Erik wasn’t buying it. “Come on,” he told the guys at the harbor café one morning, sipping cheap coffee from a paper cup. “If there’s no fish, blame overfishing or bad currents, not sea monsters. This isn’t a movie.” A couple of younger deckhands laughed, but the older men just stared at him, unconvinced.
Marta, who ran the fish counter at the local market, shook her head when he stopped by. “Keep laughing, Erik. It’ll be you tipping over next.” She said it with the bluntness of someone who’d seen too many accidents at sea. He smirked, tapped the brim of his cap, and told her to save him a space on the ice table for tomorrow’s catch.