The Storyteller: The Legend of the Sea Dragon

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Second Birthday

Sen stood with her possum fur cloak hanging from her shoulders and puddling on the sand at her feet. The sailcloth above her flapped a little in the wind, but it was the rain that held her attention. She had never seen anything like it, endless, splashing droplets of sea spray falling from the sky for what seemed like hours and hours. The sea was dark, steely grey and blended into the heavy clouds on the horizon. The whole world must be like this now, even way up in the sky. Everything was water.

She gasped. Out in the water, there was the ship. She knew it was the ship, distant and hidden in sheets of fog and rain though it was.

‘Sip!’ Kaiji squealed, jumping up and down. She bolted out into the rain as fast as her wobbly little legs would take her.

Sen had enough presence of mind to dump her furs on the sand—Sula yelled at her if she took them away from the house—and chased after her friend.

The rain was icy cold as she ran down to the beach, and the waves rolling up the sand were bigger and choppier than usual, almost as tall as Sen’s waist. She held onto Kaiji’s hand and pointed out to sea. ‘Sip!’

‘Sip!’ Kaiji repeated, and they both giggled and jumped and laughed aloud in the rain. The little dinghy was halfway to shore, bouncing up and down in the choppy surf as the captain rowed closer and closer to shore.

Finally, she made it, leaping out and hauling the boat up the beach in that smooth, practiced motion all seafarers seemed to possess, but this time, with the sea threatening, she gave it a few extra strong tugs to keep it away from the water’s edge.

When she was done, hands on hips, Sen toddled straight up to her and hugged a leg. Kaiji grabbed the other.

Tu laughed and reached down to ruffle both dripping little heads. It was cloudy enough that they didn’t need to wear their bandanas today. ‘Let go so we can go inside,’ she said, patting them both on the back. ‘It’s freezing out here.’

Sen pointed back out to the hulking shadow floating in the bay. ‘Sip?’

‘That’s my ship, yes. Horizons.’ She said the name slowly, enunciating carefully so Sen could copy her.

Sen chewed at the amber stone bound to her wrist. ‘Oh-wah-din.’

‘Take that out of your mouth first,’ Tu said, gently pulling the amber from her mouth. ‘Now try again. Horizons.’

‘Oh-wah-dins?’

‘There you go!’

Sen beamed. ‘Oh-wah-dins!’ she cried, repeating it again and again as she wobbled back up the beach to home. She burst through the hole in the wall that was their door. ‘Oh-wah-dinssip!’ she announced to Sula and Nak. In the inclement weather, they were both staying indoors mending fishing nets.

‘That close enough, right?’ Tu stood in the doorway, one hand resting on the door frame, the other on her hip.

Sula looked up with little more than a cursory glance. ‘As long as she didn’t try saying it with the amber in her mouth,’ she said, warning in her voice as she turned raised eyebrows on her young charge.

Sen pulled the amber from her mouth and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, carefully. ‘No amber.’

Tu looked down at her with a conspiratorial wink.

Sen grinned back up at her, then looked down at the amber and back up at Tu, eyes wide with wonder. ‘Presents?’

‘Of course, presents!’ Tu crouched down to her level, pulling something from her pocket as she did. ‘This one comes with a story,’ she said with another wink. She opened her hand to reveal a small, white branch of coral.

Sen frowned down at the coral then looked up at Tu, confused. ‘What is?’

‘What is this?’ Sula corrected.

‘What is this?’ Sen repeated.

‘This isn’t a piece of coral,’ Tu said, dropping her voice into the storyteller tone. Sen bounced at her knee to hear it. ‘It looks like a piece of coral, but it isn’t. This is from the tail of a real, live sea dragon.’

Kaiji gasped aloud. Sen did, too, mostly just to fit in.

‘Daggin,’ Kaiji breathed.

‘What is daggin?’

Tu dropped to her knees and began drawing big, sweeping curves in the sand with her left finger. ‘This is,’ she said. ‘They’re long and sinuous, kind of like a snake—have you seen a snake before?’

Sen shook her head.

‘Oh. Well, they’re long and skinny, and they move like this.’ She wove one hand through the air. ‘They have flat heads and fins, maybe like a lionfish, maybe like seaweed or kelp, maybe like waving, soft coral. They’re very hard to spot, because they just look like part of the ocean. Some even look like water. This one—‘ She placed the piece of coral at the tip of the dragon’s tail. ‘—This one was like fan coral, with four branches growing from its back, so wide they were like wings. It was bright orange all over and swimming right under the water’s surface, which is how we could see it.’

‘When was this?’ Nak asked. ‘That tail piece is pure white.’

‘Well,’ Tu said with a shrug. ‘It’s dirty, but you’re right. This was when I was on the Tranquilo, my home ship. I was only ten years old when we saw it, and I haven’t seen another one since, so this tail piece is very special to me.’

‘What does it do?’ Sula asked.

Tu shrugged again, a little uncomfortable this time. ‘Nothing, honestly. It’s not worth much, either, unless you can prove it was actually from a dragon. This just looks like a piece of coral.’

‘So why did you keep it?’

Tu sat down on the sandy floor with a heavy sigh and flicked a slightly guilty look at Sen. ‘Sentimentality,’ she mumbled. ‘I could say it’s a reminder, but I’ll never forget how I got it, so that would be a lie. I’m just sentimental about it.’

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence on Tu’s behalf. The rain fell heavily on the sailcloth overhead, echoing in the dark little room.

‘What is sennimennily?’ Sen asked.

Tu shook her head. ‘It’s silly. It’s when you give a useless object meaning, so that meaning makes you think the object is valuable. But it’s not. Only the meaning is valuable, and you don’t need the object to remember the meaning.’

Sen frowned, her face all scrunched up with the effort of trying to understand what Tu was trying to tell her.

Tu shook her head with a rueful laugh that ended in a groan. ‘I’ll tell you later, kiddo. I don’t have the words you’ll understand. Sorry.’

Nak bent forward with a smile to break the tension. ‘So! What’s the story? It must be good if it made you keep a part of it.’

Tu grinned broadly this time. ‘I was in the crow’s nest that day with my two brothers. The Tranquilo was a treasure hunting ship, and we operated mostly around Tisadez, way up north off the coast of Kazin, where coral reefs of a thousand colours thread the ocean. They’re beautiful, but without a keen navigator and plenty of sharp eyes in the nest, it’s easy to found your ship on one of them. Reefs are close to the surface, and especially in low tide, they’re treacherous.

‘Our navigator, I know now, was not that great, so it was up to me and my brothers to keep watch for shallow water. If the navigator sent us through a wrong channel, one that looked safe from the deck, up above we could see where the coral blocked our path, where the waves were choppier against the shadows of the reef below.’

Tu grinned, her grey eyes alight with the memory. ‘But it wasn’t just the reef. We could see the coral moving under the waves. Sometimes it would rise right to the surface so we couldn’t help but see the water turning white above it. They were sea dragons.’

‘Daggins!’ Sen pointed at Tu’s sand sketch on the floor.

‘Daggins!’ Kaiji cried.

‘They were showing us the way!’ Tu told them, her voice hushed and reverential. ‘The longer we followed them, the closer they allowed themselves to the ship, a school of at least six, all bright orange and with their fan-coral-wings rippling the ocean.’

‘You weren’t scared?’ Nak asked, the net half-forgotten in his big hands. ‘I’ve only ever heard of the horrors of sea dragons.’

Tu turned her head to the side in thought. ‘I wasn’t, really. I realised they had been showing us the way for an hour or more by the time I recognised them as dragons, not just coral, so it was clear they weren’t looking to attack us. By the time they had guided the Tranquilo to safe, deep waters, they were swimming right alongside the ship, slithering like snakes through the water and with their fan coral fins raised high above the waves like sails. If I was one who believed such things, I’d think they even manipulated the wind to make our sailing easier. Half the crew certainly believed it for a while.’

‘But how did you know they weren’t luring you into a trap?’ Nak pressed.

‘We were already in one,’ Tu answered with a shrug. ‘The didn’t even need to do anything and we probably would have wrecked, but they shepherded us safely through. I believe they truly wanted to help us, though to what end, I couldn’t guess. Maybe it’s fun for them, for that particular school. They certainly put on a show when we were free of the reef.’ She twisted both arms around in mirrored patterns. ‘Perfectly synchronised, looping and twisting, like they’d practiced for years. I think they may have guided us out just so they could show off their dance. At the very end of it, they plunged under the ship, way down deep where we couldn’t see them, then all at once they shot up from either side of the ship, flapping their fins like true wings, and flew!’ She arced her arms gracefully up and over.

‘Wooow,’ Sen breathed. ‘Pretty daggin.’

‘Beautiful,’ Tu agreed. ‘They leaped right over the ship, clearing the sails, the masts, even the crow’s nest, though that one did catch the very tip of its tail on the edge of the nest on the way down. This is the piece that chipped off.’ She smiled and poked Sen’s nose with the tip of her finger. ‘It reminds me to give everyone and everything a chance. The reputation of sea dragons is justified, and certainly the horror stories of storms attracting or even caused by dragons are far more common than mine, but mine exists.’ She turned her smile on the family of three around her. ‘It reminds me not to judge until I’ve at least tried to make friends.’

‘I’m a friend!’ Sen chirped, hugging her arms around Tu’s neck.

‘Me, too!’ Kaiji echoed and did the same.

‘Exactly right,’ Tu said with a laugh. ‘Keep a hold of this piece of sea dragon’s tail, and I hope you’ll remember that, too.’

STUFF

o I got distracted by Game Grumps so there's only one chapter tonight, damnit. I'm caught up on said grumps now, though, so no distractions tomorrow night and I'll be able to do two, I swear.

o DRAGONS. Which are nowhere near common enough for anyone in Tsayth to have any definitive ideas about them controlling the weather. But we all know they totally do.

o I still don't know how to baby but I know how to cute, so there we go.

o It hurts my minor OCD that this is chapter three despite Sen being age two. The whole story will be like that. IT WILL FINISH AT AGE TWENTY-NINE GODDAMNIT.