Seren splashed into the river again, trying to adjust to the freezing water. They’d all had to wait until she had a bag capable of floating, but she was ready now that several were tied at her waist. Also, after almost a week—had it been that long?!—in the sky, she was more than happy to be doing something in the water, even if it was the coldest she’d ever felt.

“A curse of growing up on an island,” she muttered to herself, chuckling. Swimming out to the middle, she turned around and waved to Rive and Vachlan standing at the edge. “You remember what to do?”

“Yes!” Vachlan called out, dipping her head in a nod.

“Great. I’m heading down. Be ready with your mastery when the bags hit the surface!” Seren didn’t wait for a reply this time. She took a measured breath, dove, and kicked to get as far as she could. Even with all the minor adjustments taken because of the current, and the mirage effect of the clear waters, she felt she was deeper than she’d been before. Kicking to stay in place, she uncapped a bag and tilted it above a nest of rocks she saw. Ground rock dust slid out and clouded the water, but eventually settled on the river bed. Letting go of the first bag, Seren quickly did the same to the other two bags, then waited impatiently for the waters to clear.

Her lungs were burning when she finally saw movement. One of the pulsing rocks started coming closer, pushing up from Vachlan gathering the rock dust. Seren smiled, watching a little longer before her body reminded her that air was mandatory and not an option. Flipping so that she faced the surface, she focused on getting back up in time.

“Rive!” she shouted when she’d broken through. “Send out the basket!”

The point, she’d explained earlier, was that Vachlan could sense where the rocks were because of their absence, but couldn’t touch them. Adding specks of earth brought to the area meant the rocks could be pushed to a reachable area. Easy in thought, but it meant they’d needed to find a floating basket for collection, or that Rive would have to make one.

Thankfully, the engineer had pulled through and there were at least three different baskets currently floating in the river. Each of them was pulled by a rope, so what ended up happening was that Rive tossed the basket into the river, letting the rope catch around a rock so it wouldn’t be pushed all the way downstream, and when Seren called out that she was ready, Rive pulled it back in.

So far, they had continued working like this for two hours, by Seren’s reckoning. Over ten completely full baskets had returned to the river’s edge, and they were still coming up!

“Rive!” Seren called, waving another basket to come over. “Last one!”

At least for now. She was getting too cold to do this for much longer, no matter that Vachlan was passing the rocks to an easy place and letting the specks of earth fall back to the bottom of the river again. Seren swept an armful into the final basket, then turned it so none of the gathered rocks slipped out. One last look, and she headed to the surface. Sure, more were behind the waterfall, but they’d cleaned out the area here.

“Is that all we’re going to get?” asked Vachlan as Rive began hauling Seren back to shore, along with the last basket.

“Yes!” Seren called out, her voice patchy and dry. She hadn’t been sure about drinking water from the stream—her dad and father had gotten sick once after drinking “fresh mountain water”—so she’d kept repeating to herself that she’d get a drink after the job was done.

Rive continued to pull her in. One moment she was in the water, the next she was sitting on stone, shivering hard enough that she couldn’t control herself.

“Let’s get you warmed up, captain,” Rive said gently, rubbing her goose fleshing shoulders and staying clear of her sopping wet hair.

“Come on,” Vachlan said, holding out a wing to Seren. “You need to be in a better place than this if you don’t want to become sick.”

“I’m probably going to get sick anyway, since I’ve been in the water for such a long period,” she said as Rive and Vachlan steadied her on her feet. The mud that had sucked her in earlier didn’t make an appearance this time, thankfully. Instead, the area felt like the rock they’d climbed down to get there, solid and hard.

“Yes, I’m the one that changed it,” Vachlan said as the three of them made their way to her home, off at the distance of Seren’s vision. “I’m not always here, so it’s better to have the environment be a trap for the unwary as well.”

“If it’s a trap for everyone, does that really count as a trap?” Rive huff-laughed as they continued.

“No, but I really don’t want other people around my home,” explained Vachlan as they continued. “So whenever I don’t want company, I make the area on the bottom pure mud. Keeps out those who shouldn’t visit me.”

“What about Tairdi?”

“What about the bearkin? Xe’ll never have a good enough reason to come down here, and I’m fine with keeping xem away.”

“He seems to be your friend?” asked Seren. Vachlan opened the door to the house, and she almost fell inside with a swoon at how warm it was.

“How do you keep this place so hot?” asked Rive, taking on Seren’s extra weight. She touched them briefly on the arm as a thank you and said nothing else, focusing on just enjoying the warmth.

“Have an insulated house can do a lot of things, actually. It’ll be cool in summer and warm in winter. Also, I can move around part of the wall if I want more windows, or fewer.” Vachlan moved her wrist and showed. In the wall across from them, a hole the size of Rive’s head appeared in the middle, then was filled again with liquid sand. “See.”

“Very interesting. Can I nap here?” asked Seren, trying to steer Rive into taking her to the couch.

“Yeah, go ahead and lie down on the couch. Rive, once she’s down, can you come back outside and help me gather up the baskets?”

“Sure, can do.” They leaned over Seren and grabbed a blanket that was draped over the couch. “Here, this should keep you even warmer. We’ll be back as soon as possible.”

“Mmm...” Seren’s eyes were already slitted, and she practically purred with happiness at being tucked in. “This is fine. You two take as long as you need. Go get some of whatever you wanted to drink or eat. You smelled it.”

Rive pumped their fist in excitement, but shouted softly to Vachlan. “Can we get something to eat, please?”

“We should be able to.” Seren heard small sounds coming from the other room. “To be honest, it’d be better for us to get something and bring it home. My house is empty of food, so I have little that can be shared.”

Seren made another noise, and right after she heard Rive tell Vachlan something about the delicious food they had smelled earlier, she drifted off. Noise woke her slightly when they came back in again, but other than that, she enjoyed the scent of food cooking in the kitchen and the gentle clicky-clack pattern of rocks being laid out on something hard, most likely a table or counter.

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It seemed like only a few minutes later that Rive was shaking her shoulder.

“Hey, Captain. Seren. Time to get up.”

“Mmm... five more minutes,” she muttered, pulling the blanket around her shoulders.

“We don’t have five more minutes. Vachlan wants you to look at the rocks and tell her what you think.”

The rocks? Seren didn’t have any information about them, so what could she help with? Nevertheless, she sat up and pushed the blanket away. Far away. Farther away. It dropped off of the edge of the couch and into a position where she couldn’t get it. Rubbing her eyes and standing on rubbery legs, she got up, stretched, and made her way over to where Rive and Vachlan were pointing at things laid out on a rocky table.

“What..?” The rocks weren’t acting like they had been earlier, when Tairdi had showed them off at xyr library. Touched, soft or hard, produced zero reactions. “Okay. Leave it alone for a few seconds, Rive. I want to see what will happen.”

Not much was the answer. The rocks made a pattern, but there was something to the beat that nagged at Seren’s mind. Absent-mindedly, she reached out and picked up a small pink rock. It was about a quarter the size of her hand, and if she made a fist, it wouldn’t be noticed.

“What do you see?” asked Vachlan. “Because I see rocks we were not supposed to find. They do not act like the ones that wash downriver, and people may not want to buy them.”

“What do you know about the first rocks?” asked Rive, pulling Vachlan’s attention away from the one that Seren cradled. Almost the instant she pulled away, Seren took the rock and slipped it into an inside pocket. Something inside her whispered that it should be hidden, kept safe.

Rive, she saw, had their fingers playing next to one of the slightly bigger blue stones, a soft sapphire that continued to spread a rippling effect with three unique patterns. First, there was the wave, which had been on her own rock. However, Rive’s continued to spread off to the right and the left, almost as if there was an invisible V in the middle that it needed to go around.

“I don’t know anything about these,” said Seren.

“I asked Vachlan. Since she lives here,” they added with a grin, “you know?”

Seren rolled her eyes. “Okay, sure. That’s fair.”

Vachlan huffed and pushed her chair back from the table. “That’s the problem with about half of these rocks. They’re nothing like I’ve ever seen.”

“Okay,” said Seren, trying to wake up from her too-quick nap. “What have you seen? What’s the difference?”

“Well, the main part is the way the patterns ripple. The ones that are ‘normal,’ and I use that term loosely here, are the rocks that you touch for the ripple to appear. These five over here are still going and we have not touched them after laying them down on the table.”

“Are the colors different?”

“All the colors are.” Vachlan said, crossing her wings over her chest.

“Um...” Seren took notice of one rock that had spiked sharply when the winged woman had moved. “Are you angry, Vachlan?”

“Annoyed, but not angry.”

“What would make you angry?” asked Seren, studying the rock. “I promise, there’s something I’m thinking about with this in mind, but if you could answer the question?”

“Um...” she hesitated, then let out a sigh. “Fine. Talking about Tairdi will ruffle my feathers.”

“Why?” asked Rive. Seren looked over at them, thankful for help and wondering if they knew what she needed. “What did xe ever do to you that you’re still pissed at xem?”

“You know xe’s a dowser, right?” she asked, looking between the two of them. “Meaning he can see the future.”

“The probable future, yeah...” Seren nodded along with the idea.

“Xe didn’t see me,” she snapped at them. “Xe looked around this town, saw everyone else at their stupid jobs, with their families, and all of those good things, but xe didn’t see me. At all. Where am I supposed to be, if not here, with the people I’ve grown up with? But I’m not allowed to have family or friends, all because I wasn’t in xyr future picture.”

Rive whistled.

“Wait, that’s it?” asked Seren. “You’re angry because xe didn’t magically see what was going to happen to you in the future?”

“Xe could have lied, damnit!” snapped Vachlan, slamming a talon on the table. A smaller part of Seren’s brain pointed out that slamming a wing on a table didn’t really have the same effect as a fist would have, which was why the woman had used a different limb. “Why didn’t xe lie and say xe saw me with a family? Xe could have saved me from being ostracized!”

And that was the problem. Not that Tairdi hadn’t wanted to lie. It was that the rest of the community wasn’t doing anything to keep Vachlan in their embrace. If she left, then that was fine. If she stayed, they weren’t sure what to do with her.

“Come with us,” Seren offered suddenly, looking up at her. “Join my crew and sail the skies.”

“I... I don’t know what to say.” Vachlan suddenly looked haunted. “Everything here… I would have to give up my home...”

“You just said that you’re not happy being here,” Rive pointed out. “Why would it be a bad thing if you left?”

“It’s just... this is all I know.” She looked at them. “And I don’t want to be the only beastkin on the ship.”

“Why not?”

“You... Do either of you know how beastkin act? Or what’s normal for us?”

Rive shook their head and Seren said no.

“Then why do I want to travel with people who can’t understand me? Who will hear something and not know how to react? See something and think the opposite?”

“Because we can learn,” answered Seren. “Because we want to be around you and you seem like you have a good heart… Well, as long as Tairdi isn’t mentioned.”

Vachlan said nothing. She turned away and started to the stove, taking a small tool and poking at whatever was boiling.

“We can always ask Tairdi if xe wants to join?” offered Seren. “Xe seems to know you well, and xe is another beastkin.”

“DON’T!” Vachlan snorted at them, then turned back to the food. “Not after everything I’ve gone through. I want xem to feel the pain I felt, I have felt, for all these years.”

“Okay, then xe stays here with xyr library,” said Rive. “I doubt xe’d choose to leave it after all the work xe’s put into it. And honestly, we need a lot more crew members. Who knows? Maybe they’ll be another beastkin on the team.”

Vachlan chirred, but Seren could see and hear her feathers rustling. She continued looking at the food though, and doing something with a few shakable spices lined up at the back of the stove. The room slowly became even warmer, and Seren noticed that she had stopped shivering a while back. Her hair was even beginning to dry!

“What did you want to tell me about the rocks, though?” asked Vachlan, grabbing bowls. “You said you were testing something.”

Seren picked up the one rock she’d been looking at and brought it over to where Vachlan was standing. “I think this is attuned to you, somehow. When your mood spiked, the rock’s ripples spiked. When you grew sadder, the ripples slowed down.”

Seren hesitated, then brought out the small rock that she’d tucked away in the beginning. “And I think this one is attuned to me.”

Vachlan glanced at it, her eyebrows dipping together, before turning back to dish out the soup she’d made.

“Rive, is there one that you feel drawn toward?” Seren asked, looking at her engineer. They frowned and examined the table.

“I guess... this one?” The rock they picked up looked as cold and hard as steel to Seren’s mind. “I mean, that’s the one I’m being pulled to the most.”

“Then touch it. Does it act like the other rocks?”

“Sorta?” Rive touched their rock, and shrugged as it rippled. “I mean, it does exactly what the others did up above.”

Seren leaned forward and tapped it. Nothing.

“Nothing for me, so it’s not like the others in at least one way. Those allowed multiple people to make the patterns, but some of these stones are only reacting to specific people.”

Vachlan came over to the table and dropped the bowls onto it, the soup inside sloshing dangerously close to the edge. “Let’s at least have something to eat before we discuss things that should probably not be mentioned to anyone else.”

“What? Why?” Rive grimaced at Seren’s glare and lowered their voice. “Okay, what do you mean by that Vachlan?”

She was already slurping her soup through a thick straw, but stopped at the question. “I thought it would be obvious?”

“Not to me.” Seren picked her bowl up with her hands and hurriedly put it back down again, shaking her slightly burned palms.

“Think of the information you could sell.”