Lunch had been bolted down with the same enthusiasm one shovels cold ash from a hearth—just fuel to keep the legs moving and the brain from flatlining mid-stride. But Phainon's brain was buzzing, a swarm of furious bees trapped inside his skull. Anaxagoras' lecture on "innate ideas" clung to him like a wet, heavy cloak he couldn't shrug off.

"The idea of a table is born with the man, not the carpenter, Phainon," he recalled the professor's grating voice. "The carpenter merely hauls it from the depths of the mind, like a fisherman pulling in his net." A convenient theory. Especially for someone whose last experience with an axe was fixing a shelf. What if the "depths" of your mind held only charred beams and crumbling walls? What idea could you fish out of that?

Sitting on the edge of a dilapidated pier slick with seaweed, he dangled his feet. Icy tongues of water instantly lapped at his skin, stealing the last warmth the city had squeezed out of him. With the heat, Anaxagoras' nagging voice seemed to wash away.

"Innate ideas..." he whispered into the night. "And the idea of peace, professor? Is that innate, or does someone have to 'haul it up'?"

He lay back, palms flat on the cold stone. The stars here were sharper, untainted by hearth-smoke. Here, he was just Phainon. Not a student, not a man with a past best left untouched. Just a man listening to the ocean.

The cold hit him without ceremony, shocking him out of his philosophical stupor. Snorting, he swam out a few strokes and dove under. The world collapsed into icy, saline darkness. Perfect.

He was about to surface when he heard it. A splash. Not soft, but sharp, commanding. The sound of a living thing striking the water with intent.

His body reacted instantly—muscles coiling, breath held. He spun in the water, his stinging blue eyes slicing through the gloom. Nothing. Only ripples spreading from a point beyond a reef of submerged rocks. He began a slow retreat to shore, feeling the uneven bottom with his heels.

Then the world exploded.

A surge of water, deafening and violent, slammed into him. He tumbled, lost in roaring white froth. In the chaos, another sensation cut through. Fingers. Cool, prehensile, with sharp little claws. They gripped his wrist—not gently, but with an unbreakable force. He was pulled, not down, but up and sideways, guided through the churning water past jagged rocks, into the calm shallows.

The torrent receded. Phainon coughed up seawater and sat up, chest-deep in the now placid water. He shook his head, flinging water from his white hair, and scanned the shore.

He saw them.

They sat on a stone ledge a few feet away, where waves lazed against the dark rock. Half-clad, their skin pearlescent in the moonlight. Their powerful, scaled tail was curled beneath them. They simply stared. Water dripped from their chin, their fingertips. In the sudden silence, their gaze was louder than any scream.

Phainon froze. His mind, so recently filled with survival tactics, was utterly blank. All of Anaxagoras' theories, all his city-bred fears—washed away. There was only him, and this impossible creature. They had just saved him from a wave with the force of a natural disaster and was now studying him like a pensive naturalist.

He exhaled slowly. The first words from his salt-stained lips were:

"Well... thanks."

It sounded stupid, lost, and absolutely sincere.