The Dew Sea

The Dew Sea surrounds Lumen and reaches deepest in the west, into Nocturna Bay. At the mouth of the Bay lies a string of islands that the Court considers its own: Lunel, flat and windy, with salt pans and sheep that eat seaweed; Melis, a rock covered in birds, where people live off eggs and feathers; and Ynna, the farthest, visible only on nights of thin mist, with a small lighthouse and two families of keepers who have never been to the city.

For a thousand years the wind of the Line blew from east to west, carrying warm air to the cold sea, where it became a mist that never ended and breathed slowly, thickening and thinning twice a turn. When the mist grows tired it settles as dew: for Nocturna it is fresh water, in a basalt city without springs, and it is light, because the witches make lanterns of it, glass spheres left on a balcony with their mouths open to the sky.

After the Breaking the Sea showed itself to be green and clear, not black; it has tides now, and the Moon rises out of it, “as if the waters were pushing it up”.