Water

Wave Forty

Hali flounced into the small cavern and flopped onto the sponge mattress in the centre. A flurry of sand and spores rose up around her, glittering in the light that floated nearby. Hali swatted at the floating orb and sent it skittering to a corner of the chamber where it bobbed and dipped out of reach of the current that swirled around them.
       
(It’s been tide after tide, and still they have us filing maps and taking notes for the others,) she huffed. Leira kept silent, but understood her friend’s frustration. As soon as they’d passed their Test and been assigned their first mission, it had become clear that they were only being trusted with menial tasks. For the last few tides, they’d been filing stacks of maps and mission reports in the endless small caverns that contained piles of old information. More recently, they’d been allowed to sit with the other Scouts returning from adventures. Leira’s hand still ached from etching notes with a sharp pen onto wafer thin sheets of rock, recording mission after mission as the other Scouts relayed them to her.
         
Tal swept through the curtain of long strips of hide and small shells that tinkled as he breezed into their room. They’d been given a new chamber the day after their Testing, and although smaller than the huge training dorm, it had already begun to feel like home. Leira surveyed their cavern. Nerida had strung tiny shells across the whole ceiling, each with a miniscule orb nestled inside. The effect was hypnotic, as each orb flickered and flamed, like hundreds of tiny glow fish.  
         
Surrounding their mattress were long green drapes of seaweed they could pull around the bed when they slept. They had no sandbasin in this room, instead they bathed each day in the main chamber with the other Scouts. Shelves, and hollows cut into the rock were peppered around the room and contained her friends’ possessions, trinkets and shells. Leira’s hollow was bare, but she’d shrugged this off and told the others she’d soon fill it with treasures they found on their missions. It didn’t look like that would happen anytime soon though, she thought to herself archly.
         
Nerida entered the chamber and glanced at Tal, sharing a swift smile with him. They both looked over at Leira, bristling with excitement.
(What?) she asked, curious. They refused to answer, instead looking pointedly over her shoulder and then back to her.
(What is it?) Leira asked again, beginning to get annoyed. Were they playing a trick on her?
       
Laughing, Nerida swam up to Leira and passed her, stopping at Leira’s shelf. Leira noticed then that someone had hung a sheet of seaweed over the hollow that was hers. Were they ashamed of the bare shelves? Embarrassed for her? Glancing back, she saw Tal over Nerida’s shoulder, nodding enthusiastically to encourage her. She teased back the small drape and gazed into her cubbyhole, gasping at what she saw.
         
One of the others had attached an orb to the top of the hollow, and it gleamed down into the space below it. Sea grass was growing up from the bottom of the shelf and small pebbles and sand were scattered there too with some larger rocks propped up amongst them. A movement drew Leira’s eye and she saw a piece of sea kelp twisting amongst the grass. As she watched, the sea kelp slowly opened one eye and blinked! Leira realised she was looking at a sea dragon. It had gossamer-thin stands extending off its small delicate body mimicking the look of sea kelp, and a long snout which nuzzled against Leira’s hand as she held it out.  
         
Another sea dragon emerged from amongst the sea grass and came to greet Leira, before the pair of them began to twist and dance together, each mirroring the other’s movements as they gracefully floated amongst the algae surrounding them.
         
Delighted, Leira dropped the drape and swivelled round to look at Nerida and Tal. Before she had time to project, Nerida thought,
(We knew you wouldn’t be filling your shelf any time soon, Leira. Do you like them?) Leira could only nod in response as Hali and Tal made their way over to the hollow to look in at the little creatures. Tal let them out into their room and the Mer spent much of their evening watching them dart about chasing specks of algae until they tired and returned to their hollow, nestling into the grass.
         
Although the sea dragons had lightened their mood, Leira knew the others – Hali especially – would soon slip back into sullen thoughts about their latest missions. Tal must’ve sensed this too, because as soon as the sea dragons had been put away, and they’d settled on the mattress, he projected.
(Have you noticed anything…odd, about the mission reports we’ve been filing?)
(You’ve actually been reading them?) Hali spluttered, incredulous. (I’ve just been filing them. Reading is so tedious.)
(What, more tedious than filing?) Tal shot back, his accent thickening as he prepared to argue his case.
(What do you mean by odd?) Leira interrupted to prevent another debate. She’d been hearing rumours herself over the last few tides, from the returning Scouts whose missions she’d been recording. She repeated this to her friends and waited for Tal to respond.
         
Tal paused and looked surreptitiously around the room. Leira rolled her eyes at this and caught Nerida’s eye; she was smiling. Tal seemed to have a flair for the dramatic and was relishing his moment.
(Not many tides ago,) Tal began, after shooting a stern look at Nerida who promptly stopped smiling, (a team of Scouts returned and filed a report about sensing another herd. They were leagues and leagues from here, and the team couldn’t locate any Mer. It was just a throwaway thought one of them had, but it had to be recorded in the mission report. The other team members said they couldn’t sense anything at all.) Hali scoffed at this.
         
(So, a while ago, a Scout thought they sensed another herd, but they probably didn’t and no one else on their team could feel a thing? Why even bother to record that!) Leira privately agreed with Hali. Listening to the Scouts who’d returned from a mission was boring enough and having to painstakingly record everything they projected was nothing short of torture. She wondered why it had been recorded in the first place.
       
Nerida interrupted her ideas, projecting quietly to all of them,
(We’re not sure if this is connected, but the Scout we listened to today told us of a danger. He couldn’t be precise about it – just a feeling he had when they were travelling away from the Nest. Something different about the waters, something bad. He used the word ‘tainted’.) Hali nodded quietly as Nerida thought this, then shifted slightly on the mattress before projecting,
         
(We listened to a Scout today who’s on the same team as the one Nerida mentions. They went out to try and trace the seascape further away from the Nest and she said some of the sea creatures were acting differently. A shiver of sharks was hunting outside their normal zone, much deeper down. They didn’t attack the team. They weren’t aggressive, but they weren’t in their usual place. She didn’t think much of it, but she had to tell us so we could put it into the report.)
(What have you heard Leira?) Tal asked. Leira swallowed before answering. It wasn’t so much that she’d heard something, but she had seen something curious that morning before they’d been sent to work.
         
(In the main chamber, this morning, I saw Firth and Kai together projecting quietly. Kai looked upset and whatever he told Firth, it worried him.) Leira projected the image of her memory onto their cavern wall and the others watched as she replayed the event. Kai’s hurried projection, Firth’s flawless brow furrowing as he listened before smoothing his expression into a smile as another Scout passed them by.
         
Once the Scout had passed, Kai had delved into his sealskin bag and produced something, Leira wasn’t sure what, and handed it to Firth. The mysterious object was small and white. It looked like a fragment of bone. Firth had turned it quickly over in his hands then gave it back to Kai, projecting something else. Leira had picked up the word ‘store’, but that was all. She suspected she knew where Kai would be taking the oddity, having been in the Scout’s treasure room once before. She blushed and ended the projection, wishing it didn’t have quite so much detail in it – surely the others would notice how much attention she’d been paying to Firth?
         
(What was it?) asked Nerida, breaking the silence that followed Leira’s memory as they mused over it.
(We think we might know,) Tal responded, sounding a little uncertain. The others didn’t press him, and waited for him to continue.
(We think we saw something like that etched into a file. It looked like coral. Only coral isn’t white – it’s bright and colourful. It only goes white when it dies.)
(Coral?) thought Leira and Hali together.
(Yes. From the Surface.)
         
The Surface! Leira wondered if it could be true. Had the Scouts really ventured up that far? Were the whispers of a danger from far away connected to the Surface somehow? She read excitement on the faces of her friends, and knew they were thinking the same thoughts as her.
(Do you think they’d let us-) Nerida began to think.
(They haven’t let us leave the Nest, or even the Scout chambers,) Tal cut across, uncharacteristically harsh. (Do you really think they’d let us try and reach the Surface?)
(But we have something the other teams don’t have,) Nerida persisted. Tal raised an eyebrow, and Hali finished Nerida’s thought.
(We have a Guardian.)
         
The mood lifted again as the friends chattered excitedly about their hopes for the future. Tal raced around the room fighting the imaginary Surface herds that he expected dwelled far above them, with their hoards of Sources. Leira joined in half-heartedly, trying to ignore the buzz in the back of her mind that had been growing louder for the past few tide turns. She knew it was the Seer, trying to goad her into searching for the Source she’d connected to.
       
Eventually the young Mer settled down on to the mattress and pulled the long drapes down from the ceiling, encasing them. Leira underwent her usual ritual of beginning to reach out for her father, before withdrawing in a hurry, scared he wouldn’t want her contact. She was too proud to pursue him and face rejection.  
         
The buzzing in her mind grew louder. Clearly, Anahita was not going to be ignored. Sighing angrily, Leira wriggled into a comfier position on the mattress, waiting for the others to fall asleep. She would have to go and look for the Source. It was going to be a long night.