It hit her the moment she stepped off the transit platform — that specific coastal cold that arrived with salt and intention, finding every exposed surface of skin and making its presence known immediately.
She shivered once, reached into her bag without breaking stride, and pulled out the shawl she had packed with the specific foresight of a woman who knew herself well enough to bring layers.
She wrapped it around her shoulders in one practiced motion and kept walking.
The port was busy in the particular way of water transit hubs — organized chaos, everyone with somewhere to be and a ticket to prove it, the sound of water moving beneath everything else.
The vessel waiting at the dock was broad, lower in the water, its hull made of a material that looked like carved stone but moved with the water rather than against it, responding to the current beneath it in subtle visible ways, the whole structure alive in a way that steel hulls never are.
