Saltwater Reverie
At the edge of a windswept coastline, a fisherman named Palem prayed every sunrise that the sea would return his sense of peace. Instead, strange dreams haunted him: echoes of ancient sea battles, glimpses of futuristic ocean rigs, and fleeting images of a battered watch resting on coral reefs. Locals teased that he was spooked by old sailor’s tales, but each morning he awoke to salt crusted on his hair and a lingering ache in his chest, as if he had truly traveled somewhere else in the night.
One hazy dawn, while casting his net, something tugged hard beneath the waves. Expecting a large fish, Palem reeled in carefully, only to find a half-rusted device shaped like a watch embedded in a tangle of seaweed. The watch’s face flickered feebly, and Palem felt an electric jolt through his arm, as though the ocean whispered that his dreams were no mere fantasies. Word spread quickly around the village, prompting curious glances. A few older folk muttered about rumored Keepers and a watery domain never meant to intersect with ordinary life. Most just wrote it off as junk salvage.
Yet Palem’s dreams intensified. Now, the sea battles returned in sharper detail. He sensed a long-ago war raging on distant shores, and in that watery chaos, a hidden figure tapping on a watch to shift the tide of conflict. One evening, drawn to the watch’s faint pulses, he ventured out in his small boat past the breakers. The water shone with an uncanny phosphorescence, silhouettes dancing just beneath the surface. Suddenly, he realized these were illusions—reflections of possible timelines the watch was, however weakly, calling forth.
A violent surge nearly capsized his boat, and Palem found himself wrestling with old sea netting that dragged at his ankles. The watch flared with one final spark, revealing for an instant a grand future port blazing with lights. Then the vision sank away, leaving him alone in the moonlit swells. Panting, he felt an odd surge of resolve: if this relic truly linked him to a network of hidden watchers, perhaps he could do more than fish the same waters every day. Maybe he could quell his haunting dreams by confronting them head-on.
At dawn, he returned to shore clutching the watch, determined to discover how and why it chose him. The horizon glowed, and deep in his chest, that ache pulsed—saltwater in his veins, longing in his heart, and a watch that might just open the door to worlds he’d only glimpsed in restless sleep.
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