By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2023 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
Prisoner of War and Song
__________Glaiven knew the medics would soon patch Uuinora up and discharge her for combat; war waited for no one, neither would Uuinora. Even if Uuinora’s injury was severe enough to plaster her to a hospital bed for a few days or longer, her impatience and impulsiveness would prevail over her stunted prudence. The minute she was certain she could trust her organs to remain tucked behind her stitches, she would suit up and head out. The primal instinct to move once able was embedded in Uuinora’s core, birthed long ago from a deep hatred of being left behind.
__________Glaiven smirked; his bright, white teeth flashed in contrast to the bleakness of his thoughts and the natural darkness of Zaliradai. Those ancient abandonment rituals never fail to shape their sufferers, he acknowledged. If I want to stay ahead of Uuinora, I best make quick work of reforming that selkie runt she plans to hand over to the higher-ups.
__________As a misty rain crested a jagged mountain and swept into the valley below, Glaiven flicked the silver-rimmed hood of his dark cloak over the top of his head. He pinched the rim of his hood to keep it in place, tilted his head, and peered skyward. Some exposure to the elements, a few unquenched hunger pangs, Glaiven considered, and I’ll have that stubborn selkie eating out of my palm.
__________I should thank Uuinora, or perhaps her parents, Glaiven chuckled. Her upbringing has provided her undoing, along with my upscaling.
__________At the edge of the valley rested a dark, glossy lake. Although enclosed by land on all sides, the colossal lake nearly met the criteria of a sea. On clear nights, the lake swelled over, and later shrank back behind, its ringlike shoreline in intervals; it experienced its own tides. But tonight, the colossal lake was unsettlingly calm, as if the silvery moon overhead hesitated to reach through the misty clouds to pluck and toss waves across the lake’s surface. Instead, delicate wisps of chilled vapors, which resembled wandering spirits, leapt and spun from one shore of the lake to the other. These spiritual wisps left temporary trails of disruption on the lake’s glossy surface, similar to the rows of ripples left behind after skipping stones, which disappeared within seconds of their passing.
__________Since Glaiven encountered this phenomenon whenever he passed through the valley under an overcast sky, he charged through any beached wisps that wrapped around his ankles, which tore the wisps apart and kicked the shreds aside. Those shreds dispersed and disappeared. Whether the wisps were sentient was unknown.
__________With the weight of the War of Eternal Divide burdening the minds and hearts of the Zalirkatheermor, most were unconcerned with the intelligence of meteorological apparitions. Like many Zalirkatheermor, Glaiven believed the wisps were merely misdirections, tests of mental mettle, like mirages in a desert. Popular opinion and focus deterred Zalirkatheer researchers from studying the wisps; there was little chance their soft voices would be heard among the ear-splitting drums of war.
__________The lake and its wisps rested aside the most guarded naval base in Zaliradai. Somewhere behind a set of reinforced walls and an enormous drawbridge that opened to the lake, rose a coral docking bay where the Dominion anchored. Glaiven entered the docking bay through a small metal door. He snuck along the coral dock, behind the keen-eyed shipwrights and the steady-handed alchemical welders, whose eyes never veered from the battleship-in-progress. Glaiven entered into the adjoining stockroom and harvested dried kelp from the navy’s stores.
__________Siren snacks, Glaiven alliterated. Bet she won’t let the little selkie swim away with scraps. She’ll starve him for me.
__________Although he did not fear any repercussions for his intrusion, as he marched through the base under orders and according to protocol, Glaiven did not wish to distract the naval craftsmen from their important work. He stuffed handfuls of kelp into his satchel and then swiftly exited.
* * *
__________Kimio slouched against the round, glass curve of the fishbowl. He closed his lime-green eyes, pressed a pointed ear to the glass, and shut down any inclination to leave the western hemisphere of the bowl. The eastern hemisphere belonged to the siren, who whipped the water with her silvery, muscular fishtail whenever Kimio swam within reach of the waves she manufactured. Since water muffled and distorted voices, the two prominent languages of the sea were mind melding and body language. Kimio was fluent in both. The siren clearly expressed her distaste for his company with the latter, even though she sung angelically through the former.
__________Though her lips were sealed, her otherworldly, melodious thought-voice penetrated the murky water, reverberated throughout the bowl, bounced off the glass and echoed, as if she sung aloud. Whenever the siren sang, Kimio longed to harmonize with her, to sing to the sea and with the sea. His heart thrummed with longing. He yearned to become like salt, to dissolve into the sea, merge with it, and move with it.
__________Before his capture, Kimio had heard tales of sailors, who encountered sirens and were lost to the depths of the sea. The sirens appeared as the sailors’ lovers and lured them off their ships and into the waters. As an elf-child bound to Quera: The Element of Water, who was much too young for romance, Kimio determined the tale-spinners fluffed these stories too much with their talk of beautiful women and lovesick sailors. He did not need to see a familiar face to long for a life underwater, but he would have preferred better accommodations than the territorial siren’s murky fishbowl.
__________Besides, whenever he twitched a pointed ear in the singing siren’s direction, she shook her head to silence her song, narrowed her cloudy, pearl irises and hissed through her teeth. A spurt of bubbles escorted the siren’s menacing hiss out through her teeth and negated its intended effect. Kimio smacked a hand to his mouth to muffle his laughter. Nevertheless, should he swim within range of her powerful tail, the siren would surely wallop him for his uncouthness. So, Kimio distanced himself from the siren as much as was manageable in their compact, glass prison. Unfortunately, that left Kimio with nothing to do but wait for Glaiven’s return. Kimio grew bored, anxious, and hungry.
__________His small frame tired from idling underwater. The muscles of his wading arms and legs slacked. Kimio slid down the curve of the fishbowl. He frantically flapped his sore arms and kicked his sore legs to stay afloat. His achy, weary body whipped up a violent, uneven current, and then dropped as fast and as furiously as a misfired cannonball. Kimio dropped to the base of the fishbowl, sprawled out like a starfish.
__________The siren tossed back her wavy, coral-colored locks and cackled. Her snide thoughts penetrated the waters, echoed off the glass of the bowl, and reached Kimio’s ears in taunting verse: Silly little selkie dropped in for a swim, but the savage, soiled seawater got the drop on him.
__________The siren’s mental song repeated each time it bounced off the glass of the bowl. It formed a sardonic chant, as if it were sung by a whole choir of sinister merfolk. Kimio sought to squelch the sound, which pounded against both his brain and his eardrums, but his wearied arms and legs flopped when he moved them, as if emptied of muscles and bones.
__________He dragged his arms and legs through the murky water. He cupped his hands over his ears, pressed his knees to his stomach, and rested his elbows atop his knees; he coiled into himself, like a frightened caterpillar. His throbbing eardrums slowly numbed, but the hands that soothed his ears could do nothing to drown the voice that invaded his sea of thought.
__________Again, the siren’s song echoed in Kimio’s thoughts: Silly little selkie dropped in for a swim, but the savage, soiled seawater got the drop on him.
__________Somebody please, make her stop! Kimio cried. Eternal Rain, can you hear her? Can you hear me?
__________Suddenly, at the door to the fishbowl chamber, a metal bar yanked free, and the door inched open. A cloaked man with cautious footsteps squeezed through the gap between the door and its frame. Once inside, he pressed a palm to the face of the door and wrapped his second palm around the metal bar. He pushed the door shut and the bar in place. The cloaked man spun to face the fishbowl and its occupants, and he smiled giddily, like a scholar, who unexpectedly encountered a significant breakthrough, after many years of studious research.
__________The siren recognized that smile. She anticipated her next meal, and in her excitement, waylaid her tormenting song. She shot upwards with her hands raised, cut the surface of the water with only her hands, and clapped.
__________Kimio sighed in relief and smiled softly. A wave of silence splashed over his troubled mind, as rain cleanses the landscape after a drought. Thank the Eternals! he praised.
__________The cloaked man flicked his silver-rimmed hood behind his head, so it settled between his shoulder blades. He pranced to the fishbowl and pushed aside a corner of the bowl’s spiked lid. Then he reached into his black-leather satchel, retrieved a handful of dried kelp, and tossed it to the siren. She caught all but three flakes of what he tossed. She nibbled her catch greedily, and the few neglected flakes, which she failed to catch before they rehydrated, sank to the bottom of the bowl where Kimio lay.
__________“Have your fill,” the cloaked man encouraged. He tossed in a second helping.
__________Glaiven, Kimio realized. Although Kimio was unsure whether to be relieved or alarmed at the Zalirkatheer commander’s return, Kimio’s famished stomach grumbled angrily, reminded him that the questionable character offered him food, and he needed food.
__________The importance of the feeding was likewise clear to the siren. She attacked the second handful of kelp as hungrily as she attacked the first. While she ate, Kimio uncovered his ears, rolled onto his belly, and crawled towards the flakes she dropped.
__________Glaiven pulled closed the open corner of the ceiling of spikes. Then he leaned towards the eastern hemisphere of the bowl and tapped the glass nearest the siren. She stuffed what remained of her meal into her delicate mouth, and as she chewed, she squinted quizzically at her captor.
__________Glaiven pointed to Kimio. “Are you going to let him get away with that?” he challenged.
__________The siren turned, jutted her head towards Kimio, and swallowed. When she saw Kimio reaching for the few scraps of kelp she missed, she scowled. She plunged downward, placed herself between him and the scraps, and somersaulted to reposition her tail. She smacked her tailfins across Kimio’s back to stun him. As Kimio lay motionless, his face pressed into the base of their glass prison, the siren looted the scraps. She devoured the spoils of their tussle, and then returned to her side of their cell.
__________Glaiven laughed, “The early bird gets the worm.”
__________Soon after, when Glaiven sobered, he retrieved a potion vial from a set of three cylindrical, leather cases, which were clipped to his sword belt. He raised the vial to the muted light of the incense burner that hovered above the fishbowl’s ceiling of spikes. Once exposed to the light of the burner, the clear fluid inside the vial clouded and sparkled.
__________“Such a waste,” Glaiven huffed. “There’ll be no failsafe for either of us after this.”
__________Glaiven pushed open a corner of the fishbowl’s lid, uncorked his vial, and dumped its contents into the murky water. When the white, silky fluid mixed with the polluted water of the fishbowl, it cleansed it, like the horn of a unicorn. The doctored water of the fishbowl filtered through Kimio’s gills and revitalized him. He sat up, leaned against the curve of the bowl, wrapped his arms around his knees, and rested his chin atop his kneecaps. He locked eyes with Glaiven indignantly.
__________How could you? Why would you? Kimio’s thoughts stammered.
__________After he replaced the corner of the ceiling of spikes over the fishbowl, Glaiven sarcastically saluted Kimio, flipped up the silver-rimmed hood of his cloak, and turned his back to the captive Querathoskatheer. “Best be faster next time,” he advised.
__________Kimio unfurled himself and swam to the frontal curve of the fishbowl. He pressed his palms to the glass, scrunched his eyebrows, and beckoned to Glaiven. Though the stagnant water of the fishbowl muted him and only bubbles sprang from his mouth, Kimio mouthed: “Don’t think I’ll forget.”
__________Glaiven sighed, unlocked the door, and exited the chamber. Then he relocked the door with an overhead wave of his hand. He jogged up the road and disappeared into the endless nightscape of Zaliradai, unseen by his captives for a span that stretched to a lengthier absence than the last.
Endlesslore 