With the infant seabeast Imyra swimming curious circles around her, Erin stood waist deep in the cloudy Eastern Basin pond, holding the heart-shaped crystal charm of her mother’s necklace up in front of her own face.
“…Coy?”
At first, there was nothing. The pearlescent Imyra swam faster, and Erin’s ears vibrated with her excited but silent whistle.
“Erin? I thought I heard you before,” the merling’s thickly-accented voice seemed to come from the purple heart, hanging from its chain in her hand. “I was certain I’d imagined it, until Imyra told me otherwise.”
“I’m just as surprised as you are,” she breathed. Her eyes briefly darted around as she wondered whether she might be asleep and dreaming. In the distance, Kaleit was still making his way around one side of the pond, and Leslyn the other, with Arlis just catching up to him.
“I fail to understand how we are communicating right now. I am in my home in the Depths. Where is your voice coming from?”
“I think… I think it’s the crystal, somehow. I have it here, in my hand.”
“What color is the crystal?”
“Purple. It looks kind of like moonstone, I guess.”
He was silent for a beat. “My father often suggests that I go speak to my tail instead of disturbing him so. I can only imagine his face once I inform him that I have taken his advice, and it is now speaking back to me.”
Erin remembered the purple moonstone scales he wore on his lower half, and laughed. “And how am I hearing your voice? Aren’t you underwater?”
“I am not speaking out loud.” He went quiet again, probably thinking as hard about the how of this bizarre situation as Erin was. “Perhaps Imyra... She seems to be participating, somehow.”
“What—do you mean she could be translating for you?”
“That may be. I am not certain anything similar has ever happened before for proper comparison, but if it has, I can assure you that it did not include a manling female.”
Was that an ouch? Erin wasn’t sure. “Something wrong with manling females?”
“I can also assure you that I was not making a complaint.”
The warm humor in his lightly-musical voice made her grin and press her knuckles to her chin. “Good, ‘cause I was just about to sling a fish joke your way.”
He laughed softly. “I may have deserved it. Or not. I leave the final judgment to you.”
“Oh, now I have to make all the decisions in this relationship? That always works out so well.”
Erin flinched and yanked the necklace almost hard enough to break the chain against her neck as one of the old griffins on the shore gave a thunderous, full-bodied yawn. It was like being punched out of a stupor.
What on earth was she just saying? She’d never flirted with a boy quite like that before—not even a normal human boy. It felt weird, somehow. Like something someone else would say.
Still waist deep in the murky pond, she looked out across the water again, suddenly wishing that one of those now distressingly far away boys was a little closer.
“…Erin? Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” she said, her eyes remaining distant. “Hey, something odd happened a few minutes ago. I thought I saw your face, while Imyra was playing around. Any idea why?”
There were a few moments of telling silence on the other end of the crystal. “I thought of you,” he finally said. “And I believe I understand why you chose this particular moment to ask as you did.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“It is not what you think it is.”
Says every guy ever when you catch them doing something wrong, Erin mentally scoffed. “What is it, then?”
“I never believed my father when he warned me not to surface too close to manling vessels before Imyra had grown and received her Turning.”
“Okay?” Erin was beginning to lose her patience. “And what’s that got to do with anything?”
Coyrifan went quiet again. “It’s… rather complicated.”
“Use simple words, then, so a stupid girl like me can understand.”
“I… I suppose I will do my best, then…”
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COYRIFAN
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A little less than three months ago…
“Abenfor and Zeriva? They hail from the Reef. Were you not just saying yesterday that you hoped the coming storm would wipe the place from the ocean altogether?”
“Coyrifan, I have simply changed my mind.”
After pushing down the soft pink coral divider just far enough to peer over it and see his father’s face, the young merling, resting comfortably tail over head in his hollow, shrugged. “I have no qualms with it, of course,” he thought towards the elder merling, “but what new form will your ever-shifting plans take tomorrow, I wonder?”
Much larger and bulkier than his son, his father grinned with sharp teeth and flicked his thick tail just enough to position himself in the great halfshell he often occupied during the twice-daily Repose, his long blond braid settling to float around his head like a false crown. “I may choose to feed them to Meeoa instead. We will see.”
“Speaking of Meeoa, how is she faring?”
“She is another day closer to dying of that delightful ‘gift’ Casendar’s heartbeast gave her during its last skirmish—and Casendar’s.”
Coyrifan slowly turned a circle until he was floating on his stomach, crossing his arms in front and resting his chin upon them. “Perhaps I should have phrased that differently. How are you faring, Father?”
“I will be faring much better once that egg hatches. It will be today, if I am not mistaken.”
That was when Coyrifan’s mother burst into the dwelling, flinging aside the curtain of stone and shell beads and propelling her small body at her mate at such a speed that their collision became a spin through the water, the both of them laughing as long as it lasted. “It is hatched,” was her joyous announcement. “Come and see!”
Before she’d even finished speaking, Coy launched himself from his hollow straight through into the cooler waters outside, as quickly as if the natural ground jets that heated their dwelling were attached to his tail. The water out there was very cold, almost icy at times, but he bore it no mind in his exultant haste.
Faintly visible above, behind, and to either side of the swimming Coyrifan was a scoop in the rock foot of an island that was mostly untouched by manlings, a natural shelter for his and the other merlings’ bulb-like soft coral dwellings. Before him rose a veritable mountain of hundreds of different shapes and colors of coral, yet it could not compare to the vast sea-sky of deepest, richest blue that spread in every direction beyond it.
The slender merling took a shortcut that his robust father could never have fit through even as an unbonded youth, diving into a generations-old crack in the coral and following it through to the other side of the still growing colony.
He sensed Meeoa right where he expected her to be, in her favorite hiding place. It was a particular groove in the ocean floor, right between the coral mountain and the field of dangerously super-heated jets that formed the second of three barriers that divided their tribe's home from the rest of the world. From there, she could see anyone approaching from above or from beyond the jets… when she had her eyes open, that is.
Grinning widely, he approached a round, ridged coral a third the size of his dwelling, and gently tickled it with his fingertips. It split in the middle, the thin layer over each half drawing back to reveal a stone gray eye so immense that, even stretched to the fullest, Coyrifan could not reach across its full diameter with his entire body.
Smiling at his reflection in the heartbeast’s eye, he thought to her, “I believe you have something for me?”
He squeezed one of his own eyes shut against the sudden blast of vibration through the water as Meeoa answered with an audible peep… which used to sound as such, when she was a fingerling herself. It was quite a bit deeper, nowadays. Manlings, when they heard and felt it, feared a quake.
If they’d been close enough to Meeoa for that to happen, it was like that a quake would have been the least of their problems.
The full grown heartbeast opened her mouth with a ground-shaking sigh, laying bare a cavernous maw, a gigantic, sponge-like tongue, and teeth like sharpened cylinders of ice so large that Coy had been able to hug many of them at one time or another for purchase, laughing while Meeoa powered through the ocean, an unstoppable force.
Those teeth he now slipped between and made his way deeper into the cavern of the beast’s mouth.
He was glad for the shortcut he’d taken. There was something so special, so sacred about meeting one’s heartbeast, that he wouldn't have wanted it any other way. His father would have made it happen in front of the entire tribe, if he had his choice. Now he wouldn’t see it happen at all.
In the darkness of Meeoa’s mouth, Coyrifan could sense her: A creature made purely of the warmest sunlight and the largest, most jubilant bubbles. The impression she sent of of herself ecstatically blowing those bubbles made him laugh, long before she actually revealed herself with a feeble twinkle of sunny yellow light.
It was enough for Coyrifan to locate her diaphanous form, almost completely transparent even if she’d been under the brightest light that could be found. She waited for him to swim closer and cup the water on either side of her wriggling body with both hands, then pulsed yellow again.
That seemed to be the extent of the tiny creature’s newborn strength, for her undulations slowed almost to nothing, and she began to sink. Coy caught her in his hands, and a powerful wave of contentment and solace washed over him. He bowed his head and sighed deeply, letting utter peace envelop him.
After an unknown time had passed, he was able to separate Imyra’s awareness from his own. The peaceful solace had been hers, derived from her instant trust in Coyrifan’s care. His smile was soft and warm as he held her against his heart, his spirit laughing with joy.
Imyra. That was what he’d called her. He’d often thought about what he might call his heartbeast someday, but none of those idle ideas ever sounded right. Imyra was perfect, though he hadn’t been aware of when the name even formed in his mind. Perhaps, as they joined, they’d agreed upon it together.
“Meeoa, I distinctly remember requesting that you keep your cavity closed unless I bid you open it,” came his father’s disappointed thoughts from somewhere behind the merling youth.
“Apologies,” Coyrifan said, not sorry in the least. “I could not wait any longer to meet Imyra.”
“What a beautiful name,” his mother said, her face hidden in the shadow of Meeoa’s mouth. Coy beamed at her, too elated to suspect that the strain he’d imagined in her voice could actually be real.
“I suppose it is,” his father grudgingly agreed. “Though the true concern here is whether Imyra will be as strong as her mother.”
She took his muscular arm and leaned her cheek upon it, fanning her plumed tail and gazing winningly up at him. “Really, Fair—oughtn’t we let Coy continue to bond with his precious Imyra in peace?”
“Peace is a fully fictitious state of affairs, my love.” He then turned frigid eyes on Coyrifan, trailing that gaze down to the delicate creature he held in his slender hands. “With Meeoa’s life inevitably coming to an end after another Dry or two like this one, Imyra’s Turning cannot come soon enough.”
Still smiling blithely on the outside, Coyrifan’s thoughts were already very far away. He looked down at his beloved Imyra, her tiny soul the brightest spark he’d ever known in the vast darkness that was the sea.
And he began to form a plan to protect her.