Selira Vaen: The Tide That Remembered Her Name

Selira Vaen had always known the sea could think.

In Nythrel’Vaen, where the streets were carved in harmonic spirals and every footstep rang like a distant chime, children were taught that the tide listened. They were told never to speak a promise lightly near the shoals, never to sing in anger when the Depthsong Cathedral’s bells were still. The sea remembered tone more than truth.

Selira had learned that lesson too late.

She stood now at the edge of the Siren Bone Jetty, the white curve of ancient rib-arches gleaming beneath twin-moon reflections. The water beyond was restless, its mirrored surface fractured by violet ripples. Far out, beyond the shoals, the Maw stirred, not in violence, but in hunger.

Her name had been taken.

Three nights ago, during the Stormwake Vigil, Selira had sung the forbidden refrain, a tone reserved for Depthsong Matrons alone. She had not meant to defy them. She had only wanted to prove that her voice was strong enough, pure enough, worthy of the Deep Choir.

The sea answered.

The water had stilled. The storm above had paused mid-roar. And from the depths came a second voice, hers, but not hers, echoing the forbidden refrain in perfect, terrible harmony.

When she awoke on the shore, the Matrons could not remember her.

Her mother called her "child." Her brother looked through her. The registry tablets in the Cathedral listed no Selira Vaen among the Depthsong novices.

Only the tide still spoke her name.

Now she returned to the jetty alone, bare feet brushing cold bone. Around her neck hung a shard of tideglass, a memory-bottle she had crafted in secret. Within it swirled a faint glimmer: the echo of her own laughter, captured weeks ago during a moonlit rehearsal.

If the sea had taken her name, she would take it back.

She began to sing.

Not the forbidden refrain this time. Not the proud, ascending spiral that had fractured the storm.

She sang her childhood song.

A lullaby her mother once hummed while mending nets. A simple melody shaped like a wave cresting and falling. The shoals responded, glass-sand trembling. Coral along the jetty pulsed faintly, matching her pitch.

The sea darkened.

From the mirrored water rose her reflection, not on the surface, but standing upon it. The other Selira shimmered with brine-light, eyes deep as trench water.

“You called me,” the reflection said, voice layered with undertow.

“You took my name,” Selira answered.

“I answered your ambition.”

The reflection stepped closer across the water’s skin. “You asked to be heard beyond the Matrons. Beyond the city. I gave you to the Maw. It remembers you now. That is more than mortals can promise.”

Selira felt the truth in that. To be remembered by the vortex itself, to have her voice etched into tide and storm, was immortality of a kind.

But it was not belonging.

She uncorked the tideglass vial.

Her laughter spilled into the night.

It rang bright and imperfect, a cracked, breathless joy from a moment when she had missed a note and collapsed into giggles among her friends. The sound carried over the water like sun through mist.

The reflection faltered.

The sea’s hunger wavered.

“That,” Selira said softly, “is mine.”

She stepped forward, ankle-deep into the cold tide. The memory-light mingled with her song, weaving a new harmony, not ambitious, not forbidden, but fiercely personal.

The mirrored Selira shuddered, edges dissolving into foam. The Maw’s distant pull loosened.

Names were not seized by strength alone. They were anchored by memory.

The tide roared once, not in rage, but in release.

When Selira staggered back onto the jetty, breathless and shaking, the storm resumed its distant rumble. Behind her, lanterns flickered on along the shoal streets.

“Selira!”

Her mother’s voice.

Real. Certain.

Footsteps hurried across harmonic stone.

She turned, tears mingling with salt spray. The Matrons would have questions. The Depthsong Cathedral would debate what had occurred. Perhaps she would be reprimanded. Perhaps studied.

But she would not be forgotten.

Far beyond the shoals, the vortex shifted, and for a moment, if one listened carefully, it carried her lullaby through its spiral depths.

The sea still remembered her.

But now, so did the world.