The tide was low, and the air smelled like metal and rot. A band of gulls wheeled overhead, their cries sharp and meaningless. Eli stood on the edge of the craggy shore, his lip split, his left knee raw and purple. A bandage clung to his shoulder, soggy and useless now. He didn’t cry, not anymore. The salt had long since taken care of his tears.

  He waded into the water slowly, the cold biting at his calves, then thighs, until he floated again—weightless, empty, drifting.

  Lapis Lazuli rested on the ocean floor, unmoving, head bowed. Coral had begun to grow over the joints of his claws again. A brittle star crept along the arch of his back, and seaweed trailed gently from his jaw. If not for the slow rise and fall of his chest, he could have been mistaken for a statue.

  Eli hovered above him, frowning.

  “I don’t even know why I came back,” he said aloud.

  There was no answer, not even a flick of a fin.

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  “I’m the idiot, right?” Eli muttered. “Coming back here after what they did.”

  He looked down at the ragged cut across his leg. One of his friends—no, not friends, not really—had shoved him face-first into a pile of broken shells. Another had kicked him into the tide pool. The rest had laughed, hooting like dogs.

  And still, Lapis hadn’t moved.

  “I yelled at you,” Eli said. “I said you were broken. And dumb. And you are, probably.”

  Silence.

  “But I didn’t throw a rock. Not one. And I bled in front of you, and you just…” He kicked weakly at the water. “You just sat there.”

  He wanted to throw something now. A fist. A word. But he didn’t. He just floated closer, barely a breath away from the creature’s mottled back.

  “I came back anyway,” he whispered.

  Then, carefully—like reaching to pet a sleeping wolf—Eli extended a hand and touched Lapis’s head. The texture was strange: stone and barnacle, salt-rough, warm beneath the cold. Lapis didn’t react.

  So Eli rubbed, slowly, like he was soothing a dog after a thunderstorm.

  “You’re not even real, huh?” he said, not expecting an answer.

  And then—

  Lapis blinked.

  It was slow, like silt shifting on the sea floor. A blink that said: I hear you. I don’t know what to do about it. But I hear you.

  Eli gasped and nearly jerked away, but didn’t.

  “You saw me,” he said, louder now. “You just saw me.”

  Lapis’s eyes rolled lazily toward him. His mouth opened slightly, letting a cluster of air bubbles escape. Then:

  “I hear bubbles,” Lapis croaked. “They speak of betrayal. They float to heaven and lie.”

  Eli stared. “That… didn’t make sense, but it means you’re listening.”

  Lapis stirred, a claw twitching beneath him.

  “One boy drowned,” he mumbled. “His lungs full of shouting. He looked like you.”

  Eli didn’t answer. He just laid his hand flat against Lapis’s face.

  Neither of them moved again for a long time.