Ailuhn would be her name. “Ailuhn” above the water, and my moon below it, because they were as close to a rhyme as Jinyel could think of.
The ethereal creature took to the ocean as if she had been born in it. Perhaps she had been; Jinyel knew nothing of her species or how its young came into the world. All he knew was that she was shaped for the water, and her joy upon trouching it alleviated all the confusion that clutched at him on dry land.
I want you, Sade had told him. I want you and you want me, but I am no good for you, and therefore this thing between us must end.
Jinyel had accepted that. Not easily, and certainly not painlessly, but he would never hold a sun that refused to be held. Scarcely able to breathe, he had slept against the thief, certain it would be the last time.
And then woken up to find Sade only a few feet away, having never left at all.
That was… perplexing. But Jinyel had been too raw to question it, and so had followed the other man to the docks as they both got back to endless tasks of planning a wedding. Exactly as they’d intended to do from the start. No poor words, no uncomfortable looks, not even a frown thrown his way. As if the conversation had never taken place.
Jinyel did not know what to make of it. He did not understand how words could sound like one thing and mean another, but he knew what to make of water, and of injured animals who longed to swim. He loosened the final chain from the sarkin’s feet, tightened the Saltenrock cord around his neck, and followed her into the ocean.
After the initial shock of jumping in, the waters of Faldrass were almost warmer than the air. That peculiar orange sand never went cold, and neither did the ocean above it. If he swam horizontal against the sea floor, steered and supported by his hands, Jinyel could pretend that the cold of Zi’da didn’t exist.
In that low layer of heat, life churned. Plants and animals crowded upon the sand until the ground was difficult to see beneath them. Telling the difference between a plant and an animal was even more difficult than that; there were soft pink protrusions with flowing petals which stung like nettles upon contact, but upon magical examination, were very clearly a type of soft flesh. Then there were the stiff, hard things, like colorful branches which grew like shrubs, but which his magic revealed to actually be a colony of animals living together. The only real plant in this world seemed to be the kelp, and almost half the creatures he brushed against on accident had some venom, poison, or electrocution to cause him pain.
To a creature from the surface world, this underworld lived by utterly alien rules.
Ailuhn was his guide. She knew the sea better, Jinyel did his best to swim only where she swam and touch only what she touched. She endured his slowness by swimming lazy circles above, bullying pathways through thick, silvery schools of fish. Every now and then she would catch a particularly small or inattentive creature, but most of her interest was turned to the ocean floor.
The smaller crabs, Ailuhn could eat on her own. She didn’t like the shells, as evidenced by how much gristle she spit out afterwards, but clams and mussels were what she wished for most ― and was least equipped to get. The creatures snapped closed as soon as her shadow fell upon them, and though she picked up several and rolled them around her mouth, she was not desperate enough to crack her teeth upon them.
But unlike Ailuhn, Jinyel had a knife.
The sarkin’s eyes fell heavy upon him as he pried a mussel open. Like lightning Ailuhn was at his side, and with a lick of her long tongue, the mussel was eaten.
Jinyel did not have to go looking for a second.
Ailuhn curled around him, running her neck under his palm. Then she did it again, and a third time, until he grasped her black mane and held on. She was no wild thing brought to captivity on the Widowmaker’s deck; she had been tamed long before he laid eyes on her.
Physical movement underwater was so unlike that of the surface, no saddle designed on land could possibly seat him down here. Water was heavier than air. Therefore, the weight of his body was less useful, to the point that forward motion was more powerful than gravity.
If he simply sat on Ailuhn’s back and bade her to swim, she would swim right out from under him.
The solution, then, was not to sit on her at all. He held onto her mane and trailed behind like a ribbon. It meant he couldn’t direct her, but here, now, there was no need for such things ― Ailuhn knew what she wanted and where to find it.
One clam. Two. Ailuhn brought him to them, and he opened them for her. By watching her forage, he was slowly able to learn the difference between a rocky shelf and a shell that had been built to look like a rocky shelf. He recognized the soft, fleshy creatures which could change the colors of their skin as easily as a human might change clothing. Alien things with eight limbs and no bones crawled over the discarded shells, looking for scraps.
Ailuhn brought him another clam. This one had an unusual reddish hue to its shell, which didn’t strike him as odd until he cracked it open.
The inside of the shell glittered like a gemstone. Red-iridescence coated both halves, and shifted to greens and blues when he tilted them toward the light. He was no stranger to pretty shells, but he was certainly a stranger to this. It was radiant.
Were there more? He needed more.
Jinyel ignored the next mussel Ailuhn pointed out to him. He examined the reef from whence this clam had come, and he swam across it looking for more. This clam had lived upon warm orange sand, not cold hard stone, and so he sought sand pockets amongst the corals. Ailuhn trailed bemusedly behind him, and many bits of searching turned into half a break.
He found two red-shell clams next to each other, each split open to reveal the same fiery iridescence. Ailuhn at them as easily as anything else.
This, Jinyel signed to the clams, and although the sarkin hadn’t yet been trained to obey sign language, she at least understood that these clams were important.
More bits of searching became a break. One break became two. These clams were unusual, to say the least, and it was only with Ailuhn’s aid that he found enough to count on one hand. She circled the reef ahead of him, and pulled him off course whenever she found what he was looking for.
As more shells came to his possession, the hunter imagined them strung together. For all Sade’s insistence on a wedding, for all Jinyel had done to aid him, Jinyel had not once considered actually attending the thing. Nevermind the old biqaj’s self-centeredness, nevermind Sade or all the things they had said to one another ― Jinyel was not a creature that belonged at weddings. He was not suited to crowds or to conversation. He was barely suited to civilized places at all, with his sharp teeth and ragged clothes and inability to understand simple matters like This relationship is over.
Weddings were places to become beautiful. And Jinyel had no way to become beautiful.
Yet.
Even with watery sunlight, the shells glittered. Turned outward, strung together, they could be interlaced like scale mail to be worn on the body. Would such a garment be worthy of a wedding? It would be beautiful, doubtless, but wholly unlike any other outfit.
Ailuhn brushed against him, another clam between her teeth. Absent-minded, Jinyel opened the creature for her. He had strung shells together before. It would be a long task to do it again at such a size, but it would be simple.
Ailuhn coughed. Or at least, she shuddered and opened her mouth in what looked to be a cough. She spat out the clam she had just eaten, and then stared at Jinyel as if it was his fault she had choked it up.
He blinked at her. She blinked at him, and then at the half-chewed clam meat drifting lazily toward the ocean floor.
With a frown, Jinyel caught the thing before it reached the ground. The clam had been alive when he opened it, so there was simply no way it could have been spoiled. Teeth marks pierced it ― and then halted. When Jinyel rolled the thing between his fingers, something hard rolled inside. He dug fingernails into the clam and pulled it apart, revealing…
… a stone?
A shiny stone, its shimmer even more iridescent than the clam shells. It was perfectly round, something Jinyel had never seen in wild stones. When he probed it with his magic, there were no enervations to find. Inside a living thing, this unliving thing had been buried.
Odd.
Jinyel pocketed the stone and returned the clam to Ailuhn. The sarkin licked it out of his hand and swam off in search of more. Jinyel settled upon an empty patch of sand and began to arrange the shells upon it, face-up, so he might see how best to string them together.
There were many things in the world of people that he did not understand. He did not understand weddings or love, he did not understand togetherness or separation, and he did not understand what Sade wanted of him. But he understood beauty. He understood sunsets and birdsong, and he understood these shells. Perhaps he would never be what Sade wanted, but as the shells glimmered together, he held on to the ragged hope that he could at least be close.
With a knife, a drill, and an uncertain heart, Jinyel began to work.
Resource Notes
Jinyel uses a combination of Fieldcraft, Hunting, and Animal Training to gather ignis clams.
All these skills are at expert, so he nets 12 clams and their shells.
Fire pearls are in less than 10% of clams / one clam out of ten, so with 12 clams, looking to net 1 unpolished fire pearl.
All these skills are at expert, so he nets 12 clams and their shells.
Fire pearls are in less than 10% of clams / one clam out of ten, so with 12 clams, looking to net 1 unpolished fire pearl.
