The Sea Calls Us Home

An Uneventful Day

Kili spent the night at Collin's, catching up on how the other had been and listening to the pounding rain from the storm. They passed out on the couch watching the lightning, not caring enough to move to a bed.

A buzzing phone woke up Kili early in the morning, who wondered what Fili could want so early. He wasn't late for anything, and he had told Fili he might hang out with Collin.

"'ello?" was Kili's groggy answer to his brother's call.

"Kili, you might want to get into town," he heard an odd urgency in Fili's voice that made him wake up fully.

"Why? What happened? Did the storm damage the boats?"

"The boats are fine, but uh... it's Tauriel," Kili jumped up at that, grabbing his stuff as quickly as he could.

"What? Is she okay? Did she wash up on shore?" he demanded in a rush, waking up Collin.

"Whazzup?" he mumbled, rubbing his eyes and stretching while Kili frantically made sure he had everything he needed.

"She's fine, but some guys have seen her, just get here soon," Fili reassured his brother, although the blonde brother had a bad feeling about this. It's one thing to have someone claiming to see a monster, but it's another matter entirely when a group of scientists have documentation and are searching for that monster with the media watching closely.

"Hopefully nothing, Collin, I'll catch you later. And I'll be there soon, Fili," Kili told both of them, hanging up the phone and bidding Collin a good day. While he was glad nothing had happened to Tauriel, he was not sure if this would cause problems for her or not. But the ocean was huge, and no one really believed the crew that was with him on the sub that saw the mermaids, it had just been chalked up to another hoax or some undiscovered fish in the ocean. That they had very good photos of. And multiple eye witness accounts of. And a host of other scientific data sets that Kili didn't even understand how it was supposed to be evidence. Something about how quickly the submarine had sunk and the damage it had taken as well as the gps tracker on it.

Yeah. It'll be fine.

Kili arrived in town and headed straight for Dolly's, recognizing some of the cars that the marine biologists were using while in Alaska. Looked like they had figured out Dolly's was one of the main meeting places for the seafarers. When he entered he saw an exhausted looking Dolly at the bar, seems she had had a late night with the storm, and a gathering of people around three young men that Kili did not know. But he headed over to where he and his brother normally sat, finding his brother already there. He gave Dolly a wave and a smile, which she returned with a nod and covered a yawn, grabbing a glass and bringing a plate of food she had been keeping warm over to him.

"Late night?" he asked the older woman and she nodded once, glancing over at the group.

"Storm broke a tree by my house and broke a window. Kinda hard to sleep with that. And then there's these jokers came in first thing and expect some five star meal and start talking and calling people. It's going to be a long day," she chatted, ending with another yawn before she headed back to work. Kili glanced at the group, Fili remaining silent to eavesdrop, although it wasn't difficult at the volume they were speaking at.

"-bioluminescent?" was the first part that Kili overheard, one of the scientists was asking, a notebook in hand.

"It wasn't a firefly!" the lightest of the three men in the center said indignantly, running a hand through his blond hair.

"Those're just tall tales, you just saw somethin'," one of the fishermen said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "swallowed too much seawater when you went over."