The morning the fog rolled in, Jenny May was already awake. She sat cross-legged on the old wooden pier, legs dangling just above the bay’s dark surface. Viper, her sleek black corn snake, was coiled beside her, flicking his tongue at the mist as if trying to taste it.

The air was thick with sea salt and secrets.

“This fog isn’t normal,” Jenny murmured as she thought of the words of her mentor. “Clara said there’d be signs when the tide changed. I just didn’t think it meant this kind of change.”

Viper hissed softly, which Jenny May decided to take as agreement.

A faint glow pulsed beneath the water. Not bright enough to be a reflection, not steady enough to be human-made. It shimmered like moonlight, though the sun was already up.

Jenny May leaned closer.

Something moved.

At first she thought it was a school of fish, but then a shape emerged — not swimming, but rising. A girl.

She was an absolutely beautiful girl with long golden locks, huge sky blue eyes, and a complexion that made the red haired freckled faced, Jenny May envious.

Jenny May gasped and scrambled back as the figure surfaced, coughing up seawater and gasping for air. Her hair was tangled with seaweed, and her skin shimmered faintly under the fog-filtered light.

“Are you—are you okay?” Jenny May asked, reaching out a cautious hand.

The girl blinked, disoriented. “I—where am I?”

“Johnson Bay,” Jenny May said. “You’re on the Gulf Coast. Do you… need help?”

The girl looked around, dazed. “Land feels strange,” she whispered. “Like… I’m not supposed to be here.” She pressed her hands flat against the boards of the pier as if testing them. “It’s so dry.”

Jenny May frowned. “You mean—like a fish out of water?”

The girl nodded faintly, confusion shadowing her face.

That’s when Jenny May saw it — faint silver scales along the girl’s neck, catching the light before fading like they’d never been there.

“Oh,” Jenny May breathed. “You’re—”

The girl shook her head quickly, eyes wide with fear. “Don’t say it. If you name it, it stays.”

Jenny May’s mind spun. Clara had told her stories of sea spirits, ones who wandered too close to shore and forgot which world they belonged to. None of them ended well.

She stood up. “Okay. I won’t say it. But we have to get you back before the tide turns again. The fog—”

“—means the door’s open,” the girl finished, her voice trembling. “I didn’t mean to come through. I just… wanted to see.”

Jenny hesitated. “See what?”

The girl looked up at the shoreline where the fog curled between the cypress trees. “People. You laugh differently. You cry differently. You dream with your eyes open.”

Jenny May swallowed hard. She didn’t know what to say to that.

They sat together in silence for a while, listening to the slow lap of the waves. Jenny May wanted to ask a hundred questions — what the sea was like, whether there really were kingdoms below — but the look on the girl’s face stopped her.

Some things weren’t meant to be spoken of.

“Can you find your way back?” Jenny May asked at last.

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know but for sure not alone.”

Jenny May bit her lip and glanced at Viper, who was watching the girl with wary curiosity. “Clara might know a way. But she’s not exactly a fan of sea magic. Last time she helped with a water spell, her whole kitchen flooded. In fact, she would highly disapprove of me even coming out here in the fog.”

At the thought of Clara, Jenny May glanced around nervously to make sure no one was watching her. Everyone in town knows Clara. If anyone were to see, she knew she would be toast. Clara could be nice but she could also be very scary when she wanted to be. Jenny May wasn’t even sure this was a story to share with her best friend, Daniel.

The girl smiled faintly, the first spark of warmth in her expression. “Maybe you can help instead.”

“Me?” Jenny’s eyes widened. “I’m still figuring out how to make a broom levitate without smacking into the ceiling. I’m not good a complicated magic yet.”

“You have the right kind of heart,” the girl said simply.

Jenny May wasn’t sure what that meant, but she didn’t argue. She knelt beside the edge of the pier and placed her hands just above the glowing surface of the water. “Okay. Let’s see what happens.”

Jenny May concentrated on exactly what she wanted to happen. Focus, focus, focus. She could hear Clara’s voice in her clearly in her head, Jenny May you have to focus on your magic, magic works best with proper intent.

The fog shifted, curling tighter around them. Jenny May whispered the words she half-remembered from Clara’s book of tide spells, the ones meant to guide lost things home. She hoped she’d remembered them correctly. This wasn’t the time for some magical catastrophe like Jenny May seemed to always create before she got it right.

The water shimmered.

The girl began to glow again, faintly this time — like moonlight finding its way back to the sea.

“I can feel it,” she whispered. “The pull.”

Jenny nodded. “Then go. Before it closes.”

The girl hesitated. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For reminding me what I was looking for.”

And with that, she slipped soundlessly beneath the surface. The glow faded, and the bay returned to stillness, as if nothing had happened at all.

Jenny sat back, heart pounding, proud of her first successful complicated magic spell without Clara’s help. Viper flicked his tongue, unimpressed as always.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said softly. “You’d have helped her too.”

The fog began to lift, revealing the familiar curve of Johnson Bay. The sun spilled gold across the water, and for a moment, Jenny thought she saw a silver flash beneath the waves — a goodbye.

She smiled faintly.

“Guess even a fish out of water can find their way home,” she whispered.