by Muze

Content Warnings: Suicide Mentions, Suicidal Ideation

Lan watched the surface of the town ripple from her loft. The rainy season was always a drag. And dangerous too. Everyone in Marehaven already needed to raft to each other’s buildings, but the fourth and fifth months of the year always saw the lower levels flood too, and that gave rise to the deeper things. Lan frowned as one of the dark shapes circled Adeline’s tower.

It was such a damn shame that she liked the rain, Lan sighed. She couldn’t help it. She loved the water. On a clear day, it stretched out unbroken towards the horizon, a perfect blue mirror. And when the rains came, it connected everything, blurring the boundaries between her life and everyone else’s. The streets and alleys disappeared into the gray noise and it was almost like those foggy city nights her mother had told her about. How Lan wanted to slip into that world beneath the surface, into the past that the oceans had swallowed whole.

Now, there were only these days, days of waiting. Lan didn’t know what the world was like before the Flood, but her father would surely have found this land just as bizarre and alien. The past her mother had spoken about was lush and green and shaded.

Lan couldn’t imagine such a sight. Her mother had been very adamant that the water was blue. She had always said it with the same steel as when she had spoken about Lan’s father. Supposedly, he had shoved Lan and her mother onto a raft and sunk below the waves to join the shadows. They all did, the adults.

She still remembered the day she had found her mother on the roof looking down into the crystal depths below. It had been a clear day, months after the rainy season had ended. Adeline had gone out to gather kelp and seagrass, and George had been caulking the base of a different floor now lost beneath the sea.

What had her mother seen? Lan stared out into the rain. Something beautiful maybe. After all, her mother hadn’t even looked back when she had shouted her name.

Maybe it hadn’t been her name anymore.

They all lost things in the sea.

Pendants, rings, clothes.

Memories, photos, loves.

Bodies.

They piled up, each one bringing the waves higher and higher, until they had swallowed entire buildings, roofs disappearing into the dark mass.

Lan shook her head. Eventually, they would all reunite under the waves. Perhaps that was why her mother had jumped.

She scowled.

Adeline had called Lan a Rain Maiden, those children born during the Flood. People used to swaddle them in canvas and toss them into the sea. If they sank, it was one less mouth to feed.

But if they floated? Then, inevitably, those boats would find safe passage to a town like Marehaven. They became like idols.

Or gods, Lan supposed as she traced the rains’ path down into the waves. Adeline was always coming up with tales like that.

Lan hated the idea, maybe because they had tossed her overboard, but then her mother had dived in after her and her father after her. Perhaps that was why things always seemed to be

getting worse. If she was supposed to have drowned, maybe the waters were simply rising to reclaim her. She glanced down at the base of her own loft.

This year had been particularly bad. George had fallen in before the rainy season and it had been a long time since Lan had seen Adeline, though she knew the other girl was still holed up in her tower. There was no other reason for the dark shape to still be circling Adeline’s tower otherwise.

The other residents in Marehaven never seemed to notice them until the end, but every time someone dropped into the water forever, Lan had seen those shades outside, waiting.

She didn’t know what they were, maybe scavengers or predators or merely messengers to take the fallen to the depths. She didn’t even know if they were the cause or consequence of

people staring back at the water. Perhaps, suddenly, people finally noticed them prowling the waterways and that was the end. They had a litheness to them, a grace.

Captivating.

And then suddenly one found themselves at the edge of a roof, looking down into the sea and wondering if that dark shadow would catch them.

What a question.

To ask if it would all be over, if you would be welcomed and embraced, if the depths were really as pure as the sun made them seem or as dark as the rain whispered.

Lan blinked as the shape slowed its circuit around Adeline’s tower, lingering in her sight as if it was an eye gazing at her. Then, it blinked.

A thrill ignited in Lan’s chest.

She had been noticed.

That must have been what they felt before they took that first step off solid earth, a terror and excitement so great it dwarfed everything else. Suddenly, there wasn’t much left between you and the water, and there certainly wasn’t much meaning in whatever remained above the waves.

But no. Not yet.

Lan gripped the balcony railing and took a deep breath.

It wasn’t her time, not during the rains, not when Adeline was holding out too. Maybe one day, the sea would cradle their bodies and they would all meet under the waves.

But not today, Lan promised herself. If she really was a Rain Maiden, she would wait until the last human had slipped away from Marehaven. And only then would she allow herself to rest.

She slumped back into her chair and waited, listening.

Listening to the pounding of rain and the slow gurgle of the rising waters.

Listening to the end approaching.

And waiting for the world to swallow her.

Nathan Chu (Muze) (they/them) is a fiction editor at the Portland Review and a grad student at Portland State University. When not writing, reading, or sleeping, they enjoy cooking, flailing around on the bass guitar, and practicing Japanese. They have words in Space Wizard Press, the House of Long Shadows, and Fiction on the Web. You can find them on Bluesky @muzetrigger.bsky.social where they post the fantasy flash series #DiaryOfNana.