The Setting & The Ritual's Start
The roof tile cracked under Anja's foot.
A hairline fracture, but enough to send her heart hammering against her ribs. She froze, weight balanced on the balls of her feet, arms spread wide like a tightrope walker. Below her, thirty feet of brown water waited, patient as death.
The tile held.
Anja's first thought, as always upon waking, had been the rough clay beneath her bare feet—the only solid ground left in a world dissolved into water. She perched on the highest point of the roof gable, the last defiant peak of her family home, and forced herself to breathe. The air tasted of brine and rot, a thick cocktail that coated her tongue with the memory of everything the sea had swallowed.
From here, she could see everything. Which meant she could see nothing.
Just the vast, featureless expanse of the Bay of Bengal stretched to meet a sky the color of dirty dishwater. The horizon had vanished weeks ago, swallowed by a seamless, suffocating grey that pressed down like a lid on a tomb.
Below, the water—bloated, brown, and insatiably greedy—eddied around the skeletal remains of the second-story windows. The glass was long gone, leaving empty eyes that stared out at the submerged world. She didn't look down. Looking down was madness, an invitation to feel the world tilt and her balance falter.
Instead, she looked out and forced air into her lungs, an act of defiance.
The air itself carried stories in its stench: the heavy salt that made her mouth water with phantom thirst, the sickly-sweet reek of decay from things that had once been homes, the metallic tang of rust from a thousand submerged cars. Somewhere in that toxic brew, she caught the faintest hint of jasmine—a ghost from her mother's garden, now feeding the fish thirty feet below.
The sun, a hazy smear behind the overcast clouds, began its slow, grudging climb. Its weak light signaled the start of the ritual, a silent litany she performed each morning. A series of checks and measurements that had kept her alive for forty-three days since the final surge.
The Litany of Despair
The ritual began with the water line.
Anja's eyes traced the slimy, mocking stain on the exposed brick of their neighbor's house. Mrs. Patel's kitchen window, where she used to lean out to gossip with Anja's mother over the fence, now marked the high-water line from yesterday's tide.
She held up her hand, thin fingers trembling, measuring the space between the dark stain and the current water level. The gap seemed smaller than yesterday, but that might have been wishful thinking. Or fear playing tricks. Both were luxuries she couldn't afford.
"Maybe a hand's breadth," she murmured, her voice cracked from dehydration. The salt air had scoured her throat raw. She let her hand drop, wiping the grime on her salvaged cargo pants.
"Not enough. Never enough."
The sea, vast and indifferent, remained their jailer. It rose with each tide, fell with each ebb, but never far enough. Never giving them back their world.
"I thought yesterday it was lower," Sami called from his perch on the far corner of the roof. His voice carried the forced optimism of someone trying to convince himself as much as her.
Anja shook her head, bitterness rising in her throat like bile. The taste mixed with the salt, creating a flavor she'd learned to associate with mornings. With survival. With the slow grind of hope wearing away like stone.
"The sea plays tricks, Sami. It always does."
She turned from the water, her bone-deep weariness settling on their pathetic hoard. Time to check their supplies, count their remaining days, measure their slow slide toward death.
The mental inventory made her stomach clench with hunger—a familiar fist that had become her constant companion.
Sami's eyes fixed on their supply corner, a silent plea written in the hollow circles under his eyes. Anja avoided his gaze, focusing instead on the careful arrangement of containers that held their lives.
"A half-packet of hardened protein crackers," she announced, her voice steady despite the way her hands shook. The crackers tasted like cardboard and defeat, but they were calories. "Three tins of water. Maybe four more days of rations if we're careful."
If they were careful. If the water didn't rise. If rescue came. If, if, if.
The weight of those conditions pressed down on her shoulders like the grey sky above.
She picked up the first container, shaking it to gauge the water level. The liquid sloshed with a hollow sound that spoke of emptiness approaching faster than hope. The plastic was warm from the morning sun, slippery with condensation that tasted bitter when she licked it from her fingers—every drop precious.
"Four days," Sami repeated, as if saying it might make it true. As if repetition could transform their reality into something more bearable.
Anja nodded, then moved to their signal mirror—a piece of broken glass from their bathroom, carefully wrapped in cloth to prevent cuts. She angled it toward the eastern horizon, catching what little sunlight filtered through the clouds.
Three flashes. Pause. Three more. SOS.
The same signal she'd sent every morning for six weeks. The same signal that had never received an answer.
But she sent it anyway, because the alternative was accepting that they were alone. That the rest of the world had forgotten the small fishing village of Sonapur, had written them off as another casualty of the new climate reality.
The mirror caught a shaft of light and threw it across the water like a desperate prayer.
No answer came back. It never did.
"Maybe today," Sami said, but his voice had lost conviction somewhere around day twenty.
"Maybe," Anja agreed, though the word felt like ash in her mouth.
She lowered the mirror and looked east again, squinting through the haze. For a moment—just a moment—she thought she saw something. A dark shape against the grey, miles away but distinct. Her heart lurched.
But when she blinked and looked again, there was nothing but water and sky and the endless, mocking horizon.
Hope was dangerous here. Hope could kill you faster than thirst.
She tucked the mirror away and settled into the morning's routine, the ritual of survival that had replaced her old life like a badly fitting garment. Check the water level. Count the supplies. Send the signal. Pretend that somewhere beyond the drowned world, people still cared whether they lived or died.
The sun climbed higher, burning off some of the morning mist but bringing with it the promise of another scorching day. The roof tiles would be unbearable by noon, forcing them to retreat to the narrow strip of shade cast by the chimney.
Another day of waiting. Another day of hoping. Another day of watching the water and wondering if tonight would bring the tide that finally claimed them.
Anja closed her eyes and tasted the salt wind, letting it fill her lungs with the bitter promise of another impossible day of survival.
The Interaction & The Lie
Finally, the most important part of the ritual: Sami. She didn't look at him yet. She listened past the gentle slap of water, past the lonely cry of a gull, for the fragile rhythm of his breathing. It was shallow, a whisper of air that seemed to catch and falter.
Then he coughed. The sound tore through the stillness like wet gravel in a tin can, a harsh noise that vibrated through the tiles and into the bones of their rickety sanctuary. It clawed at her heart.
A sharp, insistent dread coiled in her stomach. She shifted slowly, careful not to dislodge the loose, algae-slick tiles, and pulled the threadbare blanket tighter around his small, trembling shoulders. Her knuckles brushed his forehead. Still too warm. The heat radiating from his skin was a silent scream, a fever stealing him from her, degree by agonizing degree.
"Mama…"
Sami's voice was a dry rasp. He still called her that sometimes when the fever blurred the edges of his reality. The word was a ghost on his lips, a phantom of a life that was gone, and it twisted something sharp and painful in Anja's chest every time. He was thirteen, old enough to understand. But in these moments, the little boy she remembered surfaced, seeking a comfort she could no longer provide.
"Sami, I'm here," she managed, her whisper battling the cloying scent of sickness.
His sunken, shadowed eyes struggled to find her. A tremor ran through his emaciated frame. "Is… is the water lower today?" The question sent him into another spasm of coughing, a wet, rattling sound that felt like it originated in her own lungs. He clutched weakly at the tattered blanket, hope flickering in his feverish gaze.
Here it was. The performance. Anja forced a smile, a brittle mask over her despair. She pushed down the image of the unchanged water line, the cruel daily ritual of diminishing hope.
"A little, Sami-jaan," she said, the endearment a fragile shield. Her hand, despite the tremor in her heart, was steady as she pointed. "See? The roof of the old schoolhouse looks bigger today."
Sami's eyelids fluttered open. His unfocused gaze drifted to the skeletal heap of concrete and rusted rebar a few hundred meters away. Seabirds swarmed it, their raucous calls echoing the emptiness. He needed the lie, and she needed him to believe it. Hope was a resource more precious than water.
"Bigger?" Sami's voice was a dry whisper. "Truly, Anja?"
"Truly," she affirmed, her voice infused with a conviction she didn't feel. "Each day, a little more. We're getting closer. You just need to rest, gather your strength, and soon we'll be back on solid ground."
He gave a small, weak nod before his eyes fluttered closed again. The lie settled between them, a necessary poison. Anja turned away, the acrid taste of it on her tongue.
A Mender's Work
To keep the lie from consuming her, Anja turned to the day's next ritual: mending. Their world was in a constant state of decay, and her work was a relentless, losing battle against it. The corner of the tarp that served as their only shelter had torn loose from its lashing, and it flapped with the sound of a wounded bird.
She pulled a length of salvaged fishing line from their pouch and began to work. Her fingers, stiff and clumsy from cold and hunger, fumbled with the knot. No, not like that.
A memory surfaced, sharp and clear. Papa, his large, calloused hands surprisingly gentle, guiding her own small ones on the deck of his fishing boat. He was teaching her the knot that would not slip, the one that tightened under strain. "See, little bird? You make a loop, but then you must pass the line through itself, twice. Like a snake that bites its own tail, then thinks better of it and bites it again. That is the Bowline. It is a knot you can trust your life to."
Anja took a breath and let her fingers remember. Loop. Through once. Through twice. She pulled, and the knot cinched down, clean and tight. It held. It was a small, perfect thing in a world of brokenness, a tiny victory against the endless, unraveling chaos.
The Weight of Memory & The Past
The silence that followed was a vacuum, pulling memories from the sunken city. If she closed her eyes, the acrid smell of salt and decay would recede, replaced by the phantom scent of jasmine from Ma's bush, a fragrance that now existed only in her mind. She could almost feel the chaos of the market, the air alive with frying spices, fresh fish, and her mother's bright, clear laughter. All of it swallowed by the salt.
She remembered Papa. Not the hollow-cheeked man of the end, but the man who stood like a giant on the third iteration of the village seawall.
…The air was festive, thick with the smell of roasting fish and the sweet perfume of marigolds. The entire village of Sonapur was gathered. Papa stood atop the new wall—a massive, sloping barrier of packed earth, reinforced with concrete and the skeletons of old boats. It was twice the height of the last one. He raised his hands for quiet, a broad smile splitting his face.
"My friends! My neighbors!" his voice boomed, carrying over the crowd. "The engineers from the city told us to move inland! They told us Sonapur was a lost cause!"
A chorus of defiant shouts answered him.
"They look at their charts and their projections!" Papa continued, his voice ringing with a pride that felt as solid as the wall beneath his feet. "But they do not see our hearts! They do not see our history! This wall is not just mud and stone. It is our will! This will hold back the King Tides! The sea will not have our home!"
A roar of approval went up. Anja, small and clutching his hand, had felt the vibration of their hope run up her arm. "The sea won't dare come near us now!" she had shouted up at him.
He had laughed, a deep, rumbling sound, and swung her up into his arms. "We respect the sea, little one," he'd said, his voice soft in her ear amidst the cheers. "But we do not fear it. We endure."…
The sea, it seemed, had a different plan. The wall stood for a year, maybe two, a monument to drowned optimism. But the tides grew angrier, the storm surges clawing higher each season like a desperate beast. Papa was gone, taken not by the water, but by the Red Lung fever that bloomed in the damp, crowded relief camps inland.
…The camp was a city of mud and tarps, stretching for kilometers. The air was a constant, choking miasma of woodsmoke, sewage, and sickness. The sound was a low, unending hum of human misery, punctuated by the wet, hacking coughs that echoed from every tent. That was the sound of the Red Lung. It started with a fever, then a tightness in the chest, and then the coughing that brought up rust-colored phlegm. It was a fire in the lungs that no water could quench.
Papa lay on a thin mat, his broad chest reduced to a fragile cage of bone. Each breath was a shallow, rattling struggle. "Take care of Sami, little bird," he'd rasped, his last words a shallow whisper lost in the din. Ma, her spirit broken, had simply faded, following him soon after, her will to live extinguished. "Your Papa... he was the anchor," she'd whispered to Anja one night, her eyes vacant. "Without him... I'm just adrift."…
Now, it was just Anja and Sami, clinging to the last eroding piece of their world, the anchor long gone.
The False Alarm
The memories receded, leaving Anja hollowed out and shivering despite the humid air. She blinked, the hazy grey of the present crashing back in with a physical weight. Her eyes began their automatic, involuntary scan of the desolate horizon. She expected nothing. She braced for nothing. It was a ritual of practiced hopelessness.
And then she saw it.
Don't look, a voice screamed inside her head. It's a cloud shadow. A trick of the light.
But she couldn't look away. It was a shape, dark and low against the grey water, miles to the east. It was too large, too solid to be debris. It had a structure, a deliberateness that the aimless flotsam of their world lacked. Her heart gave a single, painful thump against her ribs. The hope she tried so hard to cage was a physical, choking thing in her throat. For a full minute, she said nothing, terrified that speaking its name would make it vanish. She didn't want to wake Sami. The disappointment would break him. It would break her to watch him break.
But the shape persisted. It was moving. Slowly. On a path that seemed to be closing the distance.
"Sami," she whispered, the name a dry crackle. "Sami, wake up. Look."
He stirred, his eyes fluttering open, still clouded with fever. "What is it?"
"I think… I think it's a boat," she breathed, the words feeling like a prayer and a blasphemy at once.
He scrambled to her side, his fever-bright eyes straining to see. "Where?"
"There." She pointed, her finger trembling. "It's real, Sami. I've been watching it. It's real."
For the next hour, they huddled together in a silent, rigid vigil, their world shrinking to that single, dark shape. The sun climbed, its weak light a frustrating veil. Their muscles cramped, their thirst was a fire in their throats, but they didn't move. The shape grew infinitesimally, agonizingly, larger.
"It's a barge," Sami whispered, his voice electric with an excitement he hadn't shown in months. "Like the ones Papa used to see at the port. Big and slow. They carry things. Supplies, Anja!"
"Maybe it's a relief boat," Anja added, daring to voice her own frantic thoughts. "Like the one on the radio. They're finally checking the outer villages." She could almost taste clean water, feel the weight of a real blanket.
"They see us," Sami said, gripping her arm with surprising strength. "They have to see us."
It was closer now. Anja could make out what looked like a flat deck, a boxy superstructure rising from the middle. Tears of pure, unadulterated relief began to stream down her face. She let out a choked, incredulous laugh that turned into a sob. "We're saved, Sami-jaan. After all this time, we're saved."
But as the sun climbed higher, burning through the morning haze, the cruel truth began to resolve itself with agonizing slowness. The light played tricks, but the laws of physics did not.
"That's… strange," Anja murmured, her joy faltering. The superstructure wasn't square. It was jagged, pointing at the sky at an unnatural angle. "Maybe it's damaged."
The haze thinned further. The flat deck wasn't flat. It was uneven, pitted, with a color that wasn't grey paint but the deep, ugly red of rust. It wasn't a deck. It was a roof.
The final, soul-crushing reveal came as the sun broke free of the clouds for a single, brilliant moment, illuminating the shape with unforgiving clarity. It wasn't a barge. It was the entire top section of a submerged factory, torn from its moorings in a storm and set adrift, a floating island of useless, mocking steel. It wasn't moving toward them; the current was simply carrying it on a slow, parallel path, destined to pass them by and disappear into the grey once more.
The hope, which had been a brilliant, soaring bird in her chest, fell like a stone, leaving a void so vast and cold it took her breath away. The sounds of the world rushed back in—the mocking cry of a gull, the ceaseless slap of water against their wall. Sami's small hand went limp in hers. His shoulders began to shake. He didn't wail. He just cried, a quiet, continuous, hopeless sound that was infinitely worse.
Anja pulled him close, but she had no words. The lies were gone, burned away by the most cruel and beautiful hope she had ever known. All she could do was hold him and let his quiet sobs rack her own empty body, her gaze fixed on the horizon. It was no longer just empty. It was a liar.