i. hot tubs are really pots of people soup (hatch thread)

The sand of Lacerta's beachfront is a place rarely disturbed these days; save for the occasional wandering pugna, or those skimmers that collectively wheel about on the warmer currents above. In this case, there is nothing around but the sand, the surf, and the shine of something violently green slowly being unearthed by the pulse of the waves. Settled there where it has been growing for some months, split down the middle after one too many large waves, is the greenstone of a chrysalis.

The body inside writhes and wakes, and discovers quickly that its solarium prison is not something of beauty, but of pain. It curls in towards itself and then releases the tension of its rubbery body, striking the shell from inside with the leading edge of a spinal growth - unaware that this is a fin, or that the fin in question is filigree'd with the same gem material.

The strike is all that is required to finish the breaking process. As the tide pulls away at the chrysalis one large segment cleaves free and drifts. Water rushes in and the pressure of this moment scoops the newborn gembound out of its captivity and in to the waiting sea of Fornax. Within minutes the creature unfurls thin fin-arms and has adjusted to the weightless feeling of the water.

Overhead the waves churn. Beneath the surface the shark feels an intimate sort of safety, coasting on a current.

Fornax had to be the most mysterious of the rooms in the caves. Even Whale, who spent all her time underwater out of necessity, had not known all its secrets. She'd thought the Gembound had unlocked its secret when they'd discovered the Black City in their quest to free Artio, but it turned out that even one cave out of many, in a cave system that was enclosed by stone in the end and (presumably) smaller than the surface world, could be far more expansive than she thought.

She'd crossed the sea only to find a massive thirty-meter gap in the wall, leading to a whole other room, shrouded with fog so dense she could barely see when she stuck the tip of her head out the water. The water was shallow here, so close to the island's beaches, but Whale dared to swim a little further, driven by the desire to see more.

The cracking of gemstone caught her ear amid the sound of ocean waves and distant shrieks. She followed the sound until she found the same current Melebrios had, and the young shark came into view. Whale's heart jumped with eagerness; it was rare that she could find a Gembound who looked like her.

"Looked like" in this case being used rather loosely, but it was a reasonable description when there were so few sapient sea-creatures around.

"Hello!" she sang enthusiastically, the sound of the bellow ringing through the water. "I am Whale! Who are you?"

Beneath the surface of the water, things were calmer. They weren't perfectly quiet but they were somewhere close to the ideal of silence, with an undulation to every movement that the newborn felt, rather than heard. That is, until a great swell of movement made the water shift in a heavy way; it did not rush this deep below, however the shark could feel a stirring of momentum and was intrigued by the sensation. A darkness swelled around him - ascending at first, as if it meant to swallow him whole.

The smaller of the two aquatic creatures moved hastily out of the way of the dark patch of sea, and soon enough found himself descending beside a very large, wrinkled, wide eye. The pupil was trained upon him. He continued to move forward (more out of necessity than desire; some intrinsic knowledge that he had to keep moving ahead no matter what, in the liminal space of this sea); as he moved, a tremulous sound erupted from the massive creature at his side.

The voice rang like a gong through the depths of Fornax. It was so loud! The newborn would have raised a squall of its own had it the capacity. Instead, as it grimaced and closed its eyes to an obvious wince, the shark twisted in one direction and then another, sweeping through the water and putting as much space between itself and the giant @Whale as it could.

The shark's magic comes in to play as soon as it feels the panic set in: an instantaneous flare of light begins along the ventral side of Mele, sweeping along the demarcation line, and finishing along the top edge of his tail fin. After, as the sound of the stranger's voice becomes less and less and the ringing in his sensitive ears fades away, the energy is confined to the thread of gemstone along his dorsal fin, where it strobes.

Guilt twisted in her the moment Whale saw the shark flinch at her voice; she should have known most creatures didn't speak at the volume a whale did. But she'd assumed, hadn't thought, had been so happy at the prospect of a sea creature like her that she'd jumped straight to calling out a greeting without consideration.

The flashing patterns on the shark reminded her of the Lightstings she'd encountered as a juvenile. She waited until they calmed slightly, before humming out a "sorry about that" as quietly as she was able. She didn't try to close the distance between them, both in the hopes that the increased distance would be easier on the poor shark's eardrums and because she remembered exactly how well getting close to an agitated Lightsting was likely to go. She didn't think of the shark as one of the jellyfish creatures, exactly. As far as Whale knew, only Greater Gembound emerged from chrysali like the shark did, and like she had. But the shark was only a child, and she didn't want to frighten them or expect them to patiently tolerate a frightening creature.

She would simply hover in the water, awaiting any answer that came.