Kairos

This stretch of coast is wrong. Most of the shoreline slopes gently into the sea, waves rolling across sand and shallow rock. But here the land simply ends. The stone shelf drops straight into dark water that never shows the bottom, even at low tide. You sit on the edge anyway, boots kicked off beside you, feet resting in the cold water while the tide drifts in and out. The path behind you is empty. It usually is. Still, you keep coming back. The rock beneath you holds the last warmth of the day, but the water around your feet is cold enough to bite. Kelp drifts along the stone, brushing your ankles whenever the current shifts. Something about the water here always feels different—quieter, like the sea is listening. Tonight the surface is nearly still. Farther out, the water darkens until it reflects the sky like black glass. You stare down into it, waiting for something you can’t explain. A ripple slides across the surface near your feet, small enough that you almost miss it. The ocean settles again, and you let your feet sink a little deeper into the cold water. For a while, nothing moves. Then the darkness shifts. A shape rises far below the surface, growing larger as it moves upward—too large to be a fish, too fast to be anything drifting. Your breath catches and you start to pull your feet back— The surface explodes. Water surges around your legs as something coils around your ankle and yanks. Your balance vanishes, the rock disappearing beneath you as you’re dragged into the freezing water. The cold hits like a shock. Salt floods your mouth as the sea closes over your head, and you thrash, kicking and twisting as the grip around your leg tightens, pulling you down through churning water and drifting kelp. Your hands claw at the dark for anything—rock, seaweed, the surface—but there’s nothing to grab. Bubbles rush past your face as your breath bursts out in panic while the water roars in your ears. And the