The house sat on a shelf of rock that the sea had been arguing with for longer than anyone in the village had been alive. At night the floorboards ticked, not with heat, but with a memory of water.
Mira inherited it in October. The solicitor handed her a key the colour of old teeth and a note in her aunt’s handwriting: Leave the windows open when the moon is fat. She did not. The first night the kitchen flooded with a smell of kelp and cold metal, though the floor stayed dry.
On the third evening she opened every sash. The house exhaled. Somewhere below the cliff, the tide turned as if it had been waiting for permission.