The shrill cry of the harness' alarm dragged Yujo back to consciousness. As was coming to, she realised that her head was thumping in pain. She lifted her hand to her head and felt a gash dug deep into the side of her diver’s mask and onto the side of her head.

Yujo hissed as the pain from the cut travelled down her body. The pain made her body move on its on as she was forced to take a deep breath and scream out loud.

Now awake and unable to feel anything but pain, Yujo sat up in the cave she had found herself in. If it was any smaller she would have found it impossible to move around. The fact that she sitting in the cave's maw and not an ugly smear on the side of the cave was a miracle.

Patting herself down Yujo confirmed that, except for the hook, she still had her equipment. With her confidence returning she pulled out her second and last can of air and swapped it with the spent can. As soon as the spent can escaped her harness, it imploded in Yujo's hands. The alarm stopped its wail, allowing Yujo a moment to think. Leaning back against the wall of the cave, she pulled out her terminal. With a press of a button, the time to appear on it’s flat surface.

20:46

Yujo closed her eyes and sighed as she realised that she was now officially in trouble. Thinking of what she could do to even start to help herself she started to fiddle with her Terminal. After a few presses, she got to her contact list which only contained one name on it.

Rosemary.

Pressing it made her contact card appear in front of Yujo. The sight of Rosemary's photograph made her hand waver over the "call" button. She didn't want to admit defeat and go crawling back to Rosemary. That would be admitting that Rosemary was right. That they could do is wait for everything to be taken from them.

But she didn't have a choice in the matter. She had to call for help.

With one last twitch of hesitation, Yujo pressed the card. Rosemary's number rang out in touch tone and then pulsed as it waited for her to pick up. After a small eternity of Yujo bracing herself she was surprised to hear a soothing male voice ringing in her headgear. Her blood ran cold as a cross appeared over Rosemay's contact card.

‘We are sorry,’ The voice sang into her headgear ‘but you are outside of the service area. Please try again later.’

Yujo shook her head. That made no sense. There was signal drones flying all over the place. Where on Mem could she be if the signal-

The realisation hit her in the gut. Whatever had pulled Yujo into the slipstream had also pulled her into the selk lands. Now, on top of everything else that had gone wrong, she was committing a serious crime.

A low growl slid out of Yujo’s mouth before erupting into a violent scream of frustration as she slammed her hand on the terminal. The outburst drained her of the last of her will. In utter defeat she turned her head to look at the entrance of the cave and sighed.

“So that's it, I’m going to die stuck in the Selklands?” Yujo thought to herself and started to laugh bitterly in frustration.

Her thoughts turned to the two selk that loomed over her broken body all those years ago.

“If only I allowed myself to go with that first one I’d-”

She stopped herself.

She knew what the selk had done to their prisoners of war. It was a terrible fate that she shouldn’t wish on anyone, much less herself. This wasn’t how she wanted to die but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it now.

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The final flicker of fight left her and she curled up into a ball to conserve heat. “Oh, Goddess. Grant your foolish child safe passage to the stars and to Sister Rosemary no grief.” She whispered in prayer as she closed her eyes and resigned herself to her fate.

Just as she felt herself in the the cold grasp of unconsciousness a cry rang out. She opened her eyes only to be greeted with a spear pointed at the tip of her nose.

Holding the spear at her nose was the very same crimson haired selk boy who had chased her the day before. Before Yujo could even cry out in shock he issued another command in Symphonic that she didn’t understand. His command began to blend with memories of her past and the image of the two selk leaning over her, ready to kill her.

Her pulse quickened and spread a paralysing adrenaline throughout her whole system. The effort to back away from the spear, pulling herself by her hands, felt like she was pulling a ton of weights.

A dull pain shot out from her back as it touched the back of the cave.

The boy’s repeated the command, sung in a commanding and angry tone. This only made her press her body against the wall harder in any attempt to get away from him.

The two selk girls that had accompanied Yujo's assailant shared a glance with each other. The older looking one sang her concerns to the other girl who nodded in agreement. The boy turned his head to look at the two who shook their head at him. With a sigh he removed the spear from its precarious position and threw it over to the older girl to catch. Now weaponless, he leaned over to grab Yujo.

The very second he grabbed her arm an emerald light shot out of the back of the cave and bathed Yujo in its brilliance. In her panicked state, it took a moment to realise that the selk were backing away. Realising that they looking at something behind her she looked up to see the source of the emerald light.

It was a large face etched into the wall behind her. The light was coming out of the slit where its eyes would have been.

“W-what?”

With that 'command', the light began to flood the cave, dividing the room in half. Yujo could only process the start of the selk boy's angry reaction to what was happening before she began to feel her head tighten in pain.

In an instant Yujo found herself being under an assault of images, sights and sounds. She could feel the very core of her being being touched by a force that defied all explanation. Then, the force began to showed her images of the territory war.

Attacks on the Islands’ shores, events that she had only ever read about before, played out all around her. Selk and Humans fighting each other, shooting and stabbing each other as the selk broached the shorelines. She saw scenes of raiding parties marching though towns and leaving hundreds dead in their wake. Her heart fluttered as she saw the selk taking prisoners of war back with them to face the fate that she knew awaited them.

Then the scene shifted to a world of green under the gaze of a brilliant blue structure that sat in the horizon. Around her she could see selk living peaceful lives. She could see farmers tending crops and fisheries and a young selk girl swimming though the farm lands singing to herself. The song continued as the scene turned back into the field of emerald light.

Yujo could feel the song translating itself into a string of information that started to drive itself into her mind. As the last few bits of information flooded into her, Yujo felt her mouth open.

Then she sang at the light.

As her flawless song came out of her mouth streams of red light began to flow out of the cuts in her suit's back. Everything that had troubled her was gone, replaced by the song. This continued for several minutes before she thought of Rosemary looking for her.

Yujo's song came to a complete halt. She held her hand out as she grasped at the fading light and then fainted from exhaustion.The three selk looked on as the last spurts of light dissipated from both the face and Yujo's back.

It took a moment before the younger selk girl pointed to Yujo and hummed a question.

The question went unanswered as the boy shouted out in confusion. He pointed at Yujo and asked something to his two cohorts.

They could only shake their heads, unable to give him an answer.

With a growl he ran his hands though his hair and then pointed at Yujo again.

The girls shared another glance to each other and shrugged. Making sure not to get themselves stuck, they swam into the cave and took Yujo by the feet and back. With Yujo secured they swam out of the cave and started to swim towards the surface.

The boy turned around, ready to follow the two when he heard a beeping coming out of the cave. He turned around and looked into the cave to find Yujo's terminal. On its screen was a card that read "Sea Guard, respond immediately".

Unable to read the common script of the card, the boy reached in to grab the terminal.