Vibi comes to find me shortly after I wake up to find Taiki gone, along with seemingly every other Kel in this pocket. Given that none of them woke me, I'm guessing it was something less than a full-camp emergency, though Taiki's absence is particularly puzzling. I saw him go to bed last night. I usually wake before him these days. I roll out of my hammock because it's been a long time since I had any fun in a hammock, and because there's something thrilling about setting my tail to full sink mode and them pitting muscle memory against my knowledge that there's no possible way for me to die from falling here, despite the fabulously high view I have of the cave.
I giggle to myself like a small child as I sink feather-light down the height of the cave. I re-float myself before I hit the floor. I kind of want to do that again, but I should probably figure out where everyone went first. Especially Taiki. We're not supposed to leave here until we get the go-ahead from Vibi or Finika, and Taiki's not the type to break rules. Least of all in a fort stuffed to the gills with Karu, Sami, and every Kel classification between and around and inside out of those two.
And so I sigh and set about exploring the branch tunnel leading off of this one. There is only one, besides the exit tunnel, and it leads to a handful of additional caves, some used, some not. The used ones have writing on the walls, and piles of seaweed scrolls and thin slices of stone that also prove covered in writing. I can only kind of read it, through the script is similar to my people's. Probably Sami, then. Islanders apparently learned theirs from washed-up Karu scrolls, and Ruka's told me before that island and Sami writing are mostly—though not entirely—mutually intelligible.
Then again, it also doesn't help that a majority of the documents seem to be written in code, or at least a shorthand that's more or less indecipherable to me. Or maybe I just can't read it. The vast number of words I've learned since I started living among the Kels may well be the jargon I'm seeing here—I just don't know how any of it looks written down.
That gives me a bit of a laugh, half in amazement, half in ruefulness. I was perfectly fluent in my people's writing back on Telu. I loved every part of it: the flowing letters, the shapes of words, the poetry they could make in shapes and lengths and rhythms when people drummed to them. The stories they could tell, recorded on any material from palm-leaf to stone. I knew the word—even several words—for every sign in my vocabulary. Finding now that my signed vocabulary has far outstripped my written one leaves a strange hole in my chest.
I poke over the diagrams and lists and maps and ledgers strewn about the writing-room, careful not to disturb anything. I find plenty of interest, but I'm not here for that, so I eventually sigh again and force myself to leave. The other caves are also empty of Kels. I test every crack and crevice I might fit through—none accommodate me—then wander back to the main room just as Vibi arrives.
I still blink when I see her. I've seen reef colours before. I grew up on an island surrounded by a coral lagoon, and we fished for half our food. I've seen the hues and patterns and elaborate decorations of reef fish in fish form, and I've seen them on Kels, too, but Vibi takes Karu colouration to a whole other level. Her tail is thicker than mine, but mostly top to bottom: it's compressed at the sides, and more muscular in general, making her faster than me even though she looks less streamlined. The bulk of that tail is a rich purple colour so vivid, it makes my eyes water a little. The yellow of her final tail-fin is no duller.
The only thing that rivals it is the yellow scales and electric blue spots of the Kel who opened the door into Underfarrow for us yesterday, though I guess the other Karu-Kel who came in last night and slept by the door is probably a good contender. Those stripes meant poison.
Vibi smiles when she sees me. And then she scribbles something on a tablet she's holding and lifts it to show to me. I cross the room to join her.
You're up, she wrote. I was hoping to find you.
The writing is perfectly legible. I look up again with a grin that I can't keep down as I realize that of course it is: my people learned their written language from the Karu. It's the reason our spoken and written languages have always been structured differently, to the point where Sar laughs when I talk about it, and says they're just different languages. You can't read out loud from island writing. It doesn't make sense.
Because it's Karu.
This whole place is Karu.
And even many Sami can understand Karu writing.
Which means it doesn't matter if any of them know my hand-language: so long as we both have a way to write things and show them to one another, I can communicate with nearly anyone. Vibi sees the grin and adds another word to the stone. She's writing with a different stone—a soft-looking white one, which leaves clear marks whenever she writes with it, but erases easily with a swipe of her hand.
Works?
I nod. She unshoulders a bag I didn't notice her carrying and hands me another tablet and writing-stone. The bag is woven from some kind of fiber that might be sea fan or sponge skeleton, but might also be coconut twine, and I do another double-take because it's islander. The knots, the shape and size, the drawstring... or maybe I've got that turned around. The Karu have access to abundant material resources, living so close to reefs and islands. They have possessions like this. They make more weapons, and better weapons, than even the Sami do, even though they're also naturally armed. They have tools to carve into stone. Rocks to write with, and things to write on. Multiple kinds of things.
This bag isn't islander. Our island bags are Karu. A design almost certainly stolen from a washed-up Karu example, somewhere in our history.
I look up when Vibi catches my attention again. Ruka wants to see you.
I nearly drop my writing-tablet. My free hand jumps to ask where she is, but that's reflex, and I need to write the question, and—
Vibi sticks a hand in front of me, not touching, and breaks my frantic scramble. She got the message. Probably knew it was coming, honestly. She beckons to me—she uses a different gesture for it than the Shalda do—and I have to fight every muscle in my body that wants to sprint past her and dash through the tunnels until I find Ruka somewhere I definitely do not know how to find. If Ruka didn't come get me herself, she's either very busy, or else she's staying with Sar. Which means it's not just Ruka I'll be seeing. I never realized how jumpy I get about friends being in a bad way until I have no way to check in on them.
The route through the tunnels is long enough for Vibi to write me all kinds of things. Names and explanations, mostly. Which is how I know by the end of the trip that we're going somewhere called the Keep, that this whole place is called Underfarrow, and that I definitely had the mental spelling wrong on at least one name from last night. At least I got everyone's sign names. I ask Vibi for hers, and learn that while nearly everyone in the Network has them, the Karu rarely do. Reefs are loud, bright, colorful, full of motion, generally overwhelming, so the people who live in them communicate primarily through sound. They have several variants of their languages, none of which are signed.
I'll just have to assign sign names myself, then. Nobody outside the Network needs to know.
I also learn things about Underfarrow and Karu culture in general that make sense of quirks I noticed Taiki falling into yesterday. Karu is the default language here, specifically a cluster of related Karu dialects and near-languages all originating in this part of the ocean. They're the same cluster that Taiki knows, which explains why he navigates this place so well. Vibi also greets every single person we pass, even interrupting our conversation to do so. This also turns out to be a Karu thing. I worry about the greetings until she shows me the gesture variants: apparently Karu as a whole are diverse enough that they still have gesture greetings in their repertoire, even in the absence of hand-language.
Vibi also catches me when I go to tap her arm for something. Most people here are used to close proximity, but touch is on a strictly ask-only basis. Apparently it's a Karu thing. I ask for the details out of curiosity, and get an easy answer: Some Karu are poisonous. Some have venomous spines. And different Karu peoples interact and mingle all the time. On the whole, it's safer and less stressful for everyone if you just don't touch.
And speaking of that, Vibi adds, be careful around Finika. We've got two people in this place with enough poison to kill someone their size, and he's one of them. He knows how to heal it if needed, but he prefers not to need to.
I recall him and Yaz fooling around last night, yanking fins and sitting well within spine-reach of one another. If that proximity is frowned upon in Karu custom, Finika's picked up a few things from Shalda-Kels. Is Yaz immune?
From the huff that nets me, I suspect this is a recurring topic of conversation. No, writes Vibi. She just has reflexes. Though Andalua forbid, she's gotten pricked enough times over the years that she may well have some immunity.
They've known each other a long time, then. That was my guess, watching them yesterday. It sounds like Vibi has known them for a while too, though, so I write, How long have you all been working together?
Remind me to answer that later. We're here.
I immediately look around for somewhere to stow my writing tools; if Ruka's here, I need my hands free to talk. Vibi gives me her bag. Keep it, she writes, before I can ask. It's just from the group collection. Not mine.
I thank her, then vibrate with impatience as we start forward again. We emerge into a shaft in the rock almost identical to the one Taiki took me to inside Telu, only with four times as many tunnels leading off of it. This place really is a maze. It reminds me of a plant's root system in reverse, with spaces where the roots should be, and this giant column of emptiness where I'd expect to find a stem or trunk. It's also pitch-black. There are glowy things in the pocket Taiki and I are staying in with the others, but that's not the norm: most of Underfarrow is dark, and most of the Kels there don't seem to mind. I don't know how they do it.
Vibi is no exception to this rule, and swims straight up into the darkness. I follow her up the vertical cave, but it ends far sooner than I'm anticipating. There overhead is a ceiling of some kind, bowed upward. In the middle of this arched ceiling is a hole. Or what would be one, anyway, if it didn't have a slab blocking its other side. The rock through which the hole runs is as thick as my arm is long.
Vibi stops outside this obvious entrance, purses her lips, and whistles up it. I startle. I recognize the look of a whistle from Telu, but I've never felt one underwater, where sounds can be felt as vibrations against my skin and tail. This one makes a decidedly unpleasant buzz. I rub my hands over my arms to scrub it away while we wait, until a grating vibration rattles my teeth, and the stone over the hole moves aside with a smoothness I'll have to investigate later. For now, I just know that the space inside is lit, and the face that peers down to wave us inside is Ruka's.
Vibi pulls aside to let me bolt through the hole like a shot arrow. Ruka smiles, but she looks dead tired. And Sar's here.
I'm not even ashamed that Ruka becomes my second priority immediately. Sar is sitting against one wall of the room, tail tucked around them, curled up and wrapped in... that's totally a blanket. Of all the things I'm not expecting to see under the ocean, that ranks pretty high on the list. Sar's sitting against at least two pillows, too, made of something like sponge skeleton, soft-looking and poofy. I dart across the room and pull up in front of them, sinking to a kneeling position before I sign gently, "How are you doing?"
I think the answer is pretty self-explanatory. They look like they've been crying for the last day, and there's food untouched beside them. They just shake their head in reply. Then they shift sideways, and I give a questioning look because as far as I'm aware, that's an invitation to sit beside them, and they don't like being close. Except when they do, apparently. They return my silent query, and I ease myself into the space like they're going to break if I move too quickly. They certainly look like it. The moment I'm settled, Sar just curls up against my side and rests their head on my shoulder.
Okay, this is not normal behavior.
Ruka's watching the whole exchange, but she just looks tired. "See if you can get them to eat," she signs, then grips the stone slab beside the door and slides it back over the exit with far too much ease to not be helped by some kind of mechanism. That's when I realize Vibi's gone. I tilt my head quizzically at Ruka.
"There's a meeting happening here once everyone's done dealing with this morning's situation," she replies, redoubling my need to know what happened this morning. "But I owe you a bit of an explanation, and I figured you might want to talk to me alone."
There's a lot of unspoken layers there. "With or without Taiki?" I sign cautiously.
"Your call."
So she declined to invite him unless I wanted him here. Something small inside me melts. I'll be able to talk to someone entirely unfiltered for the first time in as long as I can remember. Someone who seems to want to be honest with me, and who I don't need to worry about sending into a spiral if we get into a sensitive topic. I could almost cry in relief.
"Not this time," I sign. "If that's okay."
"Like I said, your call." Ruka just watches me for a moment. "It's been hard, hasn't it," she signs at last, her hands quiet. Her eyes flick to Sar. "With both of them."
Sar has their eyes closed; they're not seeing what she's saying. I suspect that's why she checked. My eyes sting, tears saltier than saltwater making their presence known. I'm trying not to cry, but oh, do I feel seen right now.
Ruka crosses the room and sits beside me, offering a one-armed hug. I take it and lean as far into her broad, strong, warm chest as I can without disturbing Sar. She reminds me of my father. I miss my family so much. I've been trying to keep it together because I'm the most stable and reasoned in our little triad, but leaving Taiki to deal with his own messes isn't the same kind of relief as actually having someone look out for me.
Ruka stays until I lean away again, then shifts to a seat on a rock not far in front of me instead. "First things first. Did you visit the Sandsingers?"
More things unspoken. She knows we were looking for her, and regret haunts the edge of her expression. Like she wishes she'd left a message for us. There's not much to say, so I just nod. Ruka lets out a long breath.
"I wasn't completely honest with you the first time we met," she signs. I've guessed as much since then, but seeing it from Ruka herself hits different. She thinks for a moment, then signs, "How much do you know about the Glauclin clans?"