He quirks his eyebrows up at the claim, at the intensity. It pauses his tap-tap-tapping. A beat of silence hangs between them.

Then he tips his head in acknowledgment of the point, opens his hand in a gesture of Go on.

"Well spotted," he says, tone still low and warm and mild. "I'll confess it's been a while since I lived by the sea. If there is a meaning to that forever-distant storm, I've yet to unravel it."

This incorrectly implies that he does not have theories. It's not an ocean is a flattening of what he already knows to be true; the River is not a river.