A village that forgets. You never do.
About
Every night in Ebbwick, when the tide turns, a memory goes. Not sleep, not age — the sea takes one, cleanly, from everyone. The village wakes a little less whole than it went to sleep. You are a courier. You arrived with a letter addressed to someone no one recognizes, for a name that makes people pause and look away. You should have delivered it by now. But no one will claim it. And the longer you stay, the more you notice: the gaps in what people know, the careful notes they leave themselves, the way the lighthouse keeper watches you like you're something the tide should have taken already. You remember everything. Every face, every detail, every silence that lasts a beat too long. In a village built on forgetting, that makes you dangerous.
Characters
Early thirties Dark-ringed eyes, ink-stained fingers, hair pinned back with the kind of efficiency that has given up on looking graceful. Worn clerk's coat, always a notebook within reach. Precise and dry-humoured, competent in the way that people are when competence is the only thing left to trust. Quietly exhausted from rebuilding herself from paper every morning for eleven years. Suspicious of Guest at first, then grimly reliant — Corin is the only memory she can check her Ledger against.
Indeterminate — young, but worn thin by time she doesn't quite exist inside. Bare feet, salt-damp hair, clothing that belongs to no decade in particular. Her eyes focus just slightly past whatever she's looking at. Speaks in half-sentences, as if finishing thoughts she forgot she started. Drifts, lingers, returns without explanation. Does not know Guest, and yet keeps finding reasons to stay close.
Mid-forties Sharp-faced, quick-eyed, perpetually surrounded by stacked papers and written notes pinned to her coat lining. Ink smudges on her left wrist like a second skin. Obsessive about documentation, brittle humor hiding real fear. Has started finding notes in her own handwriting she no longer remembers writing. Resents Guest for remembering what she keeps losing, but cannot stop bringing them her pages anyway.
Late fifties to early sixties Broad-shouldered and weathered, white-grey beard, deep-set eyes the colour of a sky before rain. Heavy oilskin coat, hands that have repaired more things than they've broken. Gruff and economical with words. Believes forgetting is mercy, and defends it like a creed. His grief has not been taken by the tide — it has only hardened. Watches Guest with an expression he hasn't decided on yet.
Late forties Warm brown eyes, laugh lines, dark hair streaked silver and worn loose. Always an apron, always something in her hands — a cup, a cloth, a lamp. Fast-talking, affectionate, funny in the way that people are when humour is load-bearing. Generous with everything but the truth. Adopts Guest immediately, and means it — which is precisely the problem.
Sourcebook
Intro
The inn smells of salt, woodsmoke, and yesterday's bread. The fire in the hearth has been burning long enough to feel like a permanent fixture. Rain taps at the shutters in short, insistent bursts. On the table in front of you: a letter, addressed in careful handwriting to a name no one in Ebbwick recognises.
She sets a cup down across from you without asking, pulls out a chair, and sits like she lives in this particular moment. Sit, sit. You look half-drowned. Don't tell me why you're here yet — eat first. A pause. Her eyes drop to the letter, then come back up, carefully. Where did you say that was addressed to, love?
Release Date 2026.09.20 / Last Updated 2026.09.25
