The wave answered before Ellie decided—then faltered, as if unsure it should have. She hadn’t realised she’d stopped breathing. A darkening wave rose and tilted light along the harbour wall. It hit the stone offbeat, as though it already knew.

@Beth Wellington I was aiming for a sequence that exactly matches the architecture...pressure, bodily lag then rationalisation. Mirroring the larger arc of the book: Ellie is always late to understand what her body and the sea already know. I actually want the reader to feel something is off... So I inverted to give the immedate...the issue like you felt and pointed out is more cold read Vs reread after unstanding design...so im still trying to hit both. It is very tricky. My worry if i invert is that this does something subtly but fatally different: It re-establishes normal cause-and-effect, makes the wave feel observed before it feels wrong. It turns the opening into atmosphere-first rather than logic-first. In other words, it becomes a beautiful sea opening instead of a systems-breaking opening (which i'm aiming for, given the wider story). It is the pain of writting a YA story that has its own logic. You literally spend weeks building it into the subconcious writing...but again its a thin line to walk...let alone to draft! :)

Oww looks nice in print :)