Rainbow swirl seahorse design

The tide clock in the flooded arcade stopped again on Tuesday, so I have been timing everything by the seahorses. The old aquarium tanks are still wired to the kelp farm, and the males carry their brood in those pouches, pumping like tired bellows, so we know the hour by how many have dropped their young into the grey water. Yesterday Mirela brought me a dried specimen from the cistern, its tail curled tight as a watch spring, and asked whether it had been bred or grown. I told her nobody remembers any more.

You asked in your last message whether the scrolls on the sea-glass panels I salvaged were meant to be ornament or instruction. I have decided they are a map. The curls along the body are the currents off the old shelf, and the long fins that spray out like rain are the places where the shoal used to gather before the warming. The colours bleed from green at the head to red at the root, and I think the makers meant that as a warning, or a promise. Either way, it is the only chart we have that still shows where the water runs cold enough to hold eggs.

So I am sending you the panel, rolled in oilcloth, with the cold-room key taped to the back. Take the northern line on the low tide and do not stop at the drowned lighthouse; the tail of the spiral points you past it. If the pouches are full when you get there, bring back three. Tell the children it is only a seahorse. They will laugh, and that is fine. It was always a seahorse to us.