Starfish

Thirty-Four

That morning, the sky rolled in steel-gray and pushed a chill ahead of it that raised a mist from the lagoon the color of old cotton. The peach-colored sand and blue-green tallgrass lay blanketed with sparkling dew, tiny birds and lizards huddled under the long silky strands licking the dew from their feathers and pebbly skins. Miles beyond the chalk-cliffed archipelago a low head of darkening clouds muffled the horizon like a hand over a mouth, and before the sun rose on Dreenai that morning the air was tense with signs of the first autumn storm. 

Crossing the footbridge between the university and its community of apartment buildings Ardus felt the subsonic rumblings of thunder and smelled salt-tinged rain coming in from the sea. He raised his head, nostrils flaring as he took in the electrified air and the ends of his barbels and his thick skin registering the change in atmospheric pressure and environmental moisture. "There will be a storm tonight," he said to Nina as a gust blew her dress tight against her legs, "you may prefer to spend it with me rather than alone." The corner of his mouth drew into a smile at the thought of Nina clamping herself to him with the first cracks of lightning while the building shook under the onslaught of rain and the waves assaulted the shore.

"Storms don't scare me," Nina hitched her bag higher, "I grew up on an island in the middle of the Pacific, it'll take more than a hurricane to upset me. But I'll stay another night if you can't handle being alone." She grinned up at him, walking at his side past the dropoff to the beach. The surf was already whipping, sea foam and salt spray throwing itself high enough to dampen her hair and the hem of her skirt. 

They passed a long stretch of red-brown shrubs growing along the path and the whistling of the wind through the woody stems, rattling and clicking, added to the grumbling of the water and low squeaking of sand beneath their bare feet. Overhead black divers and white wave-streakers struggled against the incoming front, their long necks tucked close to their bodies as their wings beat furiously against the strengthening gale – at the height of these autumn storms one would barely be able to hear himself think over the noise.

Indoors, the university's thick stone walls muffled the hiss of sand and the resulting quiet played an eerie contrast. It would be another hour before students and the teaching faculty arrived, and the halls echoed with the soft slap of feet and the rustling of printouts and quieted voices. Overhead lights hummed and flickered, and the pinpoint flashes of emergency lighting on battery power signaled they were on standby. In the shared office Ardus found Athe applying protective steel coverings to his office windows from the outside – it was easier to remove the panels than it was to clean up broken glass and install new windows. "They say it's going to be a bad one," the younger brown Dreen leaned inside the window to announce.

"As they always do," Ardus replied as he settled into his desk. "How is Boda?"

"Could be worse, but he's got his arm in a sling now – he can't use that hand at all. The specialist said that as long as he isn't in pain he should try to go about his day as normally as possible. Nia's making the necessary adjustments to his schedule."

Nodding, Ardus booted up his terminal. Nina settled in at her tiny desk and pulled a thermos of black kelp tea from her bag, sipping on it while her tablet downloaded and uploaded from the university network in its docking station. Athe finished his task and returned inside before long, taking up a polishing cloth and rubbing the wood shelving with preserving oil. Ignoring him, Ardus made a mental note to draw his own panels closed when he returned home and used a weather map to calculate how much time he had before that job became absolutely necessary. 

Watching a storm come in off of the ocean had been one of Timam's favorite autumn pastimes, and doing so had become a comforting habit of his own. Taking one last look at the beach before shuttering the apartment's broad seaward window and opening again to a new scene was exciting, and the storms always carried with them odd and interesting things from the sea floor – fossils, shells, bits of driftwood from distant shores, artifacts from ancient sailing ships, and on occasion the remains of creatures recently killed by the elusive, almost mythic starfish. Ardus imagined Nina's excitement when he showed her the changed landscape and wonderful new things that washed up, her eyes wide and silver-bright as she turned over the sand and uncovered sea glass, fossilized sea creatures and cone-shaped shells in a hundred colors. Already he was imagining her finds cast in Meem's crystal-clear resins, on display in the office and-