For the first time since the binding, nothing demanded attention.
No alarms.
No votes.
No urgent lines drawn across glowing maps.
The city breathed.
Rhen found the stillness unsettling at first. He walked the bridges longer than necessary, listening for tension that no longer hummed in the air. Lanterns swayed gently, reflected in water that moved without insistence.
"Peace feels suspicious," he muttered.
Nymera heard him and smiled. "That's how you know we're not used to it."
The quiet revealed things urgency had hidden.
A broken step repaired because someone finally noticed it.
Two neighbors reconciling over bread instead of blame.
A Line Holder declining a shift—not from fear, but because someone else needed it more.
Small acts, unrecorded.
They mattered.
Nymera spent her days walking—no authority, no destination—just presence without consequence. People greeted her without pausing their work. Children tugged at her sleeves not with questions, but with stories.
She listened.
That was enough.
The deep did not disturb the calm.
It observed.
Your waters are stable, it conveyed one evening. No corrective action required.
Rhen raised an eyebrow. "That's a first."
Nymera rested her hands on the rail. "Don't get attached."
Stability is temporary, the deep replied. But informative.
She nodded. "So are we."
The first ripple came as laughter.
A festival—unplanned, unsanctioned—broke out in the relocated quarter. Music spilled into the streets. People danced where walls had once been waterlogged and cold.
Skelda frowned when she heard. "They didn't file a request."
Rhen laughed softly. "Let them."
Nymera watched from a distance, heart tight with something like grief and joy braided together. "They're celebrating survival."
"Is that allowed?" Skelda asked dryly.
"It's necessary," Nymera replied.
Not everyone joined.
Some stood apart, arms crossed, unable to relax into a moment that felt undeserved. Trauma does not recede on schedule.
Nymera sat with them too.
Silence counted.
That night, as the city slept unevenly, a single question appeared on the public board—chalked carefully, not erased by morning rain.
WHAT DO WE DO WHEN IT'S QUIET?
Rhen read it at dawn and felt the weight of it settle.
Nymera answered it by example.
She did nothing.
She rested.
She listened.
She let others decide without watching for mistakes.
The city learned that quiet was not emptiness.
It was space.
The deep spoke one last time that week, its tone neither warning nor approval.
Your stillness alters flow.
Nymera smiled faintly. "So does yours."
A pause.
We will remember this interval.
Rhen nodded. "So will we."
When the next challenge eventually came—and it would—the city would meet it changed.
Not hardened.
Not complacent.
But familiar with the sound of its own breathing.
And in that familiarity lay a strength no surge could teach:
The ability to live
between waves.