Double Rainbow

Spritz-1

I paw the bottom of the iceberg and it cracks beneath me. Surprised, I yip and jump back. My mother looks bored. "Careful, Spritz. Wouldn't want you to fall in." From the bored look on her face, it's fairly obvious she doesn't care all that much. I know that's a lie, she has to care about me some, but I was not only one out of ten but also the runt of her third litter. Add that to the fact that we're the lowest family in the Frostberg Kingdom, and you have a whole load of reasons why I'm the single biggest nobody in existence. I was named Spritz because my mother, Ariel, couldn't think of a name and then the floor had a geyser coming out of it, spritzing water everywhere. So not the best name in Dreamland, either.

I walk around the room and decide to go up to my siblings to say hi. They don't notice me for a while, then Frost sees me, and slams me across the room with his tail. He looks back and notices it's me. "Oh, I thought it was... them."

"Who's them?" I ask.

"Recently the higher ranks have been coming down while you sleep and messing with the ice. It's like they want us killed."

"What did you do?"

"A little frost breath fixes everything." he says with a wicked grin, freezing his paw with a quick puff. The power to condense moisture in the air is, after all, especially useful when you live in a giant iceberg. I squeeze in between my siblings, enjoying the warmth of their semi-fluffy, semi-scaly backs. Maybe one out of ten isn't so bad after all.

"Hey Spritz! Ya wanna go on an adventure?!" asks my older sister Marie. She's the only one who makes me feel special.

"Sure!" I say. I wriggle out between one of my brothers' tails and land on the ice, skidding across.

Silently, we head out from our small piece of the world, our drippy, cold, and yet so comfy little abode. She walks slowly until we get up the stairs, then she giggles. "Look at us, breaking all the rules like this."

"I don't think it's that bad. If the higher-rankeds can do it, then why not us?" I say.

"Well, we're gonna go play with the higher-rankeds!"

"Frost said they were mean!"

I notice we're being too loud a minute too late. A fully grown Ocean Canira (our species) comes up and stares at us. "Oh look, it's Marie. Who's your friend?" She looks down at me with a smile.

"That's my brother." She says with a smile.

"Oh, Marie. Now we make an exception for you, but your brother... We can't have you lower-ranks running around any further than this, okay? We don't want higher-ranks, or (PPS forbid!) Nobles coming down here to bring us back our pups! They might cut our rations. As a whole, we may be the backbone of this tribe, but we are expendable." She walks away.

"Who was that?" I ask.

"Just a really annoying old mid-rank fisher. She's no good anymore, so all she really cares about is rations. Technically, she's supposed to be taking care of her daughter's pups, but her daughter is a higher-rank so she acts like she runs this place."

"How did her daughter become a higher-rank?"

"She married into it, of course."

My brow furrows as I try to make sense of it, but I give up and continue striding along the corridor. Daydreaming, I walk into one of the other rooms. There are a few other Ocean Canira in there, some reading scrolls. Marie hides scrolls in my room and reads them to me all the time. They're really rare, but the higher-ranks go to cities and bring them back sometimes. Marie taught me how to read. If I wasn't so scrawny, I would pass for a higher-rank because I'm literate.