After a bit of shopping around on Gateway Island, and leaving with a mixed feeling of getting horribly cheated on mundane items, and getting some incredible bargains on others, Envoy is all set for her sea borne adventure aboard the living ship known as the Coy Mermaid, piloted by Prince-Captain Rashad, son of the Emir.

The quarters are most certainly less than spacious – Basically, there is the cockpit, an airlock, some basic facilities (disturbing, perhaps, inside a living creature, but necessary nonetheless), a single cabin that Prince-Captain Rashad has graciously allowed Envoy the use of, and various strange compartments in which to stow gear.

Presently, the urgan is on course, though Envoy is still in the process of finding places to put her belongings for the journey.

Envoy finishes up stowing the last of her gear – some waterproof bags – once she finds another vacant cubby. Given the amount of liquid spirits she's encountered in most of the storage spaces, she begins to wonder at how reliable the fresh-water supply is on the urgan. Her task complete, she leaves the spartan quarters for the cockpit, both to watch how Rashad pilots the beast and to formally introduce herself if the Prince hasn't heard of her.

As Envoy finds herself stooping to half-crawl into the low cockpit area, she finds the Prince curled up and taking a catnap in the pilot's chair, while, outside, the urgan skims along close enough to the surface that ripples of light blue crisscross above, and the orb of the sun can be roughly made out. At least it's not storming.

Rather than disturb the Khatta, who is probably tired from getting things underway so quickly, Envoy takes the opportunity to examine the urgan's guidance system.

The guidance system looks fairly straightforward … if only there were labels. A stick here, some buttons there, all quite organized, really.

Out of the corner of her eye, Envoy notices some movement near the edge of the translucent canopy of the cockpit. But then, that seems to happen a lot. Fish, after all, are to be found in ample supply in the ocean.

Envoy turns her attention back to the world beyond the canopy, to see what might be sharing the water with them. She wonders if urgans can live on Sinai. It would certainly make contacting the Cephieds easier.

As Envoy turns around to look, she catches a couple of ears … and then a small, kitten-like face attached to them, with large and expressive eyes, violet fur, and orange tabby stripes. It peers in at Envoy … then bashfully ducks its head, disappearing beyond the rim of the back of the canopy again.

Pressing up against the membrane, Envoy tries to get an angle that will let her see the Mariner better. It's her first sighting of one of the natives, but she can't tell from the face alone whether it is one of the Abyssinian ones or a dangerous Siren.

As Envoy moves toward the fore of the cockpit a bit, she gets a better view of a mer-kitten clinging to the back of the urgan, hiding its face against the urgan's hide and swishing its tailed lower section back and forth. Then, the mer-kitten looks up again, and its eyes widen at the sight of Envoy. Its mouth opens up in a squeal of both fright and delight somehow mixed together as it lets go just long enough to slip back and grab onto the back of the urgan's dorsal fin, and "hide" there.

A curious rumble echoes through the membranes on each side of the cockpit, and the angling of the floor underneath Envoy's feet suggests that the urgan is working its way toward the surface.

Figuring that the creature needs to take a fresh breath, Envoy turns to the captain and gives his shoulder a little nudge. "Rashad?" she asks. "We have company. There is a young Mariner swimming with us."

"Snnnx – hmmm?" Prince-Captain Rashad blinks and then stretches, yawning widely, as the urgan breaks the surface of the water, and the mer-cat scrambles about on the whale's back. It's daylight – nearing to noon – and the ocean is nearly featureless, horizon to horizon, save for a few reddish islands off to the port of the urgan's present destination.

A couple of very mundane-looking seagulls fly overhead, as further emphasis that there's land nearby, and much further above, a creature looking something like a manta ray soars along … like a manta ray, that is, except it happens to be flying, and is painted in colors as wild and contrasting as the mer-kitten hanging onto the back of the urgan.

Envoy nudges the Khatta once more. "We've surfaced. Do we need to take on fresh air or anything? Can I go out and talk to the Mariner?"

The Prince-Khatta smacks his mouth and rubs at his eyes. "Mmm? Sure, honey. Anything you want," he mumbles, then lies back down again, and starts to get comfortable once more.

Meanwhile, the mer-kitten hurriedly scurries right on top of the blow-hole of the urgan. The walls of the cockpit flex slightly.

Taking that as permission, Envoy quickly returns to the cabin and puts on her swimsuit, which is just a simple white wetsuit with most of the back cut out for her wings. That done, she also retrieves one of the breather critters from a water-filled storage cubby in case she needs to dive, and goes to work the airlock. "Please let me know when you are going to dive again, Coy," she says to the urgan, hoping it understands the sentiment.

A moment later, Envoy is in the fleshy chamber of the lower airlock (Mariners must have never really been concerned with staying dry, after all, by having a topside airlock), which fills halfway with water, then opens up in the bottom to allow her into the surprisingly warm waters below. It is not terribly deep here, for she can see the urgan's shadow passing over a sandy shallow some meters below.

The Aeolun takes a deep breath, and then dunks under the water to pull herself out into the ocean, where she can simply float up to the surface.

Just as Envoy breaks the surface and finds herself gliding alongside the much more slowly moving urgan, she witnesses a geyser spray of air and water shooting up … with a flailing mer-kitten squealing and doing somersaults in the air before belly-flopping back into the water in a huge splash that would have drenched Envoy if she weren't soaking wet already.

"So that's why you came to the blowhole," Envoy comments, grinning. Keeping her wings flat to the surface of the water, she starts to paddle her way towards where the kitten landed.

The kitten bobs about in the waters, looking a bit redder on its belly thanks to the belly-flop, but grinning nearly ear-to-ear nonetheless. It squeals at Envoy, and calls out in a strange, high-pitched and only remotely feline voice, "Hiiiiii!"

"Hello!" Envoy calls back, and waves with the hand not holding onto the breather mask. "My name is Envoy."

The mer-kitten spins about in the water, sunlight glinting off of a number of shiny things hanging around its neck and arms – bangles, shells, and pieces of junk tied together with woven cords of some sort of seaweed-like plant. "Hiiiiii, Envoy! I'm Riusha! Want to trade?" At this, the kitten stops spinning, and whips through the water, weaving over toward Envoy. "I have pretty shells!"

"I don't have anything to trade you, I'm afraid," Envoy admits, having come out with just her wetsuit and the breather, "unless you like songs?"

The mer-kitten smiles at this, and claps its paws together. "Yes yes yes!"

Envoy takes a moment to choose something a mermaid might like, and decides to try a snatch of whale-song from her database, thinking the deep, low-pitched tones would carry best.

The kitten listens with rapt attention, eyes going wide at the strange noises coming out of the winged ki'rin … but then its expression fades to a frown. "Awwww! That sounds so sad!"

The Aeolun blinks at the remark, since she was sure the song had to do with the weather. "Would you like something happier then?"

The kitten starts to shake its head, but then nods. "Yes, yes, something happier!"

Envoy thinks for a few moments, and then sings a jaunty tune about why it's so much better to live under the sea, where the seaweed is always greener and various fish play musical instruments.

The kitten seems to receive Envoy's song quite well, as it happily splashes in the water, bobbing to the music. In fact, the urgan even seems to join in, making reverberating noises in the water … but then Envoy notices that the urgan seems to have picked up speed, and is leaving her behind, partway into her song.

Envoy eeps, and starts to paddle after the retreating whale. "It's leaving without me!" she laments, and tries to put on the breather critter, since her only chance of catching the urgan is underwater where her wings won't be so awkward.

"Wait!" the mer-kitten squeals. "You didn't finish your song!" Just then, Envoy notices something stirring in the water just behind the mer-kitten … and a patch of white just underneath the surface.

Still struggling with the mask, Envoy widens her eyes and points behind the kitten with her free hand, making urgent motions towards the disturbance.

The kitten blinks, then looks around, and lets out a shriek as a toothy maw breaks the surface of the water. The mer-kitten flips, narrowly missing the jaws of the sea borne predator, disappearing with a slap of its tail and a spray of water. The toothy horror flails about and rolls … then barrels forward toward Envoy!

Abandoning the idea of diving, Envoy spreads her wings and backbeats against the water in an attempt to both pull away from the monster and get herself airborne.

Alas, Envoy hasn't quite mastered the art of getting airborne from the water (come to think of it, she's not had much chance at all to even learn how to properly swim), and just flounders about helplessly. She doesn't see the white patch … but she does feel something large bump against her leg – and it does not feel like the mer-kitten, and the urgan is definitely accounted for (at a lengthening distance ahead).

Envoy lets out a low-pitched bellow and tries to swim forward over the top of the predator, pushing hard with her legs in case they can find some purchase on its back. She hopes Riusha is out of danger … or that the mer-cat's parents are close by and well armed!

Instead, Envoy finds herself floundering again, and she feels a sharp pain in her leg, and the next moment, she's underwater, being thrashed about violently. She's underwater with a very shark-like creature that for the moment seems entirely comprised of jaw and fang (though it's quite certain that there's a tail on the other end), with a couple of beady black eyes and gills on each side.

Desperately, Envoy beats against the monster with her arms and wings, trying to poke its eye or hit some sensitive spot to make it let her go!

Envoy hits something soft with her foot, and feels the creature flinch. The jarring action is very painful … and it takes a moment for her to realize that it has let go – at least for the moment, though it's still uncomfortably close, and she's still under the water without having had time to take a proper breath.

Pulling towards the surface with her arms and wings, Envoy tries to pull her wounded leg up against her body to offer it some protection.

Somehow, she makes it, gasping for air, surrounded by water that is disconcertingly more red than she remembers it. The urgan is about halfway between herself and the line of red islands, and in that direction, she can make out a few other shapes splashing in the water. More predators? Well, at least the urgan doesn't seem to be steering away from them. Envoy sees a patch of white underneath the water again …

Envoy takes a deep breath and ducks under the water, trying to dodge her persistent foe. This time, she tries to spread her wings fully once submerged – if rays can fly underwater, then she hopes she can manage it as well.

Her wings don't seem to quite make her swim like a ray. Maybe if she works at it. However, she does manage to get out of the way of the teeth of the predator, her toes trailing precariously close to the predator's snapping maw.

Reaching out with both arms, Envoy tries to wrap them around the fish's tail as she comes alongside it, and yanks her feet back away from its mouth.

Envoy manages to get her arms around the beast's tail and gives it a sharp kick in the eye with her good leg, mainly to give her a boost so she can turn her body to trail alongside but she certainly can't risk missing the opportunity to strike back. Once she's riding the fish, she pulls in her wings and attempts to work her way further up its body.

The shark-thing flails about again, but Envoy gets it and gets it good in the eye. One moment, she's on its back … and the next, she's flipped into the air, landing soon thereafter on her back in the water. As she tries to regain her bearings, just as it seems about time for the creature to make a snack of her … well … it doesn't. It's gotten awfully quiet, all of a sudden. (Bleeding profusely doesn't generate much noise.)

Envoy takes a deep breath and lets it out in a moan. Spreading her wings to keep her afloat on her back, she pulls up her wounded leg to assess the damage, hoping the shark finally decided she wasn't worth the effort.

It looks like she's had a bite taken out of her, all right. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, Envoy is having trouble keeping conscious. She doesn't notice any sign of the predator … but the forms she saw earlier are getting closer. More mer-cats? Hopefully friendly ones.

Laying back and keeping her leg as elevated as she can, Envoy chides herself while she can still think clearly. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just because I'm on Child's quest doesn't mean I should think like her all the time." From this point on, she realizes, she'll have to second-guess all of her decisions, forcing herself to think them through from all the angles she normally would have considered automatically before losing her Aspects.

Envoy hears several voices calling out, too indistinct for her to make out clearly. But then, she hears someone call "Envoy". Now, her reputation has preceded her before, but not this far out, surely.

Closing her eyes, the Aeolun tries to focus on the voices over the pounding of what's left of her blood. Was that Riusha's voice she heard?

Envoy feels hands touching her arms … and then she slips off into unconsciousness, vaguely hearing a very sad, and higher-pitched rendition of a whale song that she seems to recall had something to do with the weather…

Envoy awakens to find herself floating in a shallow pool, rimmed with a frame of shells, colored stones and something resembling ivory, underneath a gently rippling domed ceiling that seems to somehow suggest the form of a jellyfish's body in its translucence … but though it's soon apparent that she's under the sea, it's also apparent that there is air to breathe here … and that her leg is wrapped up in seaweed and tingles oddly.

The air reverberates with whale song … or, perhaps more accurately, urgan song. (The similarities are there, but they're different in some fairly significant ways, after all.)

The Aeolun's stomach wakes up as well, demanding meat to replace what she's lost – preferably shark meat, but it's really not all that picky. Realizing that sitting up would just cause her to flounder and get dizzy, Envoy remains motionless, calling out instead. "Hello?"

There's a stirring of water, as Envoy's caretaker swims over – a lavender mer-cat with tresses of crimson, and adorned with a complex arrangement of seashells of similar color. "Praise the Mother, you are awake," she says, in a dialect close enough to Khattan that Envoy can piece it together easily enough with her impressive linguistic skills. "You heal very quickly."

"Yes," Envoy agrees. "Although having a safe place to recover certainly helps." She turns her head to smile to the Mariner. "Thank you for bringing me here. I'm not very good in the water yet."

"You will learn," the mer-cat says with conviction. "I am Triesa, and you have met my daughter Riusha. We are grateful that you saved her from the devourer – and that you live for us to show our gratitude."

"You are most welcome," Envoy says, glad to hear for certain that the little mer-cat escaped. "The urgan I was in was heading in this direction. Do you know if it has stopped here? It is captained by Prince Rashad."

"Yes. The urgan retreated to our harbor," Triesa says blandly. "Your captain is well rested."

Envoy closes her eyes as her stomach rumbles. "Ah … that's good to hear. I wouldn't want to be left behind. I hope he isn't too upset with me."

"Do you feel able to eat? I can bring you something," Triesa offers. "We even have some 'butter' from the ground-dwellers. I understand that your kind like it for dipping devourer meat in."

Envoy smiles and nods her head. "That would be most welcome, Triesa. My struggle with the devourer took a bit out of me."

Triesa smiles in return to Envoy, and disappears into the water surrounding the "island" that Envoy is resting in a miniature harbor of. Some time later, Envoy is seated with Triesa, Riusha and a larger mer-cat – Arina. The names have no meaning that Envoy can discern – they seem mere collections of sound to her ears. The mer-cats seem inclined to eat their food raw, but they have been exposed enough to "ground-dweller" customs to have cooked Envoy's meat, and seasoned it pleasantly, though the seaweed takes some getting used to.

The Mariners recline on rocks situated partway out of the water, as they dine, in no particular arrangement (there's no table, in any case), and the scraps are tossed to an amphibious reptile that looks vaguely like a Bromthen Naga, only with an almost centipede-like number of appendages, and no hint of opposable thumbs.

Envoy tries not to appear too ravenous as she eats, hardly caring what the food tastes like. "Your home is very beautiful," she says between helpings, quite honestly. "Are you merchants?"

"We trade with the walkers," Arina says. "I spend much time learning the value of things to the walkers, and of the many machines they have to offer for trade."

Ears perked, Envoy asks, "Their machines will work for you underwater?" Other than spices and fabrics, she hadn't thought the Mariners would have use for much else from off-world.

"Not most of them, no," Arina says, "not half as well as they claim. But they have many good weapons for fighting off the Sirenae. They have metal, and ways to make it not rust."

"The Sirenae," Envoy asks, "they don't use weapons do they?"

"Not such as we do, or the walkers," Triesa answers, breaking her characteristic silence displayed so far at the meal, to take over the conversation from her husband. "They use the creatures of the sea, but they abhor machines, even more than they hate the ways of splicing."

Envoy ponders this, since the site of the Sutaranakh is supposed to be deep within their territory. "Do they fear anything?" she asks.

"Even a beast knows fear," Triesa asserts, "but they are blind in their hatred of all others who live in the ocean but themselves. For a time, they kept to their places in the ocean, and we saw little of them but for a few clashes, when some of our kind grew too comfortable and wandered into their waters … but now they have been attacking us, and destroyed many of our outlying homes. The Abyss is the only place where we are safe anymore, for they fear nothing, not even death."

"What would drive them to such a thing?" Envoy wonders out loud. "Could someone or something be driving them out of their own homes?"

"They have no homes," Triesa says, shaking her head. "They do not need to breathe the air, as we do, and they need not the bubble-domes to make homes underneath the ocean. They move as they please, and cover wide tracts of the ocean, fiercely defending them against all interlopers."

Envoy frowns at this. "There is much still to learn about them, it seems. Has one ever been captured alive?"

Triesa looks down. "No. They do not allow themselves to be captured. Ever."

"I suppose they don't take captives then either?" the Aeolun guesses, wondering just how sentient the Sirens are.

"If they do, we never see them again," Triesa says. "When they attack the urgans, they slay all aboard, and the urgans as well. I took up my mother's trade as healer, after she fell in a Siren raid on our homestead, and all our clan moved here to the Great Abyss."

Envoy's expression turns somber at the news. "Hopefully a better means of protection will be found soon, or they will turn back to their old territory once more."

Triesa nods. "We have made agreements with the Off-World Legion, and since they have begun fighting the Sirenae, they have lessened their bold assaults on the Great Abyss, but it will be a long time before we ever venture beyond it once more."

At this, she gives a pointed look at Riusha, who ducks her head and busies herself chewing on some seaweed.

Envoy smiles at the little girl, remembering how she gleefully rode the urgan-spout into the air. "I think I still owe Riusha the rest of that song, too."

Riusha brightens at this, and looks up to smile brightly at Envoy, despite a piece of seaweed stuck in her teeth.

Having eaten her fill, the Aeolun treats the family to a fanciful song about life under the sea.