THE SUGARTIDE & THE FIRECRACKER
The Miana Pool is suspiciously still by the time Flora and Melita arrive. Water like glass, air sticky-sweet, and not a ripple to hint at the usual current. It’s only once they get close enough to deploy the first shells that the culprits surface: a flotilla of oversized coconut crabs, their claws clacking and shells daubed with streaks of berry paint. Each one seems determined to claim the glowing shells for themselves, dragging them down into their burrows like precious loot. One of them even has a pirate flag stuck to its back.
”Uh….do you have anything we can shoot them with?” Flora yells across the bow of the Sugartide, glancing at Melita.
HADAMA
Out at Metacarpal, something in the sand doesn’t like being disturbed. Hadama’s magic might slide easily through the reef caverns and shelf-drop trenches, but near the far shoals, the seabed shifts with unnatural speed. A burrowing stingray the size of a dining table stirs beneath his path, its patterned back nearly indistinguishable from the terrain. It’s not aggressive—until it is.
THE ARK
The trip to Apopo goes smoothly at first, the wind favouring the sails and the sea behaving — until the Ark crosses into a patch of floating seaweed laced with fine pink blossoms. The moment they’re disturbed, the blossoms burst into a pollen cloud that has the effect of an extremely inconvenient laughing spell. Nearby flying fish seem especially amused, launching themselves in a synchronised arc across the bow.
2/8
The Miana Pool is suspiciously still by the time Flora and Melita arrive. Water like glass, air sticky-sweet, and not a ripple to hint at the usual current. It’s only once they get close enough to deploy the first shells that the culprits surface: a flotilla of oversized coconut crabs, their claws clacking and shells daubed with streaks of berry paint. Each one seems determined to claim the glowing shells for themselves, dragging them down into their burrows like precious loot. One of them even has a pirate flag stuck to its back.
”Uh….do you have anything we can shoot them with?” Flora yells across the bow of the Sugartide, glancing at Melita.
HADAMA
Out at Metacarpal, something in the sand doesn’t like being disturbed. Hadama’s magic might slide easily through the reef caverns and shelf-drop trenches, but near the far shoals, the seabed shifts with unnatural speed. A burrowing stingray the size of a dining table stirs beneath his path, its patterned back nearly indistinguishable from the terrain. It’s not aggressive—until it is.
THE ARK
The trip to Apopo goes smoothly at first, the wind favouring the sails and the sea behaving — until the Ark crosses into a patch of floating seaweed laced with fine pink blossoms. The moment they’re disturbed, the blossoms burst into a pollen cloud that has the effect of an extremely inconvenient laughing spell. Nearby flying fish seem especially amused, launching themselves in a synchronised arc across the bow.
2/8
THE
Sugartide
