At first, the salt stings in the fresh wounds, but eventually the pain fades—the punctures stop bleeding. Indy, of course, waits for her every time she surfaces. There is something different between them now. A deeper bond that only predators can share. They hunt fish together, for the first time.

• • •
Charlie has to practically drag herself from the sea, the first time. The waves refuse to give her up; cling desperately to her like a mother to a growing child. It sings don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. The young soldier turns back with shifting eyes and quivering legs and says, “I will come home.”

• • •
And she does. She goes between the two enough times to remember how it feels to walk without stumbling, to fly without falling. Enough times that the feeling of magic knitting itself over her body feels less electric and more like a breeze. Until she almost learns how to hide her teeth.

Today, Charlie goes farther from the sea than usual. Far enough that she can no longer hear it calling to her but just feel it. Always; in her blood, her bones, like a ballad. Impossible to ignore.

The sky and water girl goes beyond the swamp and its dark buzzing canopy. She ends up in the place between dusk and dawn. In the loosely scattered glades of trees and the shallow offshoot creek from the Rapax.

For the first time since she can remember, she tries to stay away from the sea. Indy’s shadow above guides her eastward along the bank of the babbling Amare. Charlie’s not sure what she’s expecting to find. The ocean has given her everything that she thought she ever wanted.

"Speaking."