Amaya Tidecrest's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Amaya Tidecrest held the silver necklace up to the window light and read the two letters again. K and S. Her parents had left her nothing else. She ran a webbed thumb over the tiny engraved heart, then pressed it against the gills on her neck, where her skin still felt too different from everyone else's. Someone out there had given her these gills. She meant to find out who. Her house looked ruined from the outside. Vines choked the porch. The paint peeled in long strips, and the roof sagged like a broken back. But inside, Amaya kept it clean and warm. She had swept the floors that morning. A furry brown creature with huge ears and a green snake tail sat on her table, nibbling a crust. It had wandered in weeks ago and never left. She called it her only friend. "K and S," she told the creature. "That's all I have." It flicked its tail and stared at her. A name was a thread. Threads led somewhere. Amaya knew where old names lived: the records office. She tucked the necklace under her dress, laced her brown sandals, and stepped out into the sun. The three gray municipal buildings rose around a shared courtyard. A sign reading City Hall faced the front. Rows of windows watched her climb the steps. Inside, a clerk pointed her toward a room of dusty ledgers. Amaya spent hours turning brittle pages, dragging her finger down columns of names. K. S. K. S. Her eyes burned. Then she found it. One line, water-stained but clear. A marriage record. "Kai" and "Serin." The same as her letters. Her heart slammed against the necklace hidden on her chest. She read further, hands shaking. Beside the names, a note in old ink listed a last address. The record named a small house at the edge of town. Then it named the owners' trade: they had kept the sea. They were sea-folk. Amaya's breath caught. Sea-folk. People like her. The gills, the webbed fingers, the strangeness she had carried alone all her life had a source, and it had names, and one of those names was Kai. She copied the address onto her palm before the clerk could see her cry. But the record held one more line, and it changed everything. Below the address, someone had stamped a single word in red: DECEASED. Both of them. Kai and Serin were gone. Amaya sat back. She had a name. She had a house. She no longer had parents to find waiting there. Whatever answers survived, they waited inside four walls she had never seen, kept by no one. She wiped her face, closed the ledger, and read the address on her palm again. The house at the edge of town. That was where the truth lived now. She stood and walked out into the courtyard, already deciding to go.