(Mer Manoa is a multi-PoV epic organized into canto and verse, with canticles to introduce a new major section. The actual length of updates may vary, but there will be a lot of them before it's all said and done. This first post is a little on the long side, to ensure that proper introductions happen)

  ---

  Canticle I

  In the farthest of seas, old and strange,

  The Weaver of Light measures out the skeins

  Of the past and present as they weave

  Towards future's fulfillment,

  The end of an age.

  With four filaments does she work,

  Her hands rough and webbed,

  Claws pulling at lines drawn taut with purpose.

  Six threads does she consider, bound in three skeins.

  Two have been wed since birth,

  twisted around till none can say which began where.

  Two more have been paired for almost as long,

  Curled together in closest commitment.

  The last are soon to be connected,

  Soon to be met,

  With no kenning of their importance.

  There are more strings of light,

  More filaments of fate

  Hanging in the waters close at hand.

  The Goddess provides the materials,

  Life the loom.

  The Weaver of Light bears witness

  And the world bears the price.

  The first three skeins draw together.

  ---

  Canto I -- The Home Waters

  Verse I

  The firmament rose above all, its billowing waves of silvery white alternating with deepest blue to send ripples through the waters below. Light filtered as it would, in narrow streams piercing to the depths and dancing across the finsome things it revealed. From time to time, something immense would pass, either above the firmament or below, and the world was in shadow.

  It was in shadow that her senses first returned, the sudden shifts from bright to dark providing a response within her head. Through lidded eyes, she could not tell much else.

  Floating was supposed to be a comforting sensation. Her first thought sparkled across the depths of her mind, leaving oddly colored voids in its wake. It was a lonely thought, disconnected from anything which might feed it and help it to grow. Soon it would fade into a billow of tiny bubbles, passing from her consciousness even as she did. The darkness engulfed all.

  Perhaps time passed. Perhaps it did not. There was the sensation of light behind her eyelids, then darkness, and in the dimmed space more thoughts crept out like the night feeders upon the reef. They were slippery and hard to catch, mere snippets of sensation: Floating. Home? Where else? They too dissolved as the darkness gave way to the firmament's light as it trickled through the waters of her mind, pushing away all else for a short time without end.

  If not home, where else? The thoughts returned, leaving their impossible wake across the darkness. Floating. Discomfort. Something wrong?

  She asked herself the question, or a part of herself asked a different part, in slow crawls of thought that took hours of the day to complete nothing at all. From one to many their numbers swelled, incomplete squiggles finding partners until fuller questions could be realized into greater jumbles of confusion. She opened her eyes in the hopes of finding some clue, any clue.

  That was a mistake, came the last thought she would have for a while to come. In the brief glance, the waters beneath the firmament shook and wavered, never in focus and often in motion. Fishes were nothing more than glimpses of color, and the coral formations danced like the silt grasses in a strong current. At the edges of her vision, a formless froth obscured, and where it passed, the color of things went from dark to light, from light to dark, from vivid greens to strange and unwholesome hues. She had no words to describe it; all thought fled as the impossible colors rose like the current and washed the froth of pain through her skull.

  No more thought would come for some time.

  ---

  Some time came. Some time was. Some time ended. To the chaotic froth within her skull, some time was all time and yet no time at all. And yet time passed, and the shimmer of the firmament grew brighter. The day ripened and rays of light drifted down to assault her through the eyes.

  How many times had she lost the fight for consciousness? The very act of counting was enough to end the next fight, much the same as the first had concluded: with explosions of light in impossible colors crashing through her skull and a quick return to the maternal embrace of nothingness. When her ears functioned at all, they brought sounds as twisted and meaningless as her vision, and even when the noises suddenly made sense, she could not begin to react.

  "Don't have the time for this...” The words made sense later, when she finally recalled them. “Stop push... Alright! Alright! Depths take it...” At the moment, they were hardly a rush of blood through her eardrums, no different from the other noises of the surrounding waters, real or imagined.

  A hand touched her forehead. Fingers ran along the curve of her face, calloused tips rough against her skin. Words were whispered in soft strings of bubbles that flowed past without stopping by her ears first. The pounding within her skull slowed, soothed, ceased. Thoughts danced around painlessly like bits of sand in the current: free but not going anywhere. What strength she had left now fled, having no pain to stand against, and only by supreme will could she open her eyes even once, even the slightest gap, to see a vague haze of red flowing around two chips of blue.

  The warm embrace of nothingness was not so empty of thought this time, but again she would not recall any of it for a long time to come, if ever.

  Verse II

  In a different sea, connected closely by the great currents yet far distant in its waters, the same firmament shone down. The grand harbor of Bryndoon existed in a gulf between cliffs, and the light always arrived at specific angles. Its shell-work structures were designed to capture the shine as it drifted through, to hold it and keep it in soft tones of color. Most evident of this craftwork was the Palace of the Crown with its many-hued domes of delicate shell stretching across the face of the cliffs. Every room of importance was lit during the day by a soft luminescence that washed through the inner halls within the cliff.

  For the deeper halls, as for the darker hours, there were lamp-cages to keep the sluggish glow-snails safe and content. Rhiela had one such lamp in her hand as she floated upon the threshold of a deeper passage. Her other hand rested against one gilded flank with a habitual air of impatience. It was not a passage she should be seen taking, but she did not care. None ever came so deep into the cliffs as this, so none would see her. And that, to her mind, made her adventure for the day perfectly legitimate.

  “Come on, Marai!” she whispered, the short burst of sound hissing through the waters with precision. The words arrived at their target ears promptly. “This is the way to go. You just have to see it.”

  “But it’s so dark...” Her companion was not possessed of the same adventurous heart. Many were the times when Marai envied her friend’s ability to simply go places, swim currents, and not look back. Marai was familiar with the normal sort of darkness, the dimming of the firmament into the depths of night, and she knew it to be imprefect. There was the glimmer of wavelets from above and the glints of night-dwelling creatures below. It was just enough to let a mer know that it was night. But the space ahead of her, the mouth of a passageway where Rhiela floated with one fist resting on a gilded hip, that held a different sort of darkness. No little lights trickled through. No glowy creatures made it their home. The darkness was absolute, beyond the powers of her friend’s glowing lamp-cage to disperse. Even when Rhiela held the lamp past the threshold and swung it around, the brave little glow-snail’s light hardly pushed against it.

  “Come on,” Rhiela repeated, in tones more kindly. Gilded hair bounced as the mer shook her head. “It’s going to be all right. I promise. Just take my hand and I’ll lead the way.”

  Marai had heard that before. Oftentimes she had heard it from her friend just before trouble started. But on the other hand... Her braid of colored hair, tinted violet in the manner her mother and foremothers, twisted and wove between her fingers. For good or for ill, life was more interesting when she followed the golden mer’s lead. Her hand trembled in the still waters as she reached for Rhiela’s welcoming arms.

  A quick embrace, three beats at most, but Marai felt it for an entire verse. It ended with a kiss on the forehead, and then the golden mer guided her across the threshold and into the forgotten depths behind the Palace of the Crown.

  The darkness closed in, with only the paltry light of the lamp-cage to keep it at bay. She could not see the over-wall of the passageway, nor the rough-hewn fundament. To the right and to the left, Marai had the impression of there being walls, as the flow of water would have felt different in a less confined space. She had to reach out and run a finger across the mud-slicked surface to confirm that, however. How long had this way been abandoned, to accumulate such filth? The question kept her mind occupied for another long verse, but always beyond it was the encroachment of unseen depths.

  The sensation began as a chilled current along her spine, a thin line of frissoning cold which curled down her back like a second braid and pooled unpleasantly upon the curve before her hips. An itch of a twitch spread away from the spot, insinuating itself through skin and scale. A tremor ran the length of her tail, and more would seen come, she knew.

  “Oh, Marai...” A hand, heavy with warmth, rested itself upon the curve where the skin of her back met the girdle of plastron scales above her flanks and flukes. “I know this is hard, but trust me...” Her friend’s voice, her friend’s touch, those dispelled the tremulous chills and created shivers of a different sort throughout her body. Rhiela whispered sweet words into her ear, words of encouragement and grace which flowed straight through the waters of her mind without registering more their soothing tones.

  She relaxed and shut her eyes, escaping to the more familiar dark behind the eyelids as Rhiela kept one hand on her back and the other clasping the lamp-cage. A tune found her throat: a meandering, improvised thing of unequal verse that was useless for telling how long they swam, but it helped to calm her until Rhiela slowed her strokes and tugged Marai’s hand.

  “You can open your eyes now.” The words bubbled past her ears, bringing another shiver of enjoyment. “Seriously. Open them. You do not want to miss this.”

  Obediently, Marai’s eyelids cracked open, bringing her back to a darkness that was not as absolute as it had been. There was a glow in the distance ahead, one made all the more obvious as Rhiela drew her lamp-cage shut to allow the glow-snail its rest. The pleasant promise of light drew Marai forward, previous chills forgotten.

  The slow curve of the passageway took a swift and sudden turn to the left, and by the time Marai’s head had ceased its spinning, they were arrived. The mouth of the tunnel was behind her and before her was a cavern, an immensely hollow space in the cliff greater than any she had ever seen. Even the Hall of the Crown, where matters of great importance and care were once held, that space could take up only a fraction of what she saw here. Marai had helped Rhiela measure the Hall a few years ago, as part of a study in the mathematics of shape and form, and from the waters of memory she drew those dimensions in an effort to guess the cavern’s true size.

  Two hundred tail-lengths from far to near, perhaps one hundred and fifty in width, and as for height... Her gaze climbed from the fundament to the over-wall, where great holes in the stone let in the light of the firmament. “To think that such a place is hidden in the cliffs,” she murmured.

  “I know, right?” Rhiela’s scales shimmered gold as she swam through one of the falls of shine from above. “I haven’t really checked, but I bet those holes open up on the shallows beyond the kiss of the firmament. No one much likes to go that way, so no one ever found this.”

  “Yes, that makes sense...” mused Marai, but her friend was already on the stroke. The far ends and corners of the space were caught in the haze of distance, and the fine details only became apparent as they continued deeper. This cavern may have begun as a natural void in the stone, but it showed the hand of mer in the straight lines, the leveled flatness of its fundament and the careful arrangement of short pillars such as might direct the flow of a crowd. No visitors had come for an unthinkably long age, and thus the sand and silt had accumulated in the nooks and corners, hiding but not effacing its beauty.

  She might suspect some grammar at work here, some working of song and will, but no rune marks were in evidence. Her mother would know better, but Marai would hesitate to ask.

  As the two mers swept in close, the currents of their wake pushed sand away to reveal row after row of delicate shell tiles, in colors that shimmered and shifted as they swam above them. Patterns appeared, mosaics that evolved in complexity, and these directed Rhiela and Marai to the center of the cavern, where a prominence of natural stone rose from the fundament. The mass was polished and carved from its base to its peak, where--

  The water stopped in her gills. Even if she could give voice, the words would fail her. Rounding the stone, she could see that what had once been mere rock had taken the form of a mer, caught in the act of springing fully formed from the floor below. Strong arms held a spear close to a lean chest, and colorful stones had been set to wondrous effect. But what caught her attention most was the face.

  One of the manoa, with narrow features and large eyes, but even for someone of her race the figure had a striking, angular grace. It was not the conventional beauty of the artists, but something deep and potent, a sort of... Her mind cast deep for a word, locating it in a school of memories from a collection of romantic poetry her mother favored: muliebrity. A strange word, laden with tones of attraction and physicality that Marai had not understood at the time, but this statue embodied it all.

  Rhiela had stayed her voice, floating gently behind Marai for a full verse-count or more before wrapping her arms delicately around the lavender mer's waist. A string of bubbles sent shivers from her ears to her flanks as the golden mer whispered, "She's really something, isn't she?"

  "I... she..." Words arrived on her lips, for what good they did. Marai rested her head back upon Rhiela's chest and enjoyed its soft comfort as she gathered her thoughts for another attempt. "Is she... is this a statue of Cythera? Of the Goddess Herself?"

  "If she is," her friend replied, "then the sculptors were working on a very different model back then. You've seen the statues in the temple, the ones that look like a pair of octopodes are hanging off the front?" A short laugh rumbled up against the back of Marai's head. "Bigger than mine!"

  "Wasn't your grandmother the model for..."

  "Shush, Marai."

  "Yes, Rhiela."

  They floated quietly in place, Rhiela's arms snug around her, her head carefully supported, their flukes curled around. There was a magic in this moment, in this grotto, and Marai did not wish it to ever end.

  It did, of course. Rhiela could not keep her mouth shut for too long. "Yeah, this mer was builter lighter on the top, heavier in the tail. Not so burdened by obvious symbols of maternity. Kind of like you."

  "I'm not like her..." she protested.

  "No, you're like you, which is already perfect." Rhiela pulled her arms a smidge tighter for emphasis. "I do wish we could have met her, back in whenever this was made. She must have been some piece of tail."

  The crude little remark made Marai grin and shake her head. "You've been floating by the barracks yard again," she accused.

  "It's my palace and I'll go where I please."

  "Your mother's palace."

  A shrug lifted them both upwards for a beat. "It's the same difference. And as it is my... ahem, my mother's palace, I can claim this nice part of it, which obviously no one is using, and make it mine. Or rather, ours." Rhiela leaned her head in close to Marai's eaar, and again the lavender mer shivered. "How does that sound to you?"

  "Perfect..."

  "I'm glad we agree. Oh! I haven't shown you the most amazing part. Look at her hair."

  The top of the statue's head appeared to be a different sort of stone from the rest, carved and polished before being fitted so precisely to the main body that there was hardly a seam to be found. At first glance it was a dark shade, almost but not quite black, but when Rhiela brought the glow-lamp up behind it and shook the little snail to shining...

  A gasp of surprise fluttered its way from her chest. The light proved the stone translucent, the beams turning myriad shades of green as they wove through the mass. The colors and the play of the light brought to mind fields of kelp at its roots, and the tips were the paler color of the firmament between the waves. It was no color she had ever seen on a mer, not even amongst her cousins in the Mere Tessra?, where hair colors were often peculiar to a lineage.

  "What a shade, huh?" Rhiela let the glow-snail rest and the hair again went dark. "A lost family line, maybe?"

  Marai flicked her tail against the tiled floor, pushing her upwards until she was face to face with the statue. "It would appear, yes. A rare one indeed. I suppose I could ask--"

  "No." Rhiela floated to her side, catching her around the waist once again with the crook of her elbow. "I'd like... well, this is our place, mine and yours. I don't want to bring the Crown, Ministry, or Temple into it. This place has been a secret for so long, and now it's our secret, and everyone else would just mess it up. You know they would."

  A sigh flushed across Marai's gills. Little good ever came of Rhiela in a dramatic mood, but she couldn't see the harm here. And the statue was something special. Closer in, the details of the face were all the more striking, with a strong, straight nose, wide brow, and firmly sculpted lips. For a beat, she was tempted. She turned in Rhiela's embrace, tucking closer in, and kissed her real and actual princess instead.

  They did not leave the grotto till the firmament's light ceased to trickle down through the gaps above. It was not nearly long enough.

  Verse III

  Of the nine seas known to mer, the Mere Kazahn was the smallest, the most condensed. Its waters were clear but turbulent, with swiftly shifting currents that rose and fell through the fathoms with the least of warning. The land below its waters was marked by enormous stones and circular marks, bubbling vents and scalding flows. And at the center of this smallest sea, there rose the Ring of Valden.

  It was a mount, an immense hill of stone and silt as were common throughout the region, but if any were truly like Valden then they had not yet been discovered by mer. The rim of the Ring came within mere fathoms of the firmament at its highest, only to dive deep soon after, where the interior of the mount collapsed into a plain of stone and mud. At the very center, the land rose again, a conical pillar of stone which a thousand mers could not have encircled, and where it met the firmament it would not stop. Rather, it pierced the silvered veil of waves to reach high above.

  No manoa went near such a misbegotten place, and those of them who lived in Valden did so on the rim, looking down upon the other folk of the sea, the mer galda. They saw the galda's squared-off huts of stone, so different from the shell-worked domes of the rim, and shook their heads. A clever folk, the galda, with clever fingers and precise focus. Let them stay content in their sea, producing marvels for the Temple and Crown, and the local manoa to protect them. Such was the way of the Mere Kazahn for as long as any could remember.

  The galda remembered differently, though no one ever asked them. The thick, heavy lips of their faces merged with the lines of their noses to form shapes more beak than smile, and they had little use for the mannerisms of their neighbors upon the rim. Fringed scales upon their faces and necks stood or lay flat as their mood changed, while longer fringe upon their arms and flanks helped them to climb the heated currents of their home waters with ease. But never did they leave the Mere Kazahn. Their craft was considered too precious to risk.

  Down within the crater plain of Valden, amidst the blocky structures that were far grander when seen up close, many years of apprenticeship were coming to a close. A dozen galda daughters, each bearing the colors of her sept and chosen craft, awaited the confirmation of their skill. Each held a piece of their own creation, a carving or other work that was their design alone. Many weeks had been spent within the student workshops of the pillar as they perfected their technique and prepared for the final judgment from the maestra of their craft. And though none of the dozen galda expected to repeat the trial, still in the waters of their hearts they worried.

  This went doubly so for the two others who schooled with them. Jumilla min Tefira and her sister Jumella bore works of exceptional craft in their arms, and yet nothing was more exceptional than their presence in the chamber now. Their noses were high above their mouths, their fingers had no delicate claws upon the tips, and instead of the colored fringe scales of their peers they possessed matching heads of short, russet hair. There was little to differentiate them from any mer upon the rim, save for two things: First, the muscles of their arms spoke of long experience with labor; and second, they were there at all, in the hall upon the pillar in the center of Valden.

  Jumilla, if asked, would say that she was only manoa from the scalp up. Her sister would agree, as would every other galda present. The two of them had been taken in as foundlings, secured in a kelpen float anchored at a caravan stop near the border of the Mere Kazahn. For whatever reason, the mers of the rim had no use for the infant twins, just two more daughters orphaned by the pods of orcs that had smashed settlements all along the border of the Mere Tessra? and Mere Kazahn. None could say even which of the many demolished villages of those seas they might have hailed from.

  And so little Jumilla and Jumella had found a home with Tefira the jeweler, whose craft had put her on good terms with the caravanners who stopped by. Their mother a galda, thus they themselves by the customs and lore. With each passing year they celebrated the same milestones as their year-sisters, took the same lessons and learned the same skills and crafts. From their mother they knew all the names of the stones and the ways in which to carve them. From their grandmother, they learned to recite all of the old tales the galda told, the silly stories of fish and other creatures below the firmament, as well as the morals they provided.

  So when the sisters floated their, schooling with the others at this ceremony that would end their apprenticeships and begin their year of discovery, it was as galda. They wore the yellow sash of their mother's sept across their chests, and bore in their hands the projects they had laboriously completed. With matching gravity upon their faces, they presented these to their mother, Tefira min Liesa, in gratitude for everything. Jumella's was a torque of carved shell beads upon cords of tightened kelp, all produced by her hand alone. At the center was a plate carved from one singular clam, its surface now a cameo of a sinuous beast of ancient lore with a chip of red stone for an eye. This their mother accepted with a nod as Jumella fixed the clasp behind the old mer's neck and let it settle upon her shoulders.

  Jumilla's was a box, five planes of sanded coral block taken from deep within the heart of the local reef. Its coils were compressed by the weight of later growth until it was solid all across, yet the whorls and patterns could still be traced with a finger. It was held together by tiny pegs, each hand-carved with delicate care. Jumilla's thumbs bore many new scars to attest the skill required. This, too, their mother accepted with solemn thanks.

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

  All around them, similar scenes played out as their galda sisters presented gifts of skill to mothers or mentors. Thanks was granted and received with habitual stoicism. The sashes of apprentice were exchanged for the belts of young mers on their year of discovery, when the daughters of Valden would decide their current in life. Many -- most, in fact -- would already have decided, but the year gave them the chance to ponder and consider the options.

  And there, Jumella and Jumilla were suddenly different from their galda sisters in all ways, for their options were broader than any.

  *

  For almost the sum length of their lives, certainly for as long as they were capable of wondering, one question had floated in the backwaters of their thoughts: Where was she? While they were content with calling Tefira Mom, anyone with eyes could see that the galda was not their mother in the natural sense. This mattered little in the workshops and schools of Valden, where the twins were treated no less or more than their galda sisters, but there were times, bundled snugly together in a children's hammock and listening to the distant sounds of nightly industry, when they whispered little strings of ideas and imagination into each other's ears. Their missing mother was a crafter, a caravanner, an explorer, an agent of the Crown -- all the jobs or vocations they knew, they fitted upon the blank mold of memory to see what worked.

  But, come the morning, Mom was the one to feed them and teach them and do the important parts of mothering.

  One morning some time before, in their final months of apprenticeship, the two of them worked upon their projects in focused silence. The still waters of the shared workspace held only the sounds of their industry: the shuf-shuf-shuf of a sharkskin polisher on stone, the snik-snik-snik of a carving knife on coral. It was not a time for talk until Jumilla surprised them both by opening her mouth and sighing, "I wonder..."

  No words followed for several beats, and Jumella was left drifting as to what her sister meant. Her sharkskin went shuf-shuf over a red stone bead, marking the time as well as any song with its regular passage. "Wonder what?" she finally asked Jumilla, before continuing on to the next bead.

  "It's nothing..." They both knew that for the lie it was. "It's just... we're making these presents for Mom -- and well she deserves them, really -- but it makes me wonder what... what she would've liked..."

  There was only the one person Jumilla meant when that stress was placed on that pronoun. Jumella pretended for a beat that she hadn't heard. The steady shuf-shuf continued.

  "I... I think I want to, to find her and ask," Jumilla admitted.

  The sound of the sharkskin missed a beat. "We do not know where to find her," said Jumella. "Or if she is even still alive." This was where the discussion usually began and ended, with a general acceptance of fact and fate. They had no information, no names, no means of even beginning the search--

  "We could go look for her ourselves."

  "No one is allowed to leave the local waters," Jumella had to remind her sister.

  "No galda." It had never been put so baldly before. That it was the truth only made it harder to say. By order of the Crown, the galda crafters of Valden were confined to the Mere Kazahn. That was all there was to say on the matter, and the sisters were never comfortable saying anything more. Not even now. For many a verse after, the only sounds were the snik-snik-snik of carving blades on prong coral and the shuf-shuf-shuf of sharkskin on stone, the rustle of tools taken or replaced within their appropriate netting, the swish of nervous flukes on the workshop floor. The bag of pegs had grown quite large against Jumilla's flank before she spoke again.

  "We should at least try."

  Jumella ignored her.

  "Just because no one else has the chance doesn't mean we should let it slip us by."

  Still no reply.

  "Depths, sis! This is our only chance to look for her!" The words burst out and up, heavy bubbles against the workshop over-wall, but nothing followed. The younger twin returned to her pegs, attacking each new piece of coral with her carving knife, stabbing and nicking it so that somehow it reached an appropriate shape in spite of herself. Faster and faster she worked, with bitten lip and shaking hands, until the inevitable occurred. The knife slipped the wrong way on a coral stub and dug into the meat of Jumilla's thumb.

  "Ah, depths take it!" yelled the young mer, sweeping the remaining, half-finished pegs from her worktable. With the space cleared, she was free to collapse over the flat stone with an arm over her face. Short, faint sobs could be heard.

  Gentle, calloused hands took the carving knife from her grasp and placed it within the proper netting on the wall. Strong, muscled arms wrapped around her, pulling her close to Jumella's breast. A wad of sticky weed was pressed to her thumb to staunch the bleeding. Through it all, the elder twin said not a word. It was enough to be there, to be the shoulder on which to cry.

  "It's just so hard..." whispered Jumilla, her face buried in Jumella's man. "Thinking about her, wondering. I just want to know, find out where we're from, and then come home to Mom. I don't want to leave here forever. Please, Jumella..."

  "Then we should talk to Mom about it." There wasn't much else she could say. Perhaps the old galda could talk Jumilla off this fanciful current. Talk them both off of it, for the water of the twins' hearts tended to flow the same way.

  *

  To Jumella's everlasting surprise, their mother's only response was, "Thinking on it. Talk later," in her usual economy of words. Few though they were, those syllables had stopped Jumilla from saying anything else on the matter for weeks on end. The waters of their home took on a prickly feel as nerves and anxiety welled and swelled, but neither twin dared ask their mother for more. The fear was real that nothing would come of it. Somehow, the ambiguity of ignorance was both more stressful and less frightening than a straight answer.

  And then came the day, the presentation of the projects and the passage from childhood apprenticeship to the first currents of adulthood. Mom had received her torque and her box with a powerful few words of thanks. The spread of the fringed scales cresting her brow said more than her mouth ever could.

  A minor groundswell passed through, the waters shivering and the floor giving up some of its silt and sand to billow up through the waters. It was small, causing barely a pause in the conversation around the chamber, and yet it signaled the end to the festivities. Daughters newly graduated now floated off to celebrate their advancement on their own, and mothers schooled together to discuss matters of industry. The twins were pushing off to join their year-sisters when a single word, "Wait," reeled them back in. Tefira the jeweler, Mom, had her crest drawn in tight. It was the surest sign of nerves a galda could show. The elder mer swam out of the chamber, through one of the side arches and deeper into the building. "Follow."

  Most of the buildings in Valden were designed thusly, with outer chambers partially open to the common waters and inner chambers carved into the central mount. The size of the chambers varied greatly by style and purpose, and the one which they now entered was ostensibly large enough to accommodate half a dozen mers if they were on decently intimate terms with one another.

  At the moment it had but a single inhabitant, and she filled the space all by herself. The galda in the blue sash was not so tall, and definitely not so wide. She was simply there. She simply was.

  "Ser Gillian," mother and daughters said as one, bowing their heads. Tefira's crest fluttered in respect, while the twins held hands to ther foreheads with the palms spread and fingers wide to imitate the signal. "We are came as you requested," Tefira announced.

  The one known as the Voice of the galda fluttered her own crest in acknowledgment before replying. "Well met, Tefira min Liesa. And congratulations to you both, Jumella and Jumilla min Tefira."

  "Ma'am," said the twins with bowed heads.

  "Your mother has spoken to me of your desired plans."

  "Not really plans as such..." Jumilla admitted. "Thoughts? Hopes?"

  "May we ask what the Voice would say on the matter?" Jumella asked before her sister became too side-tracked in front of the most influential galda in the seas. The crafting septs of Valden each had their own colors, from the polished red of the coral-workers to the grey of the metal-makers. The Voice of the galda had a color all her own, a vivid blue such as was seen when the firmament was still and waveless. Every galda in Valden had a dab of it in her fringed crest, to be displayed in moments of happiness and joy, for it meant Hope. If Jumella's voice had a hue, in this moment it would be the shade of the great galda's sash.

  "It is a weighty endeavor which you have suggested," the Voice noted.

  "Yes, Ser Gillian," the twins said, the response well drilled by their younger days in schooling.

  "Not one of our people has left our familiar fathoms since last we began to count the days."

  Jumella shared a guilty look with her twin. "We, we do not wish to make anyone upset..." she began. "It is... it is true that my sister and I are not..."

  "You are." The affirmation was simple, strong, and proud. "You are galda, by every measure for which we care. Think you that none have noted your work over the years, the efforts you have made, equal to any of your sisters-in-schooling? Nay, it is not your family here that is the problem, for envious though we will be, still we would wish you the best on your year of discovery."

  "But... there is yet a problem?" asked Jumella.

  "Not anymore." The Voice shifted, and for the first time the twins noticed a fifth mer in the chamber, hidden in the galda leader's wake. This one was as manoa as the twins, and more so as she lacked the muscles of an industrious life. Pale yellow hair was tied back in a tail, and her flanks bore scales like old pearl. A Le?si manoa, with those colors, and after a moment spent blinking in surprise the twins bowed their heads and flashed their palms again.

  "Messra... Elshia?" asked Jumella. The name and the face were less familiar, but all in the city had at least heard of the official liaison between the Voice of the galda and the manoa governor of the city rim. "It is an honor...?"

  The manoa chuckled. "More of a surprise, of that I would wager. But actually, the honor is mine. Most upon the rim believe the tales of manoa down below to be nothing more than a rumor, a story woven to scare the daughters when they are naughty.

  "Might be they'd behave better if they tried a lick of actual work," Jumilla grumbled.

  "They might at that." Elshia shrugged. "I should not complain, after they allowed my folk shelter all those years ago, but I cannot agree, either."

  Ser Gillian prompted the blonde mer with a nudge of the elbow. "The shells?"

  "Oh, yes." The liaison produced a set of flat scallop shells from her pouch. They were the sort used for official missives. "A regular request would not have worked, of course," the manoa continued. "Everyone in the local ministry, ahem, 'knows' that there are no manoa living in these deeper waters, and so there is no one to issue travel permits to."

  Atop Ser Gillian's head, the fringed crest was drawn tight. "Ignorant fools."

  "Quite," agreed Elshia. "Lazy ones as well. But that is all for the good, as they named me your liaison when no one else wanted the post. And the secret, I have found," she said as she handed the shells to Jumilla and Jumella, "is simply not to mention the details at all. There you two go: Permits of free travel between the seas and general words of good faith from the ministry of Valden to vouch for your hiring aboard any caravan. As you do not appear to be galda, no one should question them in the port of Valden, and no one will even care elsewhere."

  "A caravan leaves on the morrow," Ser Gillian informed them. "One of the regular traders on the southern currents, bound for Bryndoon. We have dealt with them directly from time to time, and their call-singer is willing to give you work in exchange for passage. If you are still willing."

  "Yes!" shouted Jumilla. The word was echoed in her twin's own yell.

  "Excellent." The Voice of the galda nodded. "Sadly, we shall not be able to see you off. Too many galda at the port would call undue attention."

  "And the viceroy is paranoid enough with threats from outside,' Elshia added. "There is no need to worry her more."

  "Yes..." galda tended to click their lips together to voice distaste, a noise the twins could never manage to copy properly. A flick of the tongue against the roof of the mouth almost sufficed. "I do not need to impress upon you the importance of this opportunity," Ser Gilliam continued. "It has been so long since any galda was allowed outside this city that we have lost all insight into the waters beyond. We have only the words of the caravanners to balance the things the viceroy tells us, and I only trust those mers' a certain stroke's distance. Jumella and Jumilla min Tefira, be our eyes, be our ears, learn what you can so that we all may know."

  "Ma'am." Heads bowed and palms flared against brows. They would have to break themselves of old habits and mannerisms soon, thought Jumella. In distant seas they undoubtedly did things differently.

  And now... now they would have a chance to see just how differently things would be.

  Verse IV

  When at last her wits returned, it was with a rush of blood to her skull and a jumble of sensations warring for her attention. First was the inescapable feeling that someone had tried to crack her skull like it was the shell of some crab or turtle being dressed for dinner. Next came the realization that the light was wrong. It was supposed to be morning, and early at that, but already the waters below the firmament were darkening and the night-feeders had begun their evening displays. A small orange angle hobbled along the silt beneath her flukes, its stubby front fins pulling it forward as it wiggled its lure enticingly.

  There would be larger feeders coming soon, she knew. It would be best to head home as quickly as her strokes would take her. She turned to do just that, and the third realization hit her: that she was not sure which way home lay. A few shakes of the head did little to help the scramble that was the state of her brains. In the quickly dimming light it was not easy to get her bearings, either.

  The only clue she could find was a short hunting spear, the sharp end stuck in the silt at the base of a plume-grass patch. She picked it up, hefted it, felt it fit against the callouses of her palms. It was hers, she thought. It felt like hers. The spear had lain near one path through the thick patches of grasss, and so it was in that direction that she decided to swim.

  When seen from the firmament above, the fields of plume-grass were a vast green realm. They rolled far across the shelf south of the Grandest Reef, anchored in the thick silt brought down from the heights above by the currents. Few ever swam far above the top of the grass, for in the span of water between field and firmament, all manner of hunters lurked. Sharks and orcs were too large to dive into the grass themselves, but all were too ready to devour a fish or mer foolish enough to leave the sanctuary of the foliage. That was why the mers of the Grandest Reef kept to the expanses of green, despite their own size. It was easier to cut paths and make clearing to trap their prey and grow their crops.

  Her own reasons for being here were obvious to her. She had a spear, a net, and a pair of knives on her belt. Clearly she was ready to hunt. As she continued down the path, however, the questions mounted in her mind. Was she so certain that this was the current that would take her home? Who or what had happened to her head?

  Why did she feel like something was missing.

  That last thought, arriving out of the indigo depths unannounced, brought her up short in her stroke. Something was not right, not where it was supposed to be. It was not any part of her equipment, of that she was fairly sure. Nor did she have any bags or a pack to carry -- though in her state she might not remember having such a thing at all.

  The question teased at the edges of her mind, wriggling like the angler's lure but pulling back before she could bite. Just when she thought she had it, a shout rumbled down the waters ahead. An angry, loud voice, and with it a rough and grating sound. With a strong kick of the flukes she surged forward, out of the foliage and into a clearing.

  Into a fight.

  In the center of the clearing, a mer floated. She was large and well-built, with the carapace of a greater reef turtle colored red and gold upon her back. The fabric which showed from under the shell was the same. The mer's hair was hidden beneath a thick leather cap. One hand was raised, in it a short metal sword ready to fall upon its target--

  Two mers, one older and one younger. From their shared speckled flanks and reddish brown hair, they were probably family. The thought echoed in the back of her head, shifting the flotsam into place. She knew they were family, even if she did not know them. Or perhaps she did. Yes. She couldn't quite put names to them, but the waters of her mind eddied around their faces in recognition. They were her people. She knew this.

  Her people. Being threatened at sword-point.

  In her eyes, the shimmering light of the firmament bled ruddy through the waters.

  *

  Emera was not where she needed to be, in more ways than she realized in the heat of the moment. The soldier's back was turned, her focus completely on the two villagers. The sword wove back and forth through the waters in an impressive stroke that the Duchess would have swatted her for performing. It was all show, but a show was what she felt she needed. Separated from her squad by a freak bit of turbulence, the soldier had lost her bearings and these two looked like they knew where they were going. Simply asking would have been beneath her station; a show of force was necessary.

  No one else was in the clearing. Emera knew this; she had checked even before drawing her blade. There was none but herself and the two trembling before her. The truth arrived too quickly for her to feel the vibrations in the water, too swiftly for her to even realize the need to defend herself. A heavy mass tackled her from behind, dragged her to the silt, and then there was a spear at the soft of her neck.

  At that point, all the soldier could do was stare up at her assailant. Almost as tall in the back as she was in the tail, the spear-wielding mer immediately brought to mind images of Cythera's avenging furies. A young, hard face stared down at her, and there was no mercy to be found in those bright green eyes.

  Emera's final thought, as the point of the spear bit into her neck and let her life pour out, was that she had never before seen hair the color of fresh seaweed.

  *

  For a moment, she'd feared to black out once more. The world had had that odd, tense quality to it that pressed at the mind and weighed the thoughts. And then she had acted without any thought, much less remorse. Her mind was still catching up.

  Below her flukes, a corpse sank into the silt. Blood leaked slowly into the currents from its throat, and as she watched a bubbled spilled upward as the air bladders in its chest emptied. It still had her spear in it. She did not remember putting it there.

  "Ya!" came a shout. The two speckled mers had pulled back to the edge of the clearing, away from the taste of blood on the water, but the younger one still voiced her approval. "Good time, Ardenne!"

  The muddy chaos in her head receded at the sound of the name. It fit in her mind, much as the spear had fit in her hands. Ardenne... yes. That was her name. One question answered, she thought. Only a heavy handful more to ask. It was best to start with the immediate ones: "Who was this mer..."

  Lyrika -- the name popped into her head. And Lyra, the older sister.

  "...Lyrika?" she finished. "Lyra, do you know?"

  The two of them shook their heads as they tried to make sense of what had just occurred. In the pause, Ardenne's mind dredged more details from the hazy depths: Lyra and Lyrika were sisters, though enough years lay between them that one might think them aunt and niece. Their mutual mother, Maris, ran the village stores. One small fact after another she teased out, strung together like a vine of the green pod plants that grew all around the clearing. An overturned basket lying on the silt was formerly full of the fat little vegetables.

  Within the haze of her mind, too much was still obscured, hidden. Something was still missing, and the only thing Ardenne could say for certain was that it was important.

  She shook her head. There would be time to worry later. For now, she had to see Lyra and Lyrika back to safer waters. The soldier in red and gold was left for the night feeders to squabble over.

  *

  Hidden within the mass of plume-grass fronds, a pair of bright blue eyes had borne witness. They had watched as the soldier in red and gold accosted the two young gatherers, but their owner had done nothing. Sera recognized posturing and intimidation for what they were, and there had been no reason to reveal herself. To the contrary, that would have brought far more trouble than it was worth. It was her business to avoid the soldiers.

  And then swift death had burst in like a demon from the depths.

  The hunter's approach had been out of her line of sight, and so the sudden entrance had caught the watcher by surprise just as much as it had the soldier. Quick, savage, merciless, and done: if she'd entertained any thoughts of revealing herself, none survived that show.

  She only watched as Ardenne and the sisters left in the direction of the village. The soldier's corpse had settled to the bottom and the flow of blood stopped before Sera the Red left her place of concealment. Others would come, in time. There was no need for her to greet them.

  *

  Vast as they were, the expanses of plume-grass had an end, and it was a definite one. There was simply a line where the green met the many colors of the Grandest Reef, with one side clearly separated from the other. The sight of the reef, the sight of home, brought such relief that for a few beats Ardenne could not stop herself from shaking. Her nerves were on a narrow edge, as sharply capable as the point of her spear, and the pressure had now let up.

  Dusk was fast turning to night, and even in those last, fleeting moments of day the reef was a wonder to behold. Anchored to a ridge in the shelf-land that ran for leagues, it was blessed with great rolling hills of living coral. Some varieties lay like great pillows, but others -- most, even -- reached stony fingers high towards the firmament. They looped and whorled in every direction, growing so as best to expose their polyps to the life-giving currents. Even as Ardenne looked on, she could see the hush begin to fall across the expanse. Brightly hued polyps pulled in, retreating from the arrival of night and its quiet feeders. Colors faded but did not disappear. Soon enough they would be replaced by the lights of the glowing algae, the night vines, shimmerfish, and other luminescent denizens of darkness.

  The sisters raced ahead, but Ardenne followed at a more leisurely stroke. She knew taht the other villagers were not comfortable swimming after nightfall. She and her mother were the odd ones out in that respect. Often the two of them would float near the edge of the reef and stare out into the vast shelf known as the Mere Sangolia. It was only in the last few moments of day that certain creatures could be seen before night's darkness claimed them from view.

  They were her people, but in truth Ardenne had a difficult time relating with the other inhabitants of the Grandest Reef. Most of them never ventured more than a few leagues from home, or swam outside the familiar fathoms that were neither too deep nor too shallow. For the rarer materials, foodstuffs, or shells, they turned to Ardenne and her mother, Diana. Just this morning, the town elder had all but demanded they abandon their plans for the day and go looking for pearl-roots in the canyons south of the reef. The court in Bryndoon had raised the tribute for this season, and a bushel of the small white tubers would make up the balance perfectly. Of course, no one regularly visited the southern canyons except for Ardenne and her...

  Realization was an ugly thing, leaving a bitter aftertaste as it flowed through the holes in her memory. When she hadn't been trying, her memory had supplied the reasons for this morning's excursion, and that the rest came naturally. The morning, the canyons, the strangers in a place where none should have been, and--

  "Mother!" Her cry rippled across the night.