I cannot see, cannot hear, not by the usual definitions of those words, but I possess an awareness that sets me apart from the other rocks. I am a speck, a spark cradled in the sand’s coarse embrace. It churns, ebbs, and flows, heavy, then not.

Grains scrape my sides, and I capture them, consume them. The circle of my being pushes outward, slow but steady.

Light waltzes with the water, clothed in warmth, and shadow herds the dance, its voice an empty chill. I like them both, the balance, the variance, and as my awareness expands, so does the minutia of those differences.

For a moment, light strokes my sides with a slow touch, and my spirit leans into that weightless hand. It taps in rapid bursts, and I want to move with it.

Why do all things move except me?

As a speck, I did not understand motion, but as I catch up in size to the pebbles that litter the sea floor, I see it everywhere, and I want it with the same want owned by the electric things above me.

They fulfill their wants, long, lean bodies dashing to and fro somewhere between me and the light. They work with the water, a give and take, chaos always imbued with some level of grace.

The longer I watch, the more layers I perceive. Water does not keep a set form, sloshing and twisting, two droplets rarely meeting again. Yet, though they bend, these creatures have a limited range of shapes, and within their basic outline, all movement is organized—a beating heart, a flapping gill, a ticking mind.

Do I move on the inside like that?

I imagine pushing against this prison formed of my own body and swimming toward them. Though my round sides do not leave the sea floor, I touch the creatures and sink into their thoughts. It is another sea, and I flow with its waves.

Is this freedom? Is this enough?

The want burns, ever more hungry, and I clutch at the liquid thoughts around me. If I can stay in here, does that mean I belong? Can I travel with these fish when they leave, see what lies beyond my dimple in the sand?

Energy slides through the cracks of my fantasy hands until I hold nothing, and I jump to the next fish. And the next. And the next. They are all the same.

Why am I alone? Are there others like me somewhere? Can they show me how to do this right?

Light flees from a large shadow, and ice shoots through my small fish. The feeling pushes them faster than I have ever witnessed them move, but for the one weighed down by my attention, the shove is too weak. The larger creature draws it in, and the cold flame of fear explodes into a hot, sticky sensation.

Water constantly rips and crashes, never the same shape from moment to moment, heedless of its shifting form, but for this solid creature, tearing apart hurts.

I flinch away, a new flare growing beside the desire, but it dies as quickly as it arrived. The prey’s pain does not last, and everything the creature had been soaks into the clockwork of the larger fish, filling in its missing pieces. Warm, soft satisfaction blossoms in the surviving animal, equal to the pain of before.

Balance and difference, like with the light and shadow. This is right, never too much of one or the other.

Where do I fit? The fish consume each other as I consume the sand, but I am not sand. It does not feel, yet I do, so what am I?

As always, the fish swims away, and I cannot follow. Where do they come from? Where do they go?

I continue to capture the only thing I can until I am the largest of the pebbles within my range of awareness, and as I grow, so does the breadth of my senses. More exists above the water, the domain of air. It does not move like ocean or sand. What would it feel like rubbing against my sides? Softer? Faster?

A bird soars through the currents of the sky and dives, spearing a fish before taking off again.

Notice me! Carry me away like that.

The birds come again and again, and none hear me.

The sand trembles in rhythmic crescendos beneath weight I cannot fathom, and water makes way for humongous paws. The sea floor squelches and dips, and finally, I move.

For the first time, light caresses my underside, but it lasts less than a moment as I roll, not far. The sand catches me again, an abrasive but gentle-handed prison guard. This imprint is larger than mine was. As the beast that made it splashes along the shore, chasing fish trapped in tidepools, I wonder at its size.

Can I grow that big? Other creatures will have to notice me then.

I gobble sand as quickly as I can, but I do not seem to expand any faster.

Why am I alone? Why does no one see me? Do I even exist?

Watching the other beings—fish of the sea, beasts of the land, birds of the sky—and experiencing the world through them brings something similar to the satisfaction they feel when they fulfill their wants. Yet, it is incomplete, one raindrop to quench a drought while laden storm clouds wait above, just out of reach, crackling with the thunder of my frustration.

Then, it happens. The sand shifts as it so often has beneath the feet of many creatures, but none have been like this. Light describes a face rippling through the water, eyes nowhere near as round as a fish’s, a short, pointed nose, a wide mouth, and a strong chin. He is looking at me.

A hand cuts through the surface, and fingers scoop beneath my curves. His touch is tentative as if he fears I will break, but firm, not allowing the retreating waves to haul me away. Fear nips within me. How many times have I witnessed prey’s capture? Will he consume me? Will it hurt?

It will mean becoming a part of him. In that way, I can leave this place.

Will it still be me, though? Will I still experience it?

I rise and at last taste the air. It is cold and bright, weightless and smooth. I barely feel it at all as he pulls me closer to ever-widening eyes.

His thoughts are an ocean deeper than any creature’s, a chasm stretching further than all the others combined, and as he stares at me, that sea within him fills with wonder. Excitement swells and undulates the electric waters.

Can he feel my emotions like I feel his? Can he hear me? Am I like him?

Vibrations pour from his mouth, and he runs from the water, showing me to others. They form a cacophony. Is this how they communicate, by wild gestures and discordant noises?

None of them can hear me either.

He drops me in a silken bag, and light shrinks as he pulls the top closed, but still I listen, studying the vibrations. They form patterns. Some repeat.

“Sea stone.”

“Pearl.”

This is me. This is what they call me, and as their mouths mold the sounds, they think of the depths of a night sky, the radiance of a thousand sunsets. That is what they see in my curved sides, and it saturates me with a feeling that bubbles and laps at my circumference. My body is still a prison, but when they look upon me, they experience such wonder, their gaze lost within me as if they can see my thoughts.

Why can they not? These bipedal beings are better than the fish, the beasts, and the birds. Am I better than them because I can do something they still cannot? Or are their nuanced noises simply too advanced for me? How I wish I could at least hum. I want to join the conversation blaring all around.

We move. He walks with an uneven gait. He rests. He repeats the process, and the further he travels, the duller the sounds. Tall, slow-thinking creatures line his path, amused by the chirping birds that flit through their branches.

I am torn between two emotions, sitting in the palm of fear while fascination shines upon me. Each time he takes a step, I traverse new land. With every stride, I notice something I did not before, and I never want this to end.

Yet, his hunger grows, and so fear refuses to release me. Why would he carry me if not to satisfy that void within him? Why does he wait? His middle growls. Can he understand it?

On top of this, a wrongness surrounds him, as if he, too, has curved sides extending in all directions. It incites all who can to flee. Wary birds watch from far above, and the trees whisper that he does not belong.

At long last, he stops and kneels, pulls me from his pocket, and carefully divests me of the bag. Light is weak and slanted, but I am so starved of its touch, I rejoice at its return, tugging it around me like the cloth that wraps this man. It is a rebellious and difficult material, spearing off in disjointed rays, and my bearer stares, awe boiling over.

The emotion shivers through me, and my giggle ripples the light. His lips peel back, revealing teeth, and I tighten my grip on the glow. This is it. He will eat me.

But he does not. Spikes of fear pin him to the ground, cushioned by hope, as shadows shift and part. An entirely different being approaches, and every spark within me stills. The new presence washes over and through me, heavier than a whole ocean. Every mote of my attention is captured and drawn in.

“Terra,” the man whispers, and the mighty being acknowledges the address with an inclined face. While similar in form to the man’s, Terra’s features comprise the sharpest of angles and smoothest of planes as if chiseled in stone and metal instead of molded of clay.

He is a tempest, powerful and chaotic yet calm at his core, every part swirling by his design. The man chatters to him, and when Terra speaks, it is thunder. The rock walls shake, but my fear has vanished. Though loud and deep, his voice is akin to luminescence and warmth. The man trembles, but I want to feel it again.

I toy with my cloak of light, weaving it into bold flickers and dark lulls. Will he notice?

As the man lowers his head and lifts his hands, Terra’s gaze falls on me. Gold glints in burnt brown irises, matching the twisted walls of this cave. The corners of his eyes and lips pull back as he steps forward, hoof clicking against rock and arm extended. The man’s fingers tilt, and I roll into Terra’s grasp.

Though I had nearly filled the man’s palm, to Terra, I am a grain of sand just barely too large to sink between the stitches of his ruddy skin. Giddiness hums within me, and I wave my light faster. Keep looking at me.

If they stare for long enough, can I use this to communicate?

Terra speaks again. Curiosity shimmers across his edges.

I recognize some of the man’s reply. “Sea stone.”

Several sensations pass through Terra, but like him, they are so immense and quick, I glimpse only their corners before they are gobbled by his tranquil center. Shock. Regret. Hope. Wonder.

Am I the cause of these feelings? Does he know what I am, where I should be?

Now that I have seen his core open its mouth, I perceive its cracks. As the man leaves, bursting with satisfaction, I find something too familiar in Terra. The feeling of being unseen, trapped, alone.

Why would he feel this way? The man clearly knew of him and traveled a great distance to interact with him. He is leaving now, but he will return. The fish always returned, and they did not even know I was there.

“Ah, it is a feeling you know.”

Again, everything within me freezes. What is this? A thought that is not mine. It is his, yet it is meant for me.

I sculpt a reply, scraping its outline clean. “I have always been alone. But you can hear me?”

He chuckles. “Because we are the same, you and I, in more than just our loneliness.”

“Why? You are not alone.”

He strides further into the cave, and I revel in the rhythmic clack of his four hooves, in the breeze that brushes my sides and tousles his russet hair beneath his curved horns. It means we are moving, and though this motion is not in result of my own will, I feel I can add a “yet” to that sentiment. Someday I will move because I wish it.

We pass other creatures, small things with fur and tiny insects who ignore us like my fish. Others formed of stone pause in their work as if awaiting a command that does not come, faces turned toward us always.

“What are they?”

“Golems. Creatures of Essence. They live because I wish it.”

I languish in the feel of having an answer, even if I do not fully understand it. It is a start, and I hold it even closer than the light. But the satisfaction fades quickly, trampled by a myriad of more questions.

“What are we?”

Terra releases something between a sigh and a hiss. “I am the Essence of the Land. Stone and soil belong to me, and you are full of questions, as is typical of one so small, I suppose.”

I am not only full of questions. I am overflowing. Is that also normal?

He waits for me to ask another, expectation pulsing against my sides. The spaces between those beats hold my attention—snapshots of emptiness so vast, my wonderings could never fill it.

A statement attempts to instead, an echo of something I have already said. “You are not alone.”

He stops. We stop, and his hand rises to bring me level with gigantic brown eyes.

“No, I am not alone as some would define it, but everything that rises, falls, and everything that comes, leaves.”

Continued in Chapter 1: The Essence of the Sea

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

The golems are agitated. Very little disturbs them, so this must be an important visitor. In all honesty, any visitor is important at this point. It has been so long since we had one.

Humans like the one who brought me here used to come regularly, bearing gifts for the Essence of the Land in exchange for favors. They were a river that diminished into a stream, then a trickle, now a dry ditch. Thousands of seasons have passed since I saw a living human, and that drought is not quenched by today’s visitor.

She is something new but familiar, and I am drawn to her as I was to Terra at our first meeting. My bond with him is too strong for this novelty to break it, but curiosity waits like a tiger crouched in the grass, shivering across my curved sides like rising hackles.

My thoughts race, and I push them toward Terra. “She is like you but different.”

“Mare is my sister, the Essence of the Sea.”

Everything within me pulses quicker. How often the histories he tells involve the relationship between siblings, and it seems a precious thing to me. Siblings have the same origin, imperfect reflections of one another, as same as two individuals can be. Because one is an example of what the other could have been, they can be used as a measure for what one is and can be.

In the stories, sometimes this leads to a closeness that cannot be severed. Sometimes it leads to war.

As Terra stands upon his pedestal in the receiving room, I fear this is the latter. Dread trudges through him like heated sap, and regret stomps at any glimmer of hope or happiness.

Mare bustles down the staircase into this chamber, carried on the backs of some hybrid of swine and crustacean, and my intrigue grows. In quiet song, they grunt and squeal with every step, swift for creatures with such short limbs. Their hind legs are nearly non-existent, and their flippered tails drag. As they leave the stairs and enter the moat of powdered gold around our dais, dimpled furrows mark their trail.

“Hail, Brother. Time has grown old since last we met.” Mare’s voice booms within my mind like the crash of waves against a rocky cliff.

Terra nods. “True, Sister. Have you come because you miss me, then?”

She laughs as her group slows and stops only a leg-length from Terra’s hooves. Most do not dare encroach upon his space in such a way. If he kicks, the sea swine will be sent flying.

A part of me wants to see that happen. How dare she laugh at a statement that causes Terra so much pain.

All of the golems still, already facing us as always, and a few stride closer. They are as the armies of history. Though I doubt Terra needs them to fight for him, they form a daunting sight, elegant soldiers carved of marble, iron, and diamond.

I wonder at their choice of décor today. Gradients of jewels speckle the distant walls in intricate mosaics, and in the spaces between them flow molten streams of gold. The flicker of heatless flames barely licks the high ceiling, where faint glimmers drown in pools of shadow.

With a burst of pride for their hard work, I pull the image around me and reflect it as if my curved sides wear this facsimile of the night sky.

Mare’s eyes, electric green slit by blades of black, focus on Terra’s chest, right on me. “A sailor fell into the sea.”

From the back of her crowd, a statue formed of coral shuffles forward and drops its burden before her. The bedraggled body of a young man lands with a squelch, face-down and extremities at untidy angles. She flicks her tail, a jade-scaled appendage that stands in for her legs, and the corpse flips between us.

Dark, sightless eyes gaze up at Terra, and he grants the boy a brief glance. “Why would I want it?”

“It is not a gift. It is evidence.” She combs a webbed hand through her green-filament hair. The same material forms the fins that replace her feet, skirt her hips, and connect her biceps to her sides. Though the cave is moist, it is a desert compared to the ocean. Her body is sticky and heavy, and the discomfort weights her words. “Drowning sailors are neither new nor rare, but before I tired of this one, he told me something of interest, and now I see it is true.”

Arms crossed, Terra sighs. “Sister, I do not delve into your mind without permission, so grant me the courtesy of speaking forthright.”

Finger tipped in glossy scarlet to match her lips, she points at me. “That thing on your necklace is a sea stone. It came from the sea and therefore is mine. I have come to reclaim what was stolen.” Her hand rolls, waiting for me to land in her grasp.

No, I do not want to go with her. I was given to Terra, and he needs me. Humans no longer come. The golems, while beautiful, have little original thought. They made this net-like nest for me as a pendant so I can stay with Terra always, a companion with whom he can share everything.

Without me, he will be alone again.

His hand rises.

No, please, I want to stay. I am sorry I was curious of her.

His fingers curl around me, blocking most of the light, but instead of pulling me away, he holds me closer.

“She is not simply a jewel, Mare, not a bauble for you to play with and discard. Pearl is a Creature of Essence.”

I preen, glowing brighter at his use of my name. When he first asked me what I should be called, I repeated the word the humans had used. He said I did not have to keep it, that I could choose anything, but I like the enthrallment the humans associate with the sound.

“A Creature of Essence?” Mare blinks, features twisting. While they have more curves than Terra’s, they are still very sharp, and her scales glisten with the movement. “She came from my realm and so belongs in my Company.”

Terra presses me further into his chest, and I fear I might crack. No longer can I fit between the fibers of his skin, but I am still small compared to him, easily crushed.

“I will trade any number of my golems for her.”

“Ha, they are merely a wisp of thought like my corals—and at least my corals have some agency.” Her fingers tap her lips, then fall to her collarbone as if she already imagines me there amid the jewels, shells, and teeth of her necklace, hanging just above where her scales give way to green-tinged skin. “If you had anything like my swine or greater, I might consider it.”

“I can—”

“No, Brother, I have come for what is mine, and I want it, not to trade for things of lesser value. Now, give it.” Her lips stretch, one side peaking. Her teeth form a reflection of that mountain shape as her hand thrusts toward us again.

She is not alone. She does not need me, and this is cruel of her. Even if her corals and the golems can be counted as equal, she has more, the swine. They are far more complex Creatures of Essence.

I study them and poke at their minds. While they are not small, it takes two of them to carry their mistress. They are similar but not identical, siblings like Terra and Mare, each with their own thoughts and variants of features. Oversized tusks protrude from their lower jaws, and spiraling shells cover their bodies, dyed in every jewel tone.

Why does Terra not have something equivalent?

Mare huffs. “Your hesitance to release it only makes me want it all the more.”

It, she says, though Terra has already used my name. A storm churns within me, continuing to grow as they speak as if I cannot hear.

The squall rains, floods, fills me until I burst. “Why do you want me? Have you no care for what I want?”

My voice echoes in the silence that follows, the loudest I have ever spoken. Terra stiffens. The swine cower, one covering his eyes, another glancing about, other three huddled together. Though otherwise motionless, the golems rattle.

Mare lifts her hands, and her fingers steeple before her pursed lips as she cocks her head. “Pearl, is it? You think what you want matters?”

Does it not? Terra has always acted like it does. He teaches me how things work and lets me decide. Even my name is my choice.

Focusing on Mare, I shove my sentiments toward her. “You speak of the golems as having little value because of their lack of agency, yet, if my choices mean nothing, how can my worth rank above theirs?”

Terra smiles, and I sink into his pleasure and amusement like a warm bath. I must have said the right thing, even if my volume waned. It exacts mighty effort to sound forceful. Can I sleep soon?

Mare’s eyes narrow. “Let us have you prove it.” She stands, and the stone floor of the moat cracks beneath her. “If you are worthy of having your choices count, then you must be capable of making decisions toward a goal. I propose a contest, a bet.” Her gaze cuts to Terra. “At the end, we will see where Pearl chooses to live.”

Terra flinches. Fear’s cold hands slide over him, dark and smothering. Does he think I will not choose him? I will. For as long as he needs me, I will always choose to stay with him.

If I must prove my mettle first like a hero of legend, then I will do that, too.

“What are the terms?”

Her smile reveals a row of dagger-like teeth. “The humans have a concept they call love. You know it?”

Love is as prominent in the stories as family. I have many times asked Terra what it is and what it feels like, and his answer always remains the same. It is not an emotion Essences or their Creatures possess. It came with the humans, and we can understand it only in how they express it.

“I know of love. The humans prize it.”

She chuckles, one shoulder hitching toward her chin. “It is a nonsensical but entertaining notion, much like the humans themselves.”

My attention falls to the one present human. What is his story? Did he love anyone, and was he loved in return? His jaw is clenched and bruised, skin pale and webbed in dark lines. His last moment is written within, already breaking down but still legible.

Pain.

It is the same as the pain of some of our past visitors. Terra eased and healed their woes, but we can do nothing for this one. The thought fills me with a heavy tightness as if my own body is collapsing in on me.

“What do humans and their emotions have to do with this?”

“It is the task I set before you.” With a coral beneath either arm, she glides across the few paces between us, eyes level with me.

Terra’s grip tightens, but I do not hide, peeking between the grooves of bark on his fingers. I shake. Is this fear or excitement? Why would I feel either, safe in Terra’s grasp?

Mare’s smile tilts, bottom lip trembling. “You will take the form of a human and walk among them. Gain one’s love, then bring that human to me before the seventh sunset. If you succeed, then you will have proven your worth and won your freedom.”

She touches her collar again, crimson-tipped fingers like claws curling through the jagged-edged shells.

“If you fail, you prove you are a mere trinket, and that is what you will be, forever a silent pendant for my necklace.”

Continued in chapter 2: The Bet

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

“Think carefully, Pearl.” A fire’s worth of warmth coats Terra’s warning, promising both comfort and danger.

“I am more than a trinket. Therefore, I will not fail.” I take what little light filters between his fingers and use it to flicker and flash, the only movement I have yet been able to manifest. “Please? Let me prove this. Mare will follow her own rules, yes? If I win, she will cease her claim on me.”

Mare’s smile is a steady sword level with Terra’s heart behind me. “Of course, Infant.”

Terra sighs, but his hand closes around me completely and pulls down. The cord snaps, and as his grasp opens, his other palm fits atop me. In darkness, I wait.

“Pearl must do this on her own. She will win the love of a human, but you will not interfere. If you do, Sister, you forfeit.”

As heat swells, swirls, and melts my curved sides, I strain to keep listening.

“Then you cannot interfere either, Brother. If you help her, she shall be mine by default.”

It makes sense. If I am to prove my own value, I do not want Mare’s hinderance, nor do I want Terra’s aid. I am not only proving what I am and where I fit to them, but to myself. This is a chance to discover what I am capable of.

If they continue to speak, I cannot hear it, liquifying in Terra’s grasp. The heat is focused but gentle, pouring me into an unseen mold and sanding off the edges.

As he pulls his hands apart, I sit within his palm, long legs dangling over its side. My hands clench and unfurl before my face, turning over, no part missing to my inspecting gaze. Ten fingers, ten toes, two legs and arms, a torso and head.

At my command, fingers comb over my face and scalp. Silken hair falls across my shoulders and in my eyes, dark as the strongest shadows.

I smile, lips feeling strange against my teeth. Are they red like Mare’s, brown like Terra’s, pink like many humans I have seen, or blue like the dead sailor’s?

My hands rise again, but to my dismay, they cannot feel the light as my curved sides once could. My fingers touch my lips and report that they are supple, moist, and warm, but they say nothing of color. Light slides along my back, but again, it lacks detail. I can see only where my eyes point, and that is a limiting, daunting thought. How can creatures defend themselves, looking in only one direction?

My teeth squelch into my lower lip, and breath fills my new lungs. There is something in it like a knife scraping the interior of my skull, and my nose wrinkles.

As Mare shimmies closer, the gross sensation intensifies. Is this smell? I do not like it, overwhelming in how it clogs everything.

I try to tell her to back away, but nothing happens. I cannot push the thought toward her mind. My throat tightens, eyes widening, and my short breaths barely make it past my tongue. I cannot touch or even sense any mind besides my own, not the swine, not the corals, the golems, or even Terra. I am isolated in here, in the vastness, in the quiet, even more alone than when I was a speck.

Take it back. I do not want this.

“Speak as a human, Pearl,” Terra advises as his hand lowers.

Right, I have not completely lost the ability to communicate, and I have gained movement. I have lips, a tongue, and ears, and can manipulate them at will, my will. My fingers and toes wiggle at my whim.

This body paints an outward display of my emotions, and I swivel my eyes to Mare, returning her smirk. “I accept your challenge.” It is a whisper but audible. To add weight to it, I slide off Terra’s palm, and my feet tap the cracked stone floor in front of the one who wants to own me.

I immediately fall, elbows clacking alongside my knees. Pain flares, tingling through every nerve, and my hiss is louder than my first words.

Progress?

The swine squeal in laughter, all but one. He stands furthest at the back, staring at me with wonder. That I cannot delve into his mind incites another sliver of regret. I must surmise what he feels from what he shows. Surprise is plain in his slack jaw and round eyes, jealousy hinted in the slant of his brows and curl of his snout.

I stand, shaky at first. It is not as easy as it looks, but my quick mind hops along the rippling calculations. Holding my arms out, I take a wobbly step toward the salient swine, intent on asking him why he stares so, but Mare’s chortles steal my attention.

“Already headed toward the exit. How cute.” She twists in her laughter, voice raspy in the dry air. “When you find the humans, they will certainly overflow with questions.”

“Take the sailor’s clothes,” Terra instructs, and with heat throbbing in my cheeks, I kneel to obey, fingers fumbling with the tiny buttons.

Human coverings are not mere decoration like Mare’s necklace. Why do they conceal parts of themselves? If this man knew that I unhid him now, what would he think?

It is strange, how alike he is to the humans of so many seasons ago, yet he is different, too. While he claims the same basic form, he has plucked the hair from his face. His muscles, though still well-defined, do not bulge in the same places as sailors of old as if he did not hoist the same loads. His clothes, though torn and ripped, are of a finer weave, the buttons so tiny, I can barely grasp them.

The one nearest his chin snaps off and flies toward the swine. They laugh again, a grunting, bass sound this time, and my cheeks light aflame. Why is this so difficult? Is it because this is wrong? Because this man would not approve of me taking his clothes?

He is dead. He knows and feels nothing. He no longer requires anything. Why should what he would think matter?

Yet, I cannot get his arm out of the ripped sleeve, not until the golems help me. With their assistance, I dress in tattered pants and a ripped shirt, tying it closed so as not to have to deal with the buttons again.

I am ready to go, but as I stand at the top of the staircase in the mouth of the cave, my legs refuse to carry me forward. They tremble. All of me does, my lips, my lashes. A breeze brushes through my hair and chases Mare’s stink from my lungs, replacing it with a crisp, fresh scent.

Maybe smell is not a bad thing. The world outside cannot be awful if its aroma is this enticing.

Yet, I cannot move. The trees beyond the cave dance with the wind, calling for me to join them, but in their acute angles, I see Terra and hear his words.

“Everything that rises, falls, and everything that comes, leaves.”

I whirl and rush back to him, throwing my arms around his front leg. “I will come back.” I do not intend for it to be a sob.

He pats my head.

A sniffle helps steady my voice as I back away. “I will return worthy. Of your care. Capable of anything.”

Before he can reply, I turn and face the light of outside.

“Before the seventh sunset,” Mare croons.

“Right, before the seventh sunset, I will see you again, and I will bring a human’s love with me.”

***

~THE SWINE~

It’s good to be back in the water, even if I hate to admit it. Walking is difficult on legs like tree stumps and harder when your butt drags the ground.

But when Mare announced she was going to visit the Essence of the Land, how my ears perked. And when she chose me as one to accompany her, mixed feelings soured my gut.

I want out of the ocean. I want away from Mare and her cruel games, even if it means I can barely walk. Even if my skin dries and cracks. The sea’s embrace is relief for the moment, but for how long?

The face of another drowning sailor hovers at the front of my mind, so much like the one Mare deposited at Terra’s feet today. The memory is old, from my infancy when I was stupid and reckless and didn’t understand how the world worked. I begged Mare to save that man of long ago.

“Oh, my baby, what a kind heart you have,” she cooed then. “He must first want to be saved.”

The sailor’s thrashes slowed as she caught his cheek and towed him closer, though it didn’t have anything to do with a lessening of his pain. Panic bulged his blood-shot eyes as his lips darkened and both hands slowly clawed at her arm—slowly because that was all he had left.

“Do you want to live?” she asked. “Will you consent to be mine?”

Relief flooded me at his nod, but I never asked her to save another. Neither of us knew what that man agreed to until it was too late.

I trusted Mare then, but not now. I’ll never be like Brine and Barnacle, who hang on her every whim, gradually crushed as they carry her upon their backs. Here in the grand chamber of one of the undersea palaces, they float side by side under an arch that leads onto the veranda. I barely hear their snickering from the opposite side of the large space. The black walls of cooled lava devour whispers.

I watch Mare’s flicking tail as she swims back and forth across the round room. She’s flustered, on the cusp of angry, and that’s never good, especially when it comes with that twist of her brows. She’s scheming.

“What’s so special about the Pearl?” Beryl floats upside-down, the lazy fool. Maybe if he paid attention to something other than what his belly wants from moment to moment, he wouldn’t have leapt on Saburra and me when the Pearl spoke. As if we could hold him. He’s twice our size. He’s got tusks, same as us. Let him fight his own battles.

As if I’m one to talk. The Pearl’s voice made my knees knock together, too. It sounded like a sun bursting into existence right there in front of me.

I’d remind Beryl of that if I felt like answering him. I only feel like sulking in my corner between a ship’s broken helm and a locked chest bleeding gold coins through its rotten wood. That’s normal. That’s safe. Mare rarely even notices me here anymore.

If only I was braver, if I could speak like the Pearl did today. She’s so tiny, but she didn’t let Mare have her way. Maybe it was because of Terra’s protection, but Mare didn’t hurt her. Instead, they gave her legs that can walk, run, swim, or jump. Human legs. Legs that I have wanted for so long. Legs that can carry me away from Mare and her aquatic prison.

What if I—

“Your face when the Pearl transformed.” Mare floats in front of me, cupped hands aimed at my cheeks.

I duck, ears flattened, but manage not to flinch as her scales stick against my skin. “If she’s a sister to the corals, shouldn’t you have known of her?”

“The Pearl is the product of a forgotten dream. Many of the corals are.” Mare’s red lips stretch in a wan smile, and her fingers trace shallow circles at the base of my ears. She tows me to the center of the room, beneath the chandelier of glowing algae. “Do not attempt to subvert the point, my baby. You cannot lie to me.”

It’s not worth even trying to lie to her. I want to pull my face away, but my every muscle has gone slack. Even my eyes refuse to focus, lids like drapes. If she doesn’t let go, I’ll pass out soon. It’s as if lightning threads between her hands, sawing through my mind between them.

My voice is a weak, cold current sinking to the bottom of the ocean. “I want to know what it’s like on land, among the humans.”

I manage not to say, “away from you,” but she probably sees that part anyway.

A gleam churns in the pit of her gaze. “How I would be hurt to think I am not good enough for you, that you would want to leave, but that is not the reason behind this desire, is it?”

I say nothing and hope she’ll let it drop. Mare hurts the things that hurt her, heaps the pain back on them threefold.

Her tail flicks, and she pushes me backward. We’re on the veranda, and my rear flippers scrunch against the balustrade. I shiver. I don’t even like to look at the human skulls stacked to form the rail, much less touch them. But at least they stopped me.

Beneath this jutting platform, twin serpents circle the base of the tower, never still. Their boredom slides over me like smothering, molten metal. They seek something to sink their fangs into and destroy.

Mare’s voice, though soft in this moment, is just as cloying. “As you wish, I will send you to the land.”

My eyes shoot open, tongue too tied to shape the “what” that flashes through my whole body.

Mare’s grin takes the shape of a harpoon. “That Terra, distancing us to ruin my fun. If I go and watch the Pearl, I will want to join in, make sure things go my way. Then the bet would be forfeit, but if you go...”

Her fingers pause, hooked behind my ears and pressing them upright as she waits for me to finish the thought.

“Terra didn’t say anything about me.” I look her straight in the eye. “I can make sure the Pearl doesn’t succeed.”

With the chandelier behind her, her smile is a black smudge against her silhouette. “You want to make me happy, do you not?”

A tiny, withered, starving part of me does, but most of me just wants to make sure I don’t upset her.

The skulls’ gaping sockets press into my behind, proof of Mare’s hate for humans, much as she pretends to be amused by them. The oldest corals claim she hasn’t always felt this way. They knew the human that loved her. Or said he loved her.

These are the skulls of his relatives.

Creatures of Essence can’t love. We aren’t meant to be loved, and this challenge Mare threw at the Pearl seems too similar to her own story.

Hind legs stiff, I push off the morbid half-wall. “You have me. And Beryl, Brine, Barnacle, and Saburra. The corals, the serpents, and a hundred others. What’s the harm in letting Terra have one tiny rock?”

Her embrace skims down my shell as she allows the momentum to carry us back under the arch. Here, she is less of a silhouette, eyes radiant like the jewels winking in the walls. “The boundaries between realms must be strict, or do you not remember what happened when I gave a little to the infant Essence of the Sky?”

It’s hard to forget feathers cracking one’s shell. She gave a little, and Caelus thought that meant he could take a lot.

Releasing me, she whirls, rises, then dives in a backward loop, arms wrapped around herself.

“Said he whose name shall never again be spoken, the oldest of my swine, ‘I want to dance.’” Upside-down, she puckers her lips and pinches my cheeks. “The Sky’s creatures do not play nice.”

No, not when they want something, and neither does Mare. She killed the oldest of my brothers rather than give him up.

For a moment, I wonder what would have happened had the Sky’s Essence found the sea stone instead of Terra. The Essence of the Land is passive. Caelus is not.

Mare curls playfully around me, soft tailfins flapping over my face. “Sing, the lot of you. I cannot work in this silence.”

As always, Brine and Barnacle are the first to obey, voices deep and clear. Beryl’s is a bit on the nasally side, Saburra’s bright and high.

My range should slide into the middle, but instead, I whisper, “I won’t let the Pearl win the bet, but if she did, what would you do?”

“I keep my word, my baby.” She straightens, sending me rolling, and I flap my fins and legs to stay in place. “If she does bring a human who claims to love her, I will respect her win, and I will show her the fickle, weak meaning of human love. The Pearl will have her freedom, and in exchange, I will take that human’s life.”

Of course she will, especially if—

Over her shoulder, my gaze cuts to the shortest column of skulls, each one’s grin riddled with gaps. The missing teeth dangle from Mare’s necklace.

Those men were islanders, though. How would the Pearl find one of their kin? I doubt she knows how to swim, but then, I saw how quickly she learned to walk for someone who never had legs before.

Mare catches my chin and pulls my face close to hers. “That will not happen, however, because when the seventh sun sets, the Pearl will have brought you to fulfill the bet, and you will only look human.”

Her lips touch my forehead, and a current courses through me. It tears and squeezes my muscles, sculpting them into a foreign shape. The water in my throat boils and burns, trapping a scream.

Like the many men I have seen drown, I thrash, knowing it’s useless, but these long limbs move on their own.

Mare holds me tight, and we rise, I think. The world has gone dark. I’m on fire on the inside, and the water won’t put it out.

“When you win this for me, as a reward, you can keep the transformation. Walk among the humans for as long as you please.”

Her words sound garbled through these deformed ears. Do I hear them right? Is this the chance I’ve been waiting for, longing for?

Her webbed hand cups the back of my head, drawing my face to the crook of her neck. Her jagged pendants dig into my cheek, but I barely feel it. I barely feel anything. Even the fire has gone cold.

As she squishes me against her one final time, her whisper falls into my ears clearer than it ever has. “Go, my baby. I will miss you so much.”

Continued in chapter 3: Humans

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

Walking would probably not take so long if I did not stop to revel in the feel of every texture against my skin. Rough stone gives way to soft soil and pebbles that bruise my feet, then grass that bows before me, blades slick and moist with dew.

Bark scrapes my palms, but when pressed too hard, it peels, revealing a spongy, chilled interior. Fallen leaves speckle the ground in scarlet and gold and crunch beneath my toes. Their pieces tickle, stick, and itch.

I kneel alongside a mountain in miniature, gaze scouring the airy pattern of its sides. At my poke, the structure crumbles, and tiny bodies erupt from exits I had not even seen, assessing and repairing the damage. Their unified movements resemble the sea’s waves. If only I could probe that oneness of mind, experience its shape and weight.

Yet, when I try, nothing happens. A sense of emptiness grows from deep within, and I shy away from its cold. When I meet a human, I must ask them to show me how to combat this inner aloneness.

I have no idea where to go to find humans, however, and it is a shame that I cannot communicate with these ants. Intimate with the land as they are, they surely know the entirety of its layout and could instruct me in the best course. Our lack of mutual understanding instead makes me uneasy at their approach.

I step back, but they are swifter, swarming over my bare toes and up my shins. I have no way of explaining that I cannot assist them in repairing their home, even if it and I are painted the same. They cannot have any of my skin for their repairs.

They try to take it anyway, a hundred tiny mouths digging into my legs. I swat, yell, swipe, and finally just run, stumbling through the undergrowth, still with no idea which way I should be headed.

As I walk, the sun reaches its summit, tires of balancing on its throne, and heads for its bed in the mountains. Sometimes I can see its destination, but mostly, I perceive it only in the slant of the rays piercing the canopy. When these dangle nearly horizontal, warm but weak and yellow, a sound captures my ears.

It tugs, fast, then lingers, strong and sharp, like a shout compressed into a whisper. I turn toward it, and with each subsequent step, it seeps further into me, wrapping another loop around my heart. High notes dip into deep lulls, and I pause, breath held, waiting for the next pull, never disappointed.

The source nears, just on the other side of a line of saplings, when the song ends on a yelp.

I stop as if struck, hand rising to my chest, where it finds no blood, but I feel like I am bleeding out just the same, torn and in need of those notes to sew me back together.

“Give me back my flute!”

Now I find myself unable to move for a different reason. This is a human voice, mature but still young, male, nasally, and with an underlying squeak that shows a bit too much on the last syllable.

I have found humans. Now what? How do I make them feel love?

I smooth my hands over my borrowed clothes, noting the rips and crusty patches. They bunch in the most inconvenient places. Most of my shoulders show, a lot of my midriff, too. The pants might as well be a skirt below mid-thigh. Will the humans still find it beautiful?

“Seriously, your height’s no fair, man!”

“If I give this back to you, what will you do?” The second voice is lower and softer with an edge that could cut through rock.

“Okay, okay, I’ll put it in my bag, silently, since you’re so scared.”

I step forward, outstretched hand pushing just enough branches aside so I can see the clearing beyond.

“Call it scared if you want, but—did you hear that?” The taller one’s gaze cuts to me, a blue brighter than the sea and deeper than the sky.

I am stone, unmoving, part of the background. Beyond this line of younglings, even the grass is shorn, a sacred space separating the forest from a pair of rails on an altar of pebbles hashed with planks. Between the metal beams stand two young men draped in cloaks, sacks strapped to their backs. The air churns, heavy with smoke and steel. Is this the scent of humans?

While it is not as repulsive as Mare’s, I do not like it, but that clogged sensation shrinks in comparison with the scalding pinch that continues to tighten my chest the longer our gazes remain aligned. Surely, he sees me. Why does he not move, not say anything?

“For someone named after a tree, you sure seem scared of them.”

At these words from his companion, the blue eyes shift just enough for me to escape. I backpedal, and the branches swing to their former position.

“It’s not the trees I worry about. Stay here, Pike.” The zing of metal on leather sounds, and as he steps over the rail, a knife emerges from beneath the taller one’s cloak.

He heads straight toward me. What should I do?

My hands rise to my head, smoothing my hair and fanning it over my shoulders. With a deep breath, I lift my chin, fingers holding one another, toes nearly close enough to do the same.

When he crashes through the young growth, he finds only more trees and moss-covered, fallen logs. The rocky ground does not even keep a footprint to show him where I was.

Clothed in caution, his stance is one ready to spring, grip gloved in confidence on the knife’s bone handle. Its worn white matches what I can see of his attire beneath the cloak. His fallen hood reveals hair that mirrors the night tied just above his nape in a short tail and a face unrelated to any who visited Terra. Arrows form each feature, even his slightly crooked nose.

Before he can spot me ducking behind a seesaw of logs, Pike stumbles through the saplings. Branches snap before the press of his lanky body, and his green eyes shine bright with panic.

His companion straightens, shape hinting at broad shoulders and long limbs. “I told you to stay.”

“I was pretty sure you were just trying to leave me behind.”

“The thought isn’t foreign to me.” The knife disappears from whence it came, and the trace of a smirk highlights the off angle of his nose in an endearing way, almost enough to pull me from my hiding space. “I should have waited for the train.”

Pike points with his flute. “Tough luck scraping up the money to afford that hotel at the station. I certainly couldn’t, and we agreed, safety in numbers, right?”

“Not when half the numbers keep making noise that’ll attract dangerous beings. Put that thing away.” He shoves past the musician and trudges back toward the rails.

Pike rolls his eyes. “Mare doesn’t exist.”

The other stops, stiff as the ancient trees framing him on either side. “Do you know who my people are?”

“Just because your family’s superstitious doesn’t mean you have to be.”

The taller one whirls, a hurricane one moment, still as stone the next, fist tangled in the front of Pike’s cloak. Does the shorter one stand on his toes to make himself seem larger or because his comrade holds him? A slanted ray makes him squint.

Nothing moves aside from the dust dancing in the yellow swords of light.

When the other speaks, his voice is wind, cold, low, and distant. “I believe in the Essences because I’ve seen things. So have my people. My ancestors—”

“Your ancestors were killed by superstition, over and over again, right?” Despite the light shining directly on him, the shadows of Pike’s face are akin to the darkness of an abyss. “You’re here to change that.”

Slowly, blue eyes close, and their owner nods. He lets go and turns to the tracks. “We have to keep moving.”

Pike follows, flute clutched to his chest as they disappear through the broken foliage.

I rise, scoot over the logs, and flit behind the humans. I need to speak with them, so why is it so difficult? Why does my throat tighten the nearer they come? Why does thinking about that gaze on me again send chills into my deepest parts?

I trace a path parallel to theirs, ever a few paces behind and hidden by some plant or other.

“Even if Creatures of Essence did exist,” Pike grumbles, “this is a forest. It’s the ones of the Sea that lure you in with their song. The Creatures of the Land will steal your heart with their poems, which are only words, and I hate words, so I’d probably be immune.”

“For someone who hates words, you sure use a lot of them.”

Pike hunches further over his flute. “Silence makes me uncomfortable, okay? Where I’m from, music defines everything, and no task is complete without it.”

Does that connect him with the sea? It is not hard to picture him on a beach. Though not as tanned as his companion’s, his skin is no stranger to the sun’s kiss, and his hair resembles wet sand for color and texture, short and plastered down.

His friend’s stride lengthens and quickens.

“I really don’t see the harm in—”

A roar drowns the tail of the sentence as a mass of rippling, brown fur erupts from the trees beyond the tracks and charges straight for Pike.

Fear seizes my limbs, wrenching them in a run, and the same dose of motion explodes through him. For me, unseen in the trees, it is enough. My foot alights in the crook of a branch and launches me higher until I sit like a bird, twigs bowing beneath my weight. Pike’s rush is too little, too late. The bear already looms above him, black claws glinting in the last of the light as they slice down at his retreating back.

The air is a still sea, smooth as glass, and Pike’s scream cracks it, cut short as a massive paw tangles in his trailing cloak and he falls on his behind. Rolling, he leaves the garment and scrambles into the undergrowth.

The beast does not pursue him, attention yanked to the other by a thrown knife now lodged in his shoulder. If not for that, his first swipe would have snagged more than empty fabric.

“Bears are protectors of the forest,” Terra had taught me as he patted one’s head. “While not as wise as some, they aid me in guarding the land from those that would harm it and that which does not belong. Should you ever become lost within my realm, ask any local for the protector, and that one will ensure I hear you, always.”

The bear is not a villain. Neither are the men as far as I can tell. Yet, I recall the human who first carried me to Terra, how some bubble of otherness had surrounded him, warning all the creatures that he did not belong.

The bear is simply fulfilling his duty to destroy the wrongness that occupies his territory.

“Leave. Run.” My admonition is a whisper, unheard by any but the trees where I sit.

The blue-eyed human retreats too slowly, a second knife in hand and facing his adversary. Blood darkens the fur around his first blade. Cued by another roar, the massive claws swipe, and he ducks, somersaults, feet curling atop the downed paw. He leaps off it, weapon aimed to fall into the side of the bear’s throat.

As if a blade has already impaled the same place on me, I cannot breathe.

“Look out!” The cry flies from somewhere below me in this tallest of trees, so shrill, I barely hear the shape of the words.

A second paw swats the man down, and he crumples sideways over the clearing’s metal beams. Flipping end over end, his weapon retreats and stabs into the ground several body lengths away. He rolls, slower than before, feet folded beneath him. His cloak fans behind him, shredded like my not-skirt.

Crouched on the slanted lawn, he flips backward and stretches for his lost knife, but the bear scoops him up.

My eyes widen, tears leaking from their corners. I do not want either of them to lose.

The man grips the handle of the first knife and tugs, ripping it through the bear’s collar one agonizing hairsbreadth at a time. The rest of him writhes, kicks and strategic bending meant to keep his middle beneath the bear’s chin as paws aim to force him between open jaws.

His face twists, and though I cannot prod his mind, I feel the pain the expression conveys as if it is my gut the claws dig into, unseen somewhere within the cloth while crimson spreads outward.

I am falling, running. I am too close, one hand on the bear’s nose, other around the man’s wrist. Something greater than fear fills me. This must stop, or they both will die.

I extend my mind to them, a bridge to connect their understanding, but while I have enough will to build with, I cannot reach either side. Only an empty sea waits within me. The bridge leads nowhere.

Those blue eyes are on me again, scrunched and unfocused as if they look right through me. Questions are as prevalent as the tears in them. Then a paw blocks my sight.

I fold backward around it, pulling the man with me. He weighs more than I expect, but I must keep moving. This dance allows for no hesitation, a bent knee left, a leap right, a whirl, a backbend, a somersault. The blood of my rescuee flows over my arms, and despite its loss, he grows heavier.

Tightness leaves the muscles around his eyes, and they droop, half-lidded. A line of paler skin intercepts one brow and draws across his forehead—apparently his recklessness did not awaken only today. How I wish to be like Terra in this moment, able to give him the strength to heal as I saw my Essence do with those who brought him gifts.

We roll again, a tangled ball of limbs and strips of cloth, the bear’s breath hot on my face, deafening all other sound. As before, I lift my hand to place my palm against his nose, but this time, I stop short of touching him. The rest of me curls around the human as if I am any kind of shield, as if the claws cannot slice through me and into him.

A part of me believes they will not. I am favored by Terra, a child he keeps with him always. This denizen of his realm will not dare hurt me, and it will abandon pursuit of those I protect.

Either the bear has frozen or time has. All falls still, so quiet, I can hear the human’s gasp as his eyes open and flick to me.

Why am I suddenly so tired? His face blurs, the bear, too, and I cannot hold my own weight. Air leaves me in a sigh as I collapse onto the blue-eyed human, my hand the last to drop. As it greets the soft grass, the sun slips below the mountains, and my eyes close.

Continued in chapter 4: First Day

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

When next my eyes open, the scene is unfamiliar. I face upward, but no blue or black sky comes into focus. Instead, gray hovers far above, nearly as high as the ceiling of Terra’s greeting hall, but this is smoother. Where the golems shape the dimples and straws of the cave into abstract forms, the polished stone here is carved with a frieze of flowers.

Is this something the humans have done? Have I somehow found my way within one’s home?

“Don’t frown like that. It mars your pretty face.”

I turn my head, and when that proves easy enough, I sit up.

“You’re probably wondering where you are, huh?” Pike laughs and rubs a hand over his sandy hair.

I stare at him, noting his flimsy chair, the cloth wall behind him, and its copies surrounding us. His garb has changed, and darkness loiters beneath his eyes. In this pallid light, they are more aqua than green, vivid with the bluish undertone of a sheltered lagoon.

“How long was I asleep?”

His laugh comes louder this time, freer. “That’s a fair question, too, I guess. It’s been half a day. My friend and I—well, he’s not a friend, per se, since I just met him yesterday and he’s a pain in the rear, but yeah, I’ll call us friends. Anyway, we brought you with us, and security wasn’t exactly happy about it, but we talked the dean into letting you stay, so welcome to Southern Shores University.”

He spreads his arms wide to match his grin, and something in the gesture reminds me of a wave stretching upon the shore, reaching as much of the land as it can before the sea draws it back in.

“Where is your friend?”

“In class.” He scoops a blue cap off the chair beside him and stands. “We arrived later than we should have, and he had to go. Technically, I did, too, but I have no delusions that my attendance will end any wars. Plus, I’m infinitely more compassionate than he is.”

Relief is a cool, calm breeze chasing out the tightness from my chest. He did not die from his wounds at least, but I wonder at the implications of that last comparison. Does being more compassionate mean Pike is more capable or more naturally inclined to show love? Should I focus my efforts on this short, noisy human?

Pike wrings his hat, gaze passing through his feet. “Far be it from me to tell anybody they can’t be friends, but he—well, I’ll just warn you that making friends with him could be dangerous for both of you.”

Before I can ask how, his smirk returns, his cap settles crookedly on his beach-like hair, and he offers me a hand. “Think you can stand?”

My focus flutters from his face to his fingers, where callouses blur his knuckles. In the stories, this is a big moment, when lovers touch for the first time. As I accept his hand, will a spark jump between us?

My fingers meet his palm, then slide forward to fold over his wrist. While there is warmth, that is all, no flash, no firework. His grasp closes, helping me rise, but I feel no thrill or flurry. If anything, I feel trapped, as if he intends to steal my hand.

“The dean wanted to see you as soon as possible, so I’ll escort you to his office, I guess.” Head tilted, he gives me a smile.

I return it, but unexplained weight makes the expression a chore until he releases me, pivots toward a break in the flimsy partition, and indicates with an outstretched arm that I should precede him.

Beyond the doorway awaits a maze of cloth walls barely higher than our heads. The ceiling so far above appears to float on nothing. I stare at it as I walk until the swooshing fabric at my ankles calls my attention.

I hitch my step, jaunting left, then right to watch the pant legs flare at my calves. Short boots encase my feet, and my toes curl, testing the restriction. I do not appreciate how little the space for them is, as if they have been packed into a tomb, never again to face the light.

“What do you think of the uniform?” Pike asks, subtle gestures directing me at every intersection. “You’re not a student here, but we couldn’t leave you in what you were in, so I convinced the medic to let you borrow one of her novice’s outfits. The gold looks good on you.”

I run a hand along a three-quarter sleeve and down my side to where the jacket stretches beneath a metal belt. The material is both soft and slick, a pale yellow with a hint of shine.

“I couldn’t seem to talk her into letting you have the beret, too, though.” He winks and glances up as if he can see his own hat. Discounting that, his outfit is similar to mine—a jacket, though his sleeves are longer, and a metal belt. His pants tuck into his boots. The color is different as well.

“Do you prefer blue?”

“In a way. Blue is for students of experimental science, and though I don’t think that’s much different from medicine anyway, it’s closer to my dream.” He pauses as if he ran into a wall I cannot see. “Why, do you think it doesn’t look good on me or something?”

I squint at him, considering. “It does not go with your eyes.”

It would go with his friend’s, however. Does he wear the same uniform?

We reach the end of the maze and enter a hall of metal planks. Vertical bars and gold-tinted glass imprison gears in the walls. These turn in endless circles, cloaked in steam, and a humid haze shrouds the path, thickest at our feet. Its chill seeps through my skin, and I shiver.

With a guffaw, Pike strolls past me. “Nothing goes with these eyes. At least I’m not here for fashion. I’d love to have eyes like yours, though, dark like they could swallow the stars.” He faces me, looking up from a bow, hands behind his back. “Actually, I think I’m just plain jealous of you, awesomely able to dodge that bear’s attacks. While carrying someone twice your size, no less.”

I try to laugh it off, and this time, the smile shows up on its own. “I was fear’s puppet.”

“Anyone would be. I was hiding in a tree, but you…I don’t believe in fairies, but you certainly looked like one. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d believe you could fly.”

“Why do you not believe in fairies? Caelus is said to have many.”

He tilts his head so far, his hat slides off, and he catches it. “If I believed in Caelus, then I suppose I’d have to believe in his fairies, too.”

A far-away look unfocuses his pale jade eyes. His sandy lashes gleam in the afternoon light that slants through the tall windows at the ever-nearing end of the hall. Yesterday in the forest, the light carried warmth. Here, it is too sallow as if it is shadow disguised as light.

“It was probably just my imagination, but I saw a glow between you two as you faced the bear. Do you remember anything like that?”

My steps slow as I replay the scene in my mind. The blue-eyed man hung slack in my embrace. How badly I had wanted to share my strength with him, keep him alive, but I felt so tired.

Then nothing.

I shake my head, but a flame of hope shimmies in my core. If a flash came when I held his traveling companion, perhaps that explains why nothing like that happened when I touched Pike. Maybe this blue-eyed friend is the one I seek.

“Yeah, it was probably just a product of my own fear, but a word of advice? The dean is a scientist at heart, and he likes ones with interesting stories. I don’t know your background or anything, but if you can impress him somehow, he’ll probably let you stay, and”—he wrings his cap, gaze shying toward the windows now on our right as color blossoms on either side of his nose—“I’d really like you to stay.”

I puff my cheeks. Yes, I need this dean to let me stay. A place this big surely has plenty of humans. It at least has two candidates to help me win the bet. I would rather not waste more time trying to find others elsewhere. Most of my first day has already burned.

“I do not think I have a story yet. It is just beginning.”

Pike laughs again, and the sound grows on me, gentle like leaves falling in the wind yet bold like a wolf calling for the moons. “He likes those that will have a story, too. At least, that’s what he told me.” He flashes a grin, footfalls pedaling faster. “And I’m sure you will have one. I mean, the way you moved? You evaded every attack, and you didn’t even try to fight back.”

I jog to catch up, but no grin comes to mirror his. Dread is too heavy. It fumbles my steps. “What happened to the bear?”

He stops, smile fading like a sunset.

No, oh-no. I must know the truth, but I do not wish to hear it. This hallway of cold light and metal is too bright for such dark words. Windows line the right wall as squares of white canvas. I cannot see through them. Doors queue up on the left, every one of them closed.

Pike whispers what I have already guessed. “It’s dead.”

He is a blur, unrecognizable behind a wall of tears. Suddenly, I am against his chest, and his arms encircle me.

His voice is tight. “I know it would have killed you both, and me, too, probably, but we shouldn’t have been walking through its territory in the first place. If I hadn’t been making such a ruckus…”

I wait for the sentence to end, but it never does. It dangles in front of me as if I am supposed to know how to complete it.

Slowly, I slide my arms around him. If he is so willing to touch me, hold me as in the stories, then maybe he is the one I should focus on after all.

“The bear would have heard you regardless,” I say, lips aligned with his heart, “but I might not of. I came because I heard your flute and I liked it.”

A jolt yanks him an arm’s length away from me, hands on my shoulders. “Really? I mean, I’m not even that good, but you…you liked it?”

“Your song laced a hook through my heart and pulled me to you. I would love to hear you play again.”

Though it is the truth, perhaps it was not the right thing to say? He lets go of me to rub the back of his head.

“Wow, okay. Too bad I don’t have my flute with me now. And the dean’s office is right here, but you know what, talk to him. Whether or not he decides to let you stay, make sure you come by dorm room four-twelve this evening, and I’ll play a song for you.”

“Deal.”

I seal the agreement with an enthusiastic nod as he knocks on a door, and even in that I hear a simple melody. Song courses through him, and the more I look for it, the more I see.

Black wood embellished with brass circles swings aside to reveal a curvy young woman with a green uniform, pointed glasses, and strawberry hair swept into a bun.

As she beckons me within, Pike backs away with a big, goofy grin, arms rolling in some mockery of dance. “Remember, room four-twelve.”

I wave at him until he reaches the stairs at the end of the hall, striped with columns and deep shadows.

Just as I am about to turn back to the door, another patch of blue snares my eye. Spine against the ticking pillar at the bottom of the staircase, a slender girl dressed in the same azure as Pike stares through messy curls. Far outshining the brilliance of the uniform, her eyes are the cerulean of the clearest sky, but as our gazes meet, she slides out of sight.

Continued in chapter 5: The Dean

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

Within Terra’s forest, everything curves and bends. Where light and shadow press against one another, they blend or sway.

Within Southern Shores University, flat metal stands unyielding, and even light must wear a leash. The walls of the dean’s office measure three times my own height, but the platinum gears within them loom even larger, their edges hidden beyond an iron ceiling clouded by steam. Tiny, luminous gourds outline the floor, and their glow draws inverted, overlapping mountains.

The strawberry-haired girl does not follow me through the doorway. As she retreats, the tile where she stood rises with a series of echoic clicks, and the door swings shut.

The dean sits in a massive chair at an enormous desk, and everything about his person claims those same descriptors. He is not a giant like Terra or Mare, but even with him sitting, Pike would still be shorter than him, and I am shorter than Pike.

With a gesture for me to approach, he leans forward, and a deep, gravelly voice pours from his mouth. “You managed to greatly impress my students. Forgive me if I find their accounts—and the report of the train conductors that found them—difficult to believe. Care to tell me how you came to be in the E’er Wild Forest?” Elbows wrinkling the desk’s velvet runner, he folds his hands.

I bite my lip, gaze drawn to the stack of papers and codices stacked to his left. Reports, some of them about me, but not all of them. They are stories, newer than the ones Terra told or I read in his archives, fresh, ones I do not yet know the end of. I want them.

Alongside them rests a plaque carved with a name in many scripts. I recognize three. They spell Roald Smythe. Should my name be written somewhere like that as well?

The dean sighs. “I certainly hope you can speak.”

Yes, but for some reason, I do not want to. Each time I open my mouth to answer his questions, my throat tightens. My eyes fall back to the pile pushed to the side of the desk as if some deeper part of myself warns me to choose my words with greater caution.

I know a story where the hero speaks untruth. When I read it, I asked Terra why the man would conceal what happened.

“Not all are deserving of all information. Some would use the truth as a weapon to hurt others the same as a villain uses lies.”

Dean Smythe possesses an easy smile, and his eyes are pools of timid brown. His ears remind me of an elephant’s, and his poufs of graying hair do little to disguise their size. What about him has turned me into a clam? I do not like this feeling. My legs itch to run, but Pike said I must impress this man if I want to stay, and I do very much want to stay.

“I do not know how I entered the forest.” I am not quite the lying hero, for this is true. When the first human I met carried me into the grove surrounding Terra’s cave, my awareness was still so small. I do not know from which direction he came.

The dean purses his lips and nods slowly. “You were wearing a shipman’s garb that was worse for wear. How did it get that way?”

I try not to smile. “I do not know.”

“I feel you are being cheeky with me.” His eyes narrow, and his hands steeple before his nose in a similar fashion to Mare’s. “You must at least have a name.”

“Pearl.”

This earns me another nod as his smaller fingers leave their embrace to flick in my direction. “And a family name?”

“Just Pearl.”

With a slow, deep breath, he picks up a portion of the papers. I crane my neck, trying to read upside-down, but it is gibberish.

“Well, Pearl, maybe you’ll feel more like sharing if I share first. This school is my dream. I built it from the ground up. We accept anyone here that wants to change the future and is willing to work for it.”

He rifles through the papers until he uncovers the one he wants and holds it out to me.

I bring the glossy page almost to my nose. “This is us.”

A perfect, miniature rendering of Pike gives a thumbs up alongside my blue-eyed young man. In his arms, like a bride sailing over a threshold, lounges a lean girl with skin the brown of Terra’s eyes. Me.

The artist is as skilled as the golems. They must have captured my likeness as accurately as the boys’. As Pike said, my eyes are nearly as obsidian as the lashes that frame them. Judging from their half-lidded state, this scene occurred after I passed out.

Dean Smythe’s brows rise. “There was a lot of blood on you, and not a scratch. Same for the student carrying you.”

I lower the portrait but make no move to return it. “He truly is alright then?”

“Thank the Essences, though I wonder how appropriate that phrase is in this instance.”

“Why?” I purse my lips and tilt my head. Terra could have healed my young man, but I doubt he would have. Mare might count it as interference, and the bet would be lost. Plus, had Terra been involved, he would not have let the bear die either.

A squeal shatters my thoughts as the dean pushes back his chair and stands. “Do you not know what that boy is?”

I shake my head.

He utters one word, low and quiet, as if he fears the wind will overhear. “Koa.”

It means nothing to me, and my head tilts in the opposite direction.

“The islanders hated by the Essences.”

The corners of my lips point at my feet. Terra never mentioned hating any humans, even the villains in the stories. He always debated their side with me. He wanted me to see from all points of view, even those steeped in corruption.

Dean Smythe’s gaze upon me rivals the mid-day sun. “It is an old and widespread tale. Its fame is by no means a good thing, but I apologize for assuming I would never meet someone who did not know it.”

My sightline drops to the picture, again studying my blue-eyed human. Does he really come from a story where the Essences hate him?

I cannot believe that. The way he holds me is strong yet gentle, like the hand of the man who first pulled me from the sea. Yet, I am wiser now, and I see something else in his stance, in how the artist renders his stare. Protectiveness. Nothing will succeed in taking that unconscious girl from his arms, not a legion of soldiers, not even the end of the world.

Pike said he had to go, said they both did, but Pike stayed because he is infinitely more compassionate. Confusion churns in my core. This does not appear to be someone who would have so easily left me behind.

The dean draws a noisy breath. “The island Koa have been estranged for millennia from the mainland’s constantly changing nations. An ambassador nephew of mine wants to unite the world into a coalition with a common goal, and he wants to include the Koa. Wise men laughed at him, but he got the Koa to send that kid to my school.”

He chuckles and strides to the row of captive lights. “I’m an inventor. I thrive on the stories of progress.” He kicks one of the gourds, and it shatters with the smallest scream.

I flinch as a burnt stench wafts about the room, mingling with the steam, and my hands slide behind my back to shield the precious portrait of me and my humans from his destructive inclinations.

“Sometimes progress steps backward because those carrying it are not strong enough.” A few paces return him to his desk, and he retakes his seat, gaze lost in the ceiling’s changing clouds. “The first Koa man on the mainland in centuries, and before he even arrives under my roof, he’s attacked by a bear. Yet, he and Pike say you saved him.” His eyes fall to me, glazed and tender. “You have ensnared my curiosity, my dear.”

Keeping the artwork pressed against my spine, I force one corner of a smile and lob a pretend item to him. “I release it.”

His laugh is a cascade of ancient trees falling to the forest floor. “I would like nothing more than for you to stay at Southern Shores University, Pearl. Will you?”

This is what I want. Safe within these walls, Pike studies his science. Simple words—me saying I liked his song—filled him with such glee. I want to see that smile and hear him laugh again. He could love me, win my freedom.

His friend is also here, my blue-eyed islander human whose name I wish I knew. Dean Smythe surely knows it, but my tongue ties a knot at the thought of asking him.

I want to stay, so why do my knees shake when he requests that I do?

Despite a mighty swallow, I cannot coerce words past the lump in my throat. Even so, my nod places a grin upon his face, whimsical as feathers dancing on a fickle breeze.

“Good! Good. Have a look around my school. Sit in on classes. Perhaps you’ll find something of interest to you.” He shrugs and fiddles again with the papers. “You could even end up changing the world.”

Beneath the mess he has made of the stack, he finds a raised circle, and when his fingers press it level with the desk, the echoic clicks resound. The door pops open, and I whirl to face the strawberry-haired girl.

“Ah, Tulip. You have a vacancy in your room, don’t you? Meet your new roommate.” He circumvents the desk, and I scoot closer to the girl. As her gaze snaps to me with a narrow slant, he sweeps a hand in her direction. “Pearl, this is Tulip Everton. She works as my secretary part-time to repay her loans, and she is a lifesaver. Ask her for anything.”

Tulip’s face is unreadable, every angle of her expression formed of perpendicular lines, but she leads me back through a series of doors and into the hall where I last saw Pike.

For a moment, I think I spot the curly-haired, female science student again, but when I blink, only an odd shadow comes into focus. Still, a tingle simmers within my spine from the press of a suspicious gaze.

Students crowd the corridor, each one in a hurry. In the more congested intersection beneath the stairs, they stop just short of pushing. Eyes flit everywhere. I should not be so sensitive. Surely no one watches me any more than anyone else.

Tulip props a hand on one hip. “Guess I’m supposed to show you around. Sorry if I sound less than enthusiastic. It’s been a long day.” She smiles, but her weariness curls the edges.

The same ruggedness frays the posture of so many of the students. As I follow Tulip, a thousand conversations surround me, ten thousand agendas, each one heedless of where it intersects another. They crash and boom like a tempest, and I am lost in its swirls, bobbing in a sea of so many colors.

The last I see of my guide is her strawberry hair disappearing between waves of blue, gold, green, and black.

Continued in chapter 6: The Healer

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

In the time I spent sitting in the sand, creatures came, creatures left, and I could not follow them. In my early days with Terra before the golems made his necklace, I remained wherever I was placed, watching others come and go.

Now I have legs. I can move where I wish, yet I do not know where to instruct them to carry me. If I remain here, waiting as always, will Tulip return?

Eventually, the crowd thins, and I stand alone, crowned by an arch leading beneath the staircase, feet glued to polished stone. Did the students believe me an unthinking statue, art to be glanced upon, then ignored? Those who saw me skirted aside. Those that did not notice crashed into me without a word, no acknowledgement or apology, steps hastened as if I were a mere delay.

They have vanished, and as the hallway reverts to stillness, their smells linger—a whiff of fruit, a lungful of spice, a trace of rotting meat.

My stomach squeals, and as if in response, a quiet tune wafts from somewhere ahead, sharper than Pike’s flute, higher and slightly off-key. While just as quick, these notes glide with a lazy confidence, bouncing between octaves, and my feet do the same, tread light as I venture beneath the stairs.

At the end of the passage, a door is propped ajar, and a silhouette lurks beyond its small panes.

A distant command smothers the whistle, and the shadow departs, yet still I walk as if in a trance. Why do my limbs tremble like trees before the wind? The breeze through the open door possesses a chill, but it is a gentle touch against my bare skin, too weak to cut through my clothes.

I reach the exit, push it far enough to let me escape, and step into the waning light of evening. A day wasted. Or have I managed to accomplish something in the little part of today I did not sleep through? I am with humans. I spoke to Pike, touched him, embraced him even. Should I expect more on day one? Love is…

What?

The stories never define it, probably because humans instinctually know what it is. They do not record their tales with Creatures of Essence in mind, so I am left trying to piece its form together from what I see it do.

It drives humans to find one another, to want to remain in each other’s company no matter the inconvenience. It makes them see things that are not and ignore things that are. It is something they cherish and fear, crave and deny.

How I wish love were a tangible seed. I could plant it, always know where to find it, and pick its fruit as evidence of its healthy growth. As it is, how am I supposed to cultivate love in these humans, enough love that one will put aside the industry I saw today, the weariness and the rush, and return to Terra with me before the seventh sunset? How will I know that love is mature and ready to harvest?

Even if I understand it by then, will Mare? How will I prove I have delivered my quarry, not empty words like a villain’s?

Why do I stare at the sky as I think these things, squinting at the departing sun above the pointed trees as if it might give me the answers?

Metal clatters to my left, and I turn. He stands there, my tall, blue-eyed human, the one the dean said is from the islands. Swords and spears lay scattered at his feet, glittering as the shadows of dusk crawl closer, but I barely see them, lost amid the shock in his widening eyes.

“It’s you.”

“Are you displeased to see me?” My first words are a whisper and much more shrill than I intend.

A smile slowly stretches his lips. “No, of course not. I think you saved my life.”

With the rise of his brows, the scar on his forehead wrinkles, and I wonder how he got it. Caution is one thing he does not seem to have in abundance. Decorum is another matter.

He bows, fists meeting beneath his chest. “May I know your name?”

“Pearl.”

He repeats it, and I regret that I cannot touch his mind. As his mouth shapes the sound, does he picture the same night sky and sunsets as did the humans of old?

“A jewel of the sea.” His smile no longer reaches his eyes, and his brows drop, casting shadow over his lashes. His uniform, while cut like Pike’s, is a cavernous gray, not quite as black as his hair and the gloom that lowers his gaze from mine.

He kneels and scoops up weapon after weapon with a frenzied, unsure grasp. I mimic his pose and do the same, though my gathering stalls to study each blade. These are human tools. Humans do not have horns or claws, so they make them.

“You now know my name, but I do not know yours.”

“Jun.” His eyes jump from blade to blade, never landing on me.

“Pike said you were named after a tree.”

“Juniper. Oakson. But I go by Jun.”

“How is your wound, Jun?” I scoot closer to him, but still he does not look up.

“Not as bad as I thought it was. Just a scratch, really, and I know I have you to thank for that.” Arms full, he stands, and as I do the same, his eyes pierce me as if they, too, are a weapon. “Sorry, if I seem rude. Where I’m from, no one is named after things of the sea. Mare would—”

“You know Mare?” Mention of her name fills me with a sticky sense of dread mixed with the warmth of familiarity. I only met her yesterday, but she is of a world I know, an Essence like Terra.

He frowns. “Not personally. Do you seriously think the Koa—”

A summons from within the trees cuts off whatever guess he had of my thoughts. “Jun, what’s keeping you with the drill stuffs?”

“Coming, Auntie!” He scurries toward the call, gesturing with his chin at the blades I hold. “Bring those, too, will you?”

Before I can take a step, a dark figure drops from a branch behind him, arm curling over his shoulder and around his throat. He throws himself backward, head knocking against the cloaked attacker’s collar so he can spin free, but the shadow is faster.

A spear rolls into a tanned hand and swings. The pole sweeps Jun’s legs out from under him, and he falls flat, weapons scattered again as the javelin’s tip hovers above his heart.

“You don’t get to call me Auntie here, kid, especially when you’re dawdling over here, flirting with girls.”

“I wasn’t flirting, Professor.”

She looks at me, one eyebrow quirked above eyes equal to Jun’s. “Was he?”

I shrug. “I hope so.”

With a tsk, she redacts the spear and nudges her toes against his ribs. “Stand and clean up this mess, and if you delay class again, you sure as the tide won’t do it again.”

He does as bidden and quickly vanishes from sight in the denseness of the forest growth, though his footfalls still patter back to us. Uncertain what to do with my burden, I want to trail him, but the professor stares at me with ‘unwelcome’ written over her entire demeanor.

“Identify yourself, Healer.”

“My name is Pearl. I have some of the blades. May I follow him?”

Reaching to take the few weapons I recovered, she laughs, but the sound is nothing like Pike’s. Hers is deeper, sharper, with a coy irony chopping off the end of every huff. “Healer, there’s a reason I teach in the privacy of the copse.”

“I am not a medical student. I—”

The whistle returns, two low, slow notes punctuated by the snap of twigs as another approaches. Before I can see more than his outline between the brambles, he speaks. “So, this is the girl that saved Jun, huh?”

The professor’s glare softens. “That was you?”

I nod. “May I bring him the rest of his weapons now?”

She crosses her arms, but a smile much like his crinkles her blue eyes. “With the way Jun says you moved, I expected—or hoped maybe—you would be one of my students.”

“What do you teach?”

The newcomer chuckles as he stops alongside her. While not as tall as Jun, he matches the teacher’s height, and like me, he wears gold. “Can’t we let her watch, Professor?”

“That’s a bold suggestion coming from a freshman on his first day, but I suppose there’s little harm in it.” She turns her back and flits between the trees, mottled gray cloak fanning behind her.

The other rolls his eyes. His words draw and blend, vowels long and consonants like popping bubbles. “She’s trying to lose you. If you don’t feel like keeping up—”

I pass him, darting along the path of fading impressions in the bed of fallen pine needles.

With barely a pause, he is at my side. “I was going to say I know the way, but this is fun, too.” His eyes glimmer above his smirk, opaque as jade and the darkest green like the foliage.

When the professor reaches a glade, she stills, and if I had not kept my gaze upon her, I could now mistake her for one of the trees. Her presence balances with nature as if this is exactly where she belongs.

As the other student and I slow, our feet slide on the damp ground, uncovering half-decomposed needles and fresh mud.

In the clearing ahead, a dozen students garbed in dark gray mingle in small groups. Some sit on logs arranged around a sandy depression while others stand nearer the trees opposite us. Jun lines a wooden rack with the weapons he brought.

“Professor, you are a relative of Jun’s?” My heavy breaths muddle my tone, visible as short-lived clouds. The other student’s does the same, but the professor gives no evidence she breathes at all.

Her shoulders rise. “More or less. My mother is Koa. I’ve been to her homeland, of course, studied my craft among the warriors there. He calls me auntie because that’s how they respectfully refer to Koa women.”

My lips purse, and my head falls to one side. “The dean said that no Koa had come to the mainland in centuries.”

“Half-true. Jun is the first male Koa to step foot on Lemuria.” She sighs as her gaze slides over my shoulder. “Look at those useless fools. Not one of them has noticed us standing here.”

She snatches the weapons from me and charges into the meadow, bellowing orders. Every student stiffens, straightens, and scrambles to queue in front of her, all except the one who stands next to me.

I peek sidelong at him. Amid the deepness of the evergreens, his uniform’s gold is a pale, wilted color.

“Are you not part of this class?”

Following my sightline, he glances at his sleeves. “You can take classes that aren’t your major.”

I do not move, waiting for him to explain what that means.

Face twisted slightly to the left, he sweeps his bangs off his forehead, and one by one, the brilliant, white strands cascade back into place as soon as they escape his hand. “If you want to be a healer, great. And if combat interests you, too, go ahead. Learn it. Nothing’s stopping you.”

With an understanding nod, I step closer to him. “You study medicine?”

He takes an equal-sized step away from me. “What I’m interested in is the transference of energy, particularly in how the body uses it. If you want to call that medicine, then you have the same idea as my councilors.”

His slow words wash around me like an indecisive tide, few of them soaking in, and I believe that is by design. He dangles the topic above my head. Is it to test the height and flexibility of my intelligence, or because he wishes to keep the topic too far away for my inspection?

Beneath his forest-colored gaze, a fire burns in my forehead, a fuse leading straight to my heart. It burns with a logic I cannot explain. I want him to believe me capable of anything.

His eyes slide past me. “Shall we join them?”

Tracing his focus, I turn. Most of the students sit, distributed on the logs, while two face each other in the sand, a pair of blades crossed between them.

As the novice healer passes me, I search for words that will, if not impress him, at least catch his attention, assure him I have a brain and thoughts worth considering.

“You do not believe they are the same, concoctions harvested from nature and the power given when an Essence grants good health.”

He keeps walking, hands hidden in his pockets. “I didn’t say that.”

Biting my lip, I plod after him. Perhaps the color of my uniform is not so ill-fitting. Jun’s wound was more than a mere scratch. I recall the crimson river of his blood flowing over my arm, the sapphire crescents of his eyes as his lids slackened. Time had stilled, nothing in motion except his chest as he heaved in one more breath. How he looked at me as my energy vanished.

Did I heal him as Terra has healed so many?

I have fallen behind my fellow golden-clad student. “How much do you know about the Essences? Can you answer a question about them?”

With a soft whistle, he looks back over his shoulder. “Depends on the question.”

“Terra healed people long ago, when they asked, and Mare can as well, yes? Why have I never heard tale of her doing so?”

His stride hitches, and I pull alongside him as his eyes cut to Jun sitting alone at the end of a long log. “The Essence of the Sea is a dangerous topic.”

More dangerous than he can fathom, but my curiosity has become a boulder rolling down a mountain. It will not stop until it crashes upon an answer. “She has killed, I know, but has she ever healed?”

“She has.” He swallows. “She is very old and has a very long memory, longer than humankind’s. Most people don’t believe in the Essences anymore. Those that do are…”

He lets the sentence hang. Does he search for the word to end it, trying them one by one and finding none that fit? Or has he found it and simply avoids setting it free?

Either way, his gaze is so strong, I see it as a rod hooked in Jun’s back, just as deadly a weapon as the swords sliding into sheaths on the hips of the two students in the sand.

“May I ask another question?”

That perilous gaze slides to me. “Depends on what it is.”

“What is your name?”

He smirks, one huff serving as a laugh. “Friends call me Sal. You can, too, if you consider us friends.”

“Sal,” the professor barks from across the arena of logs and sand, “nice of you to join us. You’re up next.”

He winks at me. “Great way to make friends, right, using your name as bait? I’m probably about to die, so wish me luck, Pearl.”

My words of encouragement stick in my throat. I have not told him my name. Perhaps he overheard it when I told it to the Professor?

“Such dramatics,” she scoffs as she hands him a loaded sheath. “The weapons are dull. As long as you don’t get whacked on the head too many times, you’ll be fine.”

Even so, as he pulls his hands from his pockets and accepts the sword, he trembles, jaw locked. If this bothers him so, why is he here? If he desires to be a healer, why does he need to learn to destroy?

Continued in chapter 7: Second Sunset

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

As Sal strides toward the center of the ring, strapping the sheath to his belt, the vacant portion of log next to Jun calls to me. I sit and allow our shoulders to touch. This earns me a glance and a gentle smile. I take it as encouragement that he does not scoot away. Of course, he has very little seat left to his other side to scoot away on.

His warmth radiates through our sleeves, yet no glow appears. Was it only Pike’s imagination after all? Or perhaps the cloth is in the way. If I take Jun’s hand, my skin will touch his. Surely then we will see love’s spark. I have already shared this connection with him once. It should be easy, like blowing on an ember and watching it ignite.

Still, my chest tightens as I reach for the hand resting on his knee. He does not see my hesitant, hovering fingers, his eyes set on Sal. The gold-garbed human seems to belong in the ring even less than he did in the forest. The cloth’s color clashes with the pale sand as if it were meant to match and failed. He sets his feet wide, digging them into the ground as he touches the sword at his side, hand even more hesitant than mine.

Yet, he is braver than I. As his opponent’s blade emerges from its home, Sal grips the handle of his own as if he expects it to burn him. It wobbles as he draws it and just manages to deflect a first strike.

My eyes return to Jun’s hand. He lifts it in a cheer, but I do not know what he rejoices over, for I see nothing beyond it. This is a touch that will change his life, not to be done as a gull scoops a fish out of the ocean or a fox snatches a rabbit.

I see the bear crushing him in its grip.

Will he view my desire for his love in the same way? The bear had reason for what it did, but Jun did not know its motivations. If he does not know the motive behind my wish, will it end the same?

“Jun.”

He turns to me again, and the words sit on the precipice of my tongue, ready to tell him that I need him to love me, that my freedom depends upon it. Yet, the sentiment sticks with the agility of a gecko, refusing to fall into his ears.

His brows drop, their shadow only brightening the shine in his eyes as he searches my face.

I have to say something. “The silence within you, how do you fill it?”

“The what?”

“How to describe it?” I blink hard, nose scrunching. “With only your own thoughts inside your mind, do you ever get lonely?”

“If my mind was ever quiet, I’d appreciate that.”

My brows match his in a confused slant. “Humans cannot hear the thoughts of others, can they? Or is that something special about you?”

His jaw juts forward. “Koa are human, too, maybe more human than you are. We live, breathe, eat, and love the same.”

“What is love?” I say it quickly, too loud in my eagerness. The question echoes off a million surfaces and stills each one. Every eye swivels toward us, and I barrel on. “I have searched so long for a definition. If you know what love is, please tell me.”

Scarlet glows in Jun’s cheeks, and he takes a sudden interest in his feet. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a dictionary.”

“Is that a kind of story?”

“A boring one.” The toes of his boots dig into the ground as if he is about to rise and run.

I catch his elbow. “That explains it, then. I always fall asleep during the boring ones, but if you tell it, I will pay very close attention.”

He huffs, wide gaze shooting back to me. “Seriously? And why are all of you staring?”

Sal’s sword pierces the ground, and he leans on it, smirk crinkling his eyes. “I want to hear you tell this ‘dictionary story.’ Sounds to me like it’ll be entertaining.”

“Shut up.”

The students laugh, and as if their guffaws are a bed of coals, Jun jumps to his feet.

I follow, hand suspended just shy of reaching his. “Is love such a secret?”

“Love is…” He reddens in blotches until his skin reminds me of an apple. “It’s a feeling. It’s a need to protect someone.”

I see the truth in it. “To protect someone, you must be with them always so that danger cannot find them when you are apart.”

“That’s part of it, I guess, but when you love someone, you want to be with them because you’re afraid you’ll miss the good things, too, not just that something bad will happen.”

“Good things?” I press. “Like sweet kisses?”

He shines more red than a ruby. “Sometimes. You make those you love feel safe and happy so you can see their smile because to you, their smile is worth more than all the jewels in the world.”

“Very well said, Jun,” the professor pronounces with a slow clap, “but sit. For interrupting someone else’s bout, you get to clean up all the practice weapons today. Sal, Jag, reset.”

Jun plops, elbows on his knees and hands shielding either side of his face. I want to kneel in front of him, tell him I like his answer, but before I can move, Sal steps past his grounded sword.

“I have another proposal, Professor. No offense to Jag as a sparring partner, but this is the mystery girl who saved Jun. Wouldn’t we all like to see her in action?”

Several whoop in agreement. Sal’s soft footfalls sound on the sand, but I do not turn, sight draped over Jun’s slouched form. He looks hurt. Why? Where? Was the bear scratch deeper than he thought after all?

Again, I remember my arms covered in his blood.

“What do you say, Pearl? I challenge you, one hand-to-hand bout, just like when you faced off against the monster in the E’er Wild Forest. I’m no bear, but I’ll do my best.”

Sal wants me to spar with him, to move as I did against the bear? Does he not believe Jun’s account, or does he simply want the privilege of seeing it?

My heart thrums as I pivot. None of Sal’s tremors remain, his eyes locked on me. In the slanted last light of evening, their green mixes with a golden evanescence to resemble peridot.

Without my full consent, my foot moves forward, toe pushing down loose sand. I want the rush of movement from before. It was a dance. And this time, no one will die.

My second foot passes the first, and Sal’s smirk straightens in a smile. He is not my primary choice of dance partner. That would be Jun. In a spar, grabbing his hand would be simple, but something in the intensity of Sal’s gaze whispers that there is a chance here, too. He wants me to take his hand. He wants me to prove something, and once I do, then what?

The mystery lures me in. The background blurs, cloaked in the blanched light of a rising moon. I missed the moment of second sunset. Has the professor sanctioned this? I missed that, too.

Steps languid but nimble, Sal backs to my left, and I lunge. What are the rules? What are we trying to accomplish?

I do not care about the answer. Movement is my only goal.

Sal skirts my attack like shadow ever dodging the light. Behind me, he snatches my bicep. I twist free, land on my curled shoulders, and roll. My feet find the sand but cannot take my weight, swept away by his leg, and I roll again.

Over and over, he is there at every turn, every bend, every step. My heart pounds, filling the emptiness beside my thoughts. Everything I am coalesces into a need to outmaneuver him. He holds my wrist behind my back, and the more I whirl, the more tangled I become.

Light like a fire flickers between us, and a cry breaks my trance.

The flame is not my imagination, though “flame” is not quite the right word for it. The creature is a ribbon of light. Undulating in a breeze that affects nothing else, it hovers above our heads. Jag hisses on the ground, curled around his steaming leg. Another student leans over him, trying to convince him to let her assess his wound.

“What is that thing?” the professor barks, and as if in reply, it dives straight for me.

Sal wraps me in a tight embrace and spins. Jun snatches the grounded sword and dives behind us, though I do not know how he intends to combat light with a blade.

It does nothing. As the creature flows past his arm, it makes the sound of a downpour. Jun retracts his hand, holding it tight to his chest. Like Jag’s leg, it steams, flesh blistered and charred beneath shredded sleeve.

“Don’t let it touch you!” he warns, voice strained.

Sal keeps just one step ahead of it, constantly swerving, but a second one cascades over the trees. The students keep low. Some clutch weapons.

I am as a child, pressed against Sal’s chest and peeking over his shoulder. Is it wrong that I want to touch the light monsters? I heard Jun’s warning and saw what it did to him, but they are such a new and alien thing. I have never seen nor heard of anything like them. I want to probe their thoughts, experience the world as they do, even if that is impossible in this form. Why do they have to show up now?

Injured arm at his side, Jun runs toward us holding a crossbow, and the second creature flows to meet him. He pivots into a backbend, shins sliding on the grass and weapon raised. The creature is a river, the electric green of Mare’s eyes and translucent, but through its glow, I can no longer see the students. The tip of Jun’s arrow is easier to perceive. Ripples stream in its wake as it parts the monster’s belly.

Then that scene, too, disappears as the first creature surrounds us. We have almost reached the trees, and Sal looks up, body tensing. If he intends to leap into the branches, I doubt he will make it.

My feet touch the ground, and his arms leave me as he continues to drop, palms cupped together.

“Step into my hands, and I’ll throw you.”

But I do not. I crouch, forehead against his, but before I can assure him we are in this together, thunder rips through me. It starts small, a million parts fusing into one. Lightning streaks around us, crawling across the creature, and a scream echoes in my head, sharper than any claw or dagger. Hands buried in my hair, I let the cry pour from my throat until I have no more breath.

Limp, I fall on Sal and watch the scene sideways through half-lidded eyes. The first creature has vanished, and the second darts toward us, but the professor stands at Sal’s back, wielding a bow and arrow.

She barely takes the time to aim, then fires. As her bolt flies, it divides into a dozen, then two dozen, four, eight, and I lose count. They form a cloud, and as the first ones sink through the creature’s fluidic hide, electricity shoots between each tiny arrow.

The scream is just as bad the second time. In this human form, I should not have the ability to touch the mind of another, so why can I hear them? Is this the creature’s ability instead? Can the other humans present hear it as well?

How can they remain standing?

Sal shakes, but he rises, holding me tightly. His touch is a balm, warm and solid, a reminder of what is real.

“Get inside, the lot of you!” the professor calls as the students surround her.

“But you defeated them,” one says, and she swats at him with her bow.

“They may have simply retreated. Go.”

They obey, but Sal does not follow, and I cannot move. I can barely breathe.

“Sal?”

“Those things were after her. Specifically. If we take her inside—”

“Would you just abandon her, then?”

He shakes his head, and his tremors quicken. “I’ll stay with her, but it’s not wise to endanger the school.” One foot falls behind him, weight shifting backward.

There is a whooshing zing, and Sal is pulled forward, wrists leading.

“I swear on my name, boy, I’ll not leave a young girl out here to fend off those things, and I won’t leave you either.”

He laughs, but there is no mirth in it. “Professor, I don’t even know your name.”

“Cookie Baker.”

“That’s your real name? Your parents went all out on that one.”

The professor grunts, boots heavy in the soft soil as she drags us, though Sal does not put up much of a fight. His steps are stilted, but he walks. “I hope it’s an apt name. I like sweets.”

Does he? I shall have to remember that. He likely does not expect a reward for carrying me or for his bravery, but he has my appreciation just the same. I nuzzle my face into the crook of his neck. He smells of salt and ash.

With a sigh, he whispers in my ear. “See why you shouldn’t ask about Mare?”

Did those creatures belong to her? Terra forbade her from interfering. Surely killing me would be interference, though if I am dead, I may be closer to what she wants. The other items on her necklace are all broken, pulled off beings that once lived but with no life of their own. Is that my fate?

Some part of me refuses to believe those creatures want me dead, however. They want attention. They want to pull me from Sal’s arms.

They would have killed him. They hurt Jun and Jag.

My face is wet. I try to focus on Sal’s movement, the rise and fall of his feet, the sway of his shoulders, the rhythm, the balance, the art of it. Warm air and light envelop us. We must be inside, and still I cannot move, limbs as limp as vines.

The creatures’ screams reverberate, bruising the inside of my skull, and only one sound keeps me sane. Sal’s whistle, low and dawdling over the same notes as before.

“Is she hurt?” Professor Baker asks.

“I think so.”

“And you?”

“No.”

“Set her here,” another orders, and I am falling. Sponge meets my back.

I do not want Sal to let go of me, but he does.

Continued in chapter 8: The Roommate

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

“I bet you have a fascinating story.” An airy, high voice greets me as I sit up. Thin sheets entangle my legs, and a soft mattress groans beneath my weight.

Only an imprisoned flame on the desk lights the room, robust in its ire, and Tulip’s body blocks most of it. She slouches over a book, back toward me. Papers cover the walls, some with sketches, most with columns of crudely written text. A second bed above casts me in deeper shadow.

My head pounds, and the scene swims. I bring my fingers to my temples, but that does nothing to still it.

“Do heroes have headaches?” The words claw through my dry throat.

Tulip swivels her chair and pulls her glasses to the end of her button nose. “Short answer, yes. Long answer, headaches are inglorious, so unless omitting them would significantly affect one’s understanding of the story, minor pain like that is usually left out of legends. Why, you dream yourself a hero?”

She lifts a slender, black eyebrow. The angle of the light paints her in high contrast, shading held within strict borders against her deep, ruddy skin. The brilliant tint of her twisted hair brings out too much red in her cheeks.

The disjointed angles and hues are a comical sight, but I stifle my laugh behind a hand when her expression does not lighten.

“You think that’s funny? Perhaps I should charge for the entertainment.”

My gaze dips to my empty hands curled in my lap. “I have nothing to give you.”

“Didn’t I just say you have a story?” She leans over her crossed knees, and a wave of sweet air strokes my face. “Everything in this world has a price, so appreciate what you’ve got.”

I mouth the last few words, stumbling over the slurred way she molded them. What things do I possess?

This animate form, and with it, a chance to win my freedom. Would it not be preposterous to expect a human to fall in love with a rock that cannot even speak?

What else do I have?

Just before I met the dean, Pike promised to gift me a performance. Though I cannot hold it in my hands, I can in my heart. It is a thing, and all he asked in return was that I go to dorm room four-twelve.

Regret hisses in my bones, and my hands clench in response. I broke that promise. Did Pike stand there, hoping I would remember as I once longed for someone to notice me beneath the waves?

My constricted fingers do nothing the quell the ache, and the sting of my teeth sinking into my lip offers little more distraction. Will Pike forgive me, or have I shattered any chance I had with him?

“Pearl, you alright?”

Tulip sounds so distant. Though close enough to touch, she is so much further than the screams reverberating in my head. Instead of keeping my promise to Pike, I followed a different song outside. Curious of Jun and intrigued by Sal, I forgot all about him, and then…

The screams ring so loud, my vision blurs behind boiling tears. What were those creatures? Why are they still in my head?

My fingers knot in my hair. “Is Jun alright? Where is Sal? Where are we?”

Each question bursts out as a sob, and Tulip places her hands on mine, coaxing them free of ebony strands. “It’s okay. They’re all fine. It’s only been a few hours, but last I saw him, the islander was bandaged and returning to his room like everyone else, including Sal.” As my hands rest limply in hers, she shrugs at the walls. “This is my room, or our room, I suppose. We share it with one other. That’s her bed over there, but we won’t see her much. I have the bunk right above you.”

I glance at the planks that form my low ceiling and attempt a smile. “As if we are family?”

“Exactly.” With a nod, she sits back and adjusts her silken robe. “Anything you need, I’m here for you.”

“Except, you said everything in this world has a price.” Head leaning to one side, I blink at her.

Tulip grins. “You’re sharp.”

“Yet, generosity must not have abandoned everyone here.” My hand rises to my collar and rubs the soft fabric. “This golden uniform was given to me.”

With something between a huff and a snort, Tulip removes her glasses and twirls them around her finger. “That’s because the dean considers you an investment. You think you’d be allowed to just walk out now, after what they’ve seen?”

My cheeks puff as I exhale through a locked jaw. They mean for me to be a prisoner? What right do they have to say so? If I run, what will they do to stop me?

My heart quickens as I recall sparring with Sal, how movement coursed through every stitch of my being. Would running from them feel like that? Or would it be like the dying screams of the mysterious creatures?

If I leave this place, will more sentient auroras come for me? Will they drag me back to Mare and on the seventh sunset tell Terra that I have abandoned him?

My hand falls to its partner, and they squeeze each other. “Why do others wish to own me?”

“Greed. Power. A hundred reasons, really.”

“No matter what he wishes, I cannot belong to the dean.” I pour every ounce of my authority into the statement. I cannot speak with thunder like Terra or the roar of waves like Mare. In this form, I cannot even sound as I did when a stone, a voice that scared the sea swine and stilled the golems. I can only hope it is enough that she will see how immutable my stance on this is. “Even if I wanted to stay, whether I complete my mission or not, I must return.”

“Mission?” The glasses slow and dangle limply as Tulip again leans forward. “Pearl, I want to be your ally, but to help you, I have to know what you’re all about.”

She wants my story, the one where I am a hero with a headache.

I sigh. “My tale is not a very good one. It is not going as it should.”

She chews on the earpiece of her glasses. “How’s it supposed to go?”

Does she not know? I stare, eyes wide and mouth ajar, but I should not let surprise overtake me like this. It conquered Dean Smythe when I did not know a story he thought I should. I must not make the same mistake.

I swallow as I collect my thoughts and try to affect the low, syrupy cadence Terra always uses when he tells of history. “Soul mates recognize their love, if not when first they meet, then definitely by the first time they touch.”

“Let me guess, you believe your love will rescue you so you can live happily ever after?”

She does know. I release a relieved breath, but its hind trembles. Since she knows, it must be true. This is the way of human love, yet I rescued Jun and Pike from the bear, and they rescued me. When I met them again, there was something, yes, but no spark when we touched. No proof of love igniting.

Jun and Sal saved me from the auroras, but then they left when love, if it existed, should have kept one of them at my side.

Maybe the threat must be more than bears or monsters. Perhaps they must rescue me from Mare, but that is a paradox. To do that, they must first love me.

“Look at me, Pearl.” Tulip gestures from my eyes to hers. “Love is more complicated than that. Think about a plant. Does it just appear instantly?”

I shake my head.

“You have to give it time to grow, and even once it’s big, healthy, and gorgeous, if you don’t maintain it, it will wither and die.” She frowns, gaze distant as the earpiece trapped between her teeth tacks a hiss onto every word. “Dead love leaves an ugly shell in your heart. It’ll go away eventually, but the larger it was, the longer it takes.”

She, too, has a tale gone awry, and the desire to know it tugs on me. Perhaps in it, I can learn how to repair my own.

Rubbing at her eye, she swivels back to the desk. “Speaking of taking time, we’re wasting it. The doctor said you were exhausted when he had Sal carry you here. Took me forever to kick that boy out. I’ve got to finish this paper that’s due tomorrow.”

“You are making paper?”

“I’m writing words on the paper. Or trying to. Been stuck for a bit.” Darkness douses the back of her head to match her brows, and it feels more fitting, as if that is the color her hair should be.

I scoot closer to the edge of my mattress. “If you need something to write, how about the definition of love?”

“That would be great if it matched the theme at all, but I think I’d have a hard time working it into the history of drug experimentation on invertebrates.” She laughs hollowly, and a toss of her head spins her around. “No, what I want to know is why you so badly need the definition of love that you’d ask for it twice in one day.”

“I need a human to fall in love with me.”

“At least a human is more plausible than a tree. Go on.” She shifts in her chair until her chin rests on her folded hands over its back.

I take a deep breath. “How will I know when a human loves me? All the stories involve humans loving each other. If I cannot feel love myself, is it even possible for a human to love me?”

The glasses fall. “Pearl, what are you?”

“A Creature of Essence.”

She considers that for a beat, face carefully held still, then lowering in a nod. “Of which realm?”

I squirm, wringing the blanket. “That is where the complication rests. When I am with Terra, I am happy. Before that, I was lonely, trapped in the sand beneath shallow sea water, and Mare says that because I came from the sea, I belong to her.” My fingers clutch the front of my jacket. “She wants me for her necklace.”

“But you want to stay with Terra because that’s where you’re happy.”

I nod, and Tulip straightens.

“That’s part of your answer, Pearl. You love Terra. It’s not a romantic love, I don’t think, but it’s a form of love nonetheless.”

I shake my head, loose hair slapping my cheeks. “Terra says Creatures of Essence cannot—”

“Why do you need a human to fall in love with you?”

I gnaw at my lip, catching the question she did not let me ask and piecing together a response to hers. “It will prove my value to Mare. If before the seventh sunset, I return with a human who loves me, I will win my freedom. If I fail, I will become nothing more than a pendant.”

One dark brow rises again. “What happens to your lover?”

My face wrinkles and my eyes lose focus. Mare mentioned no fate for the human I bring, so what happens after I win must be up to me.

Warmth simmers behind my ribs and blossoms in a smile. “He will always be free. If he wishes to remain with Terra and I, that is his choice, and even if he desires to leave, I will request that Terra reward him. I will look after him always, and he will lack nothing.”

“Except your love since you can’t love him back.”

My gaze falls to my hands. “Does that disqualify me from being a hero?”

“No, but you’ve chosen an interesting challenge. Everyone at this university came here with an agenda. If you can get one of them to love you enough that he can’t see his future without you in it, then you’ll have won much more than a bet.”

As I look up at her, her chin tilts, and she puts on another worn grin.

She raises a finger. “His plans may also be a way into his heart.”

Eyes wide, I scuttle closer and nearly fall off the mattress. “What do you mean?”

“Love is sharing and helping one another. If you want them to help you with your goal, try asking about theirs. Then do what you can to help them reach it.”

That makes sense, like the light and shadow, one taking over where the other leaves. It is balance. The embers within my chest burn, and I can barely sit still.

“What is your goal, Tulip?”

“Mine?” Face twisted, she looks at me with such weight, I cannot move. “My goal is to never be told ‘no’ again.” She stands, folding her arms behind her. “This experiment falls neatly into my field of study. Did the dean know…”

As her gaze releases me in favor of the dark ceiling, I shrink. Her words in this one conversation are worth more than a thousand stuck in my own mind. It is only right that I give whatever aid I can in return, yet I do not know how. She is far stronger and wiser than I, all around more superior, and she speaks with such confidence, I cannot imagine anyone telling her no.

She shakes her head. “You have excellent timing anyway. The Sky Dance Festival is at the end of the week, and it’s considered bad luck not to have a partner there.” Spreading her hands, she studies her nails. They were once painted to match her strawberry hair, but most of the color has chipped away. “If the Essences are real, maybe that superstition is, too. Been a while since I held someone in my arms.”

If the experience is anything like being held, I cannot fathom why someone would put off engaging in it again. The warmth of Sal’s embrace as he carried me lingers as a ghostly reminder, and my skin prickles beneath my sleeves. He only held me because we were under attack, yet I hope it will not be the last time arms wrap me tight. It spoke to my heart and said this one would protect me no matter what.

Pike’s hug outside the dean’s office was nice, too, a pillar holding me up when I could barely stand and a place to hide in a moment when I could not face the world. It almost felt like home, like the safety of Terra’s cave.

“Speaking of myths and superstition,” Tulip says so loudly I flinch, “don’t tell anybody what you are or what you’re here for. Most wouldn’t believe you anyway, but those that would might not take it well.”

Within my mind’s eye, I again watch Jun’s falling gaze when he learned I was named for something of the sea and his ire when I inquired if he knew Mare.

As if an echo, Sal’s voice floats through my mind. “See why you shouldn’t ask about Mare?”

Lip trapped between my teeth, I send Tulip a nod. “If I cannot tell him, though, how will I get him to return to the Essences with me?”

“You’ve got to get him to love you first. Then we’ll think of something.” She plops back in her chair and spins a complete circle.

“You will tell me when one has fallen in love with me?”

While I am glad for the support and the certainty it carries, a bit of me wilts as the question too eagerly flies off my tongue. I want to know what love is for myself. Am I incomplete because these humans can experience something that I cannot?

“I don’t think it’ll be that hard for you to recognize, actually.” She shrugs. “Scientifically speaking, love is only chemicals. You just have to know what to do to get those chemicals to activate.” She winks. “Jun was injured fighting for you. Professor Baker had to order Sal to leave your side. Those boys will be back.”

My head tilts, and I lean forward. “Do you not agree with Jun, that love is wanting to protect someone and not wanting to miss the things that make them smile?”

Before she can answer, a rhythmic knock comes from the door, and both our faces whip toward it. To all appearances, the corner remains unchanged.

My ear angles closer, alert for further blows. “If they wish to break it, they will have to hit it harder.”

Moving toward the entrance, Tulip tosses me a look with her eyebrows hidden beneath her bangs. “They’re asking for it to open.”

“They ask by hitting it? They bully the door?”

With a roll of her eyes, Tulip straightens her robe, then pulls the door open a crack.

Continued in chapter 9: Sea and Sky

Thank you for reading!

~THE PEARL~

Beyond Tulip, an unfamiliar young man stands in the hallway, washed out by harsh lighting above. He reminds me of a birch tree, frame tall and skin pale. His tousled brown curls are the leaves, and peeking through that foliage, his eyes are patches of sky, the same azure as his crumpled uniform.

He says nothing, too-long limbs held stiffly at his sides and jaw working before snapping shut.

“What, do you expect me to read you?” One hand falls to Tulip’s hip while the other remains holding the door. “You’re the one who knocked at my room in the middle of the night. Don’t you have something to say?”

His small nods are so forceful, I fear his head might shake right off his shoulders.

“Out with it, then.”

His mouth opens, lips jerking awkwardly, but no sound emerges.

Hands appear on his shoulders, joined by Pike’s face a moment later as he jumps in from the left. At the sight of him, a smile stretches my face and a greeting leaps to my lips. Then I recall his invitation and how I did not come, and I lose the power to move. Does he notice me here in the shadow beneath Tulip’s bed? The door remains more closed than open, and I doubt he can even see all of Tulip’s face.

“We want to borrow the shower.”

“You have a shower in your own room,” Tulip deadpans.

“Yes.” Pike distends the high pitch, then lets the rest of the words all tumble at once. “But it’s Vidal’s, and I’d rather let him have it.”

“Vidal has to share with his roommates just like everyone else.” Tulip waves them off. “Go stand up for yourselves.”

“Normally, I’d agree with you, but Vidal has been a student here for years, and I don’t think he’s cleaned the bathroom in all that time.” Pike shudders. “I would have to take another shower after showering in that shower.”

“You just said shower so many times, it lost all meaning for me.” As Tulip runs a hand over her brow, the door falls open a few more inches. “No boys are allowed in my tub unless I invited them there and”—her gaze flicks between their expectant faces—“nah, y’all aren’t my type.”

Eyes wide and face turning a sickly yellow, the birch tree squeaks, “We would wish to borrow it separately, for separate shower-taking occasions.”

“Right, I’m a shower in the morning kind of guy.” Pike points at himself. “He insisted on coming over here right now.”

Tulip’s eyebrows hide in her bangs again. “The middle of the night. What if we were all asleep?”

“Issoria.” The birch tree’s voice sounds like stone scraping stone. “This is Issoria’s room?”

“Ah, so that’s it, huh?” Tulip perches both fists on her hips. “I don’t think that girl sleeps, honestly. She’s always off working on her top-secret experiments, so try the science hall.”

The tree bends, branches gracefully curving over his head. “Thank you. I am Halcyon. Tell her.” He scurries off to the right.

Pike shrugs, and Tulip closes the door.

“See how weird humans are?” She clucks. “Sure you want one to love you?”

“Weird and fascinating are not that disparate.”

She laughs warm but hollow huffs, and I take that as agreement. Heat grows within my core. Day one has ended, the second sunset already gone, but at least I have made a friend. Humans surround me. Surely it will not be too hard to convince one to give me his love.

~THE SWINE~

I lean against the wall outside the Pearl’s room, though the thin wood and thinner paper can’t take too much of my weight. Hand-painted flowers break up the off-white color, each one unique, but I’ve been staring at them for so long, I don’t see their illusion anymore. They’re just blotches. My mind is elsewhere.

The Pearl is nothing like I expected. Beautiful, yes, but I saw that in the cave. Terra gave her a face not unlike his own, carved with sharp angles, yet hers has a softness and a curve that makes me want to touch it. Her skin is dark, yet it gleams as if she is the surface of the sea at night reflecting the stars.

None of Mare’s creatures lack beauty in some form, so I didn’t expect anything less. She should be like the corals, pretty, durable, and with a flighty mind. I’m disguised as a human, and she should be too simple to see through it. I’ll make her think I love her. On the seventh sunset, she’ll take me back to Mare, and the Pearl will fail. I’ll be rewarded with a permanent transformation and my freedom.

Or that was my plan. Instead, the Pearl is brave, fragile, and thoughtful. If I’m not careful, she’ll see right through me. What is more, young human men have already noticed her. She’s surrounded by them.

That bear should have killed the islander. I should never have let her save him. She healed him, I’m pretty sure. It took all the strength she had, but she did it, and then he refused to leave her behind. He had to get to this school because of some complicated treaty thing, and he brought her. Maybe I should have called the attention of more forest beasts, but I feared the Pearl would get damaged.

So, I enrolled here, too, and wove a backstory. The dean seems too eager to have a Creature of Essence at his school. He even let me use his surname. I’m trying to seem as human as possible, but I’ve seen the way Jun looks at the Pearl, as if she is a star fallen from the sky. If she brings him back to Mare…

The words of my Essence titter through my mind. “I will show her the fickle, weak meaning of human love. The Pearl will have her freedom, and in exchange, I will take that human’s life.”

But if she brings a Koa? Killing him will be the kindest thing Mare does.

If it comes to that, it would be kinder for me to do it first, better for him, better for me. But that’s only a last resort. I’ll wait a while, see how things go. I still have other tricks up my sleeve.

“What is your objective, Swine?” The voice comes from behind me like a growl. With how he charged off when Tulip told him to look for Issoria in the science wing, I didn’t expect Halcyon back so soon.

I turn to face him. “Objective? Swine? Is it your intention to insult me, or are you simply an idiot?”

He is a powerful being, even in human form. I have no shell to protect me, no tusks with which to fight, but these long limbs are quick, and he is young, inexperienced. Like me, he is a Creature of Essence, and that kindred part of him calls to my core while at the same time pushing it away. Just like the moon, pushing and pulling at the sea.

I step into his space, and he stops.

“Drop the ruse. We can see each other for what we truly are.”

“Can we now?” I grin. “You think you’re hiding from the humans, too? Skin the color of clouds and eyes to match the sky. At least I blend in.”

“I want to know why you lurk outside Issoria’s door.”

“Nothing to do with you, Dragon.”

He’s not that different from Gemini, Mare’s pair of serpents. Yes, they have the same name, and no, I doubt they can even tell each other apart. Unlike Caelus, Halcyon does not possess feathers of shuriken and spears, but his true form has teeth larger than my whole body. My skin now does not bear the scars, but it remembers. Though covered by the thin cloth of this school’s uniform, I feel naked without the weight of my shell. My back tingles.

“Are you here for the Pearl?”

My ears perk. “You’ve heard of her already? Wait.” My eyes swivel back toward the door. “Is Issoria one of yours?”

With a sigh, he droops, spine sliding against the papered wall opposite me. It bevels, about to rip beneath his weight. “You are an old one?”

I cross my arms. “By your standards, I suppose. I spawned when your Essence was very young. Terra was still raising him. Mare thought he was a toy. That didn’t work out so well.”

His eyes leap to mine, a desperate set to the twist of his jaw. “You were there when she killed one of her own?”

I hear the long ago squeals of ‘the one whose name shall not be mentioned’ as the serpents rip him apart.

“Do not be scared, my baby,” Mare whispers in my ear, holding me tight. “He was defective, but you will always be mine.”

I find another memory, trying to banish the first from my thoughts. “Your name is interesting, actually. Caelus’ first complex creature was called Halcyon.”

Those sky blue eyes flash, and their tint doesn’t return in full, as if storm clouds load them now. “He and I are not the same.”

“I know.” I shrug. “He was a bird who had a bad habit of riding the waves of the sea. Mare ate him.”

I can still hear his squawks, too. This memory is little better than the first, except that I had gotten a piece of the feast. This dragon’s namesake didn’t taste that bad.

His gaze is on the floor. “It is true then.”

“A million truths and a million falsehoods are spoken every moment. To which one are you referring?”

“Caelus let one of his own be killed. If I fail here…”

“I’m not here to fight you, Dragon. If you mind your own business, I’ll mind mine.” As I push off the wall and stand straighter, a second thought occurs to me. “Unless you want to help. Then I could be persuaded to help you as well.”

Mare’s warning rings in the back of my mind. She likes the denizens of the Sky little more than she likes humans, but having another Creature of Essence here evens the odds a bit. If one of us can convince the Pearl we’re human and we love her, and she takes us back to fulfill the bet, she will lose. Doesn’t matter which one because neither of us is human.

A sly look narrows his eyes somewhere beneath his mess of bronze curls. “I am not sure Caelus would approve of me helping a Creature of the Sea.”

My lips peel to one side. “But you see, my goal is to get away from Mare.”

He tilts his head. “Why?”

“Because ninety percent of me hates her.”

“H-how can that be?” Rising, he paces, and the back and forth rhythm sets a nervous thrum through me. “As Creatures of Essence, we are born of our master’s desire for companionship. That is our purpose, to serve at their side. How can we not want to be with them?”

I roll my eyes, and every part of me droops in a frown. “Just because we weren’t given a choice doesn’t mean we can’t wish we had one.”

“Maybe you can help me.” He halts too suddenly, hands outstretched as if he might grab my arms, and I steel my knees to keep from backing through the wall. I’m the one in charge here. He should fear me, back down first. “You understand what it is to want to leave, to defy your Essence.”

My brows lift. “You want to leave Caelus?”

“I would rather die.”

“Then there’s someone else.” My eyes drift back to the closed door. “Issoria. You’re trying to protect her.”

He hunches. “I do not want to lose her, and I do not want her to get hurt.”

With a slow nod, I step between him and the entrance. “Is she human or another Creature of the Sky?”

He stubbornly sets his jaw.

“For crying out loud, I’ll know as soon as I see her.”

Though I stand at my full height, he looks down at me. I liked it better when he was sitting on the floor.

“I don’t trust Mare.”

“You shouldn’t.”

And if he knows part of the bet will bring him in contact with the Essence of the Sea, he won’t want to go, nor should he. She’d probably make a feast of him and laugh at the irony of his name.

“Full disclosure: I’m here to keep humans away from the Pearl because if any of them get close to her, Mare will kill them. And I hate to think what she’d do if it was that islander. If you can help me with that, I’ll see what I can do about your Issoria problem.”

He smiles, but confusion remains in his eyes as he blinks at me. “How does this help you leave Mare? Are you defying her?”

I swallow. “She’s promised me freedom if I succeed.”

“She is your Essence, so you must believe her, but from the outside looking in, I do not.”

I grant him another slow nod. “Nor do I, really. Mare’s whims are like the waves, sloshing to and fro. You can’t expect to remain dry as they crash over your head.”

Continued in chapter 10: Second Day

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