The Pilgrim School

Nettle tasked her guild with a second steamboat almost immediately, confident in the timeline despite the sheer scale of what still needed building.

"We already know how to build one of these," she said, already drafting the specifications. "Should be finished well before the houses and the tow system are ready. No reason to bottleneck the whole project waiting on a single ship to handle everything."

At the shoreline workshop, Arista was working through the population math, and the numbers were worse than she'd initially hoped.

"...If we're housing five hundred mermaids," she said, frowning at her calculations, "even grouping them ten or twenty to a home, that's still twenty-five to fifty separate houses per rest stop. Times five stops. That's not a modest little waypoint system anymore. That's an entire secondary settlement scattered across the ocean floor."

Selen, listening from the water's edge, tilted her head. "...Five hundred?"

Arista glanced up from her calculations. "That's the number you gave me."

"I told you roughly five hundred of my people were physically capable of making the pilgrimage." Selen paused, something working itself out behind her expression. "...You meant how many would make the pilgrimage at once."

Arista stared at her. "...Yes, Selen."

"...Ah."

Claire slowly lowered her pencil while Arista closed her eyes for a moment.

"How many, Selen?"

"Usually around fifty," Selen said. "Occasionally as many as a hundred."

Arista opened her eyes again. "...Fifty."

"Yes."

"Not five hundred."

"Not at once, no."

Arista looked down at the calculations covering her workbench, then back at Selen. "...That would have been useful information."

"You asked how many of us could make the pilgrimage," Selen replied, as if the distinction were perfectly reasonable.

Arista stared at her for another second before the realization finally caught up with her. "...I did, didn't I?"

Selen gave a small nod. Somewhere behind Arista, Bram made a suspicious choking noise that was very clearly a badly disguised laugh.

Perhaps wisely choosing to ignore him, Selen continued. "My people never traveled the pilgrimage route together as one great mass. We traveled in schools, usually around fifty at a time, occasionally closer to a hundred, staggered throughout the seasons. Each school made the journey once a year."

"...So Dryva was worshipped continuously," Arista said slowly, the shape of it clicking into place. "Just never by everyone at once. Different groups, different times of year, spread out instead of concentrated."

"Precisely. It kept the pilgrimage sustainable. Smaller groups placed less strain on each rest point, and Dryva received company steadily throughout the year rather than one overwhelming visit followed by a long silence."

Arista sat back, looking again at the nightmare of numbers she'd been building around. "...That changes everything. I don't need to house five hundred people at every stop. I need to plan around smaller groups moving through at different times."

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Claire was already recalculating. "If we design around ten people to a house, that's roughly five to ten houses per stop instead of twenty-five to fifty. Fewer if some of the larger layouts can comfortably hold more." She looked over the revised numbers, visibly more satisfied with them. "That's an entirely different scale of project."

Arista stared at the calculation for a moment before letting out a breath. "...Yeah. That I can work with."

Then something else Selen had said finally caught up with her.

"Schools," Arista repeated, looking toward her. "You actually travel in schools."

"That is the word, yes," Selen confirmed, amusement creeping into her voice at Arista's obvious delight.

Bram grinned. "...Let's call this project the Pilgrim School, then."

Arista snorted. "...That's a terrible pun."

"It's an excellent pun," Bram corrected, entirely unrepentant. "Groups of mermaids traveling together, called schools, on a pilgrimage. The Pilgrim School practically named itself."

"I hate that I don't have a better name," Arista admitted, laughing.

"You never do. That's why I'm here."

Selen watched the exchange, increasingly entertained by the easy banter. "...I find I rather like the name too," she admitted. "It captures something true about how we travel, even if Bram arrived at it through a joke."

"See?" Bram said, delighted. "Even she approves."

Arista shook her head and looked back down at Claire's revised numbers, then across the five rest-stop locations marked along the route. Five to ten houses at each, smaller groups arriving throughout the year, and no need to build five miniature cities across the ocean floor.

"...Okay," she said, looking over the revised numbers. "Now we know what we're actually building for."

With the scale of the project finally under control, Arista pushed the population calculations aside and pulled the five preliminary house designs closer. They already knew how the structures could be built and transported. Now they needed to decide how each one would actually be used.

Her notes from the gathering house sat beside the designs, filled with details Selen had helped them understand.

"...The grooves are non-negotiable," Arista said. "Water circulation channels, carved into the walls, keeping the space comfortable without stagnation. Selen was very clear about what they were for, and if people are actually going to live in these places, I'm not leaving something that fundamental out."

Claire nodded, sketching the grooves into the base design. "Basically ventilation, except we're moving water instead of air. Continuous, gentle flow. No dead pockets where the water just sits and grows stale."

"Exactly. Every structure gets them, regardless of what the building itself is for."

Bram studied the rough layout for the five rest stops. "...Are all the houses at each stop identical, or are you thinking different purposes for different buildings?"

Arista considered that, an idea already forming. "...I was thinking about splitting it. Most of the buildings at each stop could be purely for sleeping. Private rest spaces, sized for the smaller groups traveling together. But one building per stop should be different. A gathering space. Somewhere everyone can eat together, socialize, tell stories, whatever they actually want to do before moving on."

"Like a longhouse," Bram said, recognizing the shape of it immediately. "Old Viking halls back home. One big communal space where everyone ate and spent time together instead of disappearing into separate quarters."

"That's the idea." Arista looked back at the route map. "They travel in schools. If the whole group is making the journey together, they should have somewhere to actually be together at the end of the day."

Claire revised the layout, adding a larger central structure alongside the smaller sleeping houses.

"...The community house would need a very different interior," she said. "Wider open space, a central gathering point, probably the circular alcove Selen showed us in the gathering house. The one meant for evening stories and shared company."

"Yes," Arista said, sketching it into the design. "Borrow the design language from that room, just scale it for the smaller groups using these stops."

"...That would feel familiar," Selen said. "The circulation grooves, separate places for rest, and a shared gathering space. Those things belong together."

"That's what I'm trying for," Arista said. "I don't know every detail of how your people would have built one of these. But I don't want to hand you efficient boxes and call the job finished."

Selen smiled. "Then you are asking the right questions."

Bram looked over the developing layout. "...I think this works. Somewhere to sleep, somewhere to gather. Simple."

Arista sat back and surveyed the design. The scale was modest, the purpose specific, and somehow that made it more satisfying. These weren't monuments. They were places people would actually use.

"...One long hall at each stop, then," she said, grinning as she reached for fresh materials. "Underwater, because apparently that's my life now."