"I am lost. The only mountains I was supposed to travel through were right outside of Zeltiva. But this is most certainly a range of mountains." The young Charoda was walking along a bare forest path, leading into the Cobalt mountains. She had most certainly taken a wrong turn long ago, nearly outside of Zeltiva.
"How disappointing I am. But no, I entrusted to my memory. I should have acquired a written map. Though maybe that man told me wrong. He said he was a cartographer." She frowned, and then groaned. "Of course, he would not have been the first Land-Walker to trick me, or try to do so."
As the Acquitor walked, she raised her webbed right hand in front of her face and gazed at it. "I need to find a river. It has been some time since my last dip. Oh why did I ever decide to leave Zeltiva on my own..." The young Charoda kept up her litany, in her native Char. While her speech may have sounded beautiful even to outsiders were they underwater, above it sounded... alien. Almost similar to a bird, all chirps and clicks, but nothing like any bird on Mizahar.
"Rivers, paths of water. They come from mountains, and flow out to the sea, to the ocean, to Charbosi. Water is the life-bringer, the Land-Above is the dry-death. Rivers are the neutral ground. Source of some plants, some safety. But not all. No, Mizahar is a dangerous place. Full of dangerous people made violent by dangerous gods. But for the Charodae. We are the peaceful, we are the water-breathers, the volcano watchers, the wave stoppers. We will rebuild the ties, the relationships, the connections. We are the Acquitors. More paths have been forgotten then I shall ever learn. Our duty is to learn, to guide." She spoke to herself for sometime. But it was not simply speaking to fill the time. It was something more to her. While her Char was the sharp clicks and chirps that would carry underwater, her Common was nearly unaccented. She took careful time on her annunciation, on the rhythm and flow of the words. And all the while, her head was on a swivel, obviously looking for a rive or lake.
Eventually the young female Charoda found it. A small creek, barely large enough for her to fully submerge herself. But when she heard the noise of the moving water near the path, she let out a bubbling laugh and all but sprinted off the path. Once she reached the water, she allowed the green kelp rucksack to slip off of her shoulders, striking the ground with a heavy but muffled thump. Ayla then quickly worked at the shoulder straps of the soft-kelp armor she wore about her torso, while also kicking off the hardened-kelp moccasins on her webbed feet.. Once those were undone and the armor had dropped to the ground as well, she walked into the water, and simply laid down in the creek, face up.
The water, clear and starting to chill with the onset of Fall, was barely high enough to glide over her nose. But as the water moved above her, she smiled, flashing her rows of triangular sharp teeth, and started to sing in Char. The music lifted through the water, the Char completely different when emerging from underwater, transforming the peaceful creek into a storybook "babbling brook".
Life's Wheel - by Heather Alexander :
