Song of the Ocean: Daughter of the Crestian Sea - Book One

Chapter One: The Merrow

Scintillating streams of gold and orange shone through the undulating waters above, their flickering shadows dancing like misty shimmers of life. Currents hummed with a wakeful song that drifted on the tides, bringing the morning to the world of depth and colour that I had lived in all my life. The light was warming, the salty weightlessness losing the chill that night had tainted it with, beautiful as it had been. But every day and every night was beautiful under the seas. That was just the world I was born into, and I loved it.

I was drifting on the undertow, resting in its formless embrace with my face towards the surface above me. The ceiling was close, shifting and changing in never-symmetrical patterns that produced shapes so unique and alien that to try to assign names to them was so far beyond possibility. Besides, why does everything need a name? That's what Grandfather Tridanus always said, every chance he got.

A sigh slipped past my lips, small, flittering bubbles accompanying it as I lifted my arms above my head in a slow, arduous, but releasing stretch. Every muscle was at ease and I felt so comfortable floating there, from my fingers to my fins. Bathing in the sea-surface-filtered dawn-light was utter perfection. I felt the energy filling my core right where my ribs sat, the imagined glowing yellow of my solar plexus growing stronger from such gentle a touch of light.

I opened my sapphire eyes again and gazed up at the growing light through the drifting strands of my very long dark red-brown hair. A smile shaped my lips as I lifted one purple-webbed, fair-skinned hand to grasp a few strands of deep auburn with delicate fingers. It never ceased to enchant me, the way the light made my hair change in the water's shimmering body. The world really was a wonder, but I'd only ever seen a small amount of it.

I let out another sigh and another gathering of tiny, white bordered bubbles from my nose and mouth. Adjusting my position a little with the up and down of my tailfins as I let my arms drift by my sides, I turned my gaze back up towards the ocean's ceiling.

My thoughts drifted as easily as flotsam does on the currents to the world above. I had seen it, as so many of us often do, but since the chaos that had been striking the world above had been forced away with the defeat of that monster, going up had been... well, not so encouraged. At least, not to the places where the humans, elves, dwarves and others of the land lived.

Imaginings of those structures of stone that they called castles filled my head along with the stories of their strange, weighted-world towns and their fields of that thing called grass. Oh, and trees! Trees where beautiful and so varied. But that was just a few of the things I'd seen when my parents, siblings and I had gone up there to that inland town called Arvon two mega-tides ago. That was when the ocean's ceiling had turned black as the abyss and all the light had faded. But now the light was back, and I was taking every chance I could to enjoy basking in it.

Something tickled me, just under my shoulder. I squirmed and giggled, flipping onto my side with a sweep of purple fins and four-shades of blue coloured scales. Movement drew my eyes as the little thing shivered up my skin and into my red-brown locks where they floated in slow drifting clusters of living gracefulness. I felt the strands tug as the little creature tangled itself up.

"Will you stop playing in my hair!" I laughed as I swept my hands up to free it. "You'll get stuck again!"

Orange-tail peeked out at me with those large black eyes of his as his little snout blew bubbles at me in time with the tiny sound he made. He shifted his body, drifting up with the fluttering of his yellow, translucent side-fins, lifting himself out of my hair as I pushed it behind my shoulders.

"Oh, you really are trouble," I smiled at the seahorse, offering my finger to him.

Orange-tail just blew more bubbles at me and wrapped his coiling, more orange than yellow tail around my slender, creamy-hued digit. He was soft and rough all at once, but that was half the fun of my little friend.