“There,” one of them pointed, leaning precariously far from the edge of the slanted roof. “Right there.”
The other stayed sensibly seated, squinting at a horizon that looked no different than it had five minutes or five days ago.
“I don’t see it,” he said, his tone as squat and glum and settled as the rest of him.
“How can you not? It’s right there,” the leaning one repeated, though leaning a little less. Looking a little less sure of what they had seen – frowning out at the horizon as if it might have lied to them on purpose.
“Nothing there but water,” the settled one maintained. And so there seemed to be – nothing but a grey, shimmering sheet of water in all directions around the roof, hammered silver by chilly sunlight.
The leaning one gave up that title with a huff, sinking back to sit on the damp, warping shingles. With the restless hand they’d used to point, they pried at the edges of one, until it came loose and they were able to toss it across the water.
It skipped twice before catching a tiny wave and foundering. The two of them, settled and not-so-settled, watched it sink together in silence.
The not-so-settled, sitting only for lack of better options, sighed once it had.
“What I wouldn’t give for a fish,” they said. “You’d think there would be hundreds of them; I’m starving.”
They said it as just a complaint, an exaggeration, as yet, but the settled one had already given much thought to the truth of it. Under the circumstances, they were both starving, just slowly, and just starting out. Soon enough, it wouldn’t be a complaint anymore. It would be a torment, and then there would be two skeletons lying on a black square roof, a little mote in the flood.
“There could be,” he said, in his slow, considering way. “We can’t see under the surface. Even if there were, we have no way to catch them.”
“Animals do it all the time,” they pointed out. Leaning again, though not so far as to be at risk of being a skeleton in the water instead. “Seals and bears. Or maybe there’s something in the house we could use as a net. An old bedsheet or something.”
The house gurgled forbiddingly, perhaps in answer. Flooded up to its gutters, breathing those little silver gulps of warning through the chimney. Beneath the surface, it might be pitch black. Inside the rooms with no windows, it would certainly be.
“You’re welcome to go looking,” he said. The settled one, the sensible one, the one who, if he was honest, had never been much of a swimmer.
“What else is there to do?” they asked. Lean as well as leaning, full of vim and youth and perhaps too much confidence in their swimming abilities. “Are you even really waiting for rescue?”
For a little dot on the horizon that would grow into a boat, and then into jovial, shouting voices? Life rafts and warm blankets, slaps on the back and mugs of hot cocoa? The horizon had washed out black to grey for days. The sunlight and moonlight both made him shiver the same. He did so then, and said nothing.
The restless, hopeful one stood. Almost too suddenly, and the sway in their balance said they weren’t quite ready to brave the water yet.
Though they looked like they were trying to decide on it. Staring into it until its grey was in their eyes, legs bent almost for a leap. If they dove, he wouldn’t be fast enough to catch them. He wouldn’t try.
They turned away. Towards the other horizon, pacing up the shallow slope of the roof.
“Later,” they decided. Or tried to make it a promise to themself. “Once the sun slants down a little. It’ll go through the windows then. Then…”
He said nothing. Sat and watched one horizon while they stood and watched the other, and the sun started to lean, itself, to peer sideways through the water, and nothing appeared between the grey it cast on the flood and the sky.
