The Original Message

The journey's final stretch brought them back to familiar water, the Drowned Court's location marked clearly on Colm's own charts, the same stretch of open sea they'd crossed dozens of times before.

"We're close," Arista said, checking her own position against Colm's marked coordinates. "The Drowned Court's a little further ahead. Squishy's territory starts right around here."

Selen went very still, staring out toward the water ahead as though she could already feel him there.

"...We'll give you two some privacy," Arista said gently. "Take whatever time you need. We're not going anywhere."

Selen looked back at her, something deeply grateful crossing her expression, then dove without another word, trident leading the way, disappearing into the depths alone.

The crew settled in to wait, the ship rocking gently at anchor.

"...How long do you think that actually takes?" Bram asked eventually. "A god, meeting his priestess for the first time in her entire life?"

"No idea," Arista admitted. "As long as it takes, I'd guess."

They waited the better part of an hour, nobody quite finding the right thing to say.

"...She's actually talking to him properly right now," Bram said quietly, staring out at the empty water where Selen had disappeared.

Colm glanced at him. "What do you mean?"

Bram frowned, piecing it together as he spoke. "When I held the trident, all I could send were impressions. Intent. I could make him understand roughly what I meant, and I could get the same kind of thing back, but there were never actual words."

He looked toward the water again.

"But when Selen took the trident from me, she spoke directly into our heads. Clear sentences. No guessing, no trying to interpret what she meant."

Claire caught on first. "So if the trident works the same way with Squishy..."

"She's not getting the impression," Bram said. "She's getting the original message."

Arista went quiet at that, the implication settling in properly. Months spend of learning Squishy's moods through glowing rings, gestures, puzzle cubes and whatever meaning they could pull from the pieces, and somewhere beneath all of it there had apparently been an actual voice they simply hadn't been equipped to hear.

"...That's beautiful," she said softly. "And a little humbling, honestly. All those months, feeling like Squishy and I had built something real between us, and it turns out we were still only getting part of the message."

"Doesn't make what you had with him any less real," Bram added. "You just learned to understand him without the words."

Arista managed a small, grateful smile.

Selen finally resurfaced beside the hull not long after, trident held loosely now instead of clutched tight against her chest, Squishy's massive shape trailing patiently a short distance behind her. Her expression was still visibly overwhelmed by whatever had passed between them.

She cast Tidal Tongue over the waiting crew once more.

"...He is exactly as the stories described," she said, voice thick with emotion. "Curious. Gentle. Endlessly patient." She paused, a quiet, delighted laugh breaking through the emotion in her voice. "He also just showed me, quite proudly, an enormous collection of shiny rocks he has apparently been gathering for months, and a puzzle he solved entirely on his own."

Arista laughed, delighted despite the strange, quiet ache of having missed the reunion herself. "...That tracks. That tracks completely."

"He wants you all to know," Selen continued, something warm and genuine settling into her voice now, "that he considers you dear friends. He has been trying to tell you this the entire time, in whatever way he could manage."

Arista felt her throat tighten, watching Squishy's massive, patient eye turn toward her and the rest of the crew from a short distance away, rings glowing bright and warm.

Stolen story; please report.

"...We knew," she said quietly. "Maybe not in words. But we knew."

She stayed like that for another moment, watching the warm glow of his rings pulse steadily across the water, before a thought surfaced, small and curious, the kind she couldn't quite let go of once it arrived.

"...Selen, could you ask Squishy a question for me?"

Selen glanced toward her, still faintly luminous with the lingering emotion of the reunion. "Of course."

"Ask him why he gave your ancestors the trident."

Selen turned back toward Squishy, the crescent moon on her forehead settling into the same soft, focused glow it carried whenever she reached for him. A few moments passed in silence, the actual words of the exchange lost to Arista entirely, but the reaction itself impossible to miss: Selen's jaw dropped, all the way to the ocean floor, utterly speechless.

Arista straightened, genuinely alarmed. "...What?"

Selen turned back toward her, still visibly processing.

"He saw my ancestors as friends," she said, sounding as though several thousand years of religious tradition were quietly rearranging themselves inside her head, one piece at a time. "And he likes shiny things."

Arista frowned. "...How does that relate?"

Selen simply stared at her for a moment, the sheer, disarming simplicity of it apparently taking a second full pass to properly settle.

"...He thought his friends deserved something shiny too."

Arista burst out laughing, the sound escaping before she could stop it. "...Why does that make perfect sense."

Her laughter faded slowly, and once it had, she found herself looking at Selen, then past her, toward the water where the Drowned Court sat waiting beneath them, familiar and unseen all at once.

"...Would you like to actually see it properly?" Arista asked, already climbing up onto the railing. "The city itself, not just from a distance."

Selen looked up at her, something hopeful crossing her expression. "I would like that very much."

Arista dove in, and Selen blinked in mild surprise, watching the demon go straight over the railing without a moment's hesitation.

"...You simply jump," Selen observed, already reaching to cast Water Breathing over her.

[Status Effect: Water Breathing — Applied]

"I simply jump," Arista confirmed, grinning through the last of the panic as her lungs settled. "It's usually worked out fine so far."

Together, they swam the short distance toward the dome's familiar, hexagonal silhouette.

The gathered crowd inside the dome pressed close against the glass as Squishy, Arista, and Selen approached through the water beyond. Squishy was familiar and beloved after months of quiet visits. Selen was something entirely new to most of them, a genuine, living mermaid, the very first many had ever seen with their own eyes.

"...She's real," one onlooker murmured, pressed close to the glass, awestruck. "The stories are actually real."

Selen drifted close to the dome's exterior, studying the ancient ruins visible through the glass with quiet, searching wonder.

"...I cannot enter," she said, running a careful hand along the sealed panel. "The air inside, the dry ground, my body was never built for that. I can only see it, now. Through the glass, the same as anyone standing on the outside looking in."

"...I'm sorry," Arista said, genuine regret settling into her chest. "When we found this place, it was just ruins. Nobody living, nothing but a mystery to solve. I built the dome so people could actually walk through and see it properly, and it never once occurred to me that the people it actually belonged to might still exist somewhere, let alone that they'd ever want back in."

"Do not apologize," Selen said, gentle. "You did not know. And truthfully—" she studied the preserved streets, the careful, respectful way the mansion and surrounding structures had been left largely untouched "—I am moved that you preserved it so faithfully. I feared, given how long it has been submerged, that nothing recognizable would remain at all."

Her gaze drifted further, settling on the great, kelp-draped mermaid statue rising at the plaza's heart, the very first thing any of them had ever laid eyes on, all those months ago, before they'd known anything at all about who or what had built this place.

"...Who is that?" Arista asked, following her gaze, genuinely realizing only now that she'd never actually asked.

Selen's expression softened into something reverent. "The first priest," she said. "The very first among my people to hold the trident, the very first to speak with Dryva directly. Before them, my people knew of him only as a presence in the deep waters, patient, watching, occasionally curious about the small, colorful things we built. It was the first priest who finally understood him properly, who established the journey to visit him, who taught my people how to actually listen."

Arista stared up at the statue, feeling something settle into place: the very first discovery she and her crew had ever made in this drowned city, the reason they'd built everything that followed, and it had been, this entire time, the founder of everything Selen's people still carried forward.

"...That's who she is," Arista said slowly, quiet with the sheer, unbroken weight of it. "That's who's been standing at the center of this city the entire time we've known it."

Then she noticed it properly, carved into the statue's weathered forehead, half-hidden beneath centuries of kelp they'd never fully cleared away, a small, familiar crescent.

"...There's a moon," she said. "Carved into her forehead. The same mark you carry."

Selen smiled, warm and quiet. "Every priest who has ever held the role bears it, the same way I do now. Hers was simply the very first."

Arista stared at the weathered crescent, feeling the full, unbroken chain of it land properly, generation after generation, the same mark, the same trident, the same quiet devotion, stretching back to this exact statue, standing patient and reverent at the heart of the city for as long as anyone had known it existed.

"...We built an entire tourist attraction," she said quietly, "around a woman we never even asked about."

"Now you know," Selen said, gentle, watching the crowd still pressed against the glass, watching her with the same wide-eyed wonder she'd once reserved entirely for stories. "And now, perhaps, so will they."