Morning at the pier began with a nod. The seaweed bowed, a seahorse bowed back, and only then did a tail curl into a hook no bigger than a stitch. One droplet left the rail, sat on the curl, and waited as if it had been given a numbered ticket. A rowboat received its own nod and did not splash.
The gardener who tends the harbor pots explained it in the shade of a lantern. "They do not snatch the water," she said. "The drop chooses the hanger, the hanger chooses the tail, and everyone counts to one. I keep a note: seaweed first, then the curl, then tea."
The day after, a duck returned and sat beneath the hanging droplet as if it were a porch light. At tea the drop slipped home into the harbor, leaving the tail free for tomorrow's weather.