[FULL KELS SERIES] When Ande wakes up on the bottom of the ocean with a fish's tail, she's not sure what she did wrong. Getting sacrificed by her island is a likely bet, but why---and why her---is a mystery.
Out of her depth in an unfamiliar world...
I used to think the Shalda-sana was the antithesis of life on Telu. For the first days I spent in the deep, the water seemed impossibly empty, lifeless, and still, save for the stars of tiny creatures sparkling to one another just out of reach. The water didn't get any less empty the longer I spent in it, but the "lifeless" part at least dissolved. The closer I looked, the more I found: everything from jellyfish to shrimp to fish to swimming worms to other little transparent creatures of all shapes and sizes. The Shalda-sana had dozens of life forms, all living out their lives at the edge of the sun's reach.
This deep water makes me feel like I've found the opposite of Telu all over again.
When we first leave the current, I find the stillness of the water soothing. Certainly less invasive than it ever is when it moves, which happens pretty much everywhere else in the ocean. I start to change that opinion the further we swim. The water here isn't just still—it's deathly. It's so motionless, I could feel the clicks and pops of shrimp if there were any, but there aren't. Just still water and more still water, blackness and more blackness, and span upon span of identical, featureless silt plain. Now and again, a light will wink on and off somewhere a night-sky's distance overhead, but that's it.
By the end of the night, I can feel my own heartbeat. I can feel my blood moving. I begin to hallucinate crawling sensations up my arms or across the back of my neck when there's nothing there, as my mind struggles to fill the utter void of sensation all around me. I decide to make my own instead. I alter my breathing patterns and the way I swim, exchanging my more efficient tail-strokes for ones that make more eddies around my fins. After a time, I notice Sar doing the same.
There's no light down here to tell us when to stop swimming and sleep. It takes me until Sar starts to slow to realize just how exhausted I've become. Taiki refuses to acknowledge Sar's existence, of course, so I make the decision for us. Nobody objects when I simply stop. It's not like we'll find a safer place to sleep anyway. Everywhere down here is the same.
Sar, though, stays restless. They wait until Taiki and I have settled down, then slip away into the darkness. Taiki doesn't even try to hide his suspicion. I'm doing the opposite of whatever he does now, just to spite him, so I roll over and pretend to go to sleep. Taiki won't leave me to go stalk the Sami-Kel if it's just us here. He doesn't relax, but he does eventually lie down and leave Sar alone for the night.
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I wake up in warm water.
Sleep vanishes as a fight or flight instinct grips my body. My reaction is a third option: to freeze, barely breathing as I try to figure out whether this is a figment of my imagination or an actual phenomena. It's not my imagination. I feel like I'm wrapped in an invisible blanket, or back on Telu, or lying just beneath the waves. It would be a pleasant warmth in any other circumstances, but there's nothing pleasant when I don't know what it is.
Nothing changes as I continue to hold my breath and lie motionless. The longer I pay attention, the more nuances present themselves. Cool drafts eddy over my shoulders when I breathe, like the blanket has slipped off them. When I'm sure this isn't the result of my lying on some dangerous patch of ground or next to another living body, I shift one hand towards my dagger. My warm sleeve vanishes. Its dissipation sends a chill all up and down my arm, and I realize what's going on. It's just the water. It's so still, the same skin of it hovered around me while I slept, warming in my body heat until my movement disturbed it again.
