*
The strange man's eyes opened to the world once more, pure white spheres peering as if through the curtain of Maanta's soul. His stare was disturbing yet peaceful to look upon.
"Good day, young one," the man huffed in his brash low tone. "I do not know all that has occurred to me but somehow I feel I owe you a great thanks."
"I only did what any other would do." Maanta smiled, happy that the man appreciated his help. "It was my pleasure. You have a long gash along your shoulder. If you would like, I know of a place in Meridia where you might get that looked at and healed."
Maanta was talking about a small potions cove, which existed on the outskirts of Meridia. He had taken rest there many times himself, needing healing after his trips to the Meridian outersands.
"So soon to offer one’s assistance to a stranger that one barely knows?" the man asked. "I could be a thief or one in seek of others for enslaving."
"As for thievery," Maanta grinned, "you should be more cautious of me than I of you, seeing as I am just a poor, clearly tatter-clothed boy and you are draped in fine golden gems."
In that moment thoughts came to Maanta about the possibility of the stranger being one who gathers slaves. The man could have been a slave once who had been honored with the privilege of seeking out others to enslave… Certainly it would account for his eye scorch and for the abundance of gold shimmering his skin? Well, if the man was out to enslave young, weak, scatterbrained merboys, it had become far too late for Maanta to avoid that misfortune.
Maanta nervously twisted a wayward flowing seaweed strand, stretching it upon his fingertips. "A man who was felled by slowly falling stones surely would not be swift enough to capture a young one such as me."
"And it appears wit accompanies courage as another of your traits. My name," the man smiled a warm grinning smile, "is Sift. Seeing as you have rescued me I suppose you are owed as much. Perhaps if we are friends," the man slowly closed and opened his left eye, "some day my last name will follow. If you would like to listen I will tell you some of who I am and what brings me here needing, how is it you said, needing of the assistance of scatterbrained merboys."
The northern lights had faded and only the faintest of definitions could be made out by both men's eyes. Maanta cracked a malta shell, scattering its glowing red ooze across the ocean floor, as they hovered above in the currents. If he was to be listening to a tale, Maanta had decided that he would do it by malta glow. Crimson light trickled across Maanta, Archa, and Sift's bodies. Somewhere off in the distance a whale sang.
"My mother always told me never to speak with strangers." Maanta grinned. "I've never understood that rule. It's a pleasure to meet you, Sift. You can call me Maanta and I am afraid that I don’t know my last name and so you also may never know. Please, I would love to hear some of who and what you've been."
"As for my youthhood, I'm afraid that those tales will have to wait for days not so close to passing to their ends. I come from Sangfoul, a place far away from these sands. My people were enslaved by others there. I, with my brothers and sisters, was scorch-branded by my lord and sent scavenging through the molten creviced depths beneath the ocean floor. Not as sensitive to malta burns, my people fell to many monstrosities.
“Throughout the years my kin fell to tortures of the depths. Many of my family found themselves sold to other lords many leagues away. Before my eyes my father’s body shriveled and scorched to ash, melding along two pressing volcanic walls as he was pushed into them. The slave watchmen just laughed at his shriveled corpse and insisted that us slaves scrape his form from the volcanic walls to peddle in the market for its minerals. I vividly remember this and many more horrific things. My father’s face still haunts my dreams, his features twisted in boiling agony. It is so sad that such things in our world have come into being."
Maanta shivered in the cool waters. Tiny goose bumps of disturbed disbelief held him still.
Sift plucked a tiny fish from above and cradled it between his hands and fingertips. "And so I became lonely, hollow. I became hard like molten ooze after cooling and morphing to stone. Thus it was for many north light passings that I had lost who I was.
"Then one night I slept, incased within net cagings, breathing into my gills the bloody scent of those around me. And I awoke with blurred sight in the arms of a dark-cloaked man somewhere along our city's outskirts. I must have been poisoned. 'Flee and never return to this land,' the cloaked man proclaimed, his deep opal eyes, surging with the glimmer of pity and hope.
"Sleep overtook my mind and when I awoke I took the advice, swimming far away from Sangfoul. Other brave souls have joined my side. Together we scavenge the depths in watch for those who have lost their paths and might wish to be our brethren.” While saying this last part a certain calming softness swept his voice, as if speaking of a home.
Sift un-cupped his strong yet somehow delicate hands and looked upwards, warmly smiling as the little fish swam happily away.
“What brings you so close to Meridia if I might ask?” Maanta questioned.
“I am afraid that is something I cannot tell you yet, but I promise that before the rest of Meridia knows, I will share with you what brings me here. You have no need of fearing me.”
The man’s pearl white eyes glanced at something within the darkness as he said this. What was there? Why wouldn’t this man tell him about his reasons for being so close to Meridia, Maanta pondered, and for that matter what had brought Sift to his near death encounter needing assistance? These questions and many more riddled Maanta’s thoughts. There was so much more to ask and with deeper darkness looming in, so little time to do so.
“Lola!” the man bellowed out, waving his arms in excitement at something unseen and unknown.
A smooth something pressed at Maanta’s back, almost nudging him as Archa did when feeding time came and he had not yet given her food. But this something nudging was nudging his whole back and was definitely too large to be his sleek companion.
A large eye, emerald in hue and with the look of a pale mirrored pane, stared back at Maanta as he half swirled in the currents, causing his heart to gulp at the thought of being nudged by such a bizarre creature.
With two dolphin length fins outstretching from either side, this fish hovered, staring through its emerald globes. Maanta realized that here was truly something the likes of which he had never seen before. To think; in all of the places that he had been, and all of the adventures that he had been on, there were still creatures out there that Maanta did not know existed…
Shimmering sleek fins the size of Meridian warrior shields cascaded down the creature’s sides also and melded at the underbelly in a sort of sterling spike. A swaying green angel fin briskly cascaded from the creature’s back, dancing in the water’s breeze.
“Some companion you turned out to be, fish!” Sift jokingly grumbled out, swimming over to where this unique fish glided.
Still stunned from the unexpected encounter, Maanta watched as Sift patted on the fish’s scales in greeting.
“A boulder from up high fells your friend,” he waved his hands frantically at the fish, “and all that you can do is flounder about? And I thought you and I to be soul mates. See what happens if a boulder topples you, my friend, or if hunger overwhelms the belly of a fellow man and he wishes to purchase you.” He slapped the fish’s side and teased it with a goofy glare.
Lola looked back at the man as if to say, Silly little man how would you get home if you’d dare let such things happen to me? Her eyes mockingly glimmered in the malta stone’s luminescence.
“As you may very well have guessed,” Sift smiled back at Maanta, apparently quite pleased with the look of surprise which had been on his face just moments prior, “this is my traveling companion, Lola.”
“It’s good to know that I wasn’t about to become someone’s nightsnack,” Maanta replied, “but seeing as you’re wounded
and darkness will soon come, we’d better make our way back towards Meridia. Will you be alright to ride?”
“Surely you jest?” The dark skinned man swam and gripped two stones upon the fish’s backside. “I may be wounded, but one doesn’t live like I do and be unable to ride and do what I must. Thank you for your help, young Maanta. If you will take me, I will be pleased to go to the place in Meridia you have spoken of, so that I can be healed.”
Archa dipped from above, gliding beneath Maanta’s fingertips. He met her fins and lifted himself to her back, then patted her neck calmly to show how much he loved his dear friend.
“Follow me.” He grinned, happy to be off again on yet another adventure through the depths. And he sounded those tones which he had grown to know so well…
"Ooooahooo!"
The foursome swept off through the pitch night appearing to passer fish eyes as phantasms sifting currents through the seas.
A low blue sapphire hue shone down from ocean’s crest above; draping all things below the crest in a dark gray hue. Night fish glowed like stars, lightly shimmering the belly of the ocean, and somewhere off in the distance malta streams smoothly tangled their webs across all mercreatures’ sight.
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