Jovelle woke before sunrise, the first faint gray light seeping through the blinds of her small Princeton dorm room. The world outside was still and quiet, but the memory of the dream lingered in her bones like a weight she could not shake. She rolled onto her side, staring at the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the paint, imagining that the ceiling itself might collapse under the pressure of the ocean she carried inside her.
She tried to breathe normally, telling herself it was just a dream—one of many—but the rhythm of her heart betrayed her. It wasn't fear. Not exactly. It was recognition, a pulse like a memory she hadn't lived yet.
The shower helped, as it always did. Warm water splashed against her skin, chasing away the clinging darkness, washing the remnants of the nightmare into the drain. She closed her eyes and let the sensation of being fully human settle over her. Warm, ordinary, mortal. Ordinary. The word tasted bitter in her mouth, like iron. She wanted to believe it, craved it, but the pull beneath her ribs never quieted for long.
Breakfast was simple—oatmeal, fruit, black coffee. Bea chattered across the small table in the common room, talking about assignments, professors, and weekend plans. Jovelle smiled politely, half-listening, half-pretending that her mind wasn't swimming with images of shadowed water and unreachable faces.
After breakfast, she walked across the quiet quad, backpack slung over one shoulder, earbuds in, music shielding her from the world she never fully belonged to. Students passed her by, laughing, arguing, hurrying to lectures. Everyone was so… normal. So rooted in a world of clocks and deadlines and small, ordinary lives. Jovelle envied them in small, gnawing moments. If the sea hadn't awakened her blood, hadn't etched those dreams into her every night, she might have believed herself human, fully human, like they were.
The Marine Biology building loomed ahead, the familiar red brick and towering columns. She entered the lecture hall and slotted into her usual seat near the back. From here, she could watch the room, the people, the professor, without being watched herself. Observation was a skill she'd learned early. The dreams had taught her that. Awareness, attentiveness, the subtle cues of movement—details humans overlooked but the deep never forgot.
Dr. Halstein's lecture began as usual. He spoke with an enthusiasm Jovelle couldn't entirely match, his hands gesturing toward slides of abyssal trenches and bioluminescent creatures that lived in complete darkness. The students whispered, tapped on keyboards, scribbled notes. Jovelle's pen hovered over her notebook, but she wasn't writing. She was watching the slides and feeling the depths of the ocean reach up toward her chest, tugging, reminding her that she belonged elsewhere.
Her dreams had been increasing in intensity over the past week. No longer simple visions at night, they bled into her waking mind. She would catch glimpses of movement in puddles on campus, of shadows that felt too deliberate, too purposeful. The wind carried the scent of salt even when no sea was near. She knew it was only a trick of her mind, but a part of her—the deep part—recognized the call as real.
After class, she wandered through the campus library, letting the hum of fluorescent lights and the smell of old books ground her. She liked the library; it felt safe. People around her were human, solid, tangible. She could touch a spine of a book, feel the grain of the wood on the table. Here, everything had edges, rules. Predictable laws. And yet, even here, she was aware of currents she could not explain. Between the shelves, shadows clung differently, edges of her vision seemed to shimmer, and every so often, the soft hum from her dreams echoed faintly—just enough to make her pause, tilt her head, and search for a source. Nothing appeared. Nothing ever did.
By midday, she returned to her dorm. Bea was sprawled on the couch, laptop open, music playing.
"You look like hell," Bea said without looking up. "Another nightmare?"
Jovelle hesitated. "Yeah."
"You should call your mom," Bea suggested casually. "Maybe she can… you know, calm the tides or whatever." She waved her hand. "Old family magic."
Jovelle laughed softly, a bitter little sound. "She'd just remind me that the ocean remembers its own. That I'm just like them. Half of me, anyway."
"Yeah," Bea said. "Whatever that means."
Jovelle shrugged and moved to her desk, pulling out a stack of textbooks. Genetics. Oceanography. A literature assignment due tomorrow. She attempted to immerse herself in the mundane, scribbling notes, reading paragraphs, highlighting sentences. It helped. Only a little.
The hum came again—not a sound, not a voice, but a vibration she felt through her chest, faint, almost imperceptible. Her fingers froze over the pen. She tilted her head, scanning the room. Nothing. Just the ordinary hum of air conditioning, of students typing and talking somewhere far away.
Still, the pulse persisted. She traced the feeling down into her core, and for a heartbeat, she imagined herself in the dark water of her dreams, floating toward the mysterious figure she could never see. The memory was vivid. Too vivid.
Her phone buzzed. A message from her mother.
"Remember who you are, Jovelle. The tides are restless. You must listen."
She stared at it, the screen warm in her hand. Her mother had always spoken cryptically, but never like this. Not with urgency. Not with an edge that made her skin prickle.
Jovelle typed back a nonchalant reply: "I'm fine. Just busy with school."
And yet, even as she typed, her pulse quickened. She knew the ocean didn't forget. It waited. It watched. And her dreams were only the beginning.
Afternoon classes passed in a blur. Notes scribbled. Professors droned. Coffee consumed. Conversations with classmates reduced to polite nods and smiles. She tried to concentrate on the human things: lectures, deadlines, essays. She tried to ignore the undercurrent pulling at her from below the surface, at the bloodline she had spent years convincing herself was just a story.
In the late afternoon, she walked along the edge of the campus lake. Not the ocean, but it would do. The wind tugged at her hair and clothes. She pressed her palms into her jacket pockets and watched the water ripple in the fading light. A trick of the wind, a reflection of the clouds—she didn't know. But for a moment, the surface of the lake shimmered like it held something alive, something just beyond her reach.
She shook her head. Stop it.
But the shimmer didn't disappear. It pulsed. Softly, almost imperceptibly. Like a heartbeat.
Jovelle's thoughts drifted back to her ancestry. Her grandmother's stories of the guardians of the deep. Of the bloodline that had once walked the shores of a distant coast in Africa, listening to currents, knowing the tides, keeping the secrets of the ocean. Her mother's gentle reminders that the family remembered what most humans had forgotten.
She had always dismissed them. Until now.
Until the dreams, until the pull, until the faint hum that trailed her like a shadow through her day.
And yet she lived a normal life—or as normal as a Princeton student with two part-time jobs, friends, and classes could. She cooked simple meals, did laundry, emailed professors, and called her family on the weekends. She laughed with friends. She cried quietly alone. She studied. She dreamed.
All the while, the deep waited.
By evening, she was in her dorm room again, preparing dinner. The smell of sautéing vegetables and rice was grounding. She kept the music on, classical, piano-heavy, to drown out the faint vibrations she felt in her chest. Yet even here, in her own space, the ocean whispered to her. Not words. Not commands. Just a low, insistent hum. She tried to ignore it.
She studied the skyline visible from her window—the lights of the small city across the river glimmering, reflections in the water. A human world. Predictable. Controllable. Ordinary.
And yet, she could not deny the feeling that someone—or something—was stirring on the surface. Something that didn't belong entirely to the human world. Something that would eventually cross paths with her.
She shrugged on a cardigan, pulled her hair into a loose bun, and settled into her chair with a book. Oceanography, again. The abyssal zone. Hydrothermal vents. Bioluminescent predators that hunted in absolute darkness. She read, took notes, forced herself to focus, but her eyes kept wandering to the window. To the river. To the dark horizon where sea and sky blurred.
The hum in her chest grew slightly stronger, almost imperceptible, and she imagined herself floating there, beneath the waves, deeper and deeper, toward the unseen woman in her dreams. She didn't move. She didn't act. She only sat, half-listening, half-watching, knowing that the day would end, and sleep would come again.
And with it, the dream.
The black shore.
The woman.
The whisper.
It is time.
Jovelle let herself exhale. The day had passed. The human world had claimed her for a few hours. She could survive a few more.
For now.
The deep waited. Always. Patient. Ancient. Unforgiving.
And she was not yet ready to answer.