The ash settled like a slow apology, thickening the air into a grey hush that made small noises sound theatrical. Jun crouched at the rim of the shallow lightwell with the practiced patience of someone who'd learned to read a colony's mood by its twitch: a sudden pulse, a furl of filaments, a hesitant bloom. They wore a patched hood that smelled of oil and kelp smoke; Hale had sewn a spare pocket into it last season and tucked in a strip of bright cloth that had once been a festival flag. It fluttered uselessly in the stillness, doing what little it could to refuse the grey.
Jun's fingers were sure: they pressed the siphon's mouth to the water, felt the cool, half-metal vibration, then eased back as the colony arranged to flow. A faint chitter sounded against Jun's wrist—an old timing-chip making sure valves didn't forget their intervals—and Jun answered its clicks with quick adjustments, the kind of small manual choreography that had kept more than one lot of harvests alive. The gleam itself—thin, pale threads of living phosphor—moved like a shy shoal. It smelled of ozone, iron, and something green that belonged to a rain that the city remembered in theory.
Across the ridge a group of market children argued over a jarred mottlefin that blinked ember-bright at every accusation. They traded flat polished pebbles with tiny holes drilled through them, tokens from prior barter; a custom, Jun knew, that had nothing to do with harvests and everything to do with teaching trust. Someone else had roasted tuber slices two turns away; the hot sweet cut through the ash with a scent that made Jun's stomach ache in a friendlier way. Small cultural things lived side-by-side here: the clacking ritual at noon when vendors banged spoons to scare away the night gnats, the old woman who always offered a sliver of candied sea-leek to any harvester with a steady hand.
'Hurry up, poet,' Hale said, appearing behind Jun like a joke that had learned patience. Their voice scraped pleasantly; they smelled of rain-leather and caramelized kelp. 'We've got a sled waiting and I'm not carrying your poetry all the way to market.'
Jun tapped the siphon, coaxed another hesitant filament into the cask. 'Poetry doesn't pay the sledmen, Hale. It helps me sleep.'
Hale nudged Jun's shoulder. 'Then write a receipt for sleep and sell it to the people who collect dreams. I'd like a share.'
Jun smiled—small, more like a sparing flash than a full grin—and adjusted a valve. The cask welcomed the gleam's steadying glow. It was a private bright, less show than lifeline. Jun snapped the lid into place with a practiced twist, then slapped their palms clean on threadbare thighs, pulling lint and ash away as if shaking off small regrets.