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Desi blinked as she saw the name on the phone. She swiped her thumb across the screen, then held it up to her ear. "Holy shit, you're not dead?"

"Last I checked at least," Simon laughed. "It hasn't been that long, has it?"

"Do you really want me to start counting the months?"

"I feel like that wouldn't look good on either of us. So what's the deal? You just get in from doing, what, five hundred pushups or whatever it is you do all day?"

Desi rolled her eyes. "Yeah, something like that. As a warning, you're catching me before I've had anything to eat after doing the five hundred pushups or whatever." She wandered over to the small couch she kept in her condo and collapsed into it. "So what prompts the call? And where are you even calling from? Half the time I hear from you it's from a random recording studio in Tennessee or a warehouse in, like, the Ukraine or something."

There was a very long moment of quiet on the other end of the line. Desdemona had just long enough to start feeling uncomfortable before Simon responded. "Uh. Actually I'm back home."

"Oh." It was her turn to pause. "Like 'home' as in Black Bay?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." She was quiet again. "Why do I get the impression that you're not just there to see your parents?"

He snorted on the other end. "Nah. Not exactly my deal. You and Noah were in town back in May, weren't you?"

"Yeah. We were."

"Then you've probably got a pretty good idea why I'm here."

Desi's throat felt dry. She inclined her head, even though he couldn't see it. "Yeah. You could say that."

The plan had been for Noah to use one of the scuba suits down by the shore.

It was supposed to be a surprise for her mom's birthday. Desi had managed to swap their flight into Thunder Bay to first thing in the morning, and they'd hopped a bus to take them the rest of the way to Black Bay. They would show up at her parents' door hours before they were supposed to drive down to Thunder Bay to pick them up. Desdemona wasn't even surprised when Noah revealed that he had a scuba license - she'd long since stopped being surprised by his various certifications.

Things went well up until they got down to the waterfront. Desi had packed a set of swim clothes to get changed into. Noah split off to head towards the scuba rental shack while she made her way towards the changing rooms.

Her pace slowed as she approached. It had been almost two years since she'd last been to Black Bay. The last time the changing rooms down by the water were in poor repair - they were showing the effects of a couple decades of neglect and short-term fixes. The intervening time since her last visit had not been kind to the old buildings. One of the high up windows was boarded up with plywood, and the door on the men's side was hanging off its hinges. Graffiti covered the rough cement bricks. A lot of it was innocuous stuff - random tags, hands giving the finger, the odd swear or two. Painted in bright, big letters across the side, though, were the words, "DRY SCALES BURN SAILS." That was the one that gave her pause. There were a few places where somebody had clearly tried to wash the paint off. It took her a moment to notice that the slogan was painted over a conspicuously white section of the otherwise dirty grey wall - clearly somebody had painted a backdrop for it. Or maybe, she reflected, the city had painted over a previous iteration of the slogan, only for somebody to paint it back on.

"It's closed."

Desi started. She glanced over at Noah. The dirty green parrot had stepped up alongside her, and he was eying the changeroom. She gave her head a shake.

"What's closed?"

"The scuba rental place."

"Oh." Desi's forehead creased. "That's weird. It's almost noon. They used to open first thing in the morning."

"No, I mean it's closed closed."

She gave him a look, then looked back over towards the shack. It was boarded up. The perch considered for a few moments, and then inclined her head.

"Huh."

"There's a sign saying to go up to the main shop. They had a map on it." The kea reached up to rub at the back of his neck. "Looks like a bit of a walk. Especially carrying scuba gear."

Desi nodded. The two of them stood quietly there for a few moments, before Noah raised an eyebrow at her.

"So. Are we calling your parents?"

"I guess we are." Desi dug her phone out of her pocket. "The surprise was a good idea, at least."

"Ah well. Subtlety's never really been your thing."

Desdemona snorted. She started scrolling through her phone, glancing up surreptitiously once or twice. Before she was able to hit her mom's number on the phone, Noah spoke again.

"So what's the sail thing?"

"Huh?"

Noah nodded at the slogan spraypainted across the changing room's wall. "Dry scales burn sails? You keep looking at it."

"Ah, right." Desi considered for a moment. "Drowner slogan."

Noah blinked. "What?"

"Real old. From some folk song or poem or something about swimmers destroying an old ship on Lake... I want to say Huron?" Desi's throat was very dry. "And uh... I dunno. Drowners use it now. Great Lakes drowners especially."

She could feel Noah staring at her. She shrugged, and then hit her mom's number on her phone. She turned away from the changing room and started pacing.

"I'm kind of surprised I haven't heard you say anything about it. Like publicly or anything." Simon's voice was leading.

"What am I supposed to say?" Desdemona got back up off her couch. She turned on the speakerphone, and dropped her phone onto the counter as she moved into the kitchen. "'Hey, the tension between walkers and swimmers in my hometown is getting fucking terrifying?' 'Probably a bunch of people I went to high school with are threatening fucking violence against people on land?'"

"Why not? I mean, I think that would get the point across. Or at least draw some attention."

"Right, because attention is definitely what we want." She was rooting through her fridge, grabbing things out and stacking them next to her blender. "Loads of people seeing some basketball player tweet about it, and then deciding they're experts on decades of history after five minutes of googling."

"I mean, set them straight then." She could almost hear him shrugging through the line. "You know the history as well as anybody else."

"Yeah. And you think that's something I want to do? I mean, fuck Simon. I know you don't follow sports, but we kind of have a lot going on right now. The rookies are coming into town sometime this week, I have no idea who's actually going to be on the team, I'm half prepared to need to move to some other team at a moment's notice. Hell, we just finished moving Noah into his place in Queens last weekend."

"And I'm supposed to be starting recording on an album next week." Simon's voice was dismissive. "Don't tell anybody that, by the way. It's supposed to be a surprise drop thing once it's done. But I talked to the band, we pushed it back, and I came here to see what I can do for the organizing. A tweet or an argument with some people online is the least you could do."

"Doesn't change that I have no fucking interest in getting involved with all this."

"Well I think it's something you should do. Come on, Desi, this is Black Bay."

"Yeah. The city I left five years ago. For a reason, by the way." Desdemona had finished dumping packages of vegetables and fruits into her blender. She glanced over to her phone. "Blender noises. Give it a bit."

She hit the button, and the blender growled to life, drowning out anything else that Simon might have said. Desi took the opportunity to let out a long, low sigh. This wasn't a conversation that she wanted at the moment.

"So getting to the more important subjects," Desdemona's mother was saying, raising an eyeridge over at Noah. "You actually taught her how to dance?"

Desi groaned audibly, and her father laughed. They were sitting at a table in a local pub, up on dry land. It was one of the establishments closer to the water - Cali, Desi's mom, always said it was the place she and Desi's dad had gone to for dates, because it was close enough for him to make a mad dash down to the water if he lost focus on his gills.

Desi, Noah, and Desi's parents had long since finished their dinner. They were sitting back, a couple drinks in and talking. By this point Cali had already had several arguments with the pub's owner over whether or not she would get to pay for her birthday meal. The music was a bit too loud, and the conversation at the other tables made it so that the four of them were almost shouting to be heard.

Noah just gave a shrug at Cali's question. "I guess you could say that. Looking back, I think it was more that I pressured her into dancing by, uh..." he cleared his throat.

"Being pathetic and evoking pity?"

"In my defence, you broke my ribs."

"Rib. Singular."

The kea stuck his tongue out at her, and Desi rolled her eyes.

"So all it took was bodily harm?" Desi's mother flicked her gaze back and forth between the two. "What would be the cost to see the two of you take a turn around the room now?"

Desdemona had been taking a sip of water. She promptly choked on it, ducking her head. A few of the other patrons at the noisy pub glanced over at her in alarm.

"Come on, don't be dramatic." Her father said, grinning at her.

"Evil," she managed to wheeze out. "I'm not dancing in the middle of a pub."

"Well I will." Cali glanced over at Noah. "May I?"

Noah blinked. He flicked his gaze over to Desi.

In response, she shrugged. "My mom's crazy. Go ahead."

Noah shrugged, then got up. Cali joined him, and the two of them stepped into a clearer section of the pub's floor. Soon the two were swaying, and Desi wasn't surprised in the least to see that her mom knew exactly what she was doing. The parrot and the perch drew a number of looks from the other patrons, but nobody seemed to take much issue. It was a Neil Young song playing, and the two of them were quickly able to settle into a comfortable rhythm.

At the table, Desi let the silence linger between herself and her dad. At length, she cleared her throat and spoke up.

"So. The changing room by the shore?"

Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw her dad's shoulders sag somewhat. He drummed his fingers on the table and then said, "Yes. The changing room."

"How long has the drowner slogan been on it?"

He shot her a look, as though he was about to tell her not to mention them in public. Then he deflated, and gave his head a shake. "Not that long. A few months? They tried cleaning it up once or twice, but it kept coming back."

Desi nodded slowly, keeping her eyes on her mom and Noah. The two of them were cutting impressive figures on the floor now. She wouldn't be surprised if the pair drew a couple of the other patrons out onto the limited floorspace with them. Her mom and Noah both just had that energy.

She glanced over at her dad. "Great. So we've just got drowner shit on the walls now."

"You know that line's been around a lot longer than any 'drowners.'"

"And you know that nobody except English lit profs associate that line with anything else."

He snorted. "Well. I guess that's fair. But you know how it is. The municipal elections are coming up next year. Things always get tense around them."

Desi blinked, then raised an eyeridge. "Sorry, a municipal election? Really?"

"Well. Everybody knows that Laskin's going to win again."

"So? Hasn't she been the mayor forever? Why is that suddenly making this an issue."

Her father kept drumming his fingers along the table, considering. Finally, he sighed, and spoke. "Because since Laskin took power, the tax allotment has gradually shifted away from the underwater section of the city and towards the surface. People underwater are frustrated. Some people on the surface are, too. But when the day comes, everybody's pretty sure that she's going to pull down enough votes again to get in."

Desi kept eying him as he watched the dance. The song was beginning to draw to its close when she asked, "How worried about this are we, dad?"

He considered the question for a long few moments before he answered. "Depends on who you ask. But the longer Laskin's in power, the less patience people have left."

His face swapped from pensive to grinning as the song finished, and Noah and Cali made their way back over. A few people in the pub were awkwardly clapping. Desi tried to force a grin to her face as Noah collapsed into the seat next to her, laughing.

Desi switched off the blender. She grabbed a large glass out of a cupboard, then called over to her phone. "Your ears still working?"

"Kind of? Give me a bit more warning next time."

"You'll get over it."

"Okay, but seriously. You have some issues with Black Bay. I get that - I really do. But, I mean... don't you remember what it was like? Just that feeling like any time you walked up onto the shore that everything was just a bit nicer, and that anything built for us was just an afterthought."

"I have some kind of different memories about all that and where I did or didn't feel like a priority or an afterthought." She was trying to not grit her teeth as she responded. "Look, Simon. I get it. I understand the frustration and why people are pissed. I really do. But I'm about to drink a smoothie that's basically just ground up optimized nutritional input after spending all day training. I'm fucking tired, I'm sore, and I'm three days into missing having my boyfriend around. Get to the point."

Everything was quiet for a few long seconds. When Simon spoke again, it was clear that he was choosing his words carefully.

"Okay. Sorry. You're right. But like... I don't know. I never found any success until I left home, you know? I had to leave with basically no money, scrounge for scraps for years before anybody thought that the stuff I was doing was worth anything. We both know I wouldn't have gotten anywhere past the 'scraps' stage if I'd stayed at home.

"But that doesn't change that Black Bay's where I'm from. It fucking made me. Hell, the surface high school in Black Bay has a fucking pool. Our school hasn't been able to afford a dry room in decades. I mean, fuck, think about what might have happened if we'd had one? If we'd had a space where you could actually try and practice basketball underwater? You fucking deserved that. We deserved that. Just like we deserve to actually have fucking facilities that work.

"Because at the end of the day? The reason that city even exists is because we let them live there. That's what we found out during the protests and the blockades back in the 80s. The surface side of Black Bay doesn't survive if we don't let them ship things through the bay. In return for letting them use part of what should be our homes, they're supposed to use the profits to help build up our end of the city. If they're not holding up their end of the deal, then why should we?"

"We don't even live there anymore!" She finally snapped. She was glaring at the phone, as though Simon could see her face through it. "Fuck, Simon. They didn't want me. Do you remember that part? The bit where the moment I stepped onto a court on television, everybody started treating me like I was just another walker? The bit where your own fucking bandmates were treating me like a fucking traitor because I happened to find people that wanted and celebrated me on the surface? I mean, fuck, why should I disappoint them now? I bet you a hundred bucks that if I did get involved, your bandmates and fans would be all over me and call it phoney or performative."

"I told you not to take them too seriously!"

"Well that's good for you, man. You're not the one they were talking shit about. Have their opinions of me changed over the years?"

"Come on, Desi."

"No. I spend my summers in the water. I donate to charities for aquatic communities. Has that changed what your fucking punk friends say about me?"

"You still haven't fucking showed up." Simon was yelling now, and the tone of his voice drew Desi up short. "Yeah, great, you've done that stuff. You have so much influence. So much power. Have you done anything that's actually put you at any risk to try to help things? Fuck, I'm asking you to write a couple fucking tweets to try to help out our hometown. How hard is that?"

Desi kept glaring at the phone, but she let the silence linger after Simon's words. An uncomfortably long time passed before Simon's voice came through the phone again, tentative.

"Did I lose you there?"

"No." She considered, then spoke. "It's a municipal election in a city in the middle of nowhere. Why does this matter so much?"

"Because I've been talking to people. Old friends, inside and out of the city. Organizers. Just... people, you know? They're angry." He hesitated before adding. "This one's making me scared."

"Scared that people might actually do something?"

"Yeah." She could hear him considering his next words. "Scared that I might this time, too."

Desdemona let out a very long breath. Her eyes were narrowed on the phone, but she held herself back from speaking. She wasn't sure what to say to that.

It was Simon that broke the silence. "Just promise me you'll think about it?"

"Don't think I have the option to not think about it, after that."

"Right. Talk soon?"

"Yeah. Talk soon, Simon."

She reached over and ended the call, then stared at the off-green smoothie in her hand. It tasted like leaves. It was a carefully engineered creation that the new dieticians on the Tides had come up with for her - something designed to support an aquatic professional athlete that was competing almost daily on land, and who happened to also be taking hormones. She didn't want to think about how much research and science had gone into it.

She sighed and took another long swig. Simon's words were bouncing around in her head. She fished her phone out of her pocket and checked schedules. Her next game in Queens, when she would have a chance to visit Noah, wasn't until the end of December. That was months away still. Until then, she had a regimen of long flights, hotel stays, intense games and training, and her empty condo to look forward to. Plenty of time to overthink everything that was going on.

They were walking down to the water again. They'd gone to pick up a rental suit up at the scuba place's main location, and then brought it down to the surface in a taxi. The plan was for Noah to suit up and go down with the three fish. Her parents had set up a cot for him up in their house's dry room.

As Desi and her mom started heading towards the women's side of the change room by the shore, Desi's father called her back. She lingered by the wall, trying not to look back up at the 'Dry Scales Burn Sails' slogan on the wall right next to her.

"Just as a fair heads up," her father was saying, his voice low. Noah and Cali were already in the changing room, so it was just the two of them outside. "If you do bring up the election or any of the other things going on, your mom's already talking about helping another candidate with his campaign against Laskin. So you might get an earful."

Desi shrugged. Her mom had used her fame to speak out on a lot of things over the years. "I'm not super surprised. I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Right, right." The older perch inclined his head. It was obvious that there was more he wanted to say. At length, Desi tapped her foot impatiently, and he sighed. "Well again. Fair warning. She's likely going to be helping Braydon Hakala."

Desi blinked. Unbidden, images of the last time she'd seen the otter flashed through her head. Three years ago, at a dive bar in Winnipeg, his face agonized as he told her he wanted to break up. She stared straight ahead at her dad. "Oh."

He nodded. "He's... well. He's not a bad choice. I just thought you would want to know."

"Yeah," Desi responded, distantly. "Cool. Uh... great. I'm going to go get changed now."

Her dad looked like he had more to say, but thought better of it. He turned and headed into the men's side of the change room, leaving Desi alone outside in the failing summer sunlight.

She spent a few long moments just standing there, taking deep breaths and leaning against the wall. Once she thought she had things back under control, she turned and headed into the change room, leaving the slogan on the wall behind her.