"By the by, I'm Nyla," the tall girl introduced while practically holding me hostage. Five times I've tried to pry away and five times she deterred me. She was a full head taller than I was and possessed with bewildering strength. She laughed as we walked, which was further down the dilapidated pier, into darker territory: More unmaintained lampposts, abandoned storefronts with boarded up windows and buildings filled with moving and shifting shadows. Desperation clung to me as with each step brought me further and further away from familiar ground. But Nyla was all laughs and jokes as if I was some lost buddy and not a kidnapee. It was almost like a game to her. I managed to get my fingers underneath her grip and try to pry her grip on my shoulder one finger at a time. But she would instead twist her body closer to mine, nearly suffocating me with a sudden one armed bearhug and renew her grip. Her body was tough as an anvil beneath all that cloth.

As we came closer to a boarded up warehouse I was suddenly filled with a cornered animal's vigor.

I pried her fingers away with all the strength I could muster, twisted my body, managing to break free from her grasp. I broke away from her and was prepared to make a run for it if I hadn't seen her face. She was unsurprised, eyes still glinting with mirth and lips fixed in a grin. Her stance was wide and loose and I knew- -I just knew - - that if I made a run for it, she would get me. She was more physically fit beneath all that sash and fabric, whilst I spend entire days barely getting out of the door if my uncle doesn't prod me. There was no escape here.

"And here I thought you to be curious," she said with with no small amount of cheer. We were farther away from the well-lit street I came out of and down a path lined with wooden abandoned wharfs and ruined warehouses. I thought I saw a figure moved from one boarded up window but that could have been a play on my mind. The moon more lit up the promenade we were on than the feeble light of these forgotten lamp posts, it casted the entire esplanade in an eerily silver glow of moonlight.

"Not at the expense of my own life, you miscreant!" I hissed at her.

"Miscreant. How posh." she said, making a mocking imitation of me like some puffed-up aristocrat. Was that how I really sound like?

"You think me a mugger?" She then asked, now feigning the innocence of some delicate maiden, puckering her lips and enlarging her eyes as best she could.

"I don't know you. You suddenly appeared out of nowhere, all smiles. And you are, quite literally, leading me down a darkened alleyway against my will. Is that not the definition of a mugger? A thug?" I laid out all of the known facts before her, counting them off with my fingers. Maybe I could scream for help? Surely someone, anyone, would come to my aid? A 12 year old boy screaming is a distressing sound to hear in the Sorez.

She shrugged. "I have no plans of the sort, tado," she said with the least bit of worry, as if we were two mates jesting about. "You seemed genuinely curious. And as I've said before, you look new. I was just doing my best, guiding along a wee lost lamb lest you fall over the railings or the missing floorboards. These here parts aren't too kind for cute little lambs such as ye," she said, circling me like some wolf and eyeing me like some lamb before finally settling against the rusted iron rail that lined the esplanade. I met her gaze and held it. Her eyes were the color of bright amber.

The waves rolled below, crashing against the promenade. The sound of the festivities were muffled here, in this enshrouded part of the city. I guessed that every light must have its shadow and this was it for Sorez. My eyes were starting to get used to the low light afforded by the worn lamps and the enshrouded moon. I found myself slightly shivering. The air was colder here for some reason, having thought myself acclimated already to the climes of the Greysea.

I breathed, letting out a becalming sigh to soothe my nerves. My breath was slightly visible in the cold. She claims it was out goodwill but I am not certain of it. I kept a wary sense of my back lest for another sudden ambush. Common sense dictates to return back to the light of the inner city and back to uncle. Morbid curiosity got the better hold of me however. Here was an ample opportunity for my questions to be answered. So much of this land is sheathed in more than just mists. "Who are the Faithful?" I asked.

Nyla gave a noncommittal shrug with one shoulder, "Those that hold faith. The names are pretty self explanatory, no?" she chuckled at her own joke. Then proceeded in a more serious tone, "They themselves don't rightly know what faith they hold unto. They simply could not help it. The Sorezii have all destroyed any relics, temples or even the smallest of mementos by whatever faith our ancestors used to keep. All we have are stories."

"Yes, yes. I've heard it all before," I piped, a bit aggravated, "Stories and the Old Call. That is all that remains." Then added for further clarification, "And I'm not new around here. I've been living here for almost four years now."

"But you weren't born here, were you?" Nyla deduced correctly. There seemed a glow in her eyes even as she back was to the moon, her faced swathed in shadows. I was right to be wary of her, for all her smiles and jests, there was degree of low cunning to her. I eyed the long stick that hung behind her via a strapped sheath. "Are you an orphan?"

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The question brought me out of my assessment of Nyla.

"What? No."

"Everyone in their mothers were told not to stare at the Faithful and simply ignore them.. So long as they don't cause any trouble for anyone, they are ignored. Ex visu, ex animo as the saying goes."

Out of sight, Out of mind. Nyla was leaning against the railing with apparent ease. Does she not hear the Old Call? Even as I stood there it was an ever prevalent thrum at the base of my skull. Not obtrusive nor painful but you could feel it like a constant breeze at the back of your neck being this close to the Greysea.

"You, however," Nyla went on, "were gawking them so openly you only had to be born outland. So where are you from? Originally?"

Cunning indeed. But I have no reason to lie, so I answered her truthfully. "The Thousand Seaspires."

Nyla gave a low whistle and nodded to herself, seeming impressed.

"Why'd you ever come back to this greysmeared country then? Do you know what kind of strength--and maybe a hint of madness -- to cross the Greysea for a Sorezii? It is no easy thing, I tell you."

I sighed. Now the discussion had veered dangerously close to the subject of my mother. I did not want to dredge up the feelings of that particular topic brings. Best change the subject. "Family troubles." I simply said, and then added; "Is that all they do then? Stare out into sea all day long?" Pointing back to the figures so apart from everyone else. I stepped towards the rail, right beside Nyla. I stared at the outstretched pier and at the disparate figures that stared out into the sea.

"No, they're just like you and me. People. They work, they go about their days. They eat and they sleep," Nyla explained. Then an expression flitted in her feature (of which I got a better look in this waning light: Dark skinned, a face that is usually out in the elements. But handsome, in a diamond-in-the-rough sort of way) as if she had chewed something bitter. It was gone in an instant, "But there are stories," she continued, "that if you attune to the Old Call in just the right way, the right note on the right time of day or night.....you might just hear it."

"Hear it?" I repeated, practically close to leaning, "Hear what?"

""The Answer, it is said to be," A blank expression now was in her amber eyes, as if recalling a tale she heard a long while ago. "That the oldest and most adept of the Faithful, after decades of attuning to the Old Call with its minutiae and giving their life's pursuit to this singular task, can find the Answer. Calling to them, somewhere beyond the mists and the Mare Graucus' abstruse currents. And then....." Nyla broke off, not continuing. As if there were no more words to be said or trying to grasp words she had no means to say.

"And then what?" I gripped the iron rail. I did not know I had been gripping so tight the white of my knuckles appeared.

Nyla shook herself awake, as if she had been stuck in some kind of trance. She looked towards the sea for a bit. Then, finally, spoke once more, her voice regaining its steadiness, "Then nothing. Every now and then you get the occasional fool who thinks they've head the Answer, rushing out into the sea with their bare feet as if to walk there straight-on," she shook her head, finding the idea much like I did. Madness. Utter madness.

She gave another sigh, somber, "And every now and then people find some washed up corpse of one of the Faithfull. It doesn't happen often, just every couple of years or so. People would usually rush to stop any mad fool from making the attempt of walking on the sea but people have to sleep and the Faithfull who thinks they've heard the Answer go rushing out into the sea with no one looking." She shrugged, "Sometimes their bodies turn up, sometimes it doesn't. The tides claim them all the same."

We stood there, staring out into the sea, not saying a word. Just letting the windblown breeze be our accompaniment. I cast hidden glances at my back, where the darkness in between the alleys were most prevalent. Satisfied, it seems Nyla was true to her words, that her interference (and brief kidnapping) of my evening was some random act of goodwill. Or maybe she was just looking time to pass. Who knows.

"You're a tidedredger aren't you?" I said unceremoniously.

She cast me a sideways glance and grinned before erupting into a overexaggerated bow.

The muddied boots caked with sand, as well as the long stick strapped at her back. The open disdain of talking of such matters in public I can deduce from what Nyla and Uncle had told me.

Treasures from the Tide. The Old Call. The Greysea and its strange undercurrents.

All of them connected.

"What are you looking for out there? When the low tide sets in and the waters pull up--" Nyla interrupted me, putting her finger to my lips, hushing me.

I jerked back, started spitting and rubbing my lips with my sleeve. Who knows where she put her fingers?

"Now that is a conversation for another time, newboy." She simply said, unheeding of my act of cleansing my lips.

"My name --" I gave another cleansing spit, "-- is Anrique."

"Anrique," she repeated, almost purring my name, with a smile.

"If you wish to know more, Providence willing, the world would set the circumstance for it. Besides it is ill to talk of such things in the open, which is why I pulled you somewhere a bit secluded but not secluded enough." She broke away from the rail and began moving ever deeper into the promenade. I got the feeling this conversation is at its end and we should part ways. But I was not yet sated.

"Can you tell me at least what are the treasures from the tide?" I called out. She turned. The sight struck a dagger into my heart. There must have been a breakaway in the greyveil in that short instance but the full glow of the moon poured down on the esplanade, the occurrence sheathed Nyla's features in a mantilla of moonlight. The sight took my breathe away as well as several beats of my heart.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. You shouldn't say such things aloud. The Faithfull is one thing. But the so called 'treasures'?" she shook her head not pressing the matter any further, genuine worry was prevalent in her sun-kissed features before turning her back. The world returned once more into the shrouded night, the brief gap in the grey brume closing. She disappeared in the shadows, just as she had come.

And I was left there, alone. More questions to my mind than answers and then some; an odd sensation lingering on my chest, a feeling that refused to go away no matter how hard I rubbed, as I trekked back towards the glow of the city.