The last day of harvest was a feast day. Long tables were laden with bounty, from land and from sea, until the wood near buckled beneath the weight. Children ran to and fro across the marketplace, pigtails streaming behind them like sails, and old folks creaked in their chairs near the fire. Always a fire, no matter how high the sun climbed or how much sweat stained best shirts. Candles were set in the windows at the dark of the moon, horseshoes nailed by the door, and a fire burned to guide the lost home.
"Ain't that what the lighthouse is for?" someone asked. Not Briar or Quinn, who had discussed the great sightless eye on the rocks often enough to know nothing would be guided to Lastings by its gaze. "Why should we melt in this heat?"
Briar had eaten three fistfuls of strawberries by then. His hands were sticky and red. He could've cleaned them, but there were other berries to eat, and he didn't see the point. He could have been ten, or twelve, or fourteen, and he wouldn't've been sick of eating berries. The only sweeter thing he'd ever tasted were Quinn's kisses, and he couldn't have those in the marketplace. They'd agreed. Or they would.
Before Briar could go looking, Quinn sidled up to him with a small plate, piled high with berries. Briar went to take it, thanks on his lips, but the plate became half an oyster shell, the berries an enormous pearl. Someone said the city had tried dredging oysters in Lastings once and found nothing but bones, and that's why they packed up.
Quinn said merfolk wore heavy strings of pearls, and had lost more jewels than any city could ever find. Like marbles, Quinn said.
The pearl on Quinn's plate turned around and blinked at Briar.
"Ain't that what the sea is for?" Quinn asked.