Firefly Fish

Chapter 12

"The problem remains, though, even in accepting your dowry, that I don't speak Antumnos, and I can't use my gills. What is there for us if I have an aversion to the water?" I motioned to the horizon behind Saeesar.

He pulled up a shoulder and twisted his head at the question. "I am not without understanding or as crass as to demand anything of my partner which they do not wish to give freely. You have time, Marin Cimet, to find if the water or the land will be home."

"My name is Marin," I tacked into the conversation.

"You are not Marin Goranich? That was the name I was given?" Saeesar cocked his head in the opposing direction.

"Some humans have multiple names. Marin is my first, Goranich is my last. I just go by Marin." I ducked my head to rub at the back of my neck.

"If it will not offend you?" Saeesar ventured.

"Do you-" I cleared my throat, "do you go by Saeesar, or do you also have multiple names like humans?" Saeesar stalled at the question, his fins telling his mood of nervous and relaxed. I scrunched in on myself at the action. "Is that something I'm not supposed to ask?"

"It is not that, necessarily. It is that..." he trailed off, still at a loss for words. I waited, letting him determine what he was willing to talk about. "I am spotless." His tone warbled, the type of note I would expect before Anna or Viktor would start crying because of bullies at school.

"Are spots common amongst the children of Llyr?" I asked.

"The clans of the large Llyr have them and many of the small Llyr folk. The nesting grounds to which I see, and Keris, the territory's overseer, are of one of the large Llyr clans," he explained in a roundabout way.

"You are not from Taigre's clan?" I summarized. "You are from somewhere else than the gulf, then?"

Saeesar's fins eased at the questions.

"I am half-human Saeesar, and you and Taigre are all that I have seen. I have seen prejudice within the human world. I will not deny that. Is that what is happening to you?"

"Prejudice. It is an interesting articulation for Disgust and Hate," Saeesar deflected.

"Those are the Antumnos words for it, I take it?" I flicked a pebble into the surf.

"My mother fled with me from the nesting grounds in the three-channelled river of Ayutthaya when the Burmese burned the human settlement to the ground. So much of the destruction polluted the nesting grounds, decimating entire stocks of our people." He slid off his perch to return back to the water. In a way, he reminded me of my father pacing the floor in front of the fireplace the night he told us the farm would be foreclosed on. "It is not that we died out. It is that my father died in helping save some of the humans that were forced into our waters by other humans."

"You were forced out because your father tried to protect who he could?" I demanded, rising in frustration.

"My mother fled with me from the other Bet-tah when I was not yet old enough to protect myself. Baya or Overseer is passed down within the Bet-tah from father to son. With my father dead, and me too young, the seat turned over to the rule of the Council until I came of age. She died of stress shortly after reaching the Gathering Grounds, where the Antumnos Council meets. She had hoped that one of the Council would place me with a clan. Keris knew nothing of what happened in Ayutthaya. The Council placed me with him to distance me."

I frowned at the procession of events. "Then, if you are mature, why have you not returned to oversee your nesting ground?"

"With no mate, I would still be seen as unable to lead. Traditions." He sank back into the water, eyelids cast low at the admission. "It is not that I asked you to be my mate so as to take back my grounds."