[SE] Nocturns

He had initially planned to leave his offering at the underwater shrine where he had so often prayed before, but that shrine served all gods impartially and he wanted to honor Safrin directly. Though he couldn't ascend the stairs within the lighthouse he threaded the currents between the rocks at the base of the cliff below to find the place he had left an offering for the goddess once before with Maeve and Flora.

It wasn't laid directly upon the altar above, but perhaps it would still be accepted.

The moon hung high and full overhead, painting the sea in silver and frosting the rimed rocks with the illusion of ice. The cold waters didn't seem to bother the merman, but the light breeze off the beach was certainly chill with the lingering Deepfrost that had extended even into Longheat. Long, steely hair gleamed like a pale beacon in the surf that raced along the narrow strand at the base of the cliff though the night bleached the gold from his tattooed scars.

Hadama bowed his head over the polished silver clam shell the size of his hand that he had painstakingly cleaned and hinged and latched and turned into a container for his true offering: a shawl of precious golden sea silk with ends beaded with black pearls. He couldn't spin and weave the rare threads but he had spent a season harvesting the filaments from the clams that grew them and traded with one of the weavers who could turn the raw threads into one of the Arclight's rarest treasures. Laying it on the rock where the offerings for the Stargate had been set out, his voice rumbled out a quiet prayer as he turned his eyes to the stars above.

"Safrin. You have answered me, and I will answer You, if You call," he promised in his simple, forthright way.

Amanda looked over the paper, frowning at the scribblings on it. She stared at it for a few moments, then turned the sheet upside down. It didn't help it make any more sense. She turned it back in the other direction, hoping it would be more legible. It was still no better.

"You sure this is a ledger?" she asked, squinting at the writing. She found a few things that looked like numbers, if you used your imagination. Either whoever had written this had done it with broken fingers, or they had the intelligence of a toddler. A dumb toddler at that.

"It's inventory," the man in front of her said, waving dismissively at the papers. "What, can't you read?" He scowled at her, tapping his fingers on the desk.

Amanda sighed, rolling her eyes. She was used to dealing with idiots in the bureaucracy, or at least, as much of a bureaucracy as existed in a city like Torchline. But even still, this guy was a whole new level of dumb.

She smirked. It was perfect.

"Listen," she said, setting the pages on the side of the desk. "You don't need me as a cargo lifter. You need a bookkeeper."

The man frowned at her, saying nothing. Amanda waited a moment for the words to work their way through the cobwebs in his mind.

"A whatchacallit now?" he finally asked. "Look, I told ya, we got an inventory. I just need people to haul crates."

Amanda kept a controlled expression on her face. No need to let the man know how much she was internally laughing at him.

"You're going to lose half of those crates," she said, nodding towards the door that led to the main room of the warehouse, "if you don't have a proper bookkeeper. Won't do the war effort much good if you can't tell which boxes have food and which have clean socks. You send them to the wrong places, and you end up with soldiers with sticky feet and gnawing on old cotton."

The man stared at her.

Amanda sighed, rubbing a hand across her forehead. "Look, if you don't want to lose track of everything in the warehouse, hire me as the bookkeeper. I'll make sure the inventory is checked and double checked. All the shipments will get where they're going. Nothing gets lost. You don't want shipments getting lost, right? I'm sure your boss wouldn't be too pleased about that..."

The man's expression darkened. A worried look entered his eyes. "You can make sure it all stays in order, then? Inventory's been messed up from time to time. Last guy didn't have a head for numbers, I s'pose."

Amanda refrained from asking if anyone working here knew how to count to ten. "I'm a professional," she said, sitting up straighter. "I've been working the marketplace for years, and I've never lost a single item. I'll set you up a proper ledger, design a new sorting system, and make sure everything is catalogued properly. It'll make the whole system work better. And with things more organized, your laborers will get the job done faster. Faster work means fewer hours on the payroll, saves you money, right? The boss will love you for that."

The man's face broke out into a grin. She'd hooked him with that one.

She spent a bit more time talking herself up, making sure to use plenty of big words that the idiot couldn't follow. He was the sort of person who would never admit that he didn't understand what she was talking about, so she could make herself sound like an expert even when she was making it all up as she went along. Sure, it was true that she'd worked in the market for years. But she ran a small scavenger's stall that sold junk she fished out of wrecks on the beach. She didn't know the first thing about being the inventory supervisor for a supply warehouse.

But she sold her story well enough to land the job. She was grinning as she left the building, already thinking ahead to what it would be like to be in control of the entire inventory, being the only one who knew exactly what was coming in and out of the warehouse. Being the only one who controlled which crates of supplies went out to fund the war effort...and which ones got 'lost' along the way.

She was whistling to herself as she started heading home. Then a thought occurred to her and she stopped dead in her tracks.

"Oh, gods be damned," she muttered.

She'd remembered something important, something she'd been putting off. It hadn't seemed so urgent before, when she was cooking up this scheme. But now that the wheels were finally in motion, she suddenly had a lot of pieces to get into place all at once.

She sighed, thinking of her bed and a cup of warm tea. But home would have to wait. She had to stop putting this off and start getting serious.

She headed back down to the docks, untying her small outrigger, hopping in, and grabbing the oar. She started paddling away from the docks, looking up at the darkening sky. The night had fully fallen by the time she got where she was going. She cursed herself for not planning this out better, but sometimes she just had to do what she had to do.

She followed the beacon of the lighthouse, using it to mark her path. She'd memorized a number of landmarks: a rock outcropping along the shore, the wreck of an old sailing ship that jutted up just off the coast, a section of cliff face that she thought kind of looked like a rabbit. She used these markers to follow along until she was near to her destination.

She expected to be alone. There normally wasn't anyone out here at this time of night. That was, after all, kind of the point. So she was surprised when the moonlight glinted off the cliffs down near the water, drawing her attention. She started paddling towards the glimmer, hoping for some valuable salvage. But instead, she found a merman, his head bowed down over the rocky outcropping.

He looked familiar. But she didn't want to assume...someone might admonish her for thinking all merfolk looked alike. And without seeing his face from this angle, she couldn't be sure.

When she paddled up closer to the figure in the water, she set her oar over her knees and called out, "Hey there. Nice night for...well, nice night, right?"

Hadama had also expected to be alone. Between the rocks at the bottom of the cliff and the treacherous currents that raced between them it was usually only the merfolk who could traverse the water side of the promontory with impunity. Drylanders came down the steep and winding path to the slender spit of beach between stone and sea when they came at all.

So hearing the paddling of a little boat across the crash and swell of the waves breaking against the upthrust rocks that the lighthouse had been built to warn against drew his attention and concern. He watched it paddle closer wordlessly, curious but silent until the moon revealed a figure that was passingly familiar.

It was the voice that was the most recognizable, and the mermanta dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Indeed," he rumbled solemnly. "Have you come to pray to Safrin?"

Amanda snorted out a laugh. "Pray. Yeah. Sure. I love pissing the gods off with my 'prayers.'" She made a mocking gesture with her hands.

She shook her head. "Nah, I'm here on business. There's caves all around here that you can only reach by boat. I've got...well, let's just say I've got some things to set up." She decided not to go into detail, considering the illegal nature of what she was planning.

"Which one is Safrin again?" she asked to change the subject. "Is she the fun one, or the bitchy one?" Knowing the details of the gods had never been an important thing for the Abandoned girl. If the gods didn't want to have anything to do with her, she didn't care to have anything to do with them either.

Hadama regarded the woman solemnly at her irreverent words and gestures, but made no further comment. Even so his brow furrowed a bit at her next words and he tilted his head at her thoughtfully. "It is late," he rumbled, "for business." And though smuggling was pretty much the national pasttime of Torchline - was it even really illegal at this point? - not everyone engaged in or approved of it.

There was no such thing as going still in the rocky waters beneath the cliffs. The currents switched directions with every swell and wave, but Hadama had a moment of almost frozen confusion before steely brows knitted just slightly together at Amanda's words. Though he serenely rode out the natural movements of the tide in the protected tidepool he'd chosen, there was a sense that he was genuinely baffled by the question. "I did not realize you were an Outlander," he admitted, though he inclined his head courteously in apology for his mistaken assumption to the contrary. "Safrin is the patron goddess of Torchline. She has done much for us since her return." Perhaps Frey had not been much seen in the region - though Ludo had been prayed to by the local humans for the safety of their sailors, and the fate of souls lost at sea for generations - but Safrin had been very visibly active in her assistance of the coastal people in recent years. The canals that crossed through all of Haulani and Kaiholo bore her signature starlight glow and the very prominent seat of government in the middle of Haulani - the Court of Stars - had been erected in her honor. It was Safrin's blessing that gave the public fountain within its healing powers, and it was her protection - again with that unmistakable starlit glimmer - that now shielded the coast from the brunt of the monsoons that had used to buffet it. Even those who chose not to pray to her personally had still directly benefited from her interventions in Torchline, regardless of race.

"Outlander?" Amanda frowned. "Whaddya mean, Outlander? I ain't no Outlander. I just don't give a crap about the gods. Not like they care one bit about me either."

She looked around, starting to realize that there wasn't enough moonlight for her to find the sort of cave she was looking for. This is what she got for putting this off for so long. But she figured maybe the merman knew the area, considering how much time he must have spent along the shores.

"You know the way through these rocky shallows? I usually don't come out to this part of the shoreline. I'm trying to find some caves that aren't too tough to navigate to. My boat can fit through shallower areas without much trouble, so I can navigate the area just fine."

The boat was shallow, essentially a canoe with an outrigger attached to a pontoon. Easily capable of navigating rocky waters that a larger boat would never be able to fit through without smashing the hull on the rocks beneath the waves.

He tilted his head at the response, though if he was taken aback it didn't show on his serene features. He simply dipped his head in acknowledgment of the correction with a murmured: "I see." It wasn't his place to change her mind, though he made note of her opinion to avoid future misunderstandings.

Her question wasn't entirely unexpected after her earlier reply, though the request for help was a little more surprising. Hadama dove beneath a particularly large swell and surfaced again with water streaming from his hair and face as he considered the size and draft of her boat. It was possible...

There were other elements at play as well as he stretched out his magic to calm the waters around the canoe and swam slowly around it, giving himself more time to think. Returning to the place in front of Amanda he reached a decision and nodded slowly. "I can guide you," he agreed. "The caves by the lighthouse are too shallow to fit your boat in. But there is one..." He turned to face the shore, looking over the shadowed cliff face and the rocks below; some poked boldly above the waves and hid vicious riptides around them while others lay in wait with their hidden teeth that peeked just above the surface when the water pulled away. One wave could carry the canoe safely over the top of some of them. The next could drop the boat in a trough and impale it, if the sea was unkind enough. The cave was a little distance away and protected by both kinds of stones, both large and mostly-submerged, that had fallen into the sea in ancient times and been weathered away to sharp points ever since.

But the merman had magic of his own to protect the little craft from mischance or folly, and he turned back to Amanda with another nod. "What will you trade for it?"

Amanda smirked at the request for a trade. This merman was her kind of guy--you should never give something without asking for something in return. And she had an idea from their previous encounter of what kinds of things he might be interested in.

"Last time we talked," she said, "you said you were interested in ore and ingots. Well, I'm about to come into quite a bit of that. A full crate of materials of your choice, in exchange for helping me find a nice, secluded cave. Along with your promise not to tell anyone else about it."

She looked around at what rocks she could see, knowing the dangers of more rocks beneath the waves. She was confident that the merman knew the waters better than she did. His expertise would be worth the cost of the trade, and she was more than willing to strike a deal.

Hadama tilted his head in consideration of the trade, swishing his tail through the water as he took into account the work that he'd be doing tonight. Eventually he gave a slow nod - though not without a caveat. "The cave is worth one crate," he agreed. "Secrecy will cost a second. And only as long as your actions there do not bring harm to the merfolk." He would not risk the safety of any of his people for a few crates of raw metal, but as long as that ironclad rule remained intact the stoic mermanta was unlikely to share anyone else's secrets.

He turned and began to swim carefully down the coast. The water around him calmed as he approached it, the currents gentling to allow him to pass safely over and around the stone teeth that the lighthouse warned of. And behind him Amanda's boat came as well, riding a high swell of a slow wave that carried it safely over the treacherous rocks and past the racing tide so the small human didn't have to pit her strength against the sea to keep her craft from being smashed against the jagged remnants of some ancient landslide

"You've got a deal," Amanda said. "And don't worry, I don't mess with merfolk. I'm just looking to make a profit, nothing more." Sure, her plans weren't exactly legal, but that didn't hurt anyone. Well, unless you counted the people she ripped off.

She paddled along, following the merman. She noticed the shift in the waters, and deduced he was using the same kind of magic she'd seen on their last encounter. She felt rather jealous--water magic was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to learn. It was just a matter of time.

When they reached their destination, Amanda looked around, struggling to see in the dim moonlight. It looked like a well-secluded place. Far off enough from the main shipping lines that most people would never see it, and hard enough to navigate to that anyone who spotted the cave was unlikely to make their way there.

"This seems like exactly what I need," she said.

The journey was swift thanks to the use of his magic. A few months ago it would have been far more harrowing for both of them, but Hadama had worked hard to hone his control and he had a merfolk's natural affinity for it. Carrying them both safely passed the hazard, he relaxed as the waters in front of the cave grew naturally calm, protected by those very rocks that made it so dangerous to navigate through.

The cave itself was a dark shadow against the cliff side, easily mistaken at first for a simple indent in the stone in the night's uncertain light. Hadama swam slowly towards it, towing Amanda a little ways behind him until they were close enough for the lapping of the small waves against the rocky interior to send cascading echoes back at them. "Do you have a light?" he questioned curiously. "It may be dangerous to go farther without one."

Amanda looked around, nodding in approval. This was just the sort of thing she'd had in mind.

When Hadama asked for a light, she pulled open her backpack and dug around for her lantern, flint, and tinder. With a few strikes of the flint she lit the lantern. She floated it in front of her with her telekinesis, letting the flickering light cascade over the stone walls.

As they moved inward, Amanda made careful note of the shape of the cave and the paths that Hadama guided her along, doing her best to memorize how to avoid the rocks. "Don't suppose you can teach me that water trick?" she asked. "Sure would be a handy kind of magic in my line of work."

With the aid of Amanda's light Hadama swam slowly ahead, pointing at the places where stalagmites grew sharp teeth towards the surface of the water. At low tide they'd be clearly visible, but in the dark at high tide they were treacherously hidden just below the surface. The cave went back a few dozen feet and contained a damp ledge at the back that was five or six feet deep. Stalactites dotted the ceiling though their slow dripping was lost in the echoes of the waves that slapped against the sides of the cave as well as the hull of Amanda's canoe.

"I cannot," he rumbled with a slight shake of his head. Though his voice was quiet it still sent echoes through the enclosed space. "But it may awaken later in your life." Or at least it had for him. "Does magic run in your family?"

"No," Amanda said, looking off to the side. "Neither of my parents had magic. I was the lucky one." She let out a morbid chuckle. "Apparently that's how it works. Anyone can have a freak for a baby..."

She climbed out of the boat and up onto the stone floor. She started examining the area while she talked. "Dad ran off once he knew what I was. Didn't want an Abandoned kid, I guess. Mom stuck around a bit longer, but she died when I was little. Been on my own since I was..." she stopped to think for a moment "...nine or ten? About that."

She stepped from one end of the cave to another, placing one foot directly in front of the other so she could count the number of feet it took to cross the cave. "How's it work with Merfolk?" she asked. "Y'all all got magic, or are the ones who have it cursed, like we are up here?"