High Places
The platform swayed gently beneath Anja's feet as she checked the solar panel connections. Not the terrifying, precarious sway of a single roof tile barely holding under her weight—this was the steady, predictable rhythm of the Cooperative's pontoon system, designed to flex with the water rather than fight it.
Below her, thirty feet of water still waited. But it was no longer patient as death. It was just water—their water, carrying their boats, sustaining their fish nets, connecting their community. The bay had once been her prison. Now it was simply where she lived.
She wiped salt spray from her face and looked east. The horizon was visible today, sharp and clear against a sky the color of polished steel. No grey suffocating haze, no endless prison of sameness. Just the open ocean, dotted with the colorful shapes of other Cooperative vessels going about their work.
From somewhere below, she heard Sami's laugh—bright and healthy and utterly alive.
The sound still caught her off guard sometimes, that easy joy. For so long, his every breath had been a battle, a wet, rattling struggle against the fever burning him from the inside. Now he laughed. He ran. He argued with the other children about whose turn it was to help Malik in the workshop.
He was thirteen years old and finally got to act like it.
Anja's hands moved through the familiar motions, checking wire connections, tightening clamps that had worked loose in the night's wind. The work was meditative, the kind of mending that let her mind wander without fear of what it might find in the silence.
The solar array hummed softly beneath her palms, a sound that had become as comforting as a heartbeat. Papa would have loved this system, she thought. Would have understood every component, improved half of them, and taught her the principles behind the modifications.
But Papa never got the chance to see what you can do, little bird, the thought came, gentle now instead of sharp. Never saw what you became.
She finished her checks and allowed herself a moment to simply stand, looking out across the flotilla. From here, she could see everything. And this time, everything was enough.
The mending bay below hummed with morning activity. Niran's voice carried across the water, explaining something to one of the newer refugees about proper splicing technique. The school barge had its colorful awning unfurled, and she could hear Leela's voice beginning the morning lesson, the children's chorus of responses.
The Cooperative was awake, alive, and secure.
It wasn't perfect. The red tide still bloomed in the deeper waters, forcing their fishing boats to range farther each week. The generator still sputtered on cold mornings. The memory of Tomas and the others lost in the Fire-Keel Stand was still fresh enough to hurt.
But they had won. They had survived. And that was enough for today.
Evening Meal
The communal dinner was a controlled chaos of voices, laughter, and the rich smell of fish stew—real fish, caught fresh this morning, not the preserved rations they'd survived on during the worst times.
Anja took her bowl from Parvati, who ladded a generous portion with a warm smile. "Extra for you tonight. You've been working on that array since dawn."
"Thank you." The words came easy now. For weeks after arriving, Anja had struggled to accept kindness without feeling like she was taking resources from someone more deserving. But the Cooperative had taught her a different lesson: that accepting help was not weakness, and that communities thrived when people took care of each other without keeping score.
She found a seat on one of the long benches, settling in between Omar and a woman named Priya who worked the aquaculture tanks. Across the circle, Sami sat with a cluster of other children, gesticulating wildly as he told some story that had them all leaning in with rapt attention.
He'd filled out in the months since the barrel. His cheeks had color again. His eyes were bright and clear. The shadow of death that had clung to him on that rooftop had finally, blessedly, released its hold.
"Your brother's getting popular," Omar observed, nodding toward the animated group. "The kids all want to work with him on projects now. He's got a knack for explaining how things work."
Anja felt a flush of pride. "He does. Always has. Even when we were small, he'd take apart anything he could get his hands on, just to see how it fit together."
"Malik's noticed," Priya added, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "Heard him telling Rupa that the boy has real potential. Thinks he might apprentice with the tech crew properly, once he's a bit older."
The words sent a small, unexpected tremor through Anja's chest. Not fear, exactly, but awareness. Sami was finding his place here, just as she had found hers in the mending bay. They were no longer just survivors clinging to each other. They were becoming individuals, members of a community, people with purposes beyond mere existence.
It was what she'd wanted. What she'd fought for on that rooftop and across the debris-strewn bay. But it still felt strange, letting him grow beyond her shadow, watching him become his own person.
"He's got your hands," Omar said, interrupting her thoughts. "Good hands for mending. For building. The Cooperative needs more people who can see how things fit together."
Kenji dropped onto the bench beside her, his bowl steaming. "Talking about the kid again? You two are worse than parents."
"We practically are," Anja said quietly.
The conversation flowed around her—discussion of tomorrow's patrol routes, debate about expanding the aquaculture system, speculation about the weather. Normal things. Community things. The kind of conversations that happened when people felt safe enough to plan for next week instead of just surviving until tomorrow.
Jaya approached, her bowl in hand, and the bench shifted as people made room for her. Since the refinery raid, something had changed in how the community regarded their security chief. There was still respect, still acknowledgment of her tactical brilliance, but now it was tempered with something warmer. She'd proven she could think beyond just fighting, could make the hard calls that saved lives instead of just taking them.
"Good work today on the panels," Jaya said to Anja, her voice gruff but genuine. "Rupa wanted me to tell you—the council's approved the expansion you proposed. We'll start salvaging materials next week."
Anja felt her chest tighten with something that might have been joy. "Really?"
"Really. You've earned it. Your innovations kept us alive during the siege. Time we give you the resources to do more."
The words settled over Anja like a warm blanket. Not just acceptance—acknowledgment. She wasn't just a refugee they'd taken in out of mercy. She was a valued member of this community, someone whose skills and ideas mattered.
"Thank you," she managed.
Jaya's lips quirked in something almost like a smile. "Thank yourself. You did the work." She paused, then added more quietly, "Both of you did. That barrel crossing—that took courage most adults wouldn't have. Your parents would have been proud."
Anja's throat tightened. She managed a nod, not trusting herself to speak.
As the meal continued, she found herself simply observing, letting the warmth of the community wash over her. This was what they'd been searching for, she realized. Not just safety or resources or shelter. This. The simple human need to belong, to be valued, to be part of something larger than your own survival.
The sun was setting now, painting the sky in shades of copper and gold. The water reflected the light, transforming the bay from brown and threatening to something almost beautiful.
Nighttime Conversation
Their sleeping platform was a small miracle of stability compared to the rooftop. Solid planking instead of crumbling tiles. A proper tarp that didn't leak. Blankets that were clean and dry. The luxury of it still sometimes overwhelmed Anja when she stopped to think about it.
She lay on her side, watching Sami as he fiddled with a small device he'd been working on—some kind of water quality sensor he and Malik had been designing. His brow was furrowed in concentration, his tongue sticking out slightly the way it always did when he was focused.
"Sami?"
"Mm?" He didn't look up, his hands still working the small screwdriver.
"Do you ever think about the roof?"
His hands stilled. For a long moment, he was quiet, and Anja worried she'd broken something fragile by asking. But then he set the device aside and turned to face her.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "When I'm falling asleep mostly. I can still feel it sometimes—that wobble when the tiles shifted. The sound of the water against the walls." He paused. "The way everything smelled like rot and salt."
Anja nodded. She knew those phantom sensations. They visited her too, in the space between waking and sleep.
"Do you think about Ma and Papa?" His voice was smaller now, the voice of the child he'd been rather than the young man he was becoming.
"Every day," she said honestly. "But differently now. Before, on the roof, thinking about them hurt. Like pressing on a fresh wound. Now..." She searched for the words. "Now it's more like a scar. Still there, still part of me, but it doesn't bleed anymore."
Sami considered this. "I'm forgetting things," he confessed. "Little things. The exact color of Ma's jasmine bush. The way Papa's laugh sounded. It scares me."
Anja reached out, taking his hand. "That's not forgetting. That's healing. The important things—how they loved us, what they taught us, who they were—those don't fade. Those are the things that made us who we are." She squeezed his hand gently. "Papa's the reason you can see how machines fit together. Ma's the reason you still look for beauty in small things. They're not gone, Sami. They're just... different now. Part of us instead of separate from us."
He was quiet for a moment, processing. Then: "Do you think they'd be proud? Of what we did? Getting here?"
"I think," Anja said carefully, "they'd be amazed. I think Papa would want to hear every detail of how we engineered the barrel. And Ma would just hold us and cry and never let us go."
Sami smiled at that, a soft, sad smile. "I think so too."
They lay in comfortable silence for a while, listening to the gentle sounds of the flotilla settling in for the night. Voices carrying across the water. The creak of ropes and hulls. The ever-present slap of waves against pontoons.
"Anja?" Sami's voice had changed, taken on a more thoughtful tone.
"Mm?"
"Do you think we'll always be here? At the Cooperative?"
The question caught her off guard. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know. I just... Malik was telling me about the old world, before the floods. He said people used to travel. See new places. Connect with other communities." He paused. "I was thinking... what if there are other flotillas out there? Other people like us who survived?"
Anja propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at him. "Maybe there are. Probably are, even. The Cooperative can't be the only group that figured out how to live on the water."
"Don't you want to know? Don't you want to find them?"
It was a child's question, full of curiosity and hope. But underneath it, Anja heard something else—the first stirrings of ambition, of dreams that extended beyond simple survival.
"Someday, maybe," she said carefully. "But right now, we've just found home. Let's live in it a while before we go looking for new horizons."
Sami nodded, accepting this, but she could see the thought had taken root. He'd always been curious, even as a sick child on that rooftop. Now that he was healthy, now that he had the freedom to dream again, that curiosity was finding new directions to grow.
"Get some sleep," she said gently, settling back down. "Malik wants you early tomorrow to help with the battery system."
"Anja?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For everything. For not giving up on the roof. For the barrel. For... all of it."
Her throat tightened. "You don't have to thank me, Sami-jaan. You're my brother. I'd cross a thousand drowned cities for you."
"I know," he said quietly. "But I'm thanking you anyway."
Morning Ritual
Anja's first thought upon waking, as it had been every morning for months, was the texture beneath her feet. But now, instead of the rough, precarious clay of roof tiles, it was the woven fiber of her sleeping mat—dry, stable, and blessedly, wonderfully solid.
She rose quietly, careful not to wake Sami, and made her way to the platform's edge. The pre-dawn light painted the water in shades of grey and silver, transforming it from the brown, threatening expanse of Sonapur into something almost peaceful.
The morning ritual began automatically, muscle memory from the rooftop days. Check the horizon. Assess the weather. Look for threats.
But the ritual had transformed, just as she had.
Now, when she checked the horizon, it wasn't from desperate hope that someone might see her signal. It was from curiosity about what the day might bring—a fishing boat returning with a good catch, a salvage crew heading out to explore a newly-discovered wreck, maybe even a trade vessel from one of the smaller flotillas they'd heard rumors about.
The weather assessment wasn't about whether they'd survive the day, but whether they'd need to secure extra tie-downs or bring in the drying racks.
And the threats she looked for weren't immediate and existential, but manageable and familiar—the red tide's telltale shimmer in the distance, a storm system building on the far horizon, the routine challenges of life on the water.
Her hand went automatically to her pocket, where the small wooden bird still lived. She'd carried it through the refinery raid, kept it close during the worst of the fighting. It was her reminder that even in the darkest places, humans created beauty. That even enemies were people, complicated and capable of both cruelty and kindness.
She didn't know what had happened to the person who carved it. Probably died in the refinery's collapse, or fled with the survivors who'd scattered after Voss's defeat. But the bird remained, a small perfect thing, a mystery she'd never solve.
She liked that. Not everything needed an answer. Some things could just exist, small fragments of humanity that persisted despite everything.
Movement below caught her eye. Early risers beginning their day—Jaya checking the night guard's reports, Malik already at work in his shop, the kitchen crew preparing the morning meal.
And there, emerging from the sleeping quarters with a yawn that she could see even at this distance, was Sami. He spotted her on her platform and waved, a simple gesture of connection. She waved back.
They'd come so far from that rooftop. So impossibly, miraculously far.
A voice called up from below—Niran, already in the mending bay, asking if she'd come look at a tricky splice he was working on. Normal work. Community work. The kind of problem that had solutions, that could be fixed with skill and patience and the right tools.
"Coming!" she called back.
But first, she allowed herself one more moment, standing on her platform, looking out at the water that had tried so hard to kill them and had instead become their home.
The sun broke free of the horizon, sending a shaft of golden light across the bay. In the distance, she could see the dark smudge of the old port cranes—the ones they'd used as their first waypoint on the journey from Sonapur. They were just barely visible, a reminder of how far they'd come.
Somewhere beyond those cranes, beyond the drowned city and the toxic waters and the graveyard of the old world, lay the rooftop where this had all begun. Empty now. Just another piece of flotsam in a drowned world.
But it had served its purpose. It had kept them alive long enough to find the barrel. To make the crossing. To reach this place.
Thank you, she thought to the rooftop, to her parents, to the ghost of who she'd been. For holding on. For not giving up. For believing there was something worth surviving for.
A seabird cried out, wheeling overhead in the morning light. Not the lonely, mournful sound from the rooftop days, but just a bird going about its business, hunting the waters that sustained them all.
Anja took a deep breath, tasting salt and clean air and the faint smell of breakfast cooking. She felt the platform sway gently beneath her feet, felt the morning sun warm on her face, heard the sounds of her community beginning another day.
From here, she could see everything.
And this time, everything was enough.
She climbed down to join her community, to begin the work of another day. There were solar panels to maintain, splices to check, innovations to design. There was Sami's growing curiosity about the wider world to nurture, Malik's projects to assist with, the endless small challenges of keeping a floating community alive and thriving.
There was life to be lived, not just endured.
And somewhere in the distance, beyond the horizon she couldn't see, perhaps there were other survivors. Other flotillas. Other communities learning to thrive in this drowned world. Someday, maybe, they'd find them. Or be found.
But that was a problem for tomorrow, or next year, or whenever the time was right.
Today, there was work to do. And she was ready for it.
The End of Volume I
The Salt Remembers will continue in Volume II: The Red Tide War