The Tide Knocks**
Wednesday, July 19, 2028 – 6:03 a.m.**
I wake up to the smell of salt water that doesn't belong in Arkansas.
The windows are open.
The curtains are soaked.
There's a perfect circle of ocean water on my bedroom floor, three inches deep, glowing faintly turquoise.
And in the middle of it floats a single trident-shaped coin the size of my palm, stamped with a spiral that hurts to look at directly.
Atlantis didn't wait for us to finish birthday cake.
Remy is already beside me, eyes gold and furious, claws half-out.
**Remy (low):**
"They're here."
I pick up the coin.
The second my fingers touch it, the room floods with sound (whale song layered under a thousand voices speaking Atlantean).
The message is simple:
**"Queen of Sea and Storm.
You have something that was never yours to keep.
Return the Deep Script.
Or we take the valley that taught you mercy."**
The water vanishes as fast as it came, leaving only the coin and the smell of brine.
My phone explodes with texts.
Seras:
**ocean in my kitchen wtf**
Kayo:
**Portals are locked. They cut the valley off from every hidden gate.**
Rowan:
**Shambhala just went dark. They're scared.**
Mom (upstairs):
**Celeste Valentina, why is there seaweed in the bathtub?!**
I'm on my feet, crown flaring white-hot above my heart.
**Celeste (quiet, deadly calm):**
"They want the Deep Script?"
I close my fist around the coin.
"They can come try to take it."
The symbols under my skin ignite (liquid silver and living water).
I'm seventeen for exactly six hours and thirty-three minutes.
And Atlantis just declared war on my home the day after my birthday.
Rude.
I grin, sharp and bright.
**Celeste:**
"Pack the swimsuits, coyote boy.
We're going to the beach."
Remy's answering smile is all teeth.
**Remy:**
"Thought you'd never ask."
The Gulf Opens Its Mouth
Friday, July 14, 2028 – 7:19 a.m.**
We don't take the Suburban.
We take the water.
I step onto the front lawn barefoot, still in Remy's oversized Caddo Nation T-shirt and sleep shorts, hair wild from the pillow.
The coin is warm in my fist.
I speak one line of the Deep Script (the forty-first, the one about forgiveness).
The lawn ripples like a pond.
A perfect circle of ocean water rises out of the grass, ten feet across, glowing turquoise and smelling like the beginning of the world.
Kayo's already there, nine tails fanned, golden eyes reflecting the portal like twin suns.
**Kayo:**
"Shortcut. My treat."
Seras portals in with a duffel bag that's literally on fire.
**Seras (grinning):**
"Packed sunscreen, explosives, and extra sarcasm."
Remy kisses me once (hard, fast, promise).
**Remy:**
"Pack swims with teeth."
Mom and Dad come running out in robes, Lena right behind them.
Mom shoves a Tupperware of papanasi into my hands.
**Mom:**
"Breakfast. You fight empires on a full stomach."
Lena presses a third blackbird bead into my palm (this one carved from abalone, shimmering like the sea itself).
**Lena (quiet, fierce):**
"For the woman who teaches the ocean how to behave."
I thread it beside the other two.
Three beads now.
Girl. Woman. Queen.
I step into the circle of water.
My court follows.
The portal swallows us.
We fall upward into salt and starlight.
And then we're standing on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico at sunrise, a thousand miles from home, water solid under our feet like glass.
Because I told it to be.
A mile away, the ocean bulges.
Something enormous rises (spires of black coral and gold, domes that sing in frequencies that make human teeth ache).
Atlantis.
Not ruins.
Alive.
Angry.
Beautiful.
And directly in front of us, on a throne made of shipwrecks and whale bone, sits a man with sea-foam hair and eyes like the bottom of a trench.
Poseidon's grandson, maybe great-grandson (doesn't matter).
He wears the original trident across his lap like a promise.
His voice rolls over the water like a tidal wave.
**King of Atlantis:**
"Queen of Land and Storm.
Return the Deep Script and the crown that was never meant for dirt-born hands.
Or we drown the place you love first, then the rest of the world for dessert."
I tilt my head.
Smile with every tooth I own.
**Celeste:**
"Hi.
You flooded my bedroom.
On my birthday week.
That was rude."
I lift the trident coin he sent.
And snap it in half with my fingers.
The ocean screams.
Every wave for fifty miles freezes mid-crash.
**Celeste (voice calm, seventeen, unstoppable):**
"You want the Deep Script?
Come take it from the girl who learned it from your grandfather's regrets."
I spread my arms.
The symbols under my skin ignite (liquid starlight and living tide).
The crown above my heart blazes white.
Behind me, my court steps forward.
Remy shifts to full dire-coyote, eight feet of black-bronze fury.
Seras ignites, Blazing Wukong roaring into existence.
Kayo's tails fan into a golden hurricane.
Aki and Riku crack their necks, oni strength rippling.
Rowan just smiles and cracks his knuckles for the first time in four centuries.
I look the King of Atlantis dead in his ancient, terrified eyes.
**Celeste:**
"You should've stayed sunk."
The Gulf inhales.
Atlantis realizes too late:
The storm didn't come to the sea.
The storm brought the sea to heel.
And seventeen just became their worst nightmare.
Game on.
Somewhere beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an empire that once drowned the world is surfacing.
They think they're coming for the crown.
They have no idea the storm is already in the water.
And this time?
Mercy is optional.
Let's go remind Atlantis why the oceans learned to fear the sky. Friday, July 14, 2028 – 7:27 a.m., middle of the Gulf**
The frozen waves hang around us like glass cathedrals.
The King of Atlantis rises from his throne, trident leveled, every spire behind him humming with power older than continents.
I don't move.
I just speak (quiet, seventeen, and absolutely certain).
**Celeste:**
"The Deep Script was never yours to reclaim.
It was a gift.
Poseidon gave it to Dacia with his own trembling hand the day he realized even gods can be wrong.
She inherited it the way you inherited that throne: by blood, by right, by mercy she never asked for.
I inherited it from her.
I mastered the stone where she could not.
It's mine.
The crown is mine.
The choice is mine."
I take one step forward.
The solid water beneath my bare feet ripples in perfect circles.
**Celeste (softer, but the ocean itself carries my voice):**
"Let's not fight over this.
I would hate to recreate the Younger Dryas just to prove a point.
A lot of mortals would die for your greed.
And I really like mortals."
The King's knuckles whiten on the trident.
Behind him, the city's war-song falters.
Because every Atlantean just felt the forty-eighth line of the Deep Script brush against their souls (the one that drowned them the first time).
They remember.
I let the memory linger for three heartbeats.
Then I let it go.
The frozen waves crash back into gentle motion.
Sunrise paints everything gold and forgiving.
**Celeste:**
"You have two choices.
One: go home.
Live.
Let the past stay past.
Two: try to take what was freely given to a girl who learned how to forgive the sea itself."
I open my hand.
The broken trident coin floats above my palm, pieces spinning lazily.
Then it melts into liquid gold and reshapes (whole again, but now stamped with a tiny blackbird on the back).
I flick it toward him.
It lands at his feet with a sound like a bell made of water.
**Celeste:**
"Gift returned.
With interest.
Take it.
Or don't.
But the next thing I break won't fix itself."
Silence.
The King stares at the coin.
At me.
At the seventeen-year-old girl standing barefoot on his ocean with an army of love at her back.
Then (slowly, deliberately) he lowers the trident.
The city behind him dims its war-song to a lullaby.
He bows (not deep, but real).
**King of Atlantis (voice rough with salt and surrender):**
"The sea… remembers mercy."
He turns the throne around, faces the city, and speaks in Atlantean that even I understand now.
Translation:
**"Stand down.
The storm has spoken.
We kneel."**
Atlantis sinks (slow, graceful, humbled).
The Gulf smooths to glass again.
Sunrise finishes painting the sky like it's proud of me.
Remy exhales against my neck.
**Remy (awed):**
"You just made an empire blink."
Seras whoops so loud it scares pelicans.
Kayo's tails curl in satisfaction.
Rowan actually claps once.
**Rowan:**
"Poseidon's going to need therapy."
I smile (tired, seventeen, and finally, truly free).
**Celeste:**
"Let's go home.
I still have birthday cake in the fridge."
The portal opens beneath our feet (warm Arkansas steam and the smell of papanasi).
We step through.
The Gulf closes behind us without a ripple.
Atlantis stays sunk.
This time by choice.
Mercy: 1
Greed: 0
And the Queen of Sea and Storm just taught the ocean a brand-new word:
No.
(And meant it gently.)