The Ocean's Song (pt. 1) (Going through edits)

~21~

"Naida, I can't embrace my gift without giving it to you, and I don't want to do that. I'm sure I can hold back the urges; I'm stronger than I look." Krait nodded and smiled reassuringly, though he secretly had his doubts about his strength. He wasn't as smart as Mako, physically strong as Shark, charming as Ray, or energetic as Lionfish, what chance did he have with Naida?

"Ok." Naida smiled and nodded, then parted with him to go elsewhere.

Lionfish hung back to the outskirts to the reef, silently watching Naida and holding back a few tears. Why couldn't he impress her? Why did he only push her away? She's even falling for Krait now for sea's sake, why wasn't she falling for him? How could he get her to?

~~~

Everyone had picked out their food and used seaweed weaved bags they made and stored at the food reef to carry home their animal of choice. No seahorses or jellyfish were selected.

Ray had flounder and crab, Lionfish chose sea snail and oysters, Mako had a couple small tuna, Shark had a wide assortment of small creatures to which Naida had no idea what he was going to make with, and Krait had not selected any animals and instead made a salad of various aquatic plants. "I should've known you'd be vegetarian." Naida chuckled. "Wait, isn't coral an animal too?" She looked from Krait to Lionfish. In her seaweed bag she had different types of clam, crab, and a couple small fish. She wanted to see if she could make something like clam chowder, her favorite food.

"Technically, yes." Krait admitted. "But my powers are weaker on plant-like animals."

"I can't control animals, but I can make coral rapidly grow and create a nice habitat around it. I've been practicing for fun, and I've found I actually can influence the plant-like animals to an extent." Lionfish said proudly, though kept his distance from Naida. The brothers looked at Lionfish with shock and surprise.