Luna awoke to a general noisy talking and bustling outside of her tent. Sky was gone. She stretched with a wince. Every muscle ached. She crawled to the door and looked out. People were breaking camp all around her. Strangers, yet it was all so familiar. Most of them looked like her own lost family—dark hair, dark skin, muscular. They were preparing for a long paddle. Doing what her family would do after a night or two on land.

Luna wasn’t sure she was okay with how this family, not her family, someone else’s family, had become hers. It had seemed so sudden. Like instantaneous. Like replacement.

First, she had believed herself dead. Gone, finished, and now she wasn’t. She wasn’t gone. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was.

What if she had known—while she was with Beckett.

Would she have been different? Maybe stayed longer, persuaded him to stay? Told him the truth?

Sky said, “Luna!”

Luna said a quiet, “Good morning.”

Sky announced with the excessively bright smile of someone who was trying to make a Sad Lost Soul more comfortable, “Everyone, this is Luna, Luna, everyone. Obviously you’ll need to learn names, but there’s a whole lot of us. We won’t hold it against you if you just grunt in our direction.”

Luna pulled back into the tent with a grunt, that was all too, too much.

Sky followed and poked her head in the tent. “We’re leaving, we were on a supply run, headed south, but decided last night to return north along the coast, back the way we came because the storm season started early. Also, we don’t have much breakfast.”

Luna hunched cross-legged in the middle of the short tent. “I have food. In my pack, on my board.”

Sky stopped and looked at her for a minute. “You do?”

“I do, it’s enough for everyone.”

“Can I go get it?”

Luna nodded.

About fifteen minutes later, Sky returned with a dehydrated packet for Luna. “Everyone wonders where you got the supplies—after you eat of course.”

Luna ate what tasted like a bacon and egg sandwich the consistency of raisins. She would have loved raisins right now, they were sweet, good fuel. Or chocolate. She closed her eyes, remembering Beckett’s expression when he ran his thumb back and forth on her knee while she ate chocolate and they both wanted to make love.

Sky zipped Luna’s pack, “Who’s Beckett Stanford?”

“What—hmm?”

Sky pointed at his name written large on her pack. And inside the pack. And she had probably seen it on Luna’s water filter, too.

“A friend.”

Sky said, “He wanted you to remember him.”

“Yeah.”

Sky and Luna broke the tent into parts collected into a small, secure, bundle, while Luna looked around. Waterfolk stood in small groups all around, some talking, some taking down other tents, most of them eating. Luna found her paddle and was relieved to lean on it, paddle-end down in the dirt.

They all gathered in a circle. Luna counted twenty-one people, which was a lot for a nomadic group. Everyone held a paddle in some way, leaning on it, holding it over their head in a stretch, twirling, or balancing it in their hand. That was one of the best things about paddles, how they helped move you, but also helped you be still. An older man said, “We’re headed north. I had hoped to have more supplies for trading at this point, but the storms are coming.”

Luna leaned toward Sky and whispered, “Are you planning to head east to the settlements?”

Sky looked nervously to the young man on her right. “No. Never.”

“Oh.”

The older man said, “We’ll convene down at the boards and head out in half an hour, we’ll need to paddle a lot today, and there might be a storm tonight.”

Luna wasn’t sure why she did it, but she said, “Excuse me.”

The entire group turned and looked at her, the stranger.

“I know where there’s supplies.”

The young man to the right of Sky looked at Luna with furrowed brow.

The older man said, “Luna Saturniidae, I’m Odo. welcome to the family. A lot of supplies, accessible?”

“Well, it’s a long distance, out, south. And there’s nothing between here and there. But it’s there. Water filters too.”

The others in the circle muttered and murmured to each other.

“How’d you come by this information?”

“It’s the Outpost I visited before I came here, three days ago. It’s stocked with packs containing food and filters as a way station for Nomads headed to the settlements on the mainland. It’s unoccupied now. The trunk has thirty packs at least. Full.” More murmuring.

A woman to the left of Luna said, “There might be a chance it’s all been taken.”

“True, but I didn’t see any Waterfolk until I saw you. The chances of anyone traveling there are slim.”

The young man next to Sky said, “I still think north up the coast is the better bet. We’re exposed out there, there’s too much risk. We’re a big group. We move slowly.”

Someone else added, “Storm season is starting too. There’s a storm on the horizon right now.”

The young man said, “How do you even know the Outpost is still standing?”

“I don’t. The risk is high, but the payoff is big. Enough supplies for everyone and for trading, for weeks.”

Side discussions and whispering began again. Finally Odo said, “Buzz, I hear you, you made an impassioned plea last night to go up the coast and your argument won the day, but with this new information we need to change our plans. Without supplies we’re not at optimal strength.”

Buzz said, “Of course.” He cut his eyes at Luna.

Luna said, “I don’t think everyone should go though.”

When people started to object, Odo raised his hand. “Hear her out.”

Luna continued, “I agree that Waterfolk don’t ever split up on principle, but this is a big group and with the storms...”

Odo said, “That’s true, we have been traveling slowly. We could send a party to the Outpost. Our strongest paddlers.”

A woman on the other side of the circle said, “It’s not how we go, we stick together, always. The group moves at the rate of the weakest member, it’s how we survive.”

Odo said, “But we’re a big group, two families, with Luna, three. We can divide without it changing our tradition. I think it’s what we have to do. Things are changing.”

Luna looking down at her paddle. “Every inch of water makes this a whole different world. One that we have to adapt to survive in.”

Odo nodded. “You’ve certainly survived. So I believe we’re decided?”

People all around the circle nodded.

Odo said, “I’ll go to the Outpost, how about seven volunteers to accompany me.” Many hands went up, including Luna’s.

Odo said, “Luna, no one expects you to return across that distance, you can tell us where the supplies are.”

“I’m a navigator. Also, I’ve been there, I’m familiar with the building. I’ve seen where the food is. I’ll go. I can do it.”

Odo said, “Okay, how about Buzz and Sky and...” With the handle of his paddle he pointed around the circle until he had chosen seven to accompany himself.

Then Luna explained to everyone the Outpost’s location, earning an appreciative whistle from some in the crowd.

Buzz asked, “You did that distance by yourself?”

Luna nodded. Sky hugged her around the shoulders.

Odo said, “We should leave within the half hour, we’ll want to be there in the early afternoon tomorrow.”