My dreams had changed.

The void was now comfort and familiarity, not ice-cold emptiness. Except for tonight. Tonight, in a vivid, lucid dream, I waded through a twisted, hazy landscape. Fires of unnatural color burned in spots, and the ash that swept the jagged, ruined valleys bore shards of blackened bone that bit at my scales.

There were no shadows, not here. No all-consuming presence drifting ever onward.

There were figures.

I crested a hill to witness a landscape torn even further asunder; floating chunks of rock rimmed a crater deeper than the Grand Temple was tall. Several bodies lay about, forms blurred and indistinct. I couldn’t tell if they were lamia, elf, or anything other.

In the center, one figure still lived moved. A blurred mass, I only saw the tip of a shining blade as they plunged it into themselves.

The dreamscape fell apart in pieces, returning to a void from which I struggled to awaken. The endless expanse called to me to stay, and the ever-looming presence felt more and more like something I was but a small part of.

Light streamed in, and the sea breeze carried a strong taste of salt. It took a moment to remember where I was, and when I did, my hearts twinged. The Lajiir estate, still. Sire is injured, many ussen are dead, the Emerald Palace is in ruins, and we’re coiling here and enjoying the weather. Ssiina had said there was no point worrying about something we couldn’t help. It didn’t really make things better, but—

A knock at the door jolted me out of my thoughts. Really, I’d been doing that a lot lately—thinking. Kyrae said I was making up for not doing it at all when I was growing up.

She wasn’t really wrong.

“Issa? Are you up yet?” Nistala’s voice carried through the door.

I must really be up late if she’s already awake. “Working on it!” I called back, my words fading into a hissing yawn as I stretched and uncoiled.

Reflexively, I checked my eyes in the bronze mirror by my bedside. Green-on-white. Well, maybe a light gray. My eyes looked normal enough, at least, but I’d need to find my sisters or Phaeliisthia to renew the spell soon.

It'd barely been a week, but I hated to say I kinda liked it here. Perfect weather for sunning, and new, interesting smells always on the breeze. I dressed myself and slithered out into the hallway. Nistala smiled up at me, and I returned it without thinking at all. My errant fang even popped down—something that didn’t happen much anymore.

She giggled, and I had to stifle my own when I covered my mouth. The past few days, when I needed time to think and being with my sisters brought too many memories of that night, she’d stayed with me, listening or telling stories of her childhood.

She was from a branch of the main Gyontael family, and grew up on a bucolic estate in a relatively small city in rural Kii’Ssiil. The province next to the capital was the Empire’s heartland, and a far cry from life in Ess’Siijiil. She hadn’t even seen a merfolk before, let alone a human!

Really, it all sounded nice, and even the family drama she sometimes got too deep into felt like a hazy, warm sort of nostalgia to me. It was nice when it didn’t make me think of gorgeous dry season days in our grove in Phaeliisthia’s estate.

Nistala frowned up at me, and I winced, wondering what she’d said that I’d missed. “I know that look by now. Do you want to go for a swim, Hss-Issa? We should be able to get back and get ready for tonight’s dinner.”

I blinked, happy that she’d almost remembered not to use my title, but also… “Tonight’s dinner? Is it special?”

“Ussent Lyniss’s parents are getting home tonight! They sent word ahead and it got here yesterday, remember?”

I blinked again, and yawned one more time. “Nope. Didn’t Phaeliisthia say something about receiving a message back from the Grand Temple, though?”

Nistala tilted her head “Did she?”

“I dunno—I think she mentioned it to me the other day, but I wasn’t paying attention.” I shrugged. “I can ask her if we bump into her.”

Nistala nodded, hesitantly. “I… suppose. She’s really scary.”

“Hsss.” I snorted. “She acts like a hardass but she’s really… only mostly a hardass.”

“I think she’s only nice to you, Issa.”

“Was she mean to you?”

“No, but she’s… cold I guess.”

“She gets lonely. Doesn’t like getting close to people, I think.” I furrowed my brow. The words had sort of slipped out before I’d really given them much thought… but I really did think that.

“Really?”

I shrugged again, then yawned a third time. “I spent a lot of time with her as her student. Guess she likes me ‘cause I’m earnest.”

I half expected a joking rebuttal, but Nistala only nodded. Guess she’s either not that comfortable yet, or she’s nicer than my sisters.

She waited for my yawn to finish, then her eyes met mine. “Did you sleep alright? You slept in pretty late.”

“Maybe?” I half remembered the strange dream I’d had, but it was already slipping through my coils.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Nistala moved her hand to my arm like she was going to grab it, but stopped. I rolled my eyes and grabbed hers instead. “Let’s go for that swim. Water’ll help wake me up.”

On the way out of the estate, we passed Kyrae sitting in one of the many gardens. She’d stacked up rocks and weaved a few sigils to make a sort of lounging chair, and had a scroll partially unfurled in front of her. I waved, and she waved back, but her eyes didn’t really leave what she was reading.

Something about sigilcraft, probably. I doubted the Lajiir estate had anywhere near the library Phaeliisthia possessed, but my sister had thrown herself into studying lately. I wanted to help her, but I felt more like a burden than anything.

Without my powers, and the curse that came with them, she wouldn’t need to spend so much time worrying about me. At least the smile she’d given me was an earnest one.

I caught up to Nistala who’d been quietly waiting, and we made our way out onto the beach. The sun was high in the cloudless sky, and it stirred mixed feelings I was still sorting out. I wanted—needed—its warmth, but whatever my curse had done to me made me want to go find a rock to hide under.

If it wasn’t for all the real, awful, horrible things my curse could and would do to me, I’d still hate it for nothing more than ruining the sun. Hate the bad parts, anyway.

The beach itself was empty, save for a single figure. Laying out on a lounge I suspected she made using her magic, Phaeliisthia was sunning herself, eyes closed and chest rising and falling slowly. Her gold-capped horns glittered in the light, and she cracked one white-irised eye open as we passed by about twice my length distant.

Her eye met mine, and she closed it again without saying a word. Not in a big hurry to leave for someone who’s supposedly banished from the Empire. I thought about approaching, but I could always ask about a message later.

The ocean’s surface was calm, the tide in, and its water just cool enough to shock my scales. Out here, instead of mud and silt, clear, pale sand flowed between rocks studded with small corals, anemones, and shellfish. Not quite a reef, if only for the deceptively strong current that pulled water through the bay.

Nistala shivered at that depth, but it felt nice to me, the sun an agreeable distance away. I swam ahead, thinking of all those words I’d just thought and how differently I saw things now compared to only a few years ago. Then, I wouldn’t have known what any of the creatures down here were—not that I knew them all now, either—but the point stood.

I doubted I’d have even allowed myself to call them “pretty”.

At the edge of the bay, where the seafloor dropped down and the current became swift enough that I’d struggle against it, I stopped, coiling myself around a rock to rest. My lungs were starting to burn a little, but I had plenty of air left, and the shadows calling me from cracks and crevasses were a comfort. A conflicting comfort, but still.

Nistala tapped my shoulder when she caught up, then gestured at the shimmering surface above. I followed her up for a breath, and we swam back, just under the surface, until the current died out into the bay’s eddy and she brought us up again.

“How can you hold your breath for so long?” She finished with a polite cough, and a deep breath.

“That’s a secret kelaniel thing,” I lied back, starting to swim in a circle to keep afloat.

Nistala giggled and followed me. “Magic then?”

“Something like that.”

Her lips pursed, and she didn’t push. “Phaeliisthia taught you three a lot, didn’t she?”

I nodded, looking back at my tutor, who’d now flipped onto her back. “She did, yeah.”

“She must be a good person, then.”

I hissed a soft agreement.

“Hss-Issa, do you mind if I ask what you’re going to do when Phaeliisthia leaves and you can return to your sire and the Palace?”

I paused in the water, and sank a little. “I’m… not sure. My sisters and I are going to see Sire, see if there’s anything we can do for her or for Aunt—I mean Jii’Hssen Ssyii. After that, I don’t think I want to stay at the Emerald Palace, not after everything that’s happened.

“Phaeliisthia’s estate with her gone would also… hmm… if we could even stay there…”

I thought about my curse, and its progression, and what we could do. At least a couple people probably suspected my curse, and it might get out entirely, get picked up by political enemies I didn’t even really know and spun up into something terrible. The Temple was an option, sort of. Hssen didn’t really—couldn’t really—join it. And I didn’t want to, anyway.

While Uru Farlight’s wanderings had provided a clue pointing to the Sekalln Mountains and spoke of a larger picture that wasn’t fully formed, that wasn’t much to go on. The mountains spanned a continent, after all.

Which meant the only real option was somewhere I could be guaranteed to find more information, and quickly. Hesuzhaa Jii’ssiisseniir: The Spring of All Life. Where Sire and Phaeliisthia had planned for us to go anyway.

Part of the Temple, it was also a place of pilgrimage and learning for ussen and hssen alike. Most just before coming of age, but some just after, like us.

“You don’t have to try to come up with an answer if you’re not sure!” Nistala said. “I don’t want to put pressure on you, o-or make your thoughts turn to dark places.”

“Uh, thanks.” I turned to look at her. She really is cute with big, brown eyes—even with hair stuck all over her face and neck. I fought a blush. “I think I’m a little cold—let’s go dry off.”

She bobbed her head in a nod. “Alright. Again, my apologies if I brought up something I shouldn’t have.”

I took the lead again back to shore. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. Oh, actually. Can I ask you what you want to do?”

“I want to explore the Empire!” Nistala answered quickly, and her face seemed to light up. “Maybe even the world! Growing up, I read about so much and saw so little. Even when I visited the main family in the city, I never really got to see the city.

“I apologize if this causes offense, but I wanted to talk to you at your coming-of-age ceremony because you’d lived with ssen’iir, and you’d lived in Ess’Siijiil and probably seen humans and merfolk and heard other languages and been around imported goods and… oh, I’m rambling, apologies.”

I giggled. “You sound a bit like Ssiina, in a way. She was practically caged in the Palace growing up, and she snuck out all the time to see what life was really like.”

“…was really like,” Nistala repeated. “Wait, Hssen Ssiina snuck out?”

I nodded conspiratorially. “She sure did! She was almost as much of a rogue as I was growing up.”

Nistala blinked. “Oh… oh my. I shouldn’t… You said you might be going to Hesuzhaa Jii’ssiisseniir, right, Hs-Issa?” She changed the subject quickly, blush not yet fading. “My family was going to send me there soon—I just came of age last Tuo’Antzin. Do you mind if we stay friends and try to meet each other sometimes while we’re there?”

She’s going there too? It makes sense, but I hadn’t thought of that. “Oh, sure, Nistala. Totally! Maybe even after too, if you want to see places—I know there’s some places I want to visit and—” I cut myself off once I realized I’d stuffed my tail straight into my mouth.

“Really?”

I hissed, red-faced, and nodded. Why am I so embarrassed?

Nistala made a noise that was more squeal than hiss, and coiled a loop around me. “I’d love to, Issa!”

I froze, then she froze.

“Oh… I-I’m terribly sorry Hssen, I should never—”

I hugged her back, returning her coil with two more—almost familial, but not quite. “It’s fine!” I managed through burning cheeks, mostly by looking away. “Just… warn me next time?”

Nistala slipped out, and I let her go without resistance, in part because we were sinking in our embrace since we’d stopped swimming. “I will, Hssen Issa! I promise!”

“You really don’t need to use my title!”

“Apologies!”

“Don’t apologize!”

“Ss—” Nistala cut herself off so hard I heard her jaw click shut behind me.

I snorted, she giggled, and we ended up slithering ashore in the midst of a laughing fit. I caught Phaeliisthia’s eye again, and for just a moment I could have sworn I saw an earnest, melancholic smile cross her lips before she turned on her side.