Amaba finds Yetu dangerously lost in a state of remembering among a group of sharks.

Yetu returns to the deep, where thousands of wajinru have gathered in preparation for the Remembrance.

The wajinru build a protective structure called the womb to shelter themselves during the Remembrance ceremony.

Yetu begins leading the wajinru through the collective History during the Remembrance ceremony.

Yetu flees the wajinru mid-ceremony, convinced she will not survive another reimplantation of the History.

The wajinru experience the origin story of Zoti Aleyu, the first historian, through the ongoing Remembrance.

Zoti Aleyu gathers other zoti aleyu throughout the ocean and builds a society in the ocean depths.

Yetu washes ashore and meets Suka, a two-leg woman who begins to care for her.

Yetu meets Oori and the two form a slow, tense friendship built on fishing lessons and shared isolation.

Oori accuses Yetu of not understanding the importance of history after learning Yetu abandoned her people.

Yetu and Oori reconcile after days apart and admit their romantic feelings for each other.

Oori announces she must leave to return to her threatened homeland, devastating Yetu.

Yetu returns to the deep and finds the wajinru malnourished and suffering under the weight of the History.

The wajinru collectively decide to share the History among themselves rather than return it to Yetu alone.

Yetu finds Oori mourning her lost homeland and transfers a remembrance that allows Oori to breathe underwater.

The Deep follows Yetu, the wajinru historian who carries 600 years of traumatic collective memory alone. After nearly dying among sharks, she is brought back to her people to perform the annual Remembrance ceremony — but she flees mid-ritual, unable to face another year of holding the History. While the wajinru are left struggling with the memories she unleashed, Yetu washes ashore and forms a bond with a two-leg woman named Oori, slowly rediscovering her own identity and desires. Their relationship is tested when Oori condemns Yetu's abandonment of her people and then departs for her dying homeland, pushing Yetu to finally return to the wajinru. Reunited with her people, Yetu helps them devise a new way to share the History collectively, relieving the unjust burden placed on a single historian. The novella ends with Yetu reuniting with Oori and transferring a remembrance that allows Oori to breathe underwater, uniting the wajinru and two-legs in a new beginning.

The headline events of Yetu's journey from burdened historian to hero.

Amaba feeds Yetu milk and encourages her to rest, helping her recover physically before the Remembrance.

Nnenyo, Yetu's elderly caregiver, shields her from overwhelming stimuli as she prepares for the ceremony.

Kata, Nnenyo's youngest child, gives Yetu an ancestral comb that draws her into a deep and tender remembering.

Yetu argues bitterly with her amaba about the unfairness of the historian's burden just before the Remembrance.

Ayel panics and loses her sense of self during the Remembrance and must be guided back by Yetu.

Yetu becomes overwhelmed by the conviction that she cannot survive another reimplantation of the History.

Zoti Aleyu finds a two-leg named Waj floating unconscious in the ocean and carries her safely to shore.

Waj teaches Zoti language, names them 'zoti aleyu,' then builds a raft and departs for her homeland.

The growing zoti aleyu society listens to enslaved people below ships and discovers they are descendants of the enslaved.

Zoti delivers a pup named Aj from the womb of a dead enslaved woman thrown overboard by enslavers.

Suka and Oori tend to Yetu's physical injuries, bringing Oori and Yetu emotionally closer together.

Basha, the historian before Yetu, channels the pain of the rememberings into burning rage rather than despair.

Basha's lover Ephras is badly injured by two-legs, intensifying Basha's determination to seek vengeance.

Basha kills the wajinru leader Omju and leads the wajinru into a devastating battle called the Tidal Wars.

Yetu's amaba, changed by holding the History, gains true understanding of her daughter's suffering for the first time.

Beyond the headline events of Yetu's journey, the novella is rich with smaller but essential scenes that develop its characters and mythology. Yetu's preparations for the Remembrance — tended by her elderly caregiver Nnenyo and gifted an ancestral comb by a young child — reveal the emotional texture of her isolation and her complicated bond with her mother. The Remembrance itself unfolds in careful detail, from a panicking wajinru losing herself in the memories to Yetu reaching her breaking point before fleeing. The wajinru's origin story, told through the Remembrance, traces specific moments: Zoti saving Waj from the ocean, learning language, and delivering the first pup, Aj, from a dead enslaved woman. The historian who preceded Yetu, the rage-filled Basha, is shown in his full complexity — his love for Ephras, his clash with wajinru leader Omju, and his leading of the devastating Tidal Wars. The novella closes with Yetu's mother transformed by the experience of holding the History, finally understanding the suffering her daughter endured for decades.

The supporting moments that build the wajinru world and its people.

During the Remembrance, Yetu realizes the History has so overtaken her that she no longer knows her own self.

Zoti Aleyu sees their own face reflected in Waj's, experiencing the wajinru's first moment of self-awareness.

Waj's departure devastates Zoti and resolves them to build a society so no abandoned creature ever faces loss alone.

Zoti secretly buries the dead enslaved woman's body and invents the historian role to shield the wajinru from their painful origins.

Yetu begins to feel a distinct sense of self emerging as she drifts weightlessly through the open ocean.

Yetu teaches Oori to listen for fish underwater, sharing wajinru knowledge to forge a genuine bond.

Yetu learns that Oori's entire homeland and people have been destroyed, confronting her with the reality of total loss.

A recalled memory reveals young Yetu holding a shark tooth to her neck in despair over the historian's burden.

Young Yetu kills a frill shark as a ritual sacrifice and begs her ancestors to release her from the History.

Yetu demands an apology from Oori when she returns, articulating her own emotional needs for the first time.

Basha shares the most brutal rememberings with the wajinru council to persuade them to support war against the two-legs.

The wajinru witnessing Basha's memories are shocked to recognize their own faces reflected in the two-legs.

Yetu realizes that the meaning of History is not fixed — the living interpret the past and shape its significance.

Yetu uses a word found in the History — Waj's name for her homeland — to deduce where Oori has gone.

Yetu and Oori embrace at the shore and descend together toward the deep as Oori breathes underwater for the first time.

The Deep is structured around a series of revelations that shift characters' understanding of themselves, their history, and each other. During the Remembrance, Yetu reaches a crisis point, realizing the History has consumed her identity entirely — a pattern that flashbacks reveal has persisted since she was a desperate teenager. The Remembrance itself unfolds as a series of revelations: Zoti's first glimpse of self in Waj's face, the discovery of the wajinru's enslaved origins, and Zoti's fateful decision to bury that truth and invent the historian role. Basha's chapter delivers its own shock — the wajinru see their own features mirrored in the faces of their two-leg enemies. Yetu's time ashore brings quieter but equally transformative shifts: feeling her own self emerge, asserting her needs to Oori, and learning the grief of total loss. The novella's climax turns on Yetu's realization that History has no fixed meaning — that interpretation is itself an act of power — allowing her to find Oori through the past and carry both of them into a new future.