This is a ship.
It rocks gently, though the sea beneath it is still. The water isn’t water at all, but a surface like black glass. Every ripple that should exist becomes a reflection instead, doubling the ship, the crew, the lanterns, the sky. Some of the reflections move on their own.
The boy notices first. He leans over the railing and sees himself staring back—except the reflection smiles wider than he does. When he waves, the reflection keeps its hand still, fingers curled around something sharp and silver. He steps back quickly.
The woman sits at the bow, hair tied with rope. She drops a pebble into the dark glass sea. Instead of sinking, it hangs in the reflection, suspended halfway, glowing faintly. The glow spreads in ripples, each ripple spelling a word in a language no one has spoken in centuries. The cat hisses. The boy doesn’t ask what it says.
By nightfall, the glass sea starts to hum. Low, steady, a vibration that climbs through the hull into their bones. The captain places a palm on the deck and closes his eyes. When he opens them, they’re full of stars that aren’t in the sky above.
The crew gathers by the mast. They whisper, not to each other, but to their reflections in the black water. Some reflections answer. Others only watch. One refuses to mirror at all—it turns its back, shoulders trembling, like it’s waiting for a signal.
At midnight, a bell rings. Not the ship’s bell, but its echo. It comes from below the surface, from the shadow-ship in the reflection. The sound rattles teeth. The boy tastes iron and whispers, “It’s calling itself.”
The woman kneels and scratches a circle into the deck with charred wood. Inside it, she writes: Not the same ship. The circle burns softly, like the words have been waiting for fire. No one erases it.
The cat pads to the edge and peers down into the dark. Its reflection stares back with eyes too many, too bright. The cat does not flinch. Neither does the reflection. Together, they blink once, slow, deliberate. Agreement.
When dawn comes, the sea is gone. No splash, no tide, just gone. The ship hangs in silence above a gulf of stars, each one pulsing like a heartbeat. Below, the shadow-ship sails on, upside-down, lanterns glowing in patterns that don’t belong to this crew.
The boy grips the railing. “If it sails there,” he whispers, “then what are we sailing here?”
No one answers. The ship creaks, long and low, as if laughing at the question.
The captain ties the circle shut with rope and salt. The woman closes her eyes. The cat hums in a language only wood remembers.
The ship does not explain.
It does not need to.
It remembers.
And it still sails.
