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[Lucas Arias]

Spring 50, 516 AV

When Lucas woke up on the morning of the 50th of Spring and took a look out of the window of his room, he saw a shark. He had gotten somewhat used to living underwater (although he hoped that it was temporary), but this was new. He had never been so close to a shark before (he had only seen them from a distance). He stared at the shark, and the shark stared back. It was hard for the ex-squire to tell what the shark was thinking. Fish eyes always looked the same to him (rather disgusting), but he hoped that the shark was not entertaining thoughts of eating him. Finally, the shark swam away, and Lucas breathed a … no, he would not breathe a sigh of relief. Breathing of any kind when you were underwater was probably not a good idea.

He would just eat breakfast. He wasn’t sure why his bread and his tea weren’t floating away, but simply stayed on the table, and why he wasn’t completely wet and his skin wasn’t wrinkly yet. It was probably one of the mysteries of Alvadas. He also wasn’t sure why his feet remained on the ground and he wasn’t floating towards the surface, wherever the surface was in this case. Probably the Ukalas? Considering that everything was covered in water and the Ukalas was somewhere above (Ethaefal always fell down when they returned to Mizahar), could he actually go there if he only tried hard enough?

He was about to try swimming to the Ukalas, but then he watched a most peculiar occurrence the moment he walked out of the door. Another shark was swimming past him, this time without a protective layer of glass between them. That wasn’t the strange thing though. A cart was attached to the shark, and a man and a woman were standing in the cart. Just two lovers taking a romantic cart ride …

Lucas immediately forgot that he was supposed to be afraid of sharks (had he ever really been afraid of sharks?) and decided to find out where the shark with the cart had come from. Soon he happened upon a square where several sharks with carts as well as a few with saddles were waiting for people that were brave enough to take a ride, for one silver miza apparently. The young man immediately decided that he wanted to do that. Standing or sitting in a cart would be a little boring though.

He had ridden horses, in the name of the gods! He had ridden evil horses with big teeth and long legs they had tended to kick him with whenever he had come close, and he hadn't trembled in fear, but just climbed onto thier back and tried again. He could handle riding a shark. Sharks could at least not kick him. But he needed to get something first …

A few moments later he returned dressed in his old leather armor. He wanted a bit of protection in case the shark decided to try and take a bite. He handed the shark … trainer? Merchant? Handler? … a silver miza and then he walked up to a shark and looked at it. Now which would be the best way to get on its back?

[Lucas Arias]

Lucas look at the shark, and the shark looked back at him from out of cold, expressionless fish eyes. “Ummm … hello”, the former squire said and waved. The shark did of course not answer. It also did not move at all. Lucas was not sure if it could even hear him. Did fish have ears?

“I’m going to take a ride on your back now if you don’t mind”, he informed the shark. Again the shark gave no sign that he had understood Lucas, but looked at him coldly and indifferently.

“I’m really glad that I’m wearing this here, you know?” Lucas said to the shark and touched the protective layer of leather on his chest. “Plate would of course have offered more protection, but you can’t move very much when you are wearing plate, let alone ride a shark. No offense, but you don’t look very intelligent. You’d probably confuse me with your dinner. What do you even eat? Would you behave if I promised you a chicken? Or pork? Would that be better? Are you even a real shark? It’s hard to tell illusions and reality apart in this city sometimes.”

“Come to think of it, are you a boy or a girl?” He inspected the shark – as much as he dared, the shark looked as if it had big, sharp teeth - but there was nothing that betrayed whether it was a male or a female shark. Of course Lucas did not know a lot about fish anatomy. So far, most of the fish he had seen had been fried or cooked, with vegetables and sometimes a delicious sauce. He liked a sauce with white wine best … mmm …

Since the conversation was rather one sided, and he already began to feel like an idiot because of it, Lucas decided to finally climb onto the shark’s back rather than try and talk to him … her … it? He decided to call the shark an “it”, until it told him otherwise. He decided to mount the shark just like he would mount a horse. He put his left foot into the left stirrup, and then he swung his body across the shark’s back which was much harder than it sounded because the shark had fins and such, and its body was built very differently from a horse’s.

He almost fell down, much to the amusement of a few spectators that had opted for the slightly safer shark carts. Finally he was sitting in the saddle though. Now how was he supposed to get the shark to move? He doubted that it knew any of the commands the horses in Syliras had known. He had the feeling that the best he could hope for was that the shark would go where it wanted to go while he held onto it for dear life. It was not a pleasant thought.

[Lucas Arias]

Lucas didn’t jump off again though before the shark started moving. He always finished what he had started, and he would see that through. Kelwyn would not have marked him if he were a coward. They had chosen him because of his adventurous spirit and what was riding a shark but a great adventure? Who knew, maybe this would the only chance to ride a shark that he would ever get. Maybe Alvadas would never produce ridable sharks again!

Since the stark still had not started moving – had he gotten the most stupid and laziest shark in Alvadas? – Lucas pressed his knees into the sides of the shark. Unfortunately the shark did not seem to like that at all. It had finally gotten tired of the ridiculous acrobatics he had practiced on its back and began to … race through the streets of Alvadas for the lack of a better word, mouth agape and revealing a lot of sharp teeth as if it were about to hunt. Lucas could not help but wonder if the shark was trying to throw him off so that it could eat him when he was finally helplessly lying on the ground.

“A whole chicken”, Lucas reminded the shark while he held onto the saddle with both hands and pressed his knees together as firmly as he could even though that might just have made the shark go even faster. “A whole chicken.” If he hadn’t been so busy trying to stay where he was, he might have wondered if the shark was real and if an illusionary shark could eat real chicken. If he threw a chicken into its mouth, would it just fall back out?

As it was through he was busy repeating his mantra of “chicken, chicken, chicken”, hoping against all odds that Alvadas had not only produced ridable sharks, but ridable sharks that understood a little Common. While he did that the shark seemed to race through Alvadas at what seemed like lightning speed. Lucas had never moved through the ciy to quickly. He actually started to enjoy his ride, even though he was not the one who decided the destination. If only he could tame the shark and use it to ride to work and back every day. Unfortunately, knowing Alvadas, his mount would probably disappear again before the season was over, and thus there was no point in trying to tame the shark.

[Lucas Arias]

Houses and people seemed to race past the former squire and his unlikely mount. He held onto the saddle as tightly as he could and pressed his legs into the shark’s sides which of course had the opposite effect, just as horses tended to galop faster when you did that to them. His hair fell into his face and obscured his eyes so that he couldn’t see anything for a moment, and he pushed it away with one hand while the other hand remained on the saddle so that the shark wouldn’t be able to shake him off.

A scream escaped his lips as the shark turned around a corner – a scream of pure joy. He had never felt so alive before! If the knights in Syliras had had sharks instead of horses, he would happily have stayed, and he would probably have received his quest from the Windoak by now. Ser Lucas! That would have been something. For a moment he actually considered taking the next ship to Syliras and try to convince Ser Loren Dyres of the fact that sharks would make much better mounts, but he doubted that he woul succeed.

Besides, he’d have to dump all of Syliras into the Suvan Sea first for this to work as shark were fish, and fish usually needed water to live, and he had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to accomplish that! Although, come to think of it, maybe he could ask Ionu or Kelwyn for help? He considered that option while he sat on the shark’s back, still holding onto the saddle.

After a while Lucas grew braver, let go of the saddle and grabbed the shark’s back fin. He pushed the shark’s fine left, he pushed it right in an attempt to make the fish swim in the direction that he wanted after all, but unfortunately that only confirmed his previous suspicions. The shark did not understand what he wanted. Well, it understood one thing. As Lucas pulled the shark’s fin back with all his strength, it actually started moving a little more slowly. Of course it might also only be exhausted.

Lucas doubted that even illusionary Alvad sharks could keep up that kind of speed forever.

[Kaleidoscope]

Shark and man zoomed through the 'waters', past houses, past trees, and through the swirling, giant, but see-through tentacles of a lurking, purple jellyfish. The jellyfish left a ghost-feeling of static on Lucas' skin, and gave the shark what seemed like an extra boost, its body being propelled faster with a firm smack of its tail against the air-water that currently filled Alvadas.

Not only the boost though, but trailing in his wake, the sharks tail had caught one of the tentacles and ripped it off the jellyfish. As it billowed in the water behind him, the tentacle transformed into a lilac silk scarf, soft and shimmering. The scarf eventually dropped off, shaken irritably by the shark, to be caught by an astonished little girl, her mouth making an 'o' shape at the sight of man and shark, with a smile slowly forming as she held her new scarf aloft!

It seemed even Alvads could get surprised, sometimes. A group of ladies, each clutching a blue turtledove stood nearby and applauded Lucas as he rode past, thinking he was part of a racing team. They all accidentally let go of the turtledoves, confusion and panic on their faces while the doves fluttered peacefully into the sky-water above Lucas' head.

Perhaps the shark really was slowing down now, it certainly seemed to be growing more sluggish, as slug-like as a shark can get, anyhow. It's tail seemed more... dejected, somehow. It grew more curious, nudging its head against a tree despite any effort on Lucas' part to get it to do something else, until the shark itself decided to move on.

[Lucas Arias]

For a moment Lucas had been convinced that the crazy shark was finally slowing down, but it seemed as if that was not the case after all. The houses of Alvadas moved past him so quickly that they seemed to become blurred and started looking the same after a while which was quite a feat since Alvadas was a very diverse city. Once the shark even swam through a … wait, had that really been a jellyfish? Lucas had not been aware that Alvadas also produced those now. He shivered slightly as the ghostlike creature’s touch left the strangest feeling on his skin, as if he were suddenly charged with electricity.

The shark seemed to be moving even faster now. He didn’t notice that his mount had ripped one of the jellyfish‘ tentacles off – he didn’t dare to look behind his back, worried that he might fall off and hit his head if he did. He only realized that the shark had picked up some extra baggage when the scarf dropped off again and landed in the hands of a little girl. As she smiled at him, he smiled back and even let go off the shark with one hand to wave at her, as if the scarf had been a gift from him and not something Alvadas had randomly decided to produce.

He felt quite like a hero, like some sort of shark racing champion as the ladies on the side of the road started applauding and released a couple of turtledoves in his favorite color – blue. He didn’t think blue doves were strange at all, no, on the contrary, he was happy that they had finally realized that brown, white or grey were boring colors.

Eventually the shark did slow down though. "That’s a tree", Lucas remarked as his mount started nudging the tree in question. He was not sure why it did that. Maybe it was hungry? Maybe Alvad sharks ate trees instead of other fish or chicken or whatever it was that real sharks ate? "It’s made of wood. It doesn’t taste good, I think, unless there are food illusions in Alvadas as well now. Can we please continue? The view isn’t particularly spectacular here." He pulled on the shark’s fin to try and get it to move – he kind of wanted to go back home – but unfortunately it was quite stubborn.

"I promised you a whole chicken. If you move, I’ll go to the next store and get you one, cooked or grilled if you prefer it that way", he told the shark. "A chicken tastes much better than a tree."