The next day, Nythera woke up still confused from what he heard yesterday. He sat with his mother, Layle, in the family fishing boat. The wafting smell of the salty ocean gave him a soft comfort as he cast his line into the clear water near the shore of the island.
"Nythera, are you alright?" Layle asked, worried.
Layle was one of the best cartographers in the archipelago. She stood over the groma with the patience of a priestess, aligning its weighted cords until Pelagion surrendered its hidden geometry. Beside her, the dioptra rested upon its stand, its sighting tube tracing invisible lines across the horizon as though she were measuring the shape of the world itself.
"I heard something last night..." Nythera sighed.
"It was a whisper; I heard it near the ocean yesterday. I was out with dad."
Nythera had failed to notice a fish had caught his line, too focused on trying to find out where the whisper came from.
"Have you ever heard voices from the sea?" Nythera questioned.
Layle laughed it off awkwardly, blaming the voices on a lack of sleep. Her posture became rigid as a strained silence washed over them. Layle looked over the horizon through the groma before lowering it with a sigh.
"You've heard the stories, haven't you?"
Nythera frowned.
"About the seas?"
"About the Principles."
Nythera's brow furrowed. Layle's gaze was caught on a nearby fishing boat. Its bow and stern bobbed up and down as it struggled against a vicious current. An old fisherman walked out of the cabin; his hands reached toward the water. The waves obeyed.
The raging current softened into gentle ripples, and the boat glided forward as though the ocean itself had chosen to carry it.
"Water has always obeyed Force before it obeyed us," Layle noted.
Nythera watched the fisherman guide the boat to the calmer waters.
"I still can't wrap my head around Principles," he admitted.
Layle walked back to the dioptra. She adjusted the mechanism, its brass tube catching the morning light.
"Most people don't," she said. "They simply live with them."
"But how does he make the sea listen?"
"He doesn't make it listen." Layle pointed toward the water.
"Force is already there. He's only aligning himself with it."
Nythera stared at his reflection in the waves.
"Then why haven't I aligned with anything?"
Layle sighed. She knew this question was coming one day.
"I wish I knew."
The boat they stood on roared to life as Binah sailed them back to shore.
Upon reaching the archipelagoes, Nythera stumbled into the markets; a slight envy filled his body as he saw the people around him.He knew that they could use a Principle. They knew he couldn't.
He stomached his envy, bumping into his childhood friend.
"What's got you so worked up?" Deirdre taunted him. Her arms crossed.
She looked Nythera up and down. He still had that lost expression on his face from when he washed up at the beaches of the islands. His hair was longer.
"...Nothing."
"Liar."
Deirde nudged his shoulder.
"Come with me tomorrow."
Nythera frowned. His light violet eyes locked onto hers. Deirde grinned.
"The western isle." She answered.
"The one that's only above water during winter?"
"That's the one." She beamed.
"Binah said nobody should go there."
"Binah says that about every island."
Nythera couldn't help but laugh at her remark. For the first time that day, the weight in his chest eased.
The tide would be the lowest by sunrise.
They agreed to meet before dawn.