Firefly Fish

Chapter 11

The solution, for the moment, was a long abandoned dock a few miles from the bay. It had belonged to a private property. From the water edge, appearances were that the roof of the mansion had collapsed years ago. The beach receded into a cobbled-together mass of sandstone boulder and shrub brush before the boards and old tree trunks jutted out to make a slapdash deck. Hauling myself up over a particularly large boulder under the dock, I sat down to regard Saeesar and Taigre. "You guys going home?"

"I should see Taigre back to the nesting grounds and inform his father of what has happened. He will be worried." Saeesar dipped under the water.

"Like he would notice I was gone. He can't get out of the cave." Tigre slapped his fin on the water's surface and disappeared.

"Would his dad really not notice he was missing for the last day?" I ventured to Saeesar. I could be upset that my parents had left Jarl and me at the edge of the sea when the farm collapsed, but I had, when we left Vail, enough in my pocket to see me to the East coast and gotten a job at any pharmacist or print studio. Would the young dynllyr's father truly not notice his absence?

"Karis has been worried. He traded several of his shells of gems to send out searchers across the breadth of the gulf. He himself left out towards the Yucatan to see if he had been swept out there. I will escort him back to the nesting grounds and send a diver to fetch his father back." Saeesar explained.

"And I guess I'll just curl up here?" I ventured, pushed a few rocks from the flat top of the boulder, and established a place to lounge.

"I will find you again come sunrise. I will seek conference with Karis to see if he can contact Puca. I must be off." Saeesar backed farther into the depths.

"Saeesar!" I called out.

"Kraken child?" he returned the question.

"Thank you," I told him as he ducked under a wave and disappeared.

"Get some sleep, Marin Goranich," came the reply back, though it was as if yelled from fields away.

Sleep? I had spent most of my day asleep on the creek shore. No, that wasn't quite accurate. I had laid about the creek shore in shock and terror and watched the water. Irritated at the thought of sleeping under a dock the evening I had left my brother's apartment, I brushed sand from my damp trousers. They would never dry at this rate, and my legs were chafing at the texture. I shed them and my underpants. Setting the clothes on top of one of the dock boards, I hoped they would dry in the night.

No such luck. The rocks were cold. The breeze was misty. Every creak of the boards around me and the splash of the water sent my heart racing. What kind of adventure had I been hoping for when I had left Jarl telling him to write mom? A fairy tale? One involving pirates and princesses? Maybe buried treasure?

The stars blinked along the horizon, what I could see of it under the dock. The moon rotated across the sky to light up the water's undulation. Over the hours huddling for warmth, my eyesight attuned itself to the dark. Not that there was much to see from my vantage other than more rocks and brush.

"Marin Goranich?" a low voice pulled me into the early morning dawn. I was drooling and had finally warmed up from the night in the sea spray.

"Saeesar?" I rubbed at the crust in my eyes.

"You are still here?" Saeesar asked in disbelief.

Blinking, I forced my focus to see beyond double vision. Saeesar's black hair and eyes bobbed in the water. He would have made for a believable clump of algae in the murk of sunrise.