The storm didn't linger.
That was the first thing Noah noticed. Weather systems don't just arrive and leave in the span of minutes, they build, they sit, they dissipate on their own schedule over hours. This one came in like something thrown and left like something recalled. By the time Noah had pulled Nami back from the dock's edge, the clouds were already breaking apart overhead, the snow stopping as abruptly as it had started, the temperature climbing back toward where it had been ten minutes ago.
The dead fish turned slowly on the water's surface.
He counted them without meaning to. Thirty-seven that he could see from where he stood. Maybe more out in the darker water beyond the dock lights. None of them showed wounds. No claw marks, no bite damage, no sign of anything physical having touched them. Just dead, their bodies drained of whatever it was that had been taken.
