Chapter 16 The Weight of Dry Ground

Chapter 16 The Weight of Dry Ground
Aries

The first real memory does not arrive gently.

It does not come in fragments or flashes of color or half-formed faces. It does not drift in like a dream.

It strikes.

I am no longer in Cleo’s house.

I am beneath the surface, where light fractures into silver shards and the world is made of currents instead of breath. Water presses from every direction, familiar and unquestioned. A second skin. My true sky above me is the rippling roof of the sea.

And they are all around me.

Others like me, mermen and mermaids moving in a wide, slow circle as ancient voices echo through the water. Our fins shimmer. Spears of coral and shell are held in disciplined hands. The currents themselves still in reverence as she passes before us.

The High Matron.

Her hair flows like dark tides. Pearls cling to her skin as if born there. Her eyes are cold and bottomless and so very certain.

“The firma is rot,” her voice spreads into us, not through sound but through the currents of the deep. “Dry, cracked, temporary. They poison what they touch. They forget the ocean that gave them rain. They choke the world and call it progress.”

Images twist between us.

Burning coasts. Oil seeping through water. Dead coral turning pale and hollow. Steel ships slicing through sacred routes.

“They steal. They discard. They kill what they do not understand. And still… still, some of you stare upward as if the sky is a blessing.”

Her gaze finds me.

Even in memory, my chest tightens.

“You, Aries,” she says into the depths. “Born of the strongest current. Guardian of the southern tides. You will never allow your heart to drift upward. You will remember where you belong.”

The others turn toward me.

Expectation. Duty. Pride.

The word land coils in all of us like a sickness.

Never trust the firma, our elders pressed into our bones before we ever surfaced.
Never love what cannot breathe beside you.

Another image surges through...

A younger version of myself swimming close to the surface for the first time. Sunlight spilling gold on my hands. The distant, blurry outline of a beach beyond the waves. Curiosity like lightning inside my chest.

And then, pain.

A sudden, violent yank downward. Harsh hands around my wrist. A jagged whistle cutting through the water before a voice roared in my mind:

Do you long for death?

I remember then… the shame. The anger. The punishment. Days in isolation among the cold stone trenches where even light feared to follow.

You do not belong there.
You belong here.
You belong to the sea.

The memory ripples.

And then another.

The witch.

Not aged and withered as stories would have it, but powerful, intoxicating, dangerous in her beauty. Her eyes bright as bioluminescence. Her mouth painted blood-red even underwater, a mockery of land’s fragile color.

“You are wasted here,” she had purred, coiling around me in a slow, deliberate circle. “Bound by rules carved by the terrified. The land and sea were not meant to be separate, Aries. You feel it. You know it.”

I hated her.

And yet I listened.

Because part of me had always wondered… what it would be like to see the world without water between me and it.

What it would be like… to touch someone who breathed air.

Suddenly, the memory shatters.

I am back in the house.

On solid ground.

Air burns sharp in my lungs as I suck in a startled breath, hands flying to the edges of the table to steady myself. My heart is slamming so violently I can hear it in my ears.

“Aries?” Cleo’s voice cuts through the haze immediately. “Aries, look at me.”

Her hands are on my arms. Warm. Real. Human.

My vision focuses on her face, worry etched there so clearly it hurts.

“I remember,” I choke out.

“What?” she asks.

“Everything… before the beach. The sea courts. The Matron. The way we spoke about this place.” My hands tremble against the wood. “We didn’t just fear the land, Cleo. We were taught to hate it.”

Her brow furrows, but she doesn’t pull away from me.

“You were taught,” she repeats carefully.

“Yes,” I say, voice rough. “But it wasn’t just that. I believed it. I believed the firma was a plague on the world. Weak. Ignorant. Unworthy of the ocean’s gifts.”

My gaze drops to my hands.

“These hands were meant to protect the tides from people like you.”

The words hang between us like a blade.

“People like me,” she echoes softly.

“I was meant to keep your world beneath mine,” I say quietly. “To make sure the two never touched. And now I am standing in your kitchen, breathing your air, thinking of your mouth, and the sea is screaming that I am a traitor.”

Her grip tightens slightly, but her voice remains steady. “And what are you saying?”

I look up at her, frustration and confusion tearing through me.

“I don’t know where I belong anymore.” The truth feels raw as open wounds. “When I’m near the ocean, something ancient inside me rises up. Powerful. Whole. But when I’m near you…” my voice cracks, “…I don’t feel like a weapon. I feel like a man. And that terrifies me more than the witch ever could.”

Silence swells thick around us.

“You’re allowed to become something new,” she says carefully. “Even if your old world hates you for it.”

“But what if the old world is right?” I whisper. “What if I was made for water and all I am doing is poisoning your land by existing in it?”

Her eyes darken now, fire laced beneath their softness.

“Then the ocean will have to learn to forgive,” she says. “Because this land chose you first.”

The house creaks, responding to her words like an ally.

A low, distant sound rolls in from the shore, not quite thunder. Not quite waves.

Awareness travels up my spine.

“She knows,” I murmur. “The witch. She feels the shift.”

“You felt me,” Cleo says gently. “Now she feels you turning away from her.”

My jaw tightens. “It won’t make her desperate. It will make her merciless.”

“Then we become something she cannot understand,” she replies.

“And what is that?”

She steps closer. Closer than she ever has before, her voice barely more than breath.

“Both.”

The word hits me deeper than any curse, any prophecy, any decree ever spoken beneath the waves.

Both.

In that single word lies the destruction of everything I was raised to believe… and the birth of everything I am beginning to want.

Outside, the ocean howls, wounded, furious.

Inside, my heart answers with something equally fierce… but entirely new.

And for the first time in my life, I do not know whether I am more afraid of losing the sea…

Or losing her.