Talu and Jewel were waiting for me at the usual place in the Undersea. My breath hitched when I looked at Talu, as I remembered what had happened the night before. I realized I didn't see Kei—where had he come from? I opened my mouth to speak, and he shook his head ever-so-slightly.

"Lumi's busy with witching stuff," Jewel said as she sat on the sand-bank. She had a jewelry box and pulled out of it a knot of necklaces. Her slender brown fingers worked at the knotted chains. "So it's just us today."

"That's fine." I had no quarrel with Jewel, not anymore. I drifted down to take a seat next to her. 

"Oh, there you are, Pearly." Talu turned to greet a little ivory reptile with fringe on its back and tail like sea-grass, a bright-sea green. It had a pearl embedded into its forehead that glowed—the origin of the nickname, I suppose.

"What's that?" I asked as the creature dropped a piece of driftwood in front of Talu. 

"Oh, Pearly." Talu scratched the back of his neck. "She's a dragonling. I named her when I was still a really little kid, hence the name—"

"A dragonling?" I interrupted. 

"Like, a little dragon," Jewel said. "They've been our pets and companions for thousands of years."

I considered this. "Does that mean that there's big dragons?"

"Once." Talu was so solemn and quiet, I thought maybe I'd heard a little current in the water instead of his voice. "They could shift between the forms of large, majestic dragons, and humanoids not so different from you. But they're gone now."

I frowned. "What do you mean?" 

"It's an old story," Talu said as he threw the conch shell back into the blue. The dragonling went zooming after it, leaving a trail of bubbles in its path. 

"Treasure Divers like us know it well." Jewel winked.

Talu ignored her, staring out at the trail of bubbles Pearly the dragonling had left behind. "It was said that the sea-dragons once lived in a palace at the bottom of the ocean, where they crafted pearl-magic and wove spells out of moonlight."

Jewel blinked. "That's actually kind of poetic, for you."

Talu ignored her and continued. "They say that a tragedy befell their civilization, their palace was lost and the survivors scattered, integrating with the mermaids. No pure-blooded dragons remain in the world."

"So it's a sad story," I muttered.

Talu shrugged. "History often is."

Luckily Pearly returned, sparing me the struggle of figuring out what to say to that while sounding as witty and cool and fun as I did at the party. 

"So those aren't like real dragons then?"
Talu patted Pearly on the head. "No, not quite. I don't really know where they come from—but Pearly is my oldest friend. She's still just as lively and playful as the hatchlings born this spring."

"He has a whole menagerie of them." Jewel wrinkled her nose. "Lava-leviathans and sea-turtles and just about everything you can think of."

"Don't be like that, they're my friends you know." Talu spoke light-heartedly—you could tell that they'd had variations on this conversation before. "Besides, they're really useful. Scales detected that one cave-in on that shipwreck you were working on a while back."

"Scales?"

"The lava leviathan," Talu answered, which gave me nothing really. 

"That's how I met Lumi, actually." Talu's eyes went all soft and glazed over as he stared off after Pearly again. "Pearly's shedding fringe and scales all the time, and those can be useful in potion-making and spell-crafting. I was getting more than I knew what to do with, so my mom suggested I take it down to the sea-witch village. Naturally, I did, and the first mermaid I saw, right through the window—"

"—Was Lumi," Jewel interrupted, a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she lightly elbowed him.

"Yes." He turned his head, but not fast enough for me to see his face turned red.

"You like her," I blurted out. It seemed so obvious now!

He was quiet for a moment. "Yes."

"Does she know?" I asked.

"Absolutely not," Talu snorted. He then turned unusually serious. "Madame Nerissa would kill me. She hates me, almost as much as she hates Lumi."

"She hates her?" I was confused now. "But isn't Lumi her niece and apprentice?"

"Maybe, but you haven't really seen how she talks to Lumi." Talu shook his head. "I don't know the full story, but I don't think either of them really wanted the arrangement. Lumi tries to make the best of it, and she won't talk badly about Madame Nerissa—but I can see it's not a good situation."

"You want to save her, don't you?" I asked softly.

"First she has to want to leave," Jewel pointed out.

Talu said nothing to all of this. Pearly returned and plopped onto the bank of sand alongside Talu and let out a long sigh, typical of an aging pet. Talu sat on the sand beside her, flipping his fins for a moment. 

"Maybe one day, she'll be free of her apprenticeship contract and will want to see the seven seas," he said. "I just want to be there to help her when she's ready."

We sat there in silence for a time, the three of us. We watched fish swirl past in their rainbows, the underwater grasses rippling in the current. Eventually, we were joined by another—Lumi. 

But she looked incredibly grave.

"What's wrong?" Talu asked as she approached.

"It's Aunt Nerissa." Her eyes darted to me. "She wants to see you."
"Me?" I blinked and stupidly pointed at myself. 

"It was only a matter of time," Jewel muttered. 

Still, I didn't like the sound of this. "I'm not so sure, guys."

"She really will help," Talu conceded. "And I'm sure you'd like some answers."

I hesitated. As much as I hated to agree, curiosity won out. "I would." 

"Then it's settled." Lumi still looked nervous as she circled around me. "Just follow me to Aunt Nerissa's, okay?"

With that, she then took off.

"We'd better catch up." Talu looked to me again and offered a hand. "Ready?"

"Not like I have much of a choice." 

He chuckled with a sort of bitterness that only reaffirmed my bad feelings about the whole thing.

"Count me out of this one," Jewel sighed as she looked back down to her jewelry box. "Say hello to the hag for me, will you?"