Secrets Untold

A key like this doesn’t stay lost for long. It slipped from a belt or a pocket somewhere above, vanished beneath the surface before anyone thought to look for it. Down below, where light breaks and bends, it settled among silt and shells until Nerina came to claim it.

She turned it over in her hands first, testing the weight, the shape, the way it caught what little light reached that depth. Not made for her world, but not entirely out of place either. It was added to the chain without ceremony, worked in between beads and fragments gathered from elsewhere.

Now it hangs among them, worn smooth where it has been handled, darker where the water has had its way. It doesn’t open anything down there. That much is certain.

But it must have opened something once. And that’s reason enough to keep it.