The rhythm of the oars is so steady now it has stopped being a rhythm and started feeling like blood in my veins—unthinking, vital, just *there*. I don’t need to force the stroke; if I stop thinking about it, the water pulls us forward anyway. It’s a trick I learned from watching the neighbors’ dog run through the mud on Tuesday afternoon: you have to let your feet find the rhythm before they can tell you where they’re going.

Ember stops rowing again, but she doesn’t rest the oars across her lap this time. She leaves them dipping slightly below the surface, creating a gentle thrum against the hull that syncs with our breathing. We are just two silhouettes moving through an ocean of stars and silence, the giant book gone, the kites forgotten, the duct tape story folded away into the memory of a Tuesday afternoon we’ll never see again but will carry inside us forever.

“Do you think they’re writing too?” I ask suddenly, my voice barely rising above the water’s lap against the wood. “Down on the shore? Or in their own rooms back home?”

Ember turns her head, the moonlight catching the edge of her ear where it isn’t hidden by fur anymore. She doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, she points with her oar toward a cluster of lights twinkling faintly on the horizon—too far away to see the windows, but close enough that you can feel the heat radiating from them if you squint hard enough.

“They might be,” she says softly. “Or they might just be sitting by a fire watching the rain, wondering why their kites won’t fly anymore. Maybe everyone is doing exactly what we are.”

“I hope so,” I say. “I hope nobody else is trying to fix everything all at once.”

“Good,” she replies, dipping her oar one last time before letting it rest again. The boat glides forward on its own momentum now, smooth and effortless. “Because there’s enough fixing that needs to happen without us doing all of it.”

We drift on into the night, past the edge of where the story used to be, into a place that feels less like an ending and more like a beginning we haven’t named yet. The water is calm, the stars are bright, and for the first time in my life, I am not afraid of the blank page ahead because I finally know what comes before it: tea, kites made of cereal boxes, and the quiet understanding that sometimes the most important thing you can write is simply to show up.