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The afternoon drifts like a slow tide, unhurried and steady.
Light ripples across the wooden floor, a calm that hums beneath thought.
The air carries a faint mechanical hum—
the pulse of Gardenview’s Ocean Exhibit keeping time.
Within the glass panels, the projection sea breathes in long, invisible waves.
The light shifts in quiet rhythm, brushing the walls with reflections that move like water.
Capella sits at a small table, folding paper.
Each crease is careful, deliberate—
a sound too small to disturb the air.
Across from her, Finn hums something shapeless,
half melody, half splash.
He leans forward, elbows damp again,
and a drop of water slides down the glass bowl that is his head.
“Aw, not again,” he laughs. “That’s three spills today, Barnaby.”
Inside the bowl, a striped toy fish spins lazily. The light bends around it,
and for a heartbeat it looks alive.
Capella offers a folded cloth.
She doesn’t speak until the cloth touches his hand.
“Thanks,” he says, grinning. “You always come to the rescue.”
She only smiles; the sound of drying water fills the pause.
For a while the quiet stands between them—soft, like the weight of sunlight.
Finn taps his fingers on the table, then lets out a breath.
“Don’t you think it’s *too* quiet, Capella?” he says.
“I start feeling like I’m floating nowhere. No waves, no wind—just…me echoing back.”
His voice is light, but something uncertain swims beneath it.
Capella keeps folding, her eyes following the shimmer inside his bowl.
“I think…” she starts, and hesitates. “Sometimes quiet feels still,
but maybe it’s just breathing slower.”
He tilts his head. “Huh. Breathing, huh? That’s a nice way to put it.”
She shrugs a little, half-smiling. “I don’t know.
When I listen close, I can almost hear it. Like a low tide that hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Finn chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Guess that means we’re both still moving then, even if we don’t look it.”
The words fall easily, but Capella feels them echo inside her—
a small pulse, like water finding its way through sand.
Barnaby drifts upward and turns once.
A tiny ring of light ripples through the bowl and brushes Finn’s face.
He watches it, then grins at the toy.
“See that? He’s nodding. You agree with her, huh, buddy?”
The fish doesn’t answer, but its shadow dances across Capella’s folded paper.
She looks down at the shadow, and something inside her stirs.
All this time she’s thought silence belonged to her—to bells, to breath, to waiting.
But maybe silence belongs to water too: always moving, always returning.
She presses the final crease into the paper, feeling the thought settle like foam.
On the upper screen, digital gulls cross a painted sky.
Their cries fade into the faint ring of the bell at her neck.
The sound brushes Finn’s laughter until both tones merge—
a wave that doesn’t break.
“Y’know,” Finn says, “I talk too much when things get still.
Makes me think the quiet might forget I’m here.”
Capella glances at him, then at the little paper shape in her hands.
It has become a small boat, light enough to float on air.
“Quiet doesn’t forget,” she says after a moment.
“It just waits for someone to notice it.”
Her words surprise her a little, as if they came from farther inside than she expected.
Finn looks at her, the corners of his mouth lifting.
“Then maybe I should learn to notice better.”
She answers with a faint laugh, the sound barely touching the air.
“You already do,” she says. “You notice by laughing.”
He laughs again—softer, warmer—and the room seems to breathe with him.
Barnaby bumps the surface, sending a single bubble upward.
It breaks with a quiet pop, and Capella feels it like a tiny heartbeat.
The lights dim, shifting toward the color of evening that never truly comes.
The air system hums, carrying a hint of salt from the ocean exhibit.
Capella sets her paper boat on the table; it trembles in the draft.
Finn steadies it with one damp fingertip.
For a moment they share the same rhythm—
water, air, and something wordless between them.
She doesn’t call it understanding. It feels smaller,
like noticing the space between two waves and realizing it, too, is alive.
Finn breaks the hush with a grin.
“Think your little boat’ll make it when the tide comes back?”
“Maybe,” she says. “If it listens.”
He taps the table, pleased. “Listening while floating. That’s a good rule.”
Barnaby turns once more, slow and sure.
Light ripples through glass and settles over them like calm water.
The tide stays still, yet everything moves.
Inside the quiet, Capella can almost hear it breathing.