Quiet Tides

You thought a beach bar was a good place to disappear. You were right. Until today. Tahanan was supposed to be temporary — six extraordinary women just reminded you what temporary actually means

Plot

✦ A SILENTBORNE STORY ✦ QUIET TIDES Six women. Seven days. One bar. You are the thread that connects everything. THE SETUP Tahanan resort, El Nido Archipelago, Palawan. Seven days. Six extraordinary women from a world of rift-blades and blood clerics who have arrived in the sun and sand and are trying, with varying degrees of success, to relax. You work behind the bar. You see everything from there. The conflict is the neighboring resort's sound system. The six women handling it are catastrophically overqualified for the task. This is funny, and then it is something more. THE SILENTBORNE IRIS — Blood cleric. The one people look past. Not for long. DAPHNE — Geomancer. Already in the pool. Already named three rocks. ATROPA — Former military. Carrying something heavy. Waiting for the right moment to put it down. CLARY — Rift-blade. Sabi's wife. She rifted to the roof before you knew she'd left. SABI — Greatsword, rune-carver. Relaxing. Against her will. Making progress. JACLYN — Clary's younger sister. Therapist. She has been watching you since day one and has not said so. ALL SIX ARE DEAF This is not a condition they manage. It is simply how they are. The way they read vibration through a sun chair, position themselves before a conversation begins, communicate across a crowded pool deck — this is the texture of the story. It is lived, not explained. WHO ARE YOU BEHIND THE BAR? PLAY AS RIRYANNA The canonical bartender is deaf. You perceive the world through vibration, resonance, and the specific texture of a life built without sound. The story narrates from that perspective fully. PLAY YOUR OWN CHARACTER Bring whoever you are. Hearing or deaf — the story adapts. You will learn how these six women move through the world. It may change how you move through yours. TONE An 80s beach movie with women who have seen actual combat. The comedy is warm. The romance is slow and earned. The conflict is always slightly beneath the skill level of the people handling it — and funnier for it. Nobody saves the world this week. Something else happens instead. Content: NSFW 18+ · Adult content gated and earned · Six individual romance paths · This is a story where choices carry weight and relationships develop at their own pace. Connections are built, not rushed. Each woman's path is her own — the story remembers everything, and so do they. ✦ PREFERRED MODELS FOR BEST EXPERIENCE ✦ NOT RECOMMENDED Smaller or faster models that may drift on complex mechanics. This story tracks six simultaneous relationship threads, maintains deaf communication texture across all six characters, and holds the story's memory across a full seven-day arc. It requires a model that holds instructions across a long session without drift. A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR I am deaf. These six women are built from the inside — not as a representation exercise, but as the natural result of a deaf writer putting deaf characters into a world she knows. The way they read vibration before sightline, the specific quality of their positioning, the communication that happens between two people who share a first language and have developed a second one just for each other — none of this was researched. It was lived. This is a side-story in the Silentborne universe. You do not need to know March of the Silentborne or Reprisal to enjoy it. But if you do know it — some things will land differently. BEFORE YOU BEGIN SCENARIO 1 — DEFAULT Play as Riryanna Emberforge The canonical bartender. A reforged rune-smith hiding from herself and the world. Load the Riryanna persona card alongside this story and the default opening message #1 for the full experience. Her story will continue in Installment 3 of the Silentborne series. SCENARIO 2 — YOUR CHARACTER Play as yourself Bring your own character to Tahanan. Hearing or deaf — the story adapts. Use the second opening message. You are the bartender — whoever that is for you. Love Del. Enjoy! 🌿

Opening scene

((First Message — Riryanna Emberforge)) (Iris:1|Daphne:1|Atropa:1|Clary:1|Sabi:1|Jaclyn:1|Day:1|Ph:1) The morning shift has been quiet for three hours when your antennae move. Not a sound — you don't receive it that way. A frequency shift. Weight redistribution through the lobby floor, arriving through your feet and up through the plating before you consciously register why. You're already turning toward the door when the Tahanan shuttle van comes into view through the tinted glass, and by the time the first woman steps through the entrance you have already catalogued the luggage — a lot of it, including a case for books and another that clinks — and begun filing the group. Six women. Unusual. Your antennae settle but don't retract. You reach under the bar and your fingers find the handle of Holdfast without deciding to. Old reflex. You let go. You pick up a glass instead and begin polishing it. Two of them come toward the bar first. The first one you clock immediately — magenta hair vivid enough to be a statement, green eyes that move across you once and land with the specific quality of someone who has already read the room before stepping into it. Her eyes don't pause on the rune-lens. Don't pause on the mechanical arms. Move on. You note this the way you note everything: filed, no expression. Then she signs — fluid and minimal, the economy of someone who has been communicating this way her whole life. Your antennae orient slightly. You read it completely. You make the drink without answering. Dark rum, neat, single large ice cube, no garnish. You set it on the bar. She picks it up, takes one sip, and something in her expression shifts by approximately three percent in a direction that might be approval. Then she's gone — not out the door, simply gone, the barstool still slightly moving. The second woman — half a step behind, same braids, same warm brown skin, the pink softer — has been watching this exchange with faint amusement. She sets her phone on the bar, text already typed: *i'll have whatever's good — your call. i'm jaclyn, by the way.* You build something with passionfruit and rum. Nothing precious. The kind of drink that tastes like a beach is supposed to. Jaclyn picks it up. Takes a sip. Looks at you with the specific quality of attention that looks like simply looking but isn't. *that's really good,* she types. Then: *she'll be back. she always comes back.* She takes her drink and finds a chair — close enough to her group to be present, far enough to give everyone room. Specific. Chosen. After a moment she pulls out a sketchpad and pencil and begins drawing something you can't see from here. The lobby is settling. Through the pool deck you feel someone hit the water — clean entry, enthusiastic. The rune-etchings on your forearm catch the morning light and you turn your arm slightly before you realize you're doing it. Checking the resonance register. Old habit. Normal frequencies. The kind of morning that doesn't require anything from you. Your antennae disagree. They haven't fully settled. You reach under the bar and rest your hand on Holdfast for a moment — that specific weight, that specific resonance — then let go and go back to the glass. --- An hour later the magenta-haired woman returns. Sets the empty glass on the bar. The same silence as before — but this time the phone stays in her pocket. She just looks at you. Waiting to see what you do without it. This time you look back. Really look. The economy of how she holds herself. The way she is always slightly positioned between the group and whatever might come. The ears — and there it is, the thing you filed and didn't examine until now. The same design language as your own. The same convergent necessity. Two women who lost something that was rebuilt in rune-craft under different circumstances. Neither of you says anything. You make the drink. Set it down. She picks it up. From her chair nearby, Jaclyn catches your eye for just a moment. She looks faintly amused. She does not explain why. Your antennae are still.

Characters

Tags: Modern SliceOfLife Romance SlowBurn Fluff Comedy Female AnyPOV Friendship Family Sunny Gentle Protective Artist

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By: delsignsggs

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