PM to join Out on the Sea (Vanator)

[Avinash]

21st, Fall, 513AV The boat rocked back and forth calmly by the sea. it was just right outside the gates of Riverfall. Avinash was lightly resting, sounds of gulls filled the air. Just normal everyday sounds you'd hear from the sea. She given up one fishing an hour ago, because of her lack of patience. Now her mind is just wandering around playing with every memory she had and thought. Weaving them together in order, which some weren't as colorful and happy as others. Actually she didn't really have any real happy memory. Well my life is quite pathetic and dull. She laughed out loud to herself. Another hour went by, which was just as quiet has the last hour. Avinash stood up, ready to go back to the city, but she heard splashing, not that far from her... maybe a mile away. She couldn't actually pinpoint out what it was. In all caution and curiosity she steered her Casinor toward the sound.

[Vanator]

It was cool, much too cool to swim. But Larik had been teasing Vanator, as the father and son had a habit of doing, to Kavala's unending annoyance. They had been in the main sea cave beneath The Sanctuary, the sea gates open to let in the fresh ocean breeze, the Drykas and Kelvic had been performing a regular maintenance on the portals. The young raptor boy challenged his father's heartiness, given his venerable age. Vanator, usually not given to taking Larik's bait, felt a bit spunky that day and proudly touted his state of excellent physical prowess.

In the end, Vanator had foolishly agreed to wade into the water out on the beach, to prove the chilly water coming down from northerly currents would not deter him from enjoying a swim. They went out onto the beach, and the Denusk patron shed his shirt, boots and breeches, wearing only his undergarment and and his dagger belt. Heading into the surf, Van hid a grimace from Larik as the cold water advanced up his bare legs. Teeth clenched tight as the ocean crept up over is crotch, causing every muscle in his body to tense. Eventually Van sumbitted and sank into the waves.

Larik had shifted, taking to wing and hovering high over is father as Vanator swam out further, the sea particularly calm that day. Not far off was a small sailing vessel, drifting gently on the rolling waves. Not a man accustomed to the sea, Vanator had wandered further than he had planned, looking back to see how far from shore he had actually ventured. His son screeched from overhead, and Van surmised it was a reprieve from the Kelvic hawk, the older Denusk having proven his salt. Vanator, cold and almost blue, turned to swim back to the beach.

Then he saw something break the surface of the water not far off. It was large, a fin of some sort breaching the water. Vanator was not familiar with creatures of the sea, except from the tales he overheard in Riverfall, or from the stories Kavala and Riaris told of their trip on her catamaran. From what he knew, it could either be harmless or deadly. He tread water as he watched the subtle movement of the shape beneath the water, swimming around him. Van reached for his dagger, holding it in his hand as his arms and legs moved to keep him above water.

The creature was well camouflaged by its natural coloring, Larik not seeing the threat to his father from above. Then, off to his left, enough of he beast crested above the water for Van to see a maw of sharp teeth and a long protrusion at the front of its head before it disappeared beneath again. Had he any knowledge of sea fauna, Van could have identified the creature as a Spearhead.

[Avinash]

Avinash continued to venture closer, to the violent splashes, she held the harpoon in her hand in case of any dangerous sea monsters out there. Just above to her it looked like an other grown gull, but it didn't sound like on either. She could really careless on what the bird was at the moment. A few feet away from her was a grayish colored. Spearhead.. Avinash was pretty familiar about that kind... though she has not seen one with her own eyes, she has heard of them and had to repair a few fishing nets. Spearheads don't normally attack. At least that's what she has heard. it seemed to be a man in the water struggling with it. Avinash was some what amused to see this, she gripped the harpoon as she got closer to them. taking her last breath before diving in. Laviku protect me from any harm that may come to me. The water was clear she could see the outline of the man and parts of the spearhead. She was close enough to strike it but she didn't want to accidentally stab the guy she was trying to save... Avinash used her muscles in her arm and push forward aiming toward the gray outline. Blood flowed out of the body there was a small struckle, she pulled it out and struck it again. Avi remembered that she needed to come up for air. still holding on to her kill she broke surface then shook her head to get the hair out of her face. "If you're not that weak help me carry the spearhead to my ship. And quickly." She spoke in a mixture of Common and Fratava not sure if he knew her language or not. Avinash's Common had an accent when she spoke it, making her sound rough. The man had brown eyes, well built, but looked to be in his near 40's or close to 40.

[Vanator]

The creature circled, Vanator curious as to why. He knew all too well the practices of those predators that dwelt in the Sea of Grass, but in a sea of water, The Drykas was at a loss. He tried to move back towards shore, but the large fish would cut him off. Van looked up to see Larik circling above, wondering why he was not trying to help. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw why.

The small vessel had sailed closer. Vanator only caught a glimpse of someone diving into the water, Their shape swimming beneath the surface in his direction. The water around him splashed as the mysterious sailor and the sea creature met, and a cloud of crimson began to spread around him in the water. The hulk of the animal slowed to a drift, and a head breached the surface of the water, along with a long, harpoon-headed shaft.

It was a woman, and by the gleam of her big blue eyes and youthful golden features, a teenager! Long dark hair stuck to her face as she tried to manage the spearhead carcass. Vanator was not the best swimmer, but he could try to help her get it to the boat. "I can try. Maybe if we get a little bit closer to your ship, one of us can climb up and toss out a rope. If we can get a line around this beast, I can pulling in from the deck."

Van was curious about the girl with the harpoon and strange accent, but introductions would have to wait. He was beginning to fatigue.

[Avinash]

While they held on to the creature, they swam toward her ship. Once they got close enough to touch it, Avinash stretched out her arm to hold on to the ship. She let the man climb on to the ship first. They got the spearhead onto the ship, but it was hard due the fact the damn thing was heavy. Avinash was frustrated with the dead carcass. She wanted to take her harpoon the stab it again and again until she grew bored. The man reached out his arm to help her onto her ship. To be nice she took it. It seemed to her once her climbed on the whole boat seemed to rock, she would have fell down if she weren't still holding on the the man. Once she found her balance she let go of him and went to check her sails and changed the direction to Riverfall. She turned to face the older male and smile slightly to him. "That was quite a morning or shall I say afternoon now." She spoke to him in a sarcastic tone. "My name is Avinash or you can call me Avi. If there is any injury you have try to hold on until we get Riverfall I'm not a healer of any sort." She made her voice sound light and happy, but in reality she was very cautious of him. Thank you Laviku for your protection..

[Uleru]

She sees the blooming cloud of blood before she can smell it. Even while scavenging over the reef half a mile away the Otani can see the sickly cloud of red turned green in the light.

Uleru scrapes out the last of the crab meat and drops the empty shell, where the patient scavengers pounce on the threads of her meal. Uleru doesn't mention this often, preferring to operate under the thin gauze of all powerful that she wears for the weaker minds, but she really does have a horrible sense of smell both above and below the water. She'll see a contaminant before she will sense it, and the way a common shark can follow a thin, diffused trail for miles totally baffles her. So while she can see the cloud, the metallic tang of blood hasn’t quite reached her yet.

“Ooo my fishy spearhead, what have you done”, she sings melodically, brushing her hands across the rough coral to clean them. It is way to much blood for this to me anything smaller than a seal or a dolphin. It could even be another large predator. A bold young Spearhead patrols these waters, and the lad can be quite touchy. Other than that one Otani that passes through his turf (for whom he holds no great love) he is defensive of anything bigger than an eel entering his hunting grounds, unless it ends up his meal.

The moulding looks at her clean and empty hands, then to her feet where the last of the shell is being picked clean. She could really use more to eat. That Spearhead would never willingly share, but if she is quick about it she can come away with a handful of blubbery seal meat or maybe the denser dolphin. Meat like that is quite a treat, and the Otani shivers with delight.

That settled she leaves the crabs behind and swims fast and fluidly towards the disturbance, parting clouds of tiny silver fish and causing polyps to wave in her wake. While the land is beginning to fade from a bright summer to a gray winter, the ocean is going through no such transformation. The coral is just as bright as yesterday and the day before, standing resiliently against the cooling water and fading Syna, and creating a multihued carpet as Uleru skims overhead.

Though as she comes closer her speed checks and she slows down by fractions. There is a dark shape behind the red cloud that she recognizes to be the belly of a small ship. And the sour smell of blood is not seal or dolphin, as she thought, but of fish.

The ship slowly starts to move with a purpose as the wind catches in its sails. Not willing to let it get away, Uleru powers through the thinning cloud and latches onto the hull. She breaks the water and, settling her trepidation, pulls herself up to the guardrail by her elbows.

A great gray slab of what used to be the resident Spearhead is laid out on the deck, blood leaking out of a wound punched through its head. The Otani stares at him for a long moment, the damage to his species and the ecological damage to his coral territory adding up and spiraling in her mind. So when she finally looks up at the two healthy humans her color has reacted to her emotions and rolled into a hot, oily grey.

The taller one is male, as displayed by nearly indecent amounts of taunt brown skin unprotected from the chilly weather. His sunbleached and browned color would suggest he is Svefra, but Uleru knows this isn’t the case. His body is more stocky and broad than the wiry sailors, and, the most damming trait of all, his eyes are the color of wood and dirt.

The woman on the other hand is from Laviku’s waters. Bright blue eyes and a tall swimmers body isn’t needed to identify her when she can feel the sea gods mark hidden away on her body. She isn’t much more than a child, but she of all people should have known better.

Twisting her face into a scowl to illustrate her displeasure, the Otani pulls herself up with her palms flat on the rail and her arms straight to make herself appear to loom over the corpse of the shark.

“If you don’t have a good excuse for this, you had better think one up right now.”

[Vanator]

Once he and the woman had lugged the big fish onto the deck of the small craft, Vanator took a moment to assess his surroundings., clinging to the rail of the boat. Once, he had clambered aboard Kavala's catamaran, at his sister's urging. But he found the rocking of the vessel unsettling and completely unlike the sway of a horse beneath him. That same uneasiness crept over the Drykas as he steadied himself on the deck of the small ship.

Van finally had a chance to get a good look at woman who rescued him. Calling her a woman may have been a bit premature, for though the raven haired girl had a fairly maturely curved physique and trim muscle, her features were quite youthful, certainly no more than a girl in her mid teens. What she was doing out here alone on the open sea was beyond him, Though her garb, and how easily she took to the water suggested Avinash was one of the Svefra. Vanator knew little of the seafaring people, but he had seen a few in Riverfall.

"I am Vanator, thank you for...saving me." The Drykas looked down at the large, toothy fish laid out on the deck. "But I am not going to Riverfall. I live there." He pointed back to shore, where an set of iron-bound doors were set in the cliff wall, the top of a stone structure barely visible on the cliff above. "I live at The Sanctuary."

Van glanced overhead, his Kelvic hawk son circling curiously over head. The Drykas waved him off. All he needed was for the young man to take a shine to the pretty Svefra girl. The Larik screeched and turned on the wind to head back towards Sanctuary.

Vanator was just starting to get his sea legs when something pulled itself up against the side of the casinor. The man's breath caught in his chest as the creature lingered, leaning over the ship's rail. It was in the shape of a lovely woman, but the substance was like liquid, her hair an undulating mass of wave-like curls. The sunlight caught faint hints of scales in her translucent body, subtle traits about the thing hinted that it mimicked a Konti. The fluid form was cast in a cloudy gray. It raised itself up further, a dark scowl clearly visible on the watery, feminine sculpted face. Then it spoke in a female voice.

Vanator was a man of the horseclans of the Sea of Grass. He knew virtually nothing of the sea of water and of what dwelt within its depths. His gaze darted to the Svefra girl to gauge her reaction, to determine whether the appearance of the aquatic woman was a curse or a boon. It was obviously angry about the killing of the spearhead. The Drykas saw it prudent to remain silent for the moment.

[Avinash]

Avinash tried not to interested when Vanator explained he live at the Sanctuary. She heard a little about the Sanctuary, but never been there herself. Avinash changed course. She heard a horrid voice, she shot her head quickly toward the source of it. It was similar looking to a Konti with it's scattered scales... but she wasn't a Konti. She heard of Otani faithful servants of the God Laviku.As the Otani finished speaking, Avinash's blood boiled in rage. "Your spouse to to be Laviku's eyes! You should know that this man was being attacked by this Spearhead. So if I were you I would hold your tongue before accusing anything." Avinash mostly spoke in her own language to the Otani. Avinash took it to heart about 2 years ago she was accused of killing Avikki by her pod she trusted and they knew she did no such thing and Laviku saved her... In her thoughts he did. So she took it seriously when someone tried to accuse her of such things, plus it is hard for her to trust others.

[Uleru]

"You're supposed to be Laviku's eyes! You should've known that this man was being attacked by this Spearhead. So if I were you I would hold my tongue before accusing anything."
 
The Otani's color gathers like a cloud threatening rain, her very human scowl of anger devolving into something a bit more alien. But it is an expression of rage just as clear as a dogs growl. The Svefra's ignorance and blatant insult seems to grow in her like a building pressure.
 
Her eyes flick to the landstrider, burning in their intensity as she looks him over. He has plenty of scars, and some minor bruises that look rather new, but his skin is unbroken and whole. If the shark really attacked him, he would be dead.  
 
"He was in his territory", she laughs sardonically, turning back to the girl, "Were you expecting a fruit basket?" The question is posed to the  Svefra, the Otani quickly dismissing and ignoring the dripping Drykas as no more than the catalyst. Unfortunate but blameless.  
 
"Besides, I’m Otani, child, I do not serve humans, I serve the sea. And how dare you suggest otherwise", she spits venomously. "It is not my duty to fish out every landstrider that tempts fate where he doesn't belong."
 
She pulls her legs over the guardrail and gets to her feet. She stands smaller than both of them by quite a few inches, but the moulding stands ramrod straight as if to make up for it. It's not as if she doesn't care if one of the land-bound races live or die, but they are unnecessary to the workings of the sea. And quite a bit more expendable, she has to admit. They seem to infest the coast like mites.
 
"Your little stunt will cost this reef months of instability!" she roars, "He" -she points to the shark in front of her- "is not as disposable as you seem to think. Within days this place with be infested with herbivores until the reef is picked clean. Then the predators will arrive to the banquet, and start fighting each other for the territory! You've destroyed this reefs health and balance!"
 
"And if you want to start repaying the sea for your transgression, I think your tongue, child, will do quite nicely!" her voice dissolves into an unearthly screech. 

[Vanator]

Otani. It...she...said she was an Otani. Vanator didn't know much of Otani , other than the word associated with Laviku. He did know Laviku. It appeared the unwitting Drykas had become entangled in a dispute between one of the seafaring people and a minion of the Sea God. It was a place Van did not want to be, and he considered giving the teenager a grateful wave and jumping overboard. But now the beach below Sanctuary was too far for him to reach swimming on his own.

Then the Otani climbed aboard. Vanator was a bit startled, but had to admit she was a beautiful creature. Her form was that of a woman with modest but attractive curves, but her substance was fluid, the nature of it was like looking through a lazy waterfall. The Otani's elegant body was cast in a grayish tint, as if her very being displayed her displeasure with the Svefra girl, whom she was dressing down soundly.

The sea creature's last words sounded threatening, though Van was uncertain what exactly the Otani could do to Avinash. He didn't want anyone to get hurt. He raised his hand. "Wait...wait. I don't know much of the Sea of Suvan, but I know of the Sea of Grass. In every environment, there is delicate balance, whether established by Laviku or Caiyha or some other god. It is unfortunate that this creature was killed. But death comes to all things, and the means by which it comes does not matter. This fish could have died of anything. I am grateful to you, Avinash, for saving me regardless." He turned to the Otani. "I do regret the death of this noble creature. I can see how much you care for the lives in this reef. But the beauty of the sea, whether of water or of grass, is that the divine beings that created them gave them stamina, perseverance of their own. Yes, this reef will suffer imbalance. But Laviku's creation will find balance again."