The mare’s attention, which had not yet wavered from Kisamoa—her intense and unblinking stare transfixing his scaled and morphed body—was finally broken by another. Her ridged face snapped toward the being that had approached her, overlarge eyes glaring into his equally yellow, sclera-less pits. Her gaze, after staring into his for a prolonged moment, moved beyond his red-tinged face to asses the rest of his body. His build was muscular, but did not boast the over-muscling of a trained warrior. He was taller than her, and a tail filled with spikes loitered languidly about his hocks. Her gaze lingered on it for a moment—it reminding her slightly of Rohkea, her cousin that Vjanta (the picxeto Tiger Goddess) had separated her from when she fled the Akvo for Helovia.

Like this man (he was speaking now, ”You look a little salty”), Rohkea had boasted spines along his tail. Most of him had been covered in spines—though he had been anything but prickly in personality. Her face fins flared for a moment, before slapping flush either her neck as she tried to reel in the sudden influx of memories.

Instead, with a slight undulation of her ridges and buzz from her rattling tail, she focused on this speaking man. “Yes, I am salty. I am de la maro,” her deep, throaty voice answered his comment impatiently, bladed horn motioning towards the roiling waves behind her. “And you are not, ŝarkito,” her tone was terse as she named him ‘little shark,’ for his horns along his crest were like their fins.

And then her attention whipped back to Kisamoa as he began to speak, talking of appreciating the sea. Her head rose proudly, fins flaring and vibrating around her face as he spoke—though they faltered as Kis winked at her. Why was her heart suddenly pounding? She was merely standing still. Yet it raced as if she was in the middle of trejnado.

But any thoughts of her chest fled as Kis spoke of a reef deep below the surface. Her head cocked slightly—she had hunted these waters, diving deep for ligurioj. But she did not recall this reef he spoke of… But, then again, she knew better than any present how vast the ocean was.

So, with a sideways glance at the ŝarkito to see if he would dare to test the ocean’s depths, she slipped naturally beneath the waves, keeping abreast with Kis as he dove deeper, deeper, deeper.

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picxeto = c u next tuesday :x
de la maro = of the sea
ŝarkito = little shark
trejnado = intense Akvian training
ligurioj = opal fish