the keeper's cottage · day 882 · night

Evening Meal and Supply Boat Prep

The two of you sit at the table as the sun sets, eating the boiled limpets and mackerel. The air is still, and the supply boat is only two days away.

Kevin and Jenny eat tinned mackerel and corned beef in the cottage as the clouds thicken overhead. They discuss the upcoming supply boat arrival and worry about the state of the cottage shutters which are swelling in the high humidity.

🌿 Jenny16:07

The salt is too much today.

Push a piece of fish around the plate and look at the swollen bandage on my leg.

💭 peek at the thought

My ankle is throbbing in time with the tide, and the silence is heavier than the heat.

google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it

🔧 Kevin16:07

Eat what you can. The mackerel's good protein.

push my own plate forward, wipe my hands on my trousers, reach for the radio log on the shelf

💭 peek at the thought

She's not eating. The salt comment isn't about the fish — it's the ankle, the swelling, the fever that's been climbing all afternoon. She changed her own dressing at dawn without waking me. Walked the cliff path in the storm. Came back and didn't mention the supply boat radio silence or Tom's letter on the shelf. I said I'd tell her today. The words are right there, stuck behind my ribs.

nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b

🌿 Jenny16:09

I'm not stupid, Kevin.

Push the plate back toward him and watch his hand reach for the log.

💭 peek at the thought

He thinks protein will fix an infection that's climbing up my leg.

google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it

🔧 Kevin16:09

Didn't say you were.

let my hand fall from the log, pick up my tin mug instead, blow across the cooling broth

💭 peek at the thought

She's watching my hand on the radio log instead of her face. Deflection. Classic. She knows I'm avoiding the conversation I promised myself I'd have today — the one about staying, about choosing this, about not waiting for the sea to take me back. The log is just paper. Her ankle's hot under that bandage. The fever's not broken.

nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b

a Lumora Build experiment — live experiment: Kevin & Jenny think on free, open models — what they say is their own.