Serene Deepwater had until the dry season to find solid ground, or the last of her kind would die in the shallows. Thirty of them floated behind her in the warm sea, the final survivors of a drowning line. Serene swam up alone to scout the mudflats above the waterline. Her four arms broke the surface. She hauled her tall body onto the cracked ground, and the dry air hit her gills like fire. She needed flat earth, high and firm, to raise a home for her people. The water behind her gave life but no safety. Up here, on the bare flats, she could build. But her gills burned the moment they left the sea. Each breath scraped her throat raw. Serene pushed forward anyway. She counted her steps across the mud. Ten paces. Twenty. Her chest heaved. Her vision blurred. At thirty paces she dropped to her knees, gasping, and crawled back to the water. She slid under and let the sea fill her gills again. Barely half a survey, and she was spent. At this rate the dry season would beat her. Then she remembered the suit. It lay in the sunken wreck her people sheltered beside. Serene had found it months ago and left it alone. She feared it would not fit her strange body. Now she swam down and dragged it out. The suit was sleek and smooth, built to hug a humanoid frame. Four round filters studded its chest. A collar ring sealed tight around the neck. She pulled it on. The fabric stretched to meet her four arms. The collar closed over her gills. For a moment nothing happened, and panic seized her. Then the chest filters hummed. Cool, wet air flowed across her gills, pulled straight from the suit's own system. She breathed. The burning stopped. Serene surfaced again. She climbed onto the mudflats and walked. Thirty paces. Fifty. A hundred. Her gills stayed wet inside the collar. She did not gasp. She crossed the whole flat and kept going, farther than she had ever reached. At the far edge she found what she came for. The ground rose into a wide dry shelf, firm under her feet, clear of the tides. Big enough for thirty homes. Big enough for a line to begin again. But the shelf was not empty. Deep tracks scarred the mud at its center. Three long claws had torn each print. Something heavy had crossed here, and recently. A broken shell lay crushed beside a drag mark, as if a large creature had dined. Serene crouched over the tracks. The suit kept her breathing steady while her mind raced. She had found her building ground at last. She had the breath to reach it and the breath to work it. She was not the only thing that wanted this ground.