Why did the silence inside my head always get louder when everyone else was talking?

The question skittered through me like a trapped shrimp as I slipped into the shadow of the Long Rib. Sunlight thinned to green threads. Sand lifted and settled with every finbeat, the whole world breathing slow. I told myself I came here because it was quiet. That was a lie I’d been feeding myself for seasons. Quiet didn’t fix anything; it just gave the old thought room to grow teeth.

My name was Shaun, and I was the eel who left the crowd the moment the circle got warm.

“Shaun!” a voice called, bright and reckless.

Penny—a pufferfish of daring and puffed-up opinions—bobbed above me. I rose a little, keeping my tail coiled in the shadow.

“What?” My voice came out sharper than intended.

Penny didn’t flinch. “You want to see something unfair?”

The word hooked me. Unfairness was a bruise the reef carried openly—strong fish eating first, loud fish deciding routes.

“What kind of unfair?”

“The kind where something amazing has been hidden from us. Come on. Everyone’s going.”

We followed the current to a basin I’d never visited. The water tasted older there, like rust and rain. Then the wreck rose out of the sand. A whole ship, half-buried, its hull cracked open like a mouth. Anemones waved from windows. Sea grass threaded through broken railings.

A crowd hovered around the largest opening. A school of silver jacks shimmered like a single nervous thought. Inside the opening, a manta ray named Verna—big, calm, the kind of adult who could silence a reef with a tilt of her wings—hovered like a living ceiling.

“Don’t tear anything,” Verna warned.

From beneath her, a crab clacked his claws. “It’s already broken. Let us take what we can.”