Small-five fed upon frozen things.
She and her three sisters, and hundreds more scavengers – of her kind, of roving Raskljen, of things too small and empty of nutrients to have a name worth knowing – followed in the wake of the melting bergs, resting tired, hungry bodies on warming currents as the world turned north and the Fiskupids fell from above unending, as ceaseless as the race to eat them was.
They tasted of ice and nothing. Small-five hated them a little by now, but hated hunger more. So she ate them, and watched for unwary or starving others, and ate them too.
She and her sisters were the biggest things in their tiny, moving territory for once – at least, after a single rogue Nohlohk that had been unlucky enough to have its resting-place carried away finally lost its grip and fell into the void beneath – something that puzzled her until she realized that anything larger would likely starve. It was tight living even for them, especially as their smaller companion bergs broke up, shedding their cargoes across the ocean floor and sending their escorts away with grumbling stomachs. Some of them were far-cousins of theirs; once avoided discreetly in wider seas, now carefully ignored, lest they have to start arguments, which would start fights, which would lead to empty, useless deaths. There was simply no room for quarrelling.
The cargo of the melted bergs was shed in futility. The Fiskupids were in warmer seas now, but nowhere near the subtropical climes they required to properly lay themselves to seed. Every body not claimed by a hungry predator landed in water too deep and cruel for its eggs to take to life, hardy though they were. Wasted effort, after a journey to the rim of the world’s end and halfway back, under the teeth of thousands along the way.
But some persisted, embedded in the flank of the berg that Small-five and her sisters shadowed. They stayed hidden in its depths even as their shallow-burrowed kin were culled to nothing by melting, they remained secure and frozen as their world shrunk, and they were still there some months later, when the food was almost all gone and the seas had turned nearly as warm as blood around them; a coddling, soothing embrace against near-empty stomachs.
Small-five and All-fin were playing with their memories again; rattling off as long and confusing patterns of glowshine as they could possibly remember and then daring the other to repeat them. Each success added another few patterns to the chain, killing time swiftly. Boredom had first become a threat in their lives under the poles, where their minds had stretched enough to recognize it, but never so much as it was now, with nothing to do but drift and wait for food to fall. Dull-glow and Nine-point were simply talking about nothing much at all, exploring their ability to make conversation about things that weren’t relevant or very important.
Small-five saw them first, nervous as always. In the middle of paying attention to a particularly tricky embellishment of All-fin’s, a flicker caught her eye at a distance – a strobe so fast that she nearly thought it imagination.
Can’t-do-it-too-long-too-hard? asked All-fin, smugly. And there it was again, that distant glimmer.
No-look-see-that? said Small-five. To-north-northeast-look-there-quick-lights.
All-fin looked. See-nothing-making-up, she said, and no sooner had the last glimmer left her sides than the sea around them exploded into lights so strong that they dulled their pupils to pinpricks, wailing in protest and alarm that went unseen in the glare surrounding them.
Shadows broke the glowstorm – swooping forms more than twice their size and with the muscle-backed speed to match, swirling through the water and surrounding Small-five and all her kind – the distant cousins they’d ignored carefully on the trek – in pairs and triplets, blocking them from the harsh shine of what seemed like nearly a sun.
Calm, shone a voice from the bulk in front of her. It was slow and powerful, gleaming smooth as a windless day. This-is-safety. Rest-easy. Do-not-fear.
Small-five did as she was told. There didn’t seem to be much other option. Beside her, Dim-glow made a rush for the nearest gap in their encirclement and was firmly set back with a dazzling burst of light.
Safety. Come-now. Follow-us. Keep-close. Do-not-fear.
The sisters stalled for a moment, lights stuttering. At last, Nine-point swam forwards with a simple message: we-will-follow.
The strangers uncoiled and led them – one at their tails, one at their side, one at their head. An aide, a guard, and a guide. And all more distinct now that the initial lightshow was fading.
They were adults. Small-five had never seen one before, but she knew it to be true in her bones, in her arteries, in the tubes and organs that brewed and carried her glowshine across her hide. They were larger, more muscled; the twin barbels at their mouth’s sides long and sweeping, moving delicately under fine control in the current. Their sides shone constantly; a swimming, always-moving series of patterns and conversations with one another that made Small-five’s head spin just watching it. How could all those thoughts fit in their heads? How could so much glowshine filter through one body? And how could they get so big?
The-ice-the-ice-the-ice, shone All-fin frantically, tearing Small-five out of the still-new-to-her practice of getting lost inside her own head. Look-at-it-look-at-the-ice-look-at-it.
Small-five twisted, nearly bumping her escort, and was just in time to see the collapse and dissolution of their iceberg. Tons of ice smashed into the water with groans and sighs, warm-rot finally tearing out the floating mountain’s heart. Aiding it to its demise were scores of adults, each clutching some sort of strange thing in their proboscises, a slender bar of tiny pieces. Where they touched, the water boiled, and the ice melted all the faster. The last of the Fiskupids fell like rain, thousands and thousands of them, and beneath it all still more adults hovered in the deep, carrying a huge strange web between them that reminded Small-five of the net-legs of the Nohlohk. Iced bodies piled up against it, bulging deep.
Come-now. Keep-close, glowed the adult at her side firmly. Follow.
Small-five turned her back on the things happening behind her and followed, just ahead of All-fin and behind Dim-glow and Nine-point. The familiarity of pattern was a comfort.
The swim was long, and just a bit deeper than they were used to, but the fatigue was held at bay by exhaustion and the darkness by the ever-pulsing glowshine of the adults. Their only words when spoken to were repeated reassurances of safety, and Small-five had an idea (another one – they seemed to come so fast and thick these days that she had trouble noticing them) that maybe that was all they could say that wasn’t in one of those rippling glowpatterns they used to talk to one another.
Makes-sense, Nine-point agreed when she volunteered it. So-fast-recognize-parts-not-all-too-wide-too-much-at-once.
Food, interjected the guide from ahead, glowing along her back. Hold.
They halted, and Small-five was curious. There wasn’t a single shimmering scale in sight of their lights, and the water was empty. Then up ahead, roiling towards them, came a single creature – big, bigger than an adult, bulky and unstreamlined, wallowing in the current.
Food, shone light from it. Come.
Dim-glow and Nine-point moved forwards without hesitation. All-fin followed a moment later. Small-five drew back warily, then nearly jumped out of her skin as the guard at the rear gently poked her in the fin with her proboscis. Eat, she shone. Go.
Small-five went, and felt mixed embarrassment and surprise when she saw what the stranger was: no more than another adult, albeit an abnormally stout and muscled one. Her body was thick with strength and her proboscis alone seemed half as sturdy as Small-five’s entire body. But the truly surprising thing about her wasn’t her build; her entire body was swaddled with strange objects. What looked to be large shells ripped from a reefcolony coated her like oversized parasites, strapped to her flanks with lashings of some long and slender substance that she couldn’t identify at all. Nine-point was already investigating one of them, proboscis digging deep inside its hollows – a flash of surprise rippled along her sides as she withdrew an adult Ooliku, speared through its side and already quite dead.
Food, repeated the adult weighted down with dead things. Come.
Small-five needed no more encouragement. Months of low food were made up for in minutes as she and her sisters gorged themselves to the brim and beyond on prey – all recently-killed and well-fed themselves.
Where-from-how-did-you-get-this-what-are-things-on-sides-who-are-you-where-are-we-going? Nine-point asked the food-carrier.
Glowshine rippled along her sides in what was visible amusement, and for a moment they hoped, but the next thing that glimmered from her was just another one of those mind-bogglingly complex patterns that the others had used. Food, she repeated, and shone no more. Small-five and her sisters resigned themselves to merely having their best meal in many weeks, and were content, if achingly, mind-burningly curious – another curse they’d acquired since their meals in polar waters.
After the rest came the movement again, a steady, just-shy-of-swift pace that was just fast enough to prevent impatience, just slow enough to promote blissful, somnolent digestion. Questions were still multiplying like Fiskupids in Small-five’s mind, but they could wait now. In fact, she was so content that it took Dim-glow firing off a barrage of excited exclamations nearly in her eye for her to notice that they’d finally arrived at their destination.
Not-a-reefcolony, said Small-five.
Thousands upon thousands of stacked shells, soaring upwards from the bottom of the sea in a pillar that broadened into a wide plateau, just below the surface – a maximum of surface exposed with a minimum of wasted under-space.
Above them, on that broad plain below the waves, strange pillars jutted. Beneath them were lights, hundreds upon hundreds, moving in and out of caves and recesses and chambers, spiralling up and down the bulk of the not-a-reefcolony. Glowing, shining, flowing from pattern to pattern before anything could be understood except beauty.
Every light was one of her kind. Small-five knew this at the moment, but did not comprehend it. That would take much longer.
It was shaped, and impossible to understand though the means and methods which had done the shaping were, Small-five knew that the minds that had done it were just like hers
Not-a-reefcolony, said Small-five again.
No, agreed All-fin.
The size of the not-reefcolony fooled them over and over again as they approached it. First they forgot that the little lights bobbing around it were full adults, not juveniles such as themselves, and they had to adjust for that. Then they noticed that many of the adults were actually swimming some ways out from the not-reefcolony’s sides and there were many closer lights at its sides that they hadn’t seen, and they had to adjust for that. Finally, they realized that they were just plain wrong about how big it was, and gave up at the precise moment its size register for them. It made them tremble – it seemed almost as big as the Godfish in that moment, though their memories told them they were liars.
Calm, soothed their guide. Calm. Follow.
By now they were close enough that their destination was visible: a large chamber near the surface of the waves that was seemingly open to the currents; the same currents that were now jostling beneath Small-five, slipping up around her sides. The waters were strange here – a few bodylengths to her right, and she was sure that she would be pushed upwards whether she liked it or not.
It was a calming place, she thought, as they were led into it. Overwhelming large, yes, but kept cozy by surprisingly calm water and the jumble and clutter of its walls; a riotous mix of different sizes and shapes of reefcolony shells. Looking at it as something-made, like all the not-a-reefcolony, it seemed intentional. Something made to seem like it wasn’t made… it made Small-five’s mind ache.
They were not alone in confusion. Their disparate cousins from the breaking of the berg were being herded in ahead and behind them, as confused and shaken as they were. Some were unknown to them – refugees from other floating ice patches? They were all the same. Some a little larger, some a little smaller, but all the same: confused, interested, and a little terrified.
Calm, reassured their guide. Wait. And with that she, the aide, and the guard all turned on their sides, flicked their tails, and whisked themselves out of the chamber to hover just outside its mouth. Across its width, the rest of the escorts followed suit, and within moments it was empty except for Small-five, her sisters, and perhaps seventy more of their kind, in schools ranging from sizes two-to-five. They tried not to look at each other while looking at each other, and failed.
The water moved, and the waiting adults moved aside as soft, wide-spreading glowshine filled the chamber, along with the latest of the many strange new things Small-five had seen today. She was massive; nearly half again the size of the other, already too-big adults Small-five had met; she was pale, and she was scarred, and her glowshine had turned the faintest shade of red, giving her every word a pinkish hue.
Every word. Small-five could understand her words. They were a little slow, and a little strange, but they were words.
Welcome-home-little-sisters-and-daughter’s -sisters, she shone. I-am-Outward-spreading-flash. You-are-safe-here. Question-you-have-next-is-‘what-is-here?’-yes?
Agreement spread across the crowd of juveniles, almost involuntarily. Outward-spreading gleamed at it.
It-is-many. Place-to-make. Place-to-think. Place-to-live. Mostly-place-is-home. Next-question-is-‘what-is-home?’-yes?
Another chorus, another happy, welcoming gleam.
Home-is-safe. Home-is-food. Home-is-family-beyond-sisters. For-you-this-moment-home-is-mostly-learning. First-thing-to-learn-is-home’s-name. Home-is-named-Far-away-light.
Surprise rippled through Outward-spreading’s audience.
Yes-home-is-named-like-person-not-like-food-or-thing. Big-person-made-from-many-little-ones. We-care-for-it-it-cares-for-us. As-we-will-care-for-you. Start-with-learning. And-learning-starts-with-talking. You-all-understand-me-as-I-speak-yes?
Agreement.
Good. Soon-you-will-understand-us-as—we—speak. First-begin-with-basics. You-remember-your-childhood-words-yes? Not-words-at-all-just-rainbows-show-of-your-thoughts-without-focus. It-is-like-but-not. Now-watch-this.
As Small-five watched Outward-spreading’s sides ripple through a slow, deliberate approximation of a single instance of adult expression, she had two more thoughts. The first was on how she could do that, and what it meant, and so on. A visible thought, a trackable one.
The second, smaller and more quiet, but not quite unnoted, was that she knew what home was now. And she was there.