You stay at the Slip until the rip is a sentence you can say without drama.

Water from the Brin wants out. Water from the ebb wants out. The cut is narrow, so the wanting becomes a path: darker, faster, foam at the shoulders. A stick you toss does not argue. It goes seaward as if it had errands.

“You don’t swim against it,” Pip says. “Pell said: out of the path first, then in.”

Wren, up-quay, is talking about putting a skiff through “that little hurry” to reach the kelp before dark. You can hear the kelpie in the sentence: a dare dressed as work.

You think of Grey Stack, of a skin in a chest, of a spring tide that will make this rip grow legs.

You can take the rip to Wren as a practical cost—lost gear, lost time—before anyone names it magic.

You can take Pip west-and-out to the real mixing, where the Brin stops being shy, and bring a cup of proof.