Stolen Scales

Chapter 27

She wakes up in darkness, and frowns, not knowing the time. From beyond her door, she hears faint movement and sits up, assuming that it is morning. As Kyma sits up to stretch, she extends her arm to unhook the seaweed curtain. It falls open quietly, releasing a thick band of golden light onto the bed. She smiles, and slowly rolls up the curtain before hooking it onto the top of the window, letting her eyes adjust as she does so. She slips her feet off of the bed and onto the floor, reaching out to the bedside table to scoop up the little pile of pearls. She examines them one by one, completely fascinated by the uniqueness of each in size, color and even shape.

Unlike most of the pearls sold in the human world, not all of these were perfectly round. Kyma likes them like that. It gave each pearl its own little bit of character, despite just being a pearl. Kyma sets the pile back onto the table and watches the pearls shift back into the hollow at the center. With a final yawn, Kyma stands up from the bed and smoothes her dress down before rolling up her door curtain. She hooks it up above the door and steps out into the stone room, padding softly across the cold floor.

She walks the short span across the room and into the open washroom, and stares down into the little pool of water sitting inside of the sip contained within the stone ledge. Her silvery hair looks like a cloud around her face, and Kyma frowns as she tries to run her fingers through it to ease the tangled locks. Normally, her hair is fine enough that it easily slips out of its knots, but as it was immersed in seawater for so long, it sticks together. There is a voice from behind her, and Kyma jumps in surprise.

"There is a comb beneath the ledge. Is it always like this in the morning?"

Kyma turns to look at her mother, flushed in embarrassment. "No, my hair normally slips right out of its knots, but it's sticky with saltwater at the moment."

"We can go over to the falls a bit later."

"The falls?"

"It's a freshwater series of waterfalls outside the city. That's generally where we go to wash, unless it's just the skin. In that case we just scrub down with some sand."

Kyma frowns at the idea of using sand like soap. "Why sand?"

"It's coarse enough to scrape away the grime but not damage the skin. Unless you're an idiot and do it for hours."

"Oh."

Kyma reaches beneath the sink ledge and pulls out a comb from beneath it. She looks at it curiously, trying to figure out how it was made. It looks like it is mainly made of sea urchin spines bound together around a piece of thick shell. She combs her hair out carefully, trying not to break any of the spines. Thankfully, none of them break off, and Kyma sets the comb back under the sink, her hair now settled down around her shoulders.
"Would you like some breakfast before you go have fun with Alai?"

Kyma spins around to look at her mother, her mouth gaping open. "How'd you know?"

Her mother laughs brightly, her eyes shining in amusement. "It's what I would do. She's your first friend on the island, so of course you would go with her. So come on, let's get some food in you before you go. It's going to be an active day. It always is here."

With a nod of assent, Kyma follows her mother into the kitchen, where a stone plate is quickly set in front of her. Kyma looks down at it to see three different plants. Surprisingly, only two of them are seaweed, one a purple one called Irish Moss and the other one is some reddish Dulce. The last plant is just a small pile of berries. Kyma's mother smiles as Kyma looks down at her plate.

"You were expecting fish and seaweed, weren't you?"

"Yes. Maybe not the fish as much, but that might just be because I'm used to meals in the human world and fish for breakfast is a weird concept to me. I was definitely not expecting berries though. I love limoncello too, so that makes me happy. It's almost better than starfruit."

"I'll make a note of that. We have plenty of starfruit here. I can send you with some on your excursions tomorrow, if you like."

Kyma grins. "That would be awesome!"

"Good. Now eat your food, or you'll have no energy today! And when you're done, I have some more clothes for you. They arrived earlier this morning."

With a small laugh, Kyma begins to eat the food, quickly devouring the seaweeds and limoncello and sucking the juices off of her fingers. She steps into the living room to grab the small pile of clothes before returning to her room to change. She swiftly pulls the dress over her head and replaces it with a new one, rebuttoning it into a top and pants. She places the stack of clean clothes in the chest and places her used dress on top of it before grabbing her bag from underneath the bed. After a pause, she peers inside it for a moment to ensure that the contents of the bag are still there. Then she slings it over her shoulder and runs out of the house, her feet pounding as they shift from stone to earth. Her mother calls out from the door of the house.

"Kyma, wait!" With a restrained sigh, Kyma turns to look at her mother in curiosity. "Take Lyss with you. You need a guard."

A black haired girl with royal eyes steps forward, and Lyma gives her a nod. "Can I go now, Mother?"

Lahira laughs and motions Kyma along. With a grin, Kyma darts off down the road, Lyss jogging beside her easily, her spear tucked in beside her. As Kyma glances at it, she does a double take, confused by how it now appears to be so short when it was her height before. She stops in surprise, and Lyss notices her stare. She grins and pulls out something that was slung across her back. It is a short rod with a handle attached to the end of it, and as Kyma looks closer she realizes that half of the handle is hollow. Lyss slides the handle onto the bottom of her spear, causing it to be somewhere in the middle. She lets go of it and grips it again a bit higher up, at the original handle. The new piece doesn't come away, at least not until Lyss removes it once more. Lyss laughs as Kyma gapes at it in amazement.

"Cool, huh? All the spears are like that. Now don't you have somewhere to be, Princess?"

Kyma shoots her a glare. "I'm Kyma. Not Princess."

Lyss holds her hands up. "Fine, fine. Let's get going."

She follows Kyma the last twenty meters or so to Alai's house, where Alai is standing on the road, waiting. Alai grins when she sees Kyma, but it soon fades when she sees Lyss behind Kyma.

Her voice is short and tense. "Why is Lyss here?"

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Where do you think Alai is going to take Kyma? And who do you think Lyss is? And are you getting the sense that Alai and Lyss don't get along? Why do you think they don't like each other?

Happy reading, and I'll see you next chapter!

~Goddess of Fate, signing out.