Canticle II

  In the strangest of seas, distant and warm,

  the Weaver of Light examines her labors.

  Her luminous weave extends far into the past.

  Beneath her fingers, webbed and clawed,

  the most recent of events are chronicled.

  She floats the delicate interplay of threads before her,

  examining the work.

  Two have met.

  Two have left.

  Two have remained where they are.

  The lines of color flow together, and a pattern emerges.

  Its borders are not yet clear, yet to be defined,

  other threads hang close by.

  The Weaver of Light knows how the pattern will form.

  She knows which threads will join it next.

  She knows which direction those threads will trend.

  She knows not what it will show in time.

  It is the future.

  It is the truth as it occurs.

  It is revelation.

  It is retribution.

  But not yet.

  The currents of time flow on.

  Canto II -- Sea of Meetings

  Verse I

  Below the ripples of the morning firmament, the waters of the Mere Le?na were clear and bright. Wide, level shelf-lands stretched across its breadth to end upon the harbor cliffs of Bryndoon, now but a shadow at the limits of Ardenne's vision. It was early in the first hour of the morning, and by her estimation they would not reach the city until the middle of the noontide hour at the earliest.

  She turned back to look at her companion. Sera was saying farewell to their ride. Still saying farewell. The red mer had her uses, Ardenne was willing to admit. As promised, Sera's friend had been able to bring them most of the way from the Mere Sangolia in just a few days. A day's wait at the leeward edge of the Grandest Reef had brought them toward the goal faster than if Ardenne had set out immediately on her own.

  With that speed came precious little time to think, and far too much to think about. Ardenne knew the basics of how the caravan floats operated, and the direction which the great currents took as they made their circuits of the nine seas, so she had prepared her heart for a long and frustrating swim. But then the red mer's friend had arrived, and the trip turned out to be no caravan ride, after all.

  Casting a broad shadow across the sand, a manta fluttered its fins restlessly. At a full six tail-lengths wide, it was the largest such beast the hunter had ever seen. A set of harnesses strapped along its belly and back allowed mers to tag along as it swam, as long as they traveled lightly. She had worried at first about how they would pay for this service, but the beast's mistress had made it clear that gathering food was payment enough. The manta ate almost as much as three mers added together.

  Sera, Ardenne, and... the third. The red mer's friend was another first for her. Rohaise min Rihana was a sturdy mer with a strong hand to guide the manta's courses. But then there was what she was, and that was not a manoa like they were.

  The mer equmara were not a common sight, though to hear Rohaise talk it sounded like her people came and went just about everywhere in their wanderings. In Ardenne's corner of the seas, little was said of the broad-faced swimmers, but the same could be said of any of the races that were not manoa. Even the mer leondra were rare, making appearances only for the feast of the blessed sacrament every year. Rohaise resembled neither a manoa nor a leondra except in the broadest sense of having arms, a tail, eyes, and breasts. The upper and lower halves of her body could hardly be said to match, except that they were both the same warm reddish-brown shade. Above the plastron scales girding her waist, the mer was muscular but not so thick, with a chest that promised to one day be quite motherly. On the other hand, her tail was almost as large as Ardenne -- large, thick, and round. It tapered towards a pair of frilled, ornate flukes at the end, while closer to the waist a pair of pelvic fins extended a full arm's length into the water. Whenever Rohaise sat floating, these fins would slowly gyrate, keeping her balance.

  It was the face that bother her the most, Ardenne decided. The equmara's visage was dominated by a broad forehead that merged into the bridge of her nose. Bright blue eyes were set wide and positioned to the sides. Her hair flowed straight back, a narrow strip of thick browning orange that did not reach down to either temple. Rohaise was a mer, but at the same time she was different and alien.

  Her face had also been locked against Sera's for longer than was seemly.

  During their day of waiting upon the lee of the Grandest Reef, the red mer had made some discreet attempts to explain the peculiarities of equmara hospitality to Ardenne before the two of them actually met, but she hadn't cottoned the flow of Sera's explanation until much later, when Rohaise had offered the two of them space for the evening hours within her field tent. Only then had everything flowed together and, red in the face, she politely turned down the offer. That night, and every night for the rest of the voyage, she had made her own nest in nearby sargo or grasses and done her best to ignore any noises coming from the woven shelter.

  Rohaise had taken the refusal in good humor, and Sera seemed more amused by it than anything else, neither of which did anything to help Ardenne's mood.

  "Ahem." She sent a short but pointed sound towards the two. They paused as it flowed by, then gave one another a final kiss upon the cheek. Breaking away, Sera hoisted her pack.

  "Sorry, just got caught in the moment." The red mer smiled wistfully.

  The equmara snickered. "Well, I'll just leave ye two here, then," she said. Rohaise's voice was light and cheery, with vowels almost as broad as her forehead.

  "Thanks again," Sera told her friend. "Owe you one. Give my love to Nyree and the little ones."

  "Come by Mezzeret and see us all sometime," said Rohaise. "We all miss ye o'er there."

  The smile continued with a sad twist of the lip. "Miss you ladies as well. Next time I can, promise."

  Ardenne repeated her ahem. Trailing below, her flukes swept the silt with their impatience. "Are we planning on getting there anytime today?" she demanded.

  "She's right. Need to get."

  "With the flow," said Rohaise.

  Sera brought her mouth to her lips and mimed a kiss. "With the flow."

  *

  It was a silent swim for the following hour of morning. Ardenne kept pace with Sera, but the waters of her mind flowed forward to the smudge in the distance which was Bryndoon. Beneath them passed the shelf of the Mere Le?na, deeper and browner than home. Here and there hillocks of coral and stone rose up where green vegetation could grow in the stronger light. Half-wrecked shell-works sat upon many of them, keeping the silence preserved as they swam by.

  The past few days had left the hunter with plenty of questions about her companion, and while now was the perfect opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, Ardenne could not find the words. Embarrassment was winning the emotional war within her head, edging out frustration at a close second. Just as they had another verdant hillock beneath their flukes, she managed to form a "What..." in her throat, only to have the red-haired rogue pull her down against the unkept growth of kelp and sargo. Sera motioned for silence and then pointed at a spot in the distance.

  She'd thought herself well blessed with eyes to see, a boon to any hunter on the reef, but the rogue had her beat. From their position in the kelp, Ardenne could not tell quite what she was seeing. If she were to go solely by size and coloration, she might have guessed blue sharks, or perhaps a couple of juvenile orcs. Then the shapes changed tack in the water, and she was left to guess again. Whatever they were, the outline of these creatures showed that they had parts no shark or beast should have. The things spun around a few more times before pointing their tails into the distance and jetting backwards, as a squid might.

  The two of them waited until the not-sharks were completely out of sight before rising from the greenery. The time spent in thought did not help Ardenne one whit to understand what she'd just seen.

  "Wha..." The word choked in her gills.

  "Abominations," answered Sera. "Seen that kind before. Mostly sharky, frilled tentacles, mouths open sideways. Fast, but blind, near as we can tell. Lay low and keep quiet, they go away."

  "Are they... that common?" The hunter could not find it in herself to believe that, only the red mer spoke so matter-of-factly about it.

  "Getting to be. Sorry, muddy, funged-up currents. Heard to be sighted in every sea known to mer, except one."

  "Well, I've never..."

  "Exactly."

  "Oh." Ardenne was not sure not sure how to take that. The familiar waters of the Mere Sangolia had never seemed so far away, and her mother's treasured collection of reef knowledge with it. Not one of the items passed from mother to daughter, not a single bubble of knowledge would help her here.

  "Look," Sera continued. "Here's good to freak out, if you're gonna. Can't blame you if you do. Those things are always bad for a shiver. Lost it myself, first time."

  The young hunter chose to remain quiet, rather than admit a single thing to the red-haired mer. No shiver ran down her spine, nor tingles of fear in the flukes, but her guts were unsettled. There had been something so completely, viscerally wrong with the things Sera called abominations that swimming, fleeing, seemed the best option. Only, where to flee? Not back to the Mere Sangolia, not to the Grandest Reef and a home left empty and cold. There were no currents flowing but forward, and if she was going that direction anyway, she would not be doing so in fear. She pushed off the hillock, oriented herself towards Bryndoon, and kept going Even the thought of fleeing made her angrier with every stroke of the fluke.

  Sera watched her for a moment and then hurried after.

  Verse II

  Dawn had swept into the Grand Harbor of Bryndoon with little fanfare. It began as a thin line of yellow-white that crested over the tops of the cliffs, only to spill its thick tentacles against the distant hills that marked the edge of the city. The cliffs remained in shadow as laborers, merchants, families of privilege and rank were each in turn roused by the morning light. By the middle of the first morning hour, waves in the firmament above had given rise to silver ripples that washed over the city, bringing the blessings of day at long last to the nacre shells of the palace. Through the walls it shone, soft and pink.

  Marai was already awake. Unlike her mistress, the lavender mer was not a heavy sleeper. Most days she would wait, eyes half-lidded, for Rhiela to wake up. To pass the time, she went over the princess's schedule in her head. The royal birthday was coming soon, so there would be yet more preparations for that: fittings and rehearsals for the most part. And there was also the current round of studies which she would have to make Rhiela finish eventually.

  A pair of slender arms lay wrapped around her waist. Marai was fairly certain that they had been in that position all night. Against her left shoulder, a golden head of hair rested. The princess stirred, only a little, and mumbled incoherently.

  It was enough to bring a small, giddy smile to Marai's lips. The two of them had often slept together since their earliest years, and forever was it the same thing. Rhiela's hammock was a huge work of manoa ingenuity and construction, built with corded kelp and reinforced with baleen. Its siltgrass padding was replaced regularly, and the baleen frame made it wide enough to hold four mers comfortably. And yet, despite all that space and no matter how they had lain the night before, every morning Marai awoke to find the two of them curled together in one corner.

  It had been a long night. A long series of nights. Every night for the last week, in fact.

  That small and giddy grin grew into a wide and happy smile. There was still much mystery billowing around the statue of the green-haired mer, and she still had her doubts when Rhiela claimed it an image of Cythera. However, goddess or not, the icon of stone and jewel had made of Rhiela a more pious and regular temple-goer than any would ever have imagined. Their nightly visits resembled a religious adoration, made in silence. Over the last few nights they had been able to clear the muck and grime of ages from the area around the statue, and with each cleaning Marai wondered again about its origins and the place in which they had found it. Why had such a beautiful grotto been abandoned? Why had the statue and its surrounding masonry been placed there in the first place?

  Rhiela mumbled and shifted in place, distracting her beloved friend from the thoughts which preoccupied her. Arms pulled snugly around Marai's body, fitting into the space beneath the curve of her breasts. The princess's chest was squeezed between their frames, putting a pleasant pressure against her backbone.

  It was past time to wake her up, but Marai did not really wish to. Not just yet. Still...

  She pried Rhiela's left hand from where it rested upon her rib cage. Gently she teased her finger across the palm, watching it twitch. Then, starting from the tip of the princess's pointer, she ran a nail lengthwise down the arm, all the way to the elbow.

  With a shiver and a start, the princess discovered the waking light of day.

  "Um..." came the traditional mumble, followed by the rapid beat of eyelids sending miniature currents across Marai's back.

  "Good morning, Rhiela."

  "It is?"

  "Indeed, it is so."

  "Not just barely, like dawn or something?" They both knew full well that the only times Rhiela had ever seen the earliest hour of the day were after nights spent not sleeping at all. The pretense was as much a part of the morning tradition as anything else.

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Okay, Frednot. If you could please bring Marai back. She lets me have my beauty sleep."

  This time, she let herself be stern. "Rhiela. It is the middle of the morning and you do have a schedule to keep. You'd be on the late currents right now if your mother weren't a worse slug-a-bed than you."

  "Goddess save the Queen."

  "Rhiela!" She pried the princess's arms away from her torso and pushed herself out of the hammock. It rocked gently back and forth for a count of ten beats before steadying. There were times when Marai thought the thing was too well built. No manner of force would be sufficient to flip the lazy princess out of it.

  Instead, Marai was stuck with the less satisfying alternative of leading by example. Their daily wardrobe hung on hooks along the far wall. She chose a light shift for herself, ground silt-grass woven together with iridescent violet scales. Upon one fathom in the waters of her mind drifted the idle question of what sort of fish had worn them before her. With colors so vivid, it most likely was some inhabitant of the Mere Hetropa, she decided. As the light caught the material its colors wavered between red and blue, settling on a bright purple most of the time. There was a cord attached, back to front, which she pulled tight and then knotted. The shift pulled snugly against her small breasts, with the bow knot nestled right beneath them. Below the cord, the shift flowed down and wafted softly in the currents.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "You're looking fine this morning, Marai."

  She turned around to see her friend up and floating just above the hammock. "Do you really think so?" she asked.

  Yeah, of course! There's no way I could wear something like that. I'd just look fat." The princess waved a hand over the display of her bared chest. "And if I did manage to fit them all the way in, I'd probably pop a seam."

  Marai chuckled at that. A beat later, Rhiela's favorite top was in her hands. It was a long, wide banner of cloth that varied between differing shades of green in random patterns all along its length. A masterwork from one of the finest clothiers in the Mere Tessra?, it was more elastic along the center line than it was at the edges, where two rigid bands of shark cartilage had been woven into the fabric.

  Her golden-haired friend swam over, raising hands over head and sticking her chest out with pride. Marai wrapped the top around her, making sure that the wider band of cartilage had a firm hold on Rhiela's belly before folding the middle band of cloth over her breasts. The ends wound below the armpits and hooked together behind the princess's back.

  Rhiela lowered her arms and then twisted her torso right and left to check the fit. A few verse-counts later, with golden hair and violet restrained by pins and ribbons, the two of them left the royal chambers to pursue the first item of the day -- a late breakfast.

  Verse III

  Set within the protective shadow of its cliffs, the Great Harbor of Bryndoon was safe from the currents which pushed and pulled at the silt of the bottom land. The Port of Bryndoon was set a fair distance from the city proper for much the opposite reason: the currents served as its life's blood, and its location was dictated by their regular ebb and flow. Currently, the port was anchored a promontory called Noora's Idyll. Just who this Noora mer was had been lost to time. The place certainly wasn't idle now.

  The promontory itself was nowhere to be seen. Whenever Jumella looked that way, all that met her eye was the bright mass of floats and bundles bearing the marks of a dozen or more caravans. Reds and blues and yellows and greens all bounced and jumbled, with pods of mers making a brisk check through each before allowing a caravan to untether and continue on towards the city proper. She had only Messra Berenice's word that there was a rock under it all.

  "It reminds me of that artsy piece Cousin Gyra made two years back," said Jumilla at her side. "All lumps of sand-glass with color fused in."

  "Not quite so useless, though," Jumella replied. The two of them had been told to watch over the lead float while Berenice began the official side of affairs with the port staff. "Better to have the turbulence over and done at the start, and then continue on to more important things."

  "On to the city!" Jumilla cried, her gill-flaps fluttering with excitement. "What will it be like, do you think? Maybe the buildings will all be in shell-work, like the folk on the rim?"

  "I suppose they would be." Not that either of them had ever seen the manoa districts on the rim of Valden up close, but on a good day the waters in the upper fathoms were clear enough to observe them from afar. The idea of living in such fragile little baubles had always felt strange to her.

  "Do you think we can stay in one tonight?" If Jumilla found it strange, then her voice did not show it. "With those funny hammocks and silt-grass pillows?"

  "We have been sleeping in hammocks for many nights now," her twin reminded.

  "Yeah, but..." With a wave of her hand, Jumilla expressed a newfound disillusionment with caravanner hammocks -- long, stiff boards of kelp woven around fish spines. They were meant to support the body at an angle within the safety of a tent, but their unbending nature meant that the sleeper often had to be strapped in with kelpen cords. It was enough to make a daughter miss the flat, hard beds of home, as far as Jumilla was concerned.

  "Let us hope they are not too comfortable then, else you would never leave them, come morning."

  "You hurt me, sis. Really you do. One night's pleasant sleep is not going to turn me into the lazy little urchin from Granny Liesa's stories."

  "Good, because that would make me the busy little wrasse," said Jumella, referring to another of their grandmother's favorite story characters, a fish who was always cleaning up after the others.

  "If the glove fits..."

  "If it fits me, then it fits you."

  They had a shared chuckle at that. "True, so true. Oh, and speaking of urchins..." Jumilla motioned with her head, jutting her chin out a bit. Jumella turned to look.

  A head of spiky black hair was bobbing towards them. Dangling beneath it was the body of a skinny little mer. Her arms and flukes moved in quick, jerky motions -- again much like one of Granny Liesa's puppets. Tachiana din Hillia, Tachi to her friends, had enjoyed herself too much at the going-away party before the caravan had even left, and this had turned out to be a pattern. In the mer's luggage were packed a number of sacs stuffed with fermenting tuli pods. Most evenings had ended with a sac, and most mornings had begun with loud complaints when Messra Berenice made the call to break camp.

  In one of the stories their grandmother told, the silly little urchin, who ate only what she found ready for her, had happened across a pile of the sour, fermented pods. As Jumella remembered it, all of the poor thing's needles had fallen out. It had taken the busy wrasse and clever octopus a whole day to fix them back on with higgly slime.

  "If her hair falls out, I won't lift a finger," said Jumilla, echoing her sister's thoughts. "Though it might be an improvement. She'd certainly be more useful."

  Jumella raised an eyebrow at her twin.

  "Some mers would pay good money to see a no-hair freak of nature, I reckon." Jumilla grinned at her sister's snort of amusement. "Right? Just the idea is funny to think about."

  "Quiet, sister dear."

  Poor Tachiana was almost upon them, though the mer did not seem to have heard any of their conversation over the pounding of her own skull. She pulled up next to them and steadied herself, with only moderate success. A few strands of hair escaped her clips, falling across her right eye. None of it fell out, much to the twin's amusement.

  "Whazza hold'p?" the spiky-haired one mumbled. "Why w'no' goin'?"

  The last few days had left them unfortunately conversant in the language of hangovers. Jumella ignored the sour-smelling bubbles that came with the mer's words and said, "We're at the port authority. For Bryndoon."

  "Br'noon? A'ready?"

  "Yes." It was hard to tell which sister put more exasperation which sister put more exasperation into that single syllable.

  "Huh. Nowwun tol' me."

  As a privileged passenger of the caravan, Tachiana was not obliged to take part in any of the day-to-day chores, so this was not outside the waters of possibility. The regular workers had little use for the spiky black drunk, except perhaps as ballast. Still, it was the wrong sort of impressive, how the mer managed to not notice where they'd had their tents set the entire evening before.

  Jumella had tried to have a conversation with her one evening, mainly out of boredom. It had not turned out well. When drunk, Tachi was either uncomfortably flirtatious or upset about something. When sober, she couldn't even manage flirtatious.

  Now the mer was turning to Jumilla. "So, uh. D'ya think they'll check m'... my pers'nal stuff?" The thought was enough to sober her, if only a little. The hungover mumble steadied into something more understandable.

  "Probably not," Jumilla told her. "You're a registered passenger with a bonded caravan. They won't bother searching unless you look suspicious, I'm thinking."

  "Oh... um... thanks, Jumie. Um, I have to go check my things..."

  Neither twin pointed out the mistake as Tachiana wobbled away. From the start, the drunk little mer had not been able to tell the difference between them. Everyone else in the caravan had been quick to pick up on the little differences -- much quicker than the twins' own galda cousins, in fact, and they'd quickly grown accustomed to being called Jumie for Jumella and Millie for Jumilla. Tachiana's inability to tell the two of them apart was her most endearing quality, as far as they were concerned. At least that had some of the feelings of home.

  Home. She thought about it some more as Jumilla checked the float leads. She tried turning it over and around in her head like one of her mother's stones, searching for the hidden treasures and flaws. Home had always been with the galda. It was warm waters, deep fathoms, and hard beds. It was busy hands and the noises of labor both day and night. It was the feeling of welcome and community. Out in the open waters, all was different, nothing the same. The twins had no troubles with the other caravanners, but that was not the same as being welcome. Those who traveled the greater currents did so in the knowledge that they would be leaving their homes and families behind, and many traveled for just that reason. There was a camaraderie that included the twins for their hard work, but that was all. They were surrounded by mers just like her, dozens of them, and yet Jumella had never felt so apart.

  The twins never spoke of this, much as they did not speak of many things which they both felt strongly. Instead, they stuck together, making themselves a school of two in a sea of manoa. That the average mer could separate them visually with such ease was merely an annoyance.

  And as their mother always said, "Annoyance is for the unlabored." Jumella went to help her sister with the leads. Soon enough, they would be leaving Noora's Idyll in their wake, and life would never be idle.

  *

  Elsewhere in the caravan's temporary camp, personal matters were being attended to. Individual tents were taken down, their stakes and ties disentangled from nearby rocks or coral, and daily luggage was stowed in the appropriate floats. Estrella din Hillia had just finished with her travel pack when her cousin burst into the tent they shared.

  "Strella! We're here already!" The loose canopy of kelp and hide barely survived the impact, and Estrella gave quiet thanks to the Mother of All that she had not yet released it from its moorings. The flow from Tachi's entrance pushed through the tent, setting it to flutter along the smooth sand until the lines snapped taut.

  "Did'ja hear?" Tachi said.

  "We arrived last night, my dear cousin." Estrella's voice was low and calm, with the hum of the throat pressed behind each word. "You were rather indisposed..." As usual, she added to herself. She liked Tachi, had liked her for the length of their lives, but sometimes she found it necessary to remind herself of this fact. The two of them might share a grandmother, might both be of the House of Hillia, but objectively the only things which they had in common were the blue-black of their hair and the timing of their births. She'd been first, and Tachi had followed before the end of the hour. The traditions of the noble manoa houses were many, and among them was the idea of fated sisters. By dint of the closeness of their births, they were paired as custom demanded. It was done for good luck and family connections, and the prestra of the temple talked of fates intertwined whenever a good pairing was announced.

  "D'ya remember where I left my stash?"

  Sometimes Estrella hoped that last part was not true. She pointed to where Tachi's belongings lay upon the sand, then waited patiently for her cousin to finish her frantic search of the packs. A single, off-white sac made of fish bladder was the only prize Tachi found. Inside, five oblong tuli pods were visible.

  "Jus' one left?" cried her cousin.

  "Yes," lied Estrella. She'd dumped the other six sacs the evening before, knowing that Tachi never kept a careful count. "You'd better enjoy them while you can. They won't let you have any once we arrive at the barracks."

  Her cousin already had one of the little fermented pods to her lips. She licked it, savoring the tastes that washed from its surface and into the waters of the tent. It was far from disagreeable, Estrella would agree, but that did not stop her from opening a flap to let the current through.

  The tuli was a flavor to be enjoyed, a taste to share around for a verse or two before finishing. Tachi did not have that level of patience. After a mere three beats, in went the pod and crunch went the teeth, and then the spiky-haired mer shivered happily as the biting sweet taste of fermented tuli hit the back of her throat. At the same time, a surge of sour bubbles flowed across the mer's gill slits. A sigh escaped Tachi's lips, and she held her head straighter.

  "Want some?" came the inevitable offer.

  Estrella waved away the sac of pods. "No thanks. And that had better be your last for the day. Please remember why we're here."

  She watched in bored annoyance as Tachi screwed her eyes tight and concentrated on the floaty feeling of the tuli bubbles. As long as they were riding the currents, it had been easy to ignore the point of this trip. The princess's birthday was fast approaching, and Estrella was chosen to represent the Mere Kazahn in the Bryndoon Home Guard. And as a fated bond sister, Tachi was forced to school along with her. Even if it meant giving up her favorite habits. Especially if it meant giving up her favorite habits, as more than one mother and sister of din Hillia was heard to say in private.

  But, annoying as she might be, a sister by bond was still a sister. Some words of encourage would do: "Training is only for a few weeks, and after that we can relax. You'll survive, cousin. It will be good for you."

  The spiky-haired mer nodded, just barely.

  "By the way, did you see Messra Berenice out there?" The caravan's head was a busy mer, but she and her cousin had their own business to sort with her.

  "Um... Jumie said that she'd gone to talk to som'one."

  Ah, that one. Those two. The twin sisters who had joined the caravan in Valden, at the same time as herself and Tachi. Such a matched set should have caught her attention, for all that they obviously swam in different schools. Conversations in the past week had not improved her understanding.

  "Did Jumella say anything else?" she asked.

  "Um, not r'ly. The two 'f 'em were chattin' when I swam up. Don' think they liked m' bein' there," Tachi added, as if she'd just now realized this. It was certainly a possibility.

  Normal, unsoured bubbles crossed her gill slits as she sighed. "I might as well ask them myself, then."

  *

  "Danger on the currents," Jumella said to her sister. Jumilla had already spotted the new arrival out of the corner of her eye.

  If Tachi were the silly little urchin from their grandmother's tales, then Estrella was the proud barracuda: a sleek, vain fish that was quick to hear fault directed at her. While it was not the fairest comparison -- the mer had been at her most polite for the entire trip, Jumilla had to admit -- the black-haired mer moved through the water with an economy of movement and a grace that her cousin thoroughly lacked.

  "What news?" Estrella called as she approached. "Has Messra Berenice returned?"

  "Not yet," Jumilla said in reply. "She said there might be a wait, but that she'd be back before the noon hour."

  Estrella nodded at this, but said nothing else. Neither did the twins. What was there to talk about? The two of them had had little contact with the young aristocrat over the past week on the currents, and this short exchange had used up the only real topic of conversation that they had. Fins and flukes fidgeted for several beats.

  It was Jumella who broke the stillness. "Your cousin did not seem to be in her best form earlier. Is she feeling better?"

  It was a politer question than Tachiana deserved, but the other mer went with it. "She's taking the opportunity to recuperate in our tent before we're officially away. A tuli pod gone a little over-ripe; her poor stomach couldn't handle it. You know how it goes." The look on the twins' faces was enough to tell Estrella that they did not. "Ah, yes. I had heard that you do not partake."

  "I have never seen the point, to be honest," said Jumella.

  "And Mom would scrape our scales off if she caught us drunk, on or off the job," Jumilla added.

  "Ah, the depths hold no Fury to compare to a mother in her disappointment, right?" the dark-haired mer said knowingly. Jumilla could see the habits of high society as they glid into place, hiding the barracuda of Estrella's soul behind the artful veneer of banter. The tone seemed gauged to be inclusive, to shake the twins just enough to get them to open up.

  Jumilla and her twin remained stone-faced.

  "The two of you joined the caravan from Valden, yes? Are you from there as well?" prodded Estrella. The mer was grasping at bubbles, and two of them did not feel like blowing many more her way. It was like Estrella had an itch under the scales when it came to them, if only they would scratch it.

  "Those lovely earrings of yours must certainly be from our city as well, I would think."

  Okay, she was willing to listen to some flattery, at least. One galda's pride was all galda's pride, one way or another, and a compliment to one reflected a compliment to their folk as a whole. Jumilla shared a look with Jumella, who shrugged. "Yes," she admitted.

  "I thought as much." The black-haired mer looked pleased with herself. "It is odd that we've never met, though."

  "Different schools, different currents," said Jumilla.

  "But still, you are a striking pair. It is surprising..."

  They had something of a story to cover for them, though it was a detail only a native of Valden would think was important. "Crafting family," Jumella said simply.

  The veneer of politeness fell from Estrella's face piecemeal, like scales shedding from a patch of fungal infection. The barracuda rose once more from the depths, ready to snap.

  It was a carefully considered story the twins told, if anyone were to ask. The Le?si manoa who inhabited the Mere Tessra? were as noted for the crafts as the mer galda themselves, if for different styles and materials. As mers fled that sea for safer harbors, some had come to Valden and others to Bryndoon, and wherever they went, they took their crafts with them. Few crafters remained long in the city above the galda, however. The manoa of the rim spent their lives, spent their generations looking down upon the industrious, and they did not much understand why a mer would willingly turn her hand to such business. The few that remained were all settled in one small corner of the rim, in their own little enclave that rarely schooled with others.

  Elshia was from that group. It was yet another reason to like the manoa liaison.

  The black-haired aristocrat now floating before them was not privy to the life within the crafting enclave, and likely had never put in a decent hour's worth of labor since she was born. Jumilla could see the thought worming its way across Estrella's face, that a mer might choose to follow the crafting life and be proud of it. The twins had made no effort to hide their physical abillity or their skill with tools during the journey to Bryndoon, but it seemed she hadn't pieced it together herself until just now.

  If she were honest, Jumilla would have loved to ask the mer to model that very face she was making now. There was such a subtle range of shock, dismay, and disgust blended in there that she feared she'd never see again in this life.

  After a few beats of hesitation, Estrella managed to say, "Interesting..." Tiny fragments of civility schooled together to obscure the barracuda for just a while more. "I would dare say that the two of you have some interesting tales to tell. Still, I must be away. My cousin will assuredly need some assistance getting her things in order before Messra Berenice returns."

  "You had better hurry up, then," said Jumilla. "I think I see her coming now."

  The black-haired mer nodded her head at this and pushed away from them with a strong stroke. A beat later and her flukes had disappeared around the corner of a tent.

  "Is Messra Berenice really on her way?" asked Jumella in a low, focused whisper of bubbles.

  "How should I know? The port's behind us," Jumilla replied with a shrug. "She wanted an excuse to leave, so I gave her one. I swear, though, I have had enough of this today. Next time someone bothers us, then --pow!-- I'm letting them have it." She pumped a fist in the air, followed by a fake jab and a low growl.

  "You're incorrigible, sister dear."

  "I try," Jumilla said with a giggle.