The darkness about the Sentinel chased them all the way down, but shattered against the light from their beak. Strangely, the lightness about their bones and the slightness of their form didn’t hinder their sinking progress into the depths of the water. The Sentinel was able to freely swim, as if they were somehow flying in reverse: in water instead of air, down instead of up from the ground.

As they swam deeper and deeper with the scale resting beneath their tongue, they noticed just how muffled the Sunfish’s song had been above the surface. They wouldn’t have been able to tell back at the shore, but as they followed the winding path of melody into the bowels of the lake, the clarity and precision of the voice sent reverberations dancing across their ribs. They shivered, and instinctively reached for their cloak, but its deep blue folds had billowed out around them like drifting clouds around the sun at their mouth. They decided to abandon the attempt.

Motley eyes peered at the Sentinel as they forged their steady descent. The Sentinel could feel their gaze flutter against their feathers, as if they were unsure of what they were seeing, and chose to believe that they didn’t mean them any harm. Other fish were bound to live in this lake, and though the Sentinel didn’t know what they looked like or how predatory they were, they were comforted by the strangeness of their own appearance. A bird who had swallowed what appeared to be a little sun was probably not anything a wandering flounder wanted to trifle with. Once, they thought they saw the indelible metal-bright flash of fangs pry the darkness apart, but they didn’t dare cast their glance long enough to tell indefinitely if teeth were what they had seen. They continued on. They were after the Sunfish and that mission filled their mind like the scale’s light filled their beak.

Eventually, the song’s volume swelled noticeably and the Sentinel could tell that the Sunfish was very close by; if they hadn’t left their breath at the shore above, they would have held it. Right as they began to bring their wings back for another push downward, the voice broke and fell to silence. The Sentinel froze in the darkness, fractured by panic.

“Please don’t stop singing.” They were startled, distantly, that they had uttered those words aloud. Their voice was strangely not all that garbled by the water — no doubt another favor the mouse had bestowed. They swallowed carefully around the scale, and continued despite the fear that burned along their tongue. “Sunfish, please, are you there? Can you hear me?”

They waited. The limb-like pleats of their midnight cloak extended through the water like vines seeking the sun. The Sentinel didn’t dare move. They watched the water and tried very hard not to seem afraid.

And, just like that, a swatch of long golden tail glinted against the darkness. A smaller fin followed, then a narrow head. Black, shining eyes peered at the Sentinel, and all the latter could do was stare at the fish floating before them. The whole of the Sunfish’s body was poised in tentative query, and the Sentinel could only return the sentiment.

Both of them looked at each other for a long moment.

“Oh my,” the Sunfish whispered reverently, like he had somehow uttered the secret to the universe in just those two words.

Something in the Sentinel broke at that, and their curiosity came gushing out. All they could taste was the overwhelming flavor of their own question like bitter dandelion root: “Do you remember me, Sunfish?”

There was barely a beat before the Sunfish responded, flicking his tail emphatically. “Of course I do! But what in the world are you doing here? How are you here? Why—?”

He paused, reeling back slightly away from the light at the Sentinel’s beak. “It’s not safe, you know. Especially considering you have lungs and there are hazards in the lake, and it’s so far down, so why…?” He ran out of steam, his beautiful torso slumping slightly.

He looked at the Sentinel, eyes gleaming bright as stars. “I thought I would never ever see you again.”

The Sentinel gazed at the Sunfish, and couldn’t keep a small, soft smile from their beak. How strange. “Me, too.” They cleared their throat, stringing words together for a moment, then said, “I came — I came because I was worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” the Sunfish asked.

“Yes,” the Sentinel said, absent-mindedly grabbing at a stray fold of their cloak. “The Nettle is still around. The person who’s after you, I mean, who tried to kill you when — when we met.”

“Yes, I know,” the Sunfish said, the voice that the Sentinel had given him tight as spidersilk. “That’s why I haven’t gone near the surface for so long! It’s dangerous!”

The Sentinel nodded, the light in their beak bobbing with the motion like a sputtering candle. “That makes sense,” they said slowly. “It’s risky for you up there.”

“What—” the Sunfish began, then shook his head sharply, decisively. The Sentinel watched his tail flicker as he moved. “No, that’s not it, well, not necessarily — I — I didn’t want to risk your life again.”

The Sentinel blinked. They didn’t bother to fix their cloak as it drifted upwards once more, exposing the scar they’d earned so long ago. The Sunfish looked at the scar fearfully, then sighed, releasing a gentle golden bubble from his round lips.

“I didn’t want it to happen again.”

“But,” the Sentinel said, still processing, “I’ve been protecting you all this time, Sunfish. I’ve been keeping watch over this lake, I’ve been longing to see you again but I knew not seeing you was a good thing if it meant that you weren’t in danger.”

The Sunfish laughed dryly. “We’ve been protecting each other without either of us knowing it. That would be funny if...well…”

The Sentinel laughed as well, the light from their beak almost too bright without their mouth closed around it. “It would be funny, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” the Sunfish said with a soft smile. The Sentinel almost melted at the warmth of its sincerity. The Sunfish, meanwhile, tilted his head to the side. “But what made you think I was within reach, as it were? As you know, I’ve been in hiding.”

“I could hear your singing,” said the Sentinel.

The Sunfish stilled. “You could?” he asked weakly.

“Yes,” the Sentinel responded. “And a wisemouse could hear it, too. They gave me this—” they gestured at their beak, indicating the scale enclosed there, “—so that I could come to warn you.”

An odd expression wreathed the Sunfish’s small face, painting it with taut strokes. “A mouse...with a pink headscarf?”

The Sentinel nodded, puzzled. The Sunfish’s tail curled, and unwound, then pulsed as if it were knocking at an invisible door in the lake’s depths. The Sentinel watched, mesmerized, before they felt the soft pressure of a cool fin on their thin shoulder. They glanced up and met the Sunfish’s bright, beautiful, and very wide eyes.

“My dear bird,” the Sunfish intoned in the voice gifted to him, then paused to inhale. They were very close, and the Sentinel wasn’t sure what words would follow the ones just uttered, but knew, foggily, that they could never be as sweet.

The Sentinel was technically right.

“That mouse,” the Sunfish continued in an achingly tender voice, “was the one who threw the lance.”