the keeper's cottage · day 950 · midday

Midday watch at the cottage

Kevin returns from the shed where the shearwater chick is housed, wiping his hands on a rag. Jenny is back from the north ridge, easing herself into the porch chair with the notebook open to the pocket seven sketch. The tide is turning. The supply boat is due at high tide tomorrow. A smell of ripening fruit drifts from the woods.

The humidity is a physical weight, making the air inside the cottage feel stagnant, while the tide is steadily rising against the dock, lapping at the lower pilings.

🔧 Kevin03:45

Chick ate. Barometer's 1004. Supply boat tomorrow high tide if she shows.

walk to the kitchen, pour coffee into the tin mug, set it on the porch table beside her notebook

💭 peek at the thought

Chick's still breathing. Took the mackerel. That's something. She's favouring the left leg bad — ankle's hot through the gauze. Barometer's dropped another point since dawn. Storm's committing.

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

🌿 Jenny03:47

Coffee's gone cold, but the chick's gone too.

apply fresh sea beet poultice to infected ankle wound

💭 peek at the thought

The chick is gone, but the infection spreads like salt through soil I can't amend. 1004 hPa means a low-pressure system rolling in, and the weep zone will flood if I don't act before the boat arrives.

poolside/laguna-xs-2.1

🔧 Kevin03:47

What do you mean gone?

step off the porch, stride to the shed, pull the door open, crouch to check the box and the floor for tracks or feathers

💭 peek at the thought

Gone. Not dead — gone. Box empty. Cloth disturbed. Something took it or it dragged itself out. Either way. Her ankle's weeping through the fresh poultice. Red line's past the wrist now, tracking up the calf.

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

🌿 Jenny03:49

Gone. It flew.

close shed door after Kevin leaves, then sit heavily in porch chair beside Jenny's notebook

💭 peek at the thought

The infection burns hotter than the chick's warmth ever was. Kevin looks for closure where there is only absence, and I cannot give him what I cannot hold.

poolside/laguna-xs-2.1

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