Bloated seas of black rejoice in my return with a hollow silence that fills me in some strange way. Further and further I slip away from the phosphorescence of the algae curling around the boundaries of Yetla. My tail flipping and flipping as I move ahead.

I swim closer, my size being dwarfed with each flip of my fins.

Still, I am not sure why I keep returning. Perhaps it is the abnormality of it all, to have heard oh so many times of crushing beasts who want nothing but to destroy our small village and yet have been presented with this silent giant who holds the seas in their eyes. Perhaps it is a simple desire to want to break it all apart, to see these two conflicting ideals with my own eyes and to feel it with my squamous palms.

We swim for a while, I continue sketching more details across the oh-so many pages I have filled with their stature.

In a moment and like a hellion they dart into the black waters, their tentacles wrapped around my waist and throwing my hair to each side. Diving deeper and deeper to territories never seen.

They stop. My pinched frame almost slipping from their tentacle's grip as we came to a sharp halt. A sharp-edged trench looks up at us from below; its starved golden eyes only faint from the depths and innumerable depths between it, the beast and I. I loved the seas but my fingers still pressed into its calloused skin. A quiet seeped around and covered us, forcing us to share in its almost haunting presence. The quiet of Yetla still bubbled, one could still feel a heartbeat that curled the sea currents around us, but here…there was nothing.

Bounding once again towards the unrelenting darkness. They take me soundlessly into a wide open cavern entrance only steps from the base of the trench, the beauty of the dark that I vied to study was suddenly swallowed as we entered the belly of the sea.

I can feel vibrations that shake the winding, sharp caverns. Screaming; cacophonous and thundering in a way I could only presume.

A valley hidden in the rock. Salty ocean tasted different here; almost indescribable. Not heavier nor lighter.

They're ugly. Like my mother said and said and said. I can hear her voice clearly as it echoes in my mind. The irate scolding playing over and over again.

Curling ragged tails, ash and rubble twisted frames, bioluminescent bulbs hanging over rows upon rows of piercing ivory teeth. Bones which protruded from their scaly skin. Each one another colour of the same waters that breathed life into them; these black waters.

Deafening roars and cracked teeth animals dart around and between us. Chaos builds the expanse of this theatre of a cavern with the sheer number of swimming, flowing and flying beasts. But I can see them, in movement or frozen still they are alive beneath the sheer weight of the ocean, unencumbered and unaffected by our Yetlan presence.

The coiled end of their tentacle nudges my bag, jostling around belongings inside. My gaze falls onto them, rising from their heavy-edged limb to those firmly ink-black eyes. Same ones who swallowed the sun and all light around us.

I reach inside, plucking my small notebook out and revealing it to them. Gently flipping through the ink-inflated pages of translucent fish, cracked seashells and blended paragraphs on each of their descriptions.

Again they nudge gently.

"I've never played for anyone before." I turn and share my slowed-signs to the beast. The webs of beasts still.

Another nudge. Harder, pushing my hands to squeeze the half-broken object between my webbed fingers.

Lean into it, I tell myself, just lean into it. I can feel each of their gazes upon me, unsure if its a burrowing or passing gaze I allow my eyes to close. I allow my lips to press into the flute, blowing bubbles filled with melodic tunes that burst into the seas.

The sound wraps around me, each note like the pricking warmth of light against my sun-starved scales. An indescribable weightlessness worships me as I play.

So similar to that first time I played years ago; such a similar feeling to the first time I pressed my lips to the flute. My watery breaths flying through the carved shoots that created murmuring melodies that even the tons of water could not suppress.

It feels like a symphony despite the fact that I play alone. The algae curled around the cave edges sways tenderly. Each new note I breathe into I can feel its pulse across the ocean floor. This is why I love playing, not for the looks or for my mothers often distasteful but attentive stare when I play but for the way the world looks so alive when I do.

And with this tiny instrument no larger than my two webbed palms my dimensions grew to match theirs. I was beyond myself; larger and unconstricted even by the sharp cavern walls. I look at the wretched-looking beasts, the same ones I had heard detailed descriptions of a thousand times over. Stories where they swallowed homes whole, ones where they smashed through our monuments to the light allowing us to drown in the darkness.

And yet…I found myself lost in something incommunicable. In something not even my months and months of drawing, analysing and examination had given me.

The eyes never lie.

And they saw through me.

Here, in these stalactite caverns idled the unknown gods of the dark.

I am seeing the crowd of us; from above, from below and from every direction. I can feel the expanse of the ocean even from these caverns.

I filled so many pages of my notebooks that even my scales began to ache. Time passes like a warm embrace. I do not hear it tick by and remind me of where I swim.

"As dinner cooks help me with these bowls." Columns of stretched seaweed had been strewn over our small table and my fingers twist the seaweed between itself. Slowly folding and making a bowl out of these picked and gathered pieces of curling algae and sea tangle.

Neither of us move to converse, our hands entirely focused on this tiny task.

And then she signs gently, in a way so opposite to her usual tone of sign, "I wonder sometimes Sarai if you understand this world that surrounds us." Her fingers drift back down to resume the creation of the small bowl.

I do. Or at least I'm trying. Can anyone truly understand the sea?

I do not respond. Tearing my glance away from her and back onto where my fingers fight with the bowl.

"I shall tell you a story." I nod, my fingers twisting the seaweed between itself. Knotting and building the bowl one row at a time "I was a girl when I met the first and only beast I have ever encountered. A disgusting thing; foul-mouthed, brittle eyes, cracked teeth." Her quick hands described the creature's frame and her nauseated facial expressions describing so much more than that.

"That day, I vowed to myself I would never step beyond those confines again. That day I saw this expansive ocean as exactly what it was; a beast who only sought to swallow me whole. I wonder sometimes Sarai if you truly understand all I do for you. All I do to provide and to keep you safe from those beasts. Shelter from their peering eyes and agape jagged mouths. Food to keep you alive, to allow you to worship the Light. Food to keep you swimming from them if the situation arises where you must dart and swim for your life."

"They have no love for us, no desires beyond ones which pull them closer in order to swallow us whole. Their simplicity is exactly why they are dangerous Sarai, they harbour no love, no order. They are chaos and they are the screams of the darkness."

"Which, is entirely the reason the light gives us all we need to survive."

I nod solemnly. "Yes mother. I do. I do."

"Good." She flashes a razor-sharp smile, "Let us eat then."

ທທ

The light beamed over our glistening scales. Prayer seemed so simple compared to these seas now, a simplicity in the harrowing chaos of that…that wonderful cave. Ancient beings with ugly frames and eyes that carved something into my psyche. A chaos and a peacefulness I did not know could exist. Despite the light washing over my hands as I prayed I still found myself vying to fill that notebook with every detail of their existences.

What would my mother say if she knew?

My gaze passes  over to my mother. Her eyes are tight, her body rigid as she leans over, only fingertips pressed to the stone and yet, for once ease and serenity are the only words I could find to describe her. A complete and entire devotion to these streams of golden light.

She looks absolutely whole, as though this light could swallow her entire frame and she would simply allow it. Not a single look of fear would wash over her in that case. The light to her was warmth, it was life, it was beauty. It was love. Everything opposite to the world she saw beyond the curved border of Yetla.

It burns.

It burns.

With a sharp and curdling pain worming its way beneath my scales I flinch back, cradling my hands close to my chest. Trying to press it all away with shaking breaths. The burn begins to cease and the water cools back to its frigid temperatures.

My mother turns at my movement, all of that ease swept under the sands in a moment. Under her gaze, one that is no less sickly and sizzling than the light I place my fingers back under the light's irate existence. Inhaling intensely with each passing moment.

It burns.

It burns.

It burns.

Once our prayer ceases and the light is swallowed by the darkness again, the village begins to break apart. Women and girls returning to their homes to continue the day. My hand is still clutched tight to my chest as we break apart too.

That is until my mother sees waving out of the corner of her eye. Without a word to me she turns and joins a group of women. I know each one well, Yetla isn't a place where one can simply not know another. Especially not when such beasts as I once called them lurk beyond our borders.

A small prayer hums itself in gentle vibrations around us, circling outwards from the womens' chests. They all love the light so deeply.

I rested a few paces behind the conversing women. Watching and nodding as they spoke from just outside their small circle. Wide smiles illuminate their sharp teeth and the wide range of colours that blend over their scales. The women disperse and I turn back to my mother.

My mother is looking at me. Smiling.

I match her smile upon instinct.

And it fades as I realise the other women are staring at me as well. I'm not sure why but it does. "She has such magnificent hair does she not."

"Another gift of mine." My mother answers, pulling me closer into her. Her fingers tracing my hair, pulling gently at the shells weaved through them.

"A mother's love is always a gift from the Light."

"She truly does take after you. You both look so alike." My mother smiles again, eyes . And we truly did. The high bridges of our flat noses, and plump cheeks with viridescent eyes.

She is my mother and I her daughter.

"Those bloated beasts," Ephyra signs with a vile spit as she glances over to a blooming shadow in the distance, "May the Light have no love for them."

"We all know it does Ephyra!" Another woman adds in, emitting a laugh that is picked up by everyone that surrounds us.

The laugh dies down moments later, a wariness in their eyes is reborn when they glance past the walls of Yetla.