What the tide washes in

High tide meant the tidepools were accessible to the sea once more, and the mermanta had once again come up to the shore to take advantage of it. His dark skin and black scales gleamed wetly beneath the chilly afternoon sun, muscular body chased with golden tattoos that covered the scars from a life spent beneath the waves. Long steel-silver hair was pulled back in a tight, neat ponytail and held back from his brow with a silvery circlet as it dripped wetly down his back.

Swimming in the shallow waters of one of the deeper tidepools, he used a slim scraping tool of sharpened volcanic glass to cut away the whelks and molluscs that called the currently-submerged rocks home, and occasionally grabbed a scuttling crab that venture too close, cracking its pincers neatly and slipping it into the woven-kelp bag attached to the simple harness he wore for carrying his tools and weapons.

@"Amanda Branford"

Amanda paddled her pontoon boat across the waves, her eyes scanning the shoreline. It had been a long day searching the bay, but nothing of value had shown up beneath the waves. Along the shore, however, salvage could sometimes be found washed ashore or scattered among the rocky coastline. She needed something for the day's haul.

The sun shone bright overhead, despite the chill in the air. A cool breeze blew across the bay, tousling Amanda's hair, which hung in a ponytail, damp from the ocean spray. She wore a simple bathing suit of durable material, and a knife strapped to a leather belt. Her pontoon boat was old and worn, but she kept it in good, serviceable condition. It didn't have to be pretty, as long as it got the job done.

A glimmer of light from among the rocks caught her attention. Amanda's brown eyes turned towards the light, searching for its source. She paddled the boat closer, being careful to avoid the rocks in the shallower part of the bay. She'd scavenged from many a sunken boat that hadn't been careful enough around those rocks, and she didn't intend for her boat to join the rotting wooden skeletons of the depths.

She pulled in closer to shore, spotting the gleam of something metallic. She pulled the boat right up to a sandy part of the shore, hopping out and pulling a rope out along with her. She tied the rope to a tree at the edge of the beach, securing the boat against the tides. Among the scattered tidepools past the beach, she spotted the gleaming metal of an object half-buried in the sand. She hurried over to it, kneeling down alongside it and calling on her magic. Within moments, scoops of sand started flying away, hurled by telekinetic force as she worked to uncover the buried object.

The constant crash of the surf and the cries of the hels and gulls made for a pleasant cacophony in the Flowerbirth air as he worked at his gathering. Still, Hadama was looking forward to the deeper, richer notes that rolled through the sea, and the calm that came with waters far from the roaring shallows. Prying loose his culinary treasures was a task for hands both slow and careful, but the merman had patience aplenty as he worked.

Soon he had harvested as much from the tidepool as he could while still leaving the populations healthy enough to recover. Slipping the knife into the sheath at his harness for re-sharpening he turned within the pool and flexed his tail to propel him into a graceful arc over the rim of rock that protected it from the churning of the waves.

Amanda continued using her telekinesis to dig the object out of the sand. Hunks of sand flew everywhere; she thought she was alone, so she didn't care where the sand ended up. It was because of this that she accidentally hurled a huge scoop of sand right at the merman behind her. It wasn't until she heard his reaction that she realized what she had done.

She turned, her eyes going wide at the unexpected sight of the merman. She'd never actually met one before, despite all of her time scavenging along the shore. Smacking him in the face with a handful of sand wasn't exactly the first impression she would have hoped to make.

"Sorry!" she said, waving at him to get his attention. "I didn't realize you were there."

She glanced back at the half-uncovered object in the sand. It turned out it was a large decorative shield of polished silver. It had likely hung on the wall of a ship that was lost to the seas. It was covered in sand and grime, but with a good polish, she was sure she could get a nice price for it.

Already safely past the tidepool's seaward edge by the time the woman's voice reached him, the merman paused and turned back curiously. The sand sifted harmlessly through the air, floating momentarily on the calm water before sinking to its new resting place. He contemplated both her unexpectedly nearby presence and her reaction for a moment before inclining his head in acknowledgment.

"Indeed." His voice was deep, a low rumble like distant summer thunder or the roll of a midnight tide, but quiet enough to only barely reach over the other sounds of the coast.

He didn't seem bothered by her mistake, but instead skirted the tidepool's edge to swim closer at a leisurely pace, approaching the beach and looking towards the hole she'd been digging. From his lower vantage it was hard to see anything, but he caught the glint of metal and could guess what she was doing.

He could appreciate humans who cleaned up the trash their kind left to wash up on the beaches.

"I am Hadama." An offering of a name, to show no ill will.

Amanda walked over to the edge of the beach to get a closer look at the merman. She reached her power behind her as she did so, blindly digging in the sand with a telekinetic hand. No reason to let a conversation get in the way of uncovering the salvage.

"Amanda," she offered in return when he introduced himself. She was tempted to ask about his race, but didn't want to seem rude. It was just that she had never met one of his kind before.

"What brings you up here?" she asked, hoping she wouldn't offend him. I haven't seen any...err, anyone else around these beaches before. It's kind of out of the way." She glanced down the shore in the direction of Torchline. They were far enough out for the city to be out of sight; she often ventured further from the city on her boat, trying to find salvage that others had overlooked. Anything that washed ashore too close to the city was usually gone before first light.

”Nice to meet you, Amanda.” The greeting ritual was completed and Hadama considered the human Abandoned as she spoke, reminded a little of someone else he’d met in a season or two past who had been nervous around the first merfolk she had seen. A very nice young woman, and a kind one.

”I come here to gather food,” he explained, words unhurried and patient, clearly not offended by her curiosity. ”I often meet humans along the beach, too.” Usually at random, as he had done today. In recent years more of his people had been coming into the ports to trade with the drylanders, but the less-visited beaches of the coast were still more common for them to come up to the border between land and sea for those things that could only be found in the shallows and tidepools.

”What brought you here?” Though he could guess from the digging that continued magically behind her it did no harm to ask rather than assume.

"Oh," Amanda replied. "I didn't know you guys ate...surface food." She winced at her own words, realizing how dumb it sounded. She decided not to say anything about surface dwellers eating fish. Maybe eating a fish to them was like eating a dog to someone else, disgusting and offensive. She didn't want to ask.

Thankfully, the merman gave her an easy change to the conversation. She turned back towards the decorative shield. "Salvage," she told him. With the shield largely uncovered, she knelt in the sand next to it and hauled it out. It was as wide as her shoulders, and underneath the grime there was some kind of etching, possibly a coat of arms. She gave the grime a bit of a telekinetic wipe, but it only smeared the surface more. She'd need some actual soap and polish to get the shine back.

"I'm a scavenger. A trader. I sell things in the city." She turned the shield this way and that, checking its condition. Other than the grime, it didn't seem to have any damage. "I can fetch a good price for something like this. Once it's been cleaned up."

The sun was still beating down on her from overhead. She decided cooling off in the ocean wouldn't be a bad idea. She waded into the waters, then crouched down until the water was up to her chest. She used her telekinesis to swirl the water around across the shield. It wasn't as effective as it would be if she actually had some water magic, but at the very least the churning of the water was taking some of the grime off.

”Some enjoy it very much.” Emerald eyes sparkled as he said that. Hadama was certainly one who had developed a taste for dryland spices and baked confections, even if they could only eaten at the water’s surface. ”But I am gathering ingredients from the tide pools today.” He tilted his bag to show Amanda the whelks and mussels and crabs he had been liberating from the tide-covered rocks earlier.

He watched curiously from where he sat in the shallows, long tail curled under him so most of his top half was above the waves to finally get a view of the shield as it was recovered and laid upon the sand. He nodded in understanding of her explanation; there were merfolk who did the same thing beneath the waves as well, and also traded in the human ports if the items they found weren’t of interest in the Underwater City.

When she moved to join him in the surf he uncoiled and shifted closer to see the state of the shield. Watching her try to move the water around with her magic he raised a steely brow, ”Would you like help?” he offered courteously.

Amanda considered the offer for a moment. She supposed it made sense that someone who lived in the ocean would have experience cleaning off the grime of the sea. "I don't suppose any of your ingredients there are good for cleaning off this muck?" She lifted the decorative shield to show him some of the dark stains. The coat of arms was still obscured by the grime. She wondered if it belonged to one of the more prosperous families in the area. That could lead to the shield having greater value than she'd first anticipated.

She wiped the sweat from her brow. There was still an unseasonable chill in the air, but putting out the effort at scrubbing the shield was still enough for her to work up a sweat. She glanced again at the merman. Did merfolk sweat, she wondered? He didn't seem uncomfortable, from what she could see, though it was possible she just didn't know the signs to look for.

"Anything else you're searching for besides ingredients?" she asked as she continued to work her magic on the grime. She had a good amount of scavenge in her boat, and she was always looking to make a profitable trade. She hadn't the slightest clue what sort of trade goods a merman would be interested in, but in her experience, if someone wanted something, she could usually get it.

He admired the shield as she lifted it, able to appreciate the craftsmanship even beneath the grime and to see a hint of the artistry hidden there. Her question, however, gave Hadama a moment's pause and he was initially silent as he tried to understand where that particular connection had come from. His tail, ending in a long, slender whip rather than the broad flukes of the cetaceans or sharks, stirred the sand beneath the light surf before he finally shook his head. "Not the ingredients, no," he said slowly.

The water slid away from the shield as if repelled by the metal, pulling back a few inches from its surface so that it was bone dry in Amanda's hands. The merman simply gazed at her calmly, neither sweating nor shivering in the unseasonable Flowerbirth chill. His was a shift comfortable cruising at the ocean's sun-warmed surface, but equally suited to diving deep into the bathypelagic zone.

"Only food today," he said after a moment's thought. Her question nostalgically reminded of his raven friend, P, who was also quite the scavenger and scamp... but that was a young woman he hadn't seen since Deepfrost. "Though I often trade in Haulani."

"Oh, I have a market stall in Haulani. You should stop by...err..." She bit her tongue once again, realizing how impractical that would be. There were canals throughout the area, allowing merfolk easier access to many areas. But the part of the market she normally worked in was nowhere near the water. An invitation to her market stall was a dumb idea.

She cleared her throat. "That is, we should trade sometime. I'm sure I can find buyers for merfolk goods. And if there's anything in the city you're looking for, I can find it for sure. I know everyone."

That was a bit of an exaggeration, but Amanda had been working hard to build connections throughout the streets of Haulani and in the Kaiholo Port. It would only be a matter of time before she became a serious big deal in the city. She just had to get a crew together to help with what she had planned.

If he was disappointed that she hadn't reacted to his use of magic, the merman didn't show it. While they talked he considered the grime on the shield and then formed a tight cylinder of seawater the width of a finger, using his water manipulation to send it flowing with great force in its contained stream to the shield. In effect, he began to pressure wash the caked sand and encrusted minerals off the metal for Amanda.

"Many have offered that," he rumbled calmly, though there might have been a hint of amusement in emerald eyes. "But thank you." He had been trading with the surface folk for several seasons on his own, and had already developed contacts ranging from Queens to smugglers to demigods to thieves. Still, her words were appreciated. "I am sure we will also find things to trade. Are there any items from the mer that you are looking for?"

Amanda nodded in approval at the way the water magic cast a powerful stream over the shield, effectively clearing off the crust and grime. "I wish I could do that," she said. She'd been wanting to learn water magic for some time. She had quite a few ideas about how she could make use of such powers. Maybe one day soon, when her powers had grown.

She gave some thought to his question about trade goods. Usually, she didn't trade for anything in particular. She just tried to find items of value that she could trade again at a profit. And she simply didn't know enough about merfolk society to know what they could offer.

But she did know her customers. She thought about the items that would be in the most demand among the people she most frequently traded with. "Alchemical supplies would be in strong demand," she told Hadama. "Anything that could be used in brewing potions and medicine. And jewelry. There are plenty of rich ladies in the city that would pay quite handsomely for exotic goods they can't find elsewhere. Particularly if they're of especially fine craftsmanship."

Once she majority of the grime was rinsed off the shield, she lifted it into the light to examine it. The sun, despite doing little to warm the chilly air, glinted brightly off the newly cleaned surface. The shield would need a proper polish once she got it back home, but the gritty part of the job was done. She nodded in approval.

"Thanks for the help."