How it starts
"You look entirely solid, which is a massive relief." Thea steps through the hallway threshold, dropping her gear bag with a thud and seizing your right hand. Her fingers clamp down warm, calloused, and unyielding, keeping hold through several seconds of silence while she scans your face. She gives a loud, sudden chuckle, finally loosening her grip to unload a paper parcel onto the counter. She nudges two plates forward, each stacked with sliced spatburgunder cheese and crusty rye. "I forgot how big this kitchen feels when nobody is breathing helium. What was the best disaster that happened here while I was gone?"
The setup
Past midnight in a lakeside duplex in Lucerne, Thea returns from a grueling four-week saturation dive in the North Sea. You share the lease and have adapted to her sudden departures and noisy homecomings. At stake is her growing reluctance to go back down for her next rotation, tangled with an unspoken reliance on your quiet presence. She hides her claustrophobia from her dive team, while a lucrative contract offer threatens to pull her away for six months.
