𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐄

Pt 2: Nearly Drowned

Griffith frowned at the man on the ground, kicking him once. Kingston groaned but did not wake up. Griffith nudged him with his foot again, with the same result. The little dragon shimmied up onto his rising and falling stomach, deciding his sweater was a nice place to take a nap.

"Minerva!" the sorcerer scolded. "This is no time to doze. Come on, show me where he came from." Whining, the dragon slunk off and skulked down the sidewalk. The Atlantean man made an odd twisting motion with his hands, causing water to gather under the human and pull him along behind as though Griffith were pulling a wagon. Thankfully, he hadn't gotten far from the library, so it was only a couple of minutes before the odd trio was inside and mostly dry. Kingston was placed unceremoniously in his chair and Minerva scooched back up into her hiding place. This gave Griffith, who had never seen a book in his life, the chance to explore. He thought they were boxes until he pulled one off a shelf and found, to his delight, that they were full of words even though he couldn't read them.

He pulled several off the shelf, sat cross-legged on the floor, and began to look at all of the strange word-boxes. When Kingston came to his senses, Griffith was in the same position, though the books were scattered. His dragon sat laying next to him. Kingston blinked groggily, smiling when he found himself back at his desk, which told him that it had, indeed, been a dream. And then he looked at the floor, where the Atlantean sat surrounded by books he couldn't even read. Kingston sighed and sat back, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Just let me sit quietly for a minute."

"You've been sitting quietly for three hours," Griffith mused absent-mindedly from the floor. Kingston glared at the clock. It hadn't even been three hours since he had left the library.

"You made that up."

"Did I?" hummed the Atlantean distractedly. "It certainly felt like three hours." Kingston double-checked his desk, making sure he really didn't have a stapler. Instead, he found the small leather journal of a Welsh sea captain lying open to an entry about a voyage gone wrong. The librarian had found the journal on a table in a restaurant near the docks and decided, after skimming through it, to keep it, since no one else seemed interested in claiming it. There were scribbled notes and sketches in it, and after hours of deciphering the messy handwriting, Kingston discovered that the captain wrote of how the ship had crashed about sixty kilometres off the coast of Greece, near Calypso Deep, and that he was sure they were all going to die when what he thought were mer-people started helping them towards the shore of an island they hadn't even noticed before. Once they got there, the captain had realised that they weren't mer-people — they definitely had legs.

Lightning struck outside, followed by a tolling roll of thunder. Griffith squirmed uncomfortably.

"By Kiporos," he mumbled. "How long will this storm go on?" Kiporos...Kingston wracked his memory for what Greek god that was, but nothing came to mind. Did the Atlanteans have a different pantheon? Surely not. They were still part of Greek culture. As it turned out, apparently Kingston didn't know as much about Atlantis as he thought he did. The taller man suddenly stood up, startling Louis. The Atlantean pressed his pointy nose against the glass window, seeming to be watching something. Kingston squinted out the window, but he didn't see anything. He's out of his mind, he thought to himself, watching the sorcerer try to pinpoint something that wasn't there.

"Ish cinfbh shish yush," Griffith said.

"What?"

"Ish cinfbh —" he removed his face from the glass, leaving a mark on the window. "This is no good."

"What?" said Kingston for what felt like the millionth time that day. Yep. Definitely crazy.

"Don't you see it?" said Griffith.