For three days, Frank stayed with Quinta.
They lived like ghosts in her cottage—barefoot on cold floors, wrapped in blankets that smelled of salt and kelp, speaking little but saying everything. He taught her how to listen to the sea not with her ears, but with her body. How to feel the pull of the tides in her blood, how to sense the murmurs beneath the waves.
And something in her responded.
She noticed it first while bathing. In the dim candlelight, her skin shimmered faintly—as though dusted with crushed pearls. When she touched her chest, the second pair of breasts pulsed gently under her fingers, warm and alive.
That night, she dreamed again.
Only this time, she wasn't dreaming.
She stood at the edge of a vast ocean made of ink and starlight. Towers rose from the water like coral spires, glowing with bioluminescent veins. Shadows danced between them—figures with too many limbs, too many eyes, too many mouths. They turned toward her as one.
One stepped forward—a woman with hair like living eels, eyes like twin whirlpools.
Quinta knew her name before she spoke it.
"Nymara," the woman said. "Mother of the Return."
Then she reached out, pressing a webbed hand against Quinta's chest—right over the second set of breasts—and whispered:
"You are her."
Quinta woke screaming.
By the fourth day, the villagers began to notice things.
It started with young Jess Marlowe, the fisherman's son, who swore he saw Quinta standing barefoot on the cliffs during a storm, arms outstretched, whispering to the sea. He said the waves answered her voice, curling up like dogs begging for a hand.
His father laughed, slapped him on the back, told him to stop drinking his mother's moonshine before dawn.
But then came Old Man Rellis, who claimed he saw her walking the shore at midnight, trailing light behind her like a comet. Said her footprints glowed in the sand and then vanished when the tide rolled in.
Whispers spread like mold in damp wood.
They called her witch now. Freak. Monster.
And monsters don't get to live in peace.
Frank watched it all unfold with calm detachment.
"They've always feared what they can't understand," he said one evening, peeling barnacles off a rock with slow, deliberate fingers.
"But I'm not hurting anyone," Quinta argued, pacing the floor.
"No," he agreed, "but you're changing. And change is dangerous."
She stopped pacing, looked down at herself. Her reflection in the cracked mirror was shifting—her eyes had gone deeper, darker, like pools of oil. Her skin held an iridescence she couldn't explain.
"What happens if I keep changing?" she asked.
Frank looked up. "You become what you were meant to be."
"And what if I don't want to?"
He tilted his head, considering. "Do you think the moon decides whether to rise? Do you think the tide asks permission to come in?"
She didn't answer.
On the fifth night, the town came.
A group of six—men and women both—armed with torches, pitchforks, and frightened eyes. They gathered at the base of the cliff, shouting her name into the wind.
"Quinta Quiz! Come down!"
"She speaks to the sea!"
"She's cursed!"
Frank stood beside her at the window, watching them below.
"They won't stop," Quinta whispered.
"No," Frank said. "They never do."
"What do I do?"
He looked at her, really looked—into her eyes, past them, into the thing stirring inside.
"Let them see you," he said softly.
"I'm afraid."
"Good," he said. "Fear means you still care."
She opened the door.
Cold air hit her face. Rain drizzled down, soaking her clothes. The villagers flinched when she appeared at the top of the hill.
She didn't speak.
She didn't need to.
Light spilled from her chest—not fire, not magic, but something older. Something deep.
The glow pulsed through her blouse, four soft moons burning beneath the fabric. The crowd gasped. One man dropped his torch.
And Quinta, for the first time in her life, did not shrink away.
She let them see her.
All of her.
After that night, no one approached her again.
Some left the village entirely.
Others whispered prayers when they passed the cliffs.
And Quinta?
She kept climbing to the lighthouse every night.
Polishing the glass.
Lighting the lamp.
Waiting.
Because something else was coming.
Something bigger than villagers and fear.
The sea was rising.
And it remembered her name.