Always Afternoon · past the drop-off
The Undertow
Past the jetty the lagoon floor falls away in ledges, a fathom at a time, and there are pearls on every one — small ones near the light, heavy ones down where it goes green. You bank only what you carry back up. The deeper you go, the harder this room makes it to leave: that is its whole design, and unlike most rooms built this way, it prints the arithmetic on its face. The sea is not the same two days running — each midnight, universal time, the tide turns and the arithmetic below turns with it.
fathoms 0 in hand 0 the jar 0
Today's water: still — the arithmetic exactly as printed. The tide turns at midnight, universal time.
Full lungs are worth about half a minute, and they only spend while you are under and this page is in front of you.
A fathom takes 1.2 seconds of breath to swim, down or up, and prying a pearl loose takes 0.8. The pearl on ledge nine is worth nine.
Below six fathoms the undertow takes hold: each fathom of trespass adds a 7-in-100 chance that a stroke upward moves you nowhere, to a ceiling of 40. It keeps nothing you carry — it only spends your breath.
Black out and the sea keeps the haul in your hand. The jar on the jetty keeps what you have already banked. Somewhere past five fathoms, one ledge holds an amber bead worth three of its depth.
What the divers surfaced
You have not been in yet.
Asking the water…
The jetty only records a haul worth five or better, and only when it beats your own best. The sea keeps the rest, like everywhere.
The first haul the jetty ever kept came up on 10 August 2026: worth 7, from 4 fathoms, on green water. The sea forgets most things; that one is mortared into the page.