Her legs pumped, gills open and freely filtering salt water—it was, for a few precious moments, bliss. The sea was her home; it gave food and freedom and life. Her ridges undulated in the brief exhilaration; swimming into the deep alongside a man whose strange parts could nearly pass for Akvian. And there were others there with her, nearly a battalion’s worth; it was as if she was with her Akvian brothers and sisters once again—

Except she was not.

The man beside her began to glow, and Aquila’s unblinking gaze swept along the warmly hued reef that leapt to life beneath their swimming forms. It was bright and colorful, reminding her of the Rift before Vjanta had destroyed it. Too eager was she to investigate the reef more closely that she ignored the vague warning that suddenly clamored in the back of her mind: this reef was the colors of danger. The reefs of Akvo were more often greens and blues, with some violets and few yellows. Rarely reds. Yet here, red seemed to pervade as a base of nearly all the colors.

But the seahorse ignored such thoughts, instead turning her gaze back to Kis as she hung, neutrally buoyant, in the space between the other equines and the reef, listening to his words sound in her head. At first, her face-fins flared in discomfort at having someone else in her mind—but she calmed beneath the man’s broad smile.

And then she began to think—which word would she bring from the surface? The ridges of her face rose and creased in thought. There was nothing from the surface she would bring beneath the deep, because all she longed for was the promise of home; of returning to her people and fulfilling her vow to keep them safe.

So, with shocking solemnity and quietness, her simple word sounded in her mind, “Promeson.” Attached to it was the life of her people; the hope that they lived, the lives that the led (what she had tried to protect). Though the word was simple, nearly juvenile in some context, to the seahorse it held more weight than any other word she could share with these creatures.

And maybe—just maybe—Kisamoa would hear it too. And perhaps he, or the Earth God, would finally heed her pleas to save her people.

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promeson = promise/vow