you know, for kids! - Printable Version

"Oh. We don't have those," Iceheart said. At least, she was fairly certain there weren't any signs up on land. If there were, she definitely missed them "There are lights on strings everywhere, though. They don't point anywhere."

He slowed to rest and she stopped by him, too. She wasn't sure if it would be polite or not to ask if he needed help or to even sit down next to him, so she stood patiently by thinking about the questions he asked. "I fall and it hurts," she answered about her wings. "If I spread them out, it doesn't hurt. Not everything has wings. The deer and rabbit don't. The fish don't." He didn't, but his fins did almost resemble them. Maybe swimming was a lot like flying-- but even then, Iceheart didn't exactly fly very well. She just... fell very nicely.

She was still absent-mindedly sniffing him when Undertow stuck his tongue out near her. It didn't occur to her that this was his way of smelling-- she simply flicked her own blue tongue out at him without thinking anything was particularly odd about the matter. She wasn't one to speak ill about someone else's culture.

"I don't know," she answered very honestly. It's not like dead fish were capable of telling her if being out of water hurt or not. "I'm sorry it feels heavy and slow."

Why didn't she swim, though? "Where I come from, the water is really cold. It hurts when you fall into it, so I don't swim there. I haven't tried to swim anywhere else." A beat. "I didn't intentionally swim where I come from either, though. I fell in. Maybe you're not supposed to fall in when you swim." She was half-recounting, half-asking Undertow's opinion-- he seemed like the expert on swimming, after all.

"I hunt rabbits and little deer. The big deer will kick me really hard, though, so just the little ones," Iceheart answered. "And I catch fish. Do you want one? I use magic."

Her tongue startled him, and he pulled back just a little, surprised. But--she was speaking, answering his questions, now; so he sort of sat half-upright, listening.

"Thanks," he said, at first, once she had finished. "It's not bad, though. Heavy but not-... bad." His snout, though, was tipped upward again. He was looking for the strings of lights, and--yeah, he could see them. At least, he thought he could. They were so, so far away--so high up. But were they on strings?

And why?

But there were other questions, too. And he had to take a minute to parse everything before speaking, again. "This water's warm. It won't hurt you. I think? I don't... know if you're supposed to fall in or not. I live in water." He slapped his tail, splashing the thin foam behind him, as if to demonstrate.

Yup. It was definitely water.

"I don't know what rabbit or deer means. I--was gonna ask but I think I asked too much already," he admitted, a bit bashfully. He'd been peppering her with questions, and he had so many more, too. He wanted to know why she had fewer eyes, or why she didn't light up like he did. He wanted to ask what the cold place she came from was like, and what a mountain was. But again... one thing at a time.

Or at least only two or three.

"I eat fish! -You do, too? Even though you don't swim? Wait--you make them with magic?" he asked, shocked by the concept. Then he turned, slither-waddling a little bit back into the water. "I would like fish! I hunt with magic too but I don't make fish, mine's-" and here Undertow tried to demonstrate, pressing his fins into the surf.

A soft crackle, like ice, spread from them, and he craned his head around to peer at Iceheart. "It makes my fins cold. Ice? Sort of, like your name! But--fins, and not my heart." Undertow nodded wisely.

Iceheart nodded along quietly to Undertow. He did live in water! She watched his tail flap in the water (yep, yeah, definitely water) for a beat before realizing he sounded like he was on the verge of apologizing. For asking questions? Her massive ears swivelled towards his face before her head followed suit. "It's okay," she said, blinking. "You can keep asking stuff. I know lots of things."

She didn't, but we move on.

"Deer are kind of like me, but they don't have wings. Some of them are the same size as me, and some of them are bigger. They all have these small, hard feet and big floppy ears. Rabbits are really small and really fast. They both have tiny little tails," she explained. "Rabbits don't do anything and deer can kick you really hard."

She could probably try swimming here, too-- but something about the water made her uneasy. Undertow was moving along anyway and Iceheart was more than happy to pursue. She was quickly shaking her head at the serpent though, "I don't make them, I catch them with magic," she clarified. "I can-- oh!"

Emotion-- real emotion --leaked into her tone at once. She knew this spell-- she could do it, too! Though her next words weren't as emotional as that single oh, the excitement was still palpable in her calming voice. "I can make my feet cold, too. I can make an ice-spike to catch fish with."

She pushed up and waded back into the water. "I can make myself wet, too, but I get really tired after that and I need a lot of water before I can do it again," she continued absently. There was a little dappled thing in the water drifting lazily, black-and-white and blind.

Iceheart concentrated, and she held her breath (because that always helped, somehow). She could feel magic tugging a muscle deep within her and from the water, ice began to crackle and form into a thick, jagged spike. It was a delicate sort of process; like a taut thread that could snap at any moment.

The icicle lurched and speared the fish straight through its muscular body. Iceheart took the ice-- melting rapidly --in her jaws and escorted it back to Undertow, where she used her forelimbs to un-skewer the mirrorfish from the spear. She offered it in front of his face on the sand. "Here," she said.

"I can use my claws, too, but it's less cool." The pun was obviously far from intended.

Whoa. He wanted to be able to do that! He took mental notes, only gently reaching out to take the fish beneath a clawed fin. And with a sense of fair play, he gnawed it quickly in half, offering half back out with a hopeful expression. "That was amazing! I want to learn that! -And thank you!" he exclaimed, all enthusiasm. The taste of fish was on his tongue, now, though. Hunger won out, and he started to scarf down the food--while speaking.

He'd not yet been taught not to talk with his mouth full.

"I c'n... throw water. Wif' my mouf," he managed, chewing fish bones in one side of his jaw, like a dog. He swallowed. "Don't think I can make... wet? But I've always been underwater," he added, thoughtfully. "I don't think we have deer or rabbits in the Black City. But-"

Bite. Chew.

"We haf krka... kra-"

...Swallow.

"Kraken! And Luckbites, and Water Crawlers, and Skullcrabs--they are creepy. And Lanternfish! There's other stuff--umm--that glows. The rays and the--uhh-..." He'd been told all their names, but... it was a lot, honestly. "...Lightstings? Those glow too! Like me," he added, proudly. "Down there it's so dark all you can see is stuff that lights up, like the glyph-stones. If you run into a Kraken or a Deep Death you don't see it."

Undertow had had a run-in with one of the latter, early on. It had been his closest scrape with death--and judging by the very slightly more somber way he shredded and gulped his next bite of fish, it had been terrifying, probably.

The lack of manners was completely lost on Iceheart, who was also all of four days old. She did take the half-fish, though, and she started to scarf it down with equal fervor and crunch-squelching as she cracked delicate fishbones between her teeth.

"'ow?" She asked, like she had any idea how her magic worked. Iceheart wanted to throw water around with her mouth, too, though-- that seemed fun. It didn't seem very useful for hunting or catching anything, but maybe not everything had to be about 'responsible use,' whatever that was.

Undertow kept talking and Iceheart was happy to listen, though as she chewed, she was getting increasingly lost. Kraken? Luckbites? Water crawlers and skullcrabs she could hazard a guess at-- but lightstrings? Deep death? The dragon was quickly throwing her head back to snap down the half-fish before she spoke.

"I don't know what those things are," she said, licking her jowls. "Like... most of them. Water crawlers and skullcrabs are crabs, right? But I don't know what... krakens and deep death is."

A beat of silence went by and Iceheart slowly sat down, tail flicking. "Why is it so different?" She asked, toneless but earnest. "Why are we so different? Why aren't we the same?"

As Iceheart had buckled to the task of describing "deer" and "rabbits," Undertow now set himself to properly defining the denizens of Fornax's deeps. "Crabs! Yes!" was how he started, which was not a very strong start, but still. "Skullcrabs look like skulls. Um. Head-bones." Just in case Iceheart didn't know. "Crawlers are like crabs, too, but without a shell, and they're long instead of round." (Not a crab at all, in other words. But Undertow did not yet know the word for 'shrimp.') "Deep Death's... a big crab? Sorta. But they grow grass on them and hide, so you don't know they're there until they grab you." He didn't know they were actually giant water-spiders, complete with underwater webs and venom. He didn't know what a spider was.

Therefore: crab.

"Krakens are big long things. They're really flexible and have lots of long arms with suckers, and a really sharp beak. If they grab you I heard they can rip you up. I didn't get grabbed yet," which--in retrospect--Undertow regretted saying. It was obvious, given that he'd not been "ripped up" at all.

"And I don't know why we're different," he went on, tone slowing. He was a little distressed by this, actually. He didn't know much of anything, really. And who was there to ask-? The one who'd been present at his hatching he'd lost track of soon after, and it wasn't like there was any sort of giant, glowing, underwater tome prepared at the City's bottom to instruct new hatches on how the world worked.

"The water, though, it's-" and he tipped his head back a little, jaw parting as he focused on his magic.

Undertow focused for a minute, and then the gemstone at his snout--the three small horns there--gleamed a bright blue. An instant later, the water around his body exploded in all directions--a chaotic wave that flung him backward, landing him upside-down and flailing in the water with a sea-choked cry of pain. His scales instantly seemed to shrink and shrivel... lucky for him he was still technically in the ocean.

Whatever he'd been trying to do, it almost certainly hadn't been that.

Iceheart resisted the question, 'what do skulls look like,' because something deep and instinctual told her that she wasn't really meant to know what skulls looked like. Head-bones was enough. She listened regardless, ears high and flicking. She glanced down Undertow for a beat as he mentioned the Deep Death's and kraken's tendency to grab. It might have been obvious to him, but it wasn't to her.

"Oh," was all she said for a moment. Something about their differences was... sad, though not in any particular way that she could put her finger on. Claw on. It wasn't that she wanted everyone to look exactly the same, but the Black City seemed so... weird and strange to her. Everything above water must have seemed so weird and strange to him.

He spoke again, but Iceheart barely heard him. She was completely elsewhere when he suddenly cried out and water went crashing everywhere. The dragon stood up at once, alarmed and uncertain how she was supposed to help him.

He looked small. Shrink-wrapped. Did he need water? How do you make water? HOW DO YOU MAKE WATER?

Iceheart tried to call for magic but nothing came. What was she supposed to do now? She circled around Undertow in a mild panic, eyes enormous. "Are you dying? What do I do? How do I help? Do you need to go back to water? Do I drag you there?"

For a moment, Undertow thrashed like a fish out of water, despite actually being in the water. Shallow, yes, but he was still in the hissing surf. Then he went still--not dead, though.

His long, drawn-out groan attested to that.

He didn't swear. He didn't know any swears. He didn't speak, either, because nothing short of a swear could've possibly expressed how absolutely awful he felt, just then. It took him a moment of slow breathing, upside-down floating in the shallows, before he regained enough of himself--and enough hydration--to croak a few words.

"My magic bit me," he managed, his tone hurt, firing a look of utter betrayal at the furred dragon who was circling him.

Iceheart didn't really know how to respond to this. She'd felt magic not responding and sometimes there was a twinge of pain, like a muscle that had been pulled and exerted too much, but it never felt like... a bite.

"Okay," was all she said for a beat. What else was there to say?

She stopped circling Undertow, lingering near his head again. "I'm gonna shove you deeper into the water," she said before she bowed her pale, broad head and began gently shoving Undertow out of the shallows and into deeper waters. He was heavier than she expected-- but she tried it nonetheless. It'd fix him, right?

Once he was in respectable waters, and Iceheart was up to her shoulders in hot water again, she stopped and sat back. "Has your magic bitten you before?" She asked. "Is that what it does? I met someone who's magic made them hear things that aren't real." This was put forth very matter-of-factly.

He was also very bad at catching fish. Speaking of-- "Do you need more fish?"

"Okay," but the word was nearly cut off as Iceheart helpfully shoved him deeper. He wasn't... entirely sure this was necessary, but the water was refreshing, at least, so he didn't say anything to oppose it. "Um--thanks." Because that seemed polite, at least.

"It's never bitten me. -They hear fake stuff?" he asked, twisting around to stare over his shoulder, eel-like, at Iceheart in amazement. "-Like what? And uh, no, but. I owe you half a fish I think." That seemed fair. He'd grab one, too.

...In a minute. After he'd recovered.

There was more he wanted to ask. So much more. And he would. He would! But he needed a moment to get his head on straight. He wanted to ask more about the cold place Iceheart had mentioned--what it looked like, for example, and whether it had much water. And he wanted to ask what other sort of places were out there, above the water. Or maybe even more water-places he'd never even heard of. But for the moment, the lingering effects of his backfired magic--and the idea of auditory hallucinations--were taking up the forefront of his mind.