It was hot, Iceheart quickly discovered.
A thick, insulated coat was all well and good in someplace like Ursa, but the further that she got from the mountains, the warmer and warmer the rooms got. Polaris and Orion were bearable, and the tunnel leading towards Pisces was very nice, but this new room she'd find behind an ajar, stone door was absolutely scalding. Iceheart had known water to be freezing cold, but the huge enbankment here almost seemed to be steaming with warmth.
Iceheart was steaming, too, as she plunged further into the room towards where the waves crested against the pebble shore. She stuck out just a little too harshly against the grey and greens of rock and moss that Fornax had to offer, her stark-white pelt flat with dampness and sticking out in all directions. She was relatively certain (as she often was, in her four days alive) that water meant one thing: food.
Fish, specifically. And she did like a good fish.
This shallow water didn't have any that she could see, though-- so she started noisily trudging deeper in, her thick claws over-lifting to wade through the waves crashing into shore. The water wasn't as hot as she thought it was-- and once her belly got wet, she mostly stopped noticing how warm it was in the room. Up to her shoulders in Fornax's ocean, she squinted down at the surface with her ears flat against her skull. For now, all she could see were her own feet.
@Undertow
Iceheart heard splashing, a huge grunt, and another splash. She didn't dare lift her eyes from the water, however-- she knew fish, even if they were small and dumb, were very fast. If a fish came over when she wasn't looking, it might see her and run to tell its fish-friends that someone was trying to eat them. If fish can do such a thing.
What Iceheard did not anticipate however, was a different kind of fish simply taking a jab at her.
Finned forelimb met a broad, furry one and the dragon leapt immediately, gaining some several feet vertically in the air before crashing back down to the water like a meteor striking the earth. Water flew in all directions as Iceheart thrashed in utter shock, tail lashing and limbs swinging without aim. It was a solid twenty seconds before the dragon realized she was not actually under attack and fell still, still mostly-submerged in the ocean.
There were four eyes in the water that were attached to a great, black... thing. A fish, but obviously and distinctly, not a fish. If there was anything Iceheart had learned from her short time alive, too, it was that things that were much bigger than she was were not very easy to eat: but unlike anything that wandered Ursa, this one was not trying to eat or flee from her. For now, at least.
Her mouth gaped, then formed coherent words. Where there should have been clear audacity, there was nothing: the toneless, parting of information as if Undertow was not previously aware of the fact: "you touched me."
She slid up, then, water rippling and lurching with her movements, to stand up properly on all four limbs. She pointed her muzzle towards the general direction of Undertow and sniffed-- but she smelled nothing but water and heat. "Who are you?"
@Undertow
Iceheart's ears lifted and swivelled forward like satellite antenna looking for signal. The not-fish fish was speaking underwater, though before she could try to process what he was saying, he was repeating and speaking more. Iceheart had another, idle sniff. He smelled like fish and wet things and the cold.
She suppressed the urge to eat him.
"I'm Iceheart," she said, her voice still entirely devoid of tone. "What's the Black City?" She could make guesses, of course-- a city that was made entirely of black things, like dark rock and... other black things, whichever you make a city from. She could make a guess, considering it seemed like Undertow had never been out of water before (and his subsequent question to her) that it was somewhere in the ocean.
Her tail flicked, sending droplets pattering across the water behind her. "No. I live... somewhere cold. With snow," she answered. "And mountains, and deer, and rabbits."
She had to think on Undertow's next question, though. Her pelt, clinging tight to her body, drip-drip-dripped water beneath her. She'd seen a few things, but hardly everything. There were so many tunnels to wander through and explore and all those tunnels would probably lead to even more. Maybe they never ended at all.
"There's... a room with a city, and shiny rocks in the ceiling," she said, and added-- "it's dry. There's a room with a big, blue rock and a river with fish in it. There's a room that's all waterfalls and wet like this one, but it's cold, too." It wasn't very nice. Iceheart liked the dry kind of cold, thank you.
"Don't you wander?" She asked. "Explore?"
@Undertow
... was it?
Iceheart had never thought about it. Iceheart simply knew that her name was Iceheart, and that was that. She'd never thought about what it meant beyond the sounds-- perhaps that was what Undertow was referring to, that it sounded nice? Or did he mean that Iceheart, a heart made of ice, sounded cool (no pun intended)?
"Okay," she parroted after a pause that tipped on the edge of just slightly too long. "You too."
Undertow was moving on, so at least there was that. She felt a little pang of empathy as he spoke-- he didn't really seem to know what to make of everything, and Iceheart supposed that was fair enough. If Iceheart found a city in the water, she might not know what to make of that, either. She shook herself out and sat back on her haunches, massive ears swivelling idly.
"You find new things," she said, and though she tried very hard to be comforting, her inability to inflect any reasonable tone made it more difficult than it should have been. "You go somewhere and find a new thing. And I'm a new thing. And you found me. So I think you're doing exploring right."
"You have to find tunnels and go down them," the dragon added after a heartbeat of thought. "Tunnels lead to big rooms where there's lots of new things. Are there tunnels in the water?" She made the bold assumption that even if Undertow managed to make it to land, he wouldn't be going very far with those not-feet-- and even if he did, would he be okay staying out of water for long?
Fish that Iceheart had taken out of water usually died. And on top of that, if Iceheart tried to put them back before they'd die, they'd sort of... float on the top of the water like they couldn't get back in. Iceheart didn't want that to happen to Undertow.
@Undertow
"What are glyph-stones?" Iceheart asked. Unlike a Black City, she couldn't even begin to imagine what they were meant to be. A stone, presumably, but that was about it...
Undertow started wriggling to shore and Iceheart pushed herself up to follow, white tail flicking uneasily. "Maybe you shouldn't..." she started, but trailed off. There was a vague understanding that Undertow knew his body better than she did, but it didn't stop her from being worried. Undertow was asking more questions, too. "Oh. Yeah," she said. She didn't mind being asked things.
Though, she wasn't initially sure what he was talking about. "My fins?" She echoed, confusion only just breaking through the shield of monotone. "I don't swim. I tried to swim but it was cold and it hurt. Do you mean my wings? They're not for swimming. They're for falling. Like... if I fall off a big drop, I spread them out and I float down."
She shook herself out again as Undertow started slithering onto land, though it did very little for making her feel dry. "Doesn't it hurt? Fish die when they come out of water," she asked. "They can't breathe." She padded next to the serpent, sniffing him lightly like she expected him to immediately smell like death.
"The tunnel here went up. More tunnels might go up. I've only been in a few of them. I think there's more," she answered.
@Undertow