One day, sorting through the new arrivals in the back room, fingers extra fidgety and back fins buzzing, a thick vibration rolls through the water.

I pause, a box of plain gray fabric bolts half-emptied at my feet.

A fatter vibration rolls through the water, shaking the containers on the shelves, and people buzz out in the store.

I lower a folded fabric bolt back into the box. Ange bursts through the door. "The volcanoes are erupting," he signs, motions wild.

I dart after him, out the door over the checkout counter to the front door behind tens of people. "Can you see them from here?" I sign.

"I hope so. Goodness, hasn't it been years?"

The tens of people squish out the door, Ange and I follow, two red-finned people in a cloud of yellow-green and silver-blue. I swim out above them, clear of the housetops, staring down into the Teardrops. Ange drifts beside me.

A fat vibration rolls over us.

And...nothing from the city. No spurt of red lava shooting above the teardrops, no clouds of black ash. No flicker of light anywhere.

Ange's shoulders slump.

"At least this means there won't be rockfalls," I sign.

"Yeah, but we get to jack up our prices when that happens and make more money!"

"Of course we do. Everyone always freaks out that the rockfalls are going to knock something over or break some precious building, so they go crazy and stock up on everything, so it all runs out, and things cost more. It's called inflation, Ange."

He stares at me. "I know that. But it's still satisfying to charge double price on some ash-resistant sweater no one's ever going to use!"

A spurt of orange blasts from the Teardrops, far below. Then a shuddering vibration rolls over us, rattling my teeth and making my heart believe it's about to collapse out of my ribcage. Ange's hands slap his cheeks and he gets the most massive grin and his eyes glow like ember coral.

The spurt of orange lava erupts into a fountain, looming higher than the tall, glass buildings in the valley, reflected in every surface of the city. I blink; it has been years. How old was I the last time the volcanoes erupted? Twenty-three? And Ange was twenty-six?

The orange fountain vanishes in steaming bubbles, a frothy white column jetting upward to the surface. Ange claps his hands and does a back roll, still grinning like a baby angler. I grin, at him, at the lava column quickly cooling into black obsidian. He claps and shouts, and the people floating below us clap too, and I almost do a dancing little jig but stop myself, it'd just look awkward.

"I will sacrifice my next three concert tickets to get something made out of that obsidian," Ange signs.

"Like what?"

"I don't know, I'd pay for just a pebble that sits on my wardrobe forever doing nothing. But could you imagine a bracelet or something made out of that? Or a whole countertop?" Ange shakes his head. Below us, the people start to disperse across the street.

"You could ask someone to carve a life-size statue of Parro."

Ange's eyes go round. "Yesyesyes," he signs. "Then I can take the statue to all the dance halls Parro hates," he laughs. "It'd be a better dancer, too."

"Parro's a bad dancer?"

Ange's eyes go half-lidded. "Uh, yes. He can't carry a tune in those arms and his feet act like they're stuck in mud."

"Oh."

But Parro dances making food at the counter all the time and I tried copying that flicking motion his feet do because I thought it looked fancy. But I guess...stuck in mud? My back fins quiver. "What if we got Parro a mini carving of you for his birthday?" I sign.

"Also yes," he purses his lips. "Though we better jack our prices up real fast if we're going to pay for that."

"So you're not sacrificing concert tickets for Parro's birthday statue?"

"Absolutely not."

***

Just to be clear: the volcano vents lie near the base of the valley--far from the main city or anyone living on the slopes--so the closest teardrops are those of the master crafters, who study the eruptions and know how to prepare. They've got ceilings reinforced against heat damage and falling debris; they've got thick, black paint on the walls so the people inside don't go blind; they've got tunnels dug into the floor and through the seabed, just in case the doors get blocked by ash or rock.

The master crafters, they know what they're doing around the volcanoes, they spin sand into massive glass teardrops above the heat, of course they know what they're doing.

It's really just the folk who live in the clustered Teardrops at the edge of the valley that freak out whenever the volcanoes erupt, worrying about falling obsidian or ash clogging everyone's gills.

According to Mum, some group took root in the city that accuses the master crafters of exterminating the tube worms and shrimp species that thrive around the volcanoes. They blame the master crafters for causing extinction, not caring about the natural environment. According to Mum, they think the planet hates us, and is just waiting to exterminate us with its magma like we've exterminated the tube worms and shrimp from around these volcanoes.

According to Ange, another group blindly fears the end of days, screams from the street corners about how we're all going to die in a big disaster one day.

They sway some folk, lead them to believe that this eruption will bring about the end of days, the whole valley will split open and geyser lava everywhere, the mountains extending far off into the ocean will crumble and squish us all.

The rest of us; we've got nothing to fear from any eruption except a little ground-shaking and a rope anchor maybe coming loose (the sulfuric acid tubes in the anchor ropes, though, you better watch out if those break and leak into the water), and you better avoid swimming above the valley when a lava geyser goes off. But basically we've got nothing to fear.

Plus it's been years. Would you rather scream and cower and worry for the end of days you can't predict and stock up on all sorts of end-of-day "necessities," or applaud the streaks of orange searing through the black sea, fading into white bubbles, then jack up your store's prices to pay a whole bunch of money for some sculptor to carve you a gift out of obsidian?

Plus, if the obsidian pillar did start to tip and threatened to crush a bunch of homes, someone would alert the whole street and an army of people would push the pillar out of disaster's path, angle it to land on the hill somewhere safe so no one's really in danger.