The Lost Secret of the Silver Sea

Chapter 26: The Beginnings of a Plan

            Eventually, Ford arrived with a worried look etched on his face. Hartley and Kaelonne tried their best to explain the situation without revealing it to the one person who, while a great man, wouldn’t believe a word of what was going on. They calmed him with explanations of a bleeding injury and Alister’s ability to heal just about anything. Kaelonne genuinely felt bad for lying to someone who’d giving him  place to rest without question, but Hartley assured him it was for the best.

            With his wound still under scrutiny to see if there were any side effects to the poultice, Alister had opened his home to them, Hartley included, despite the fact he had to return to his own every evening. Kaelonne silently mourned the lack of Hartley’s constant presence as he was busied by his work, the world a little quieter without the constant shuffling of the scientist. The human always visited him every evening without fail, however, always bearing gifts of some sort of new food or drink for him to try and spearing some time to talk about a shaky plan or mundane things before having to return home to Ford for the night.

            Nora was quite the intricate being to work with, she absolutely reminded him of Eirian now that he got to learn about her a little more, if not a slight quieter. She allowed him to walk with her everyday as she took care of the animals. There were others that checked on the creatures and helped with a lot of the work, but they weren’t consistent so Kaelonne preferred to stick to simple greetings. Nora patiently answered any question he had, shooting back her own about his people, abilities, and general appearance. He was able to hold an easy banter with her on the most random of topics, helping him picking up on terms and words humans used in more recent times.

            “I am still confused.” Kaelonne frowned as Nora moved her hand in an aborted movement again in her strange stance. She was holding a random cloth in her hands, feet and knees braced in such a way to balance out her weight evenly. Kaelonne was trying to copy the move and failing with his absolute lack of coordination. They were currently standing in the middle of one of the empty halls, voices echoing off the walls of glass.

            “It’s not that hard.” She rocked back and made a fluid movement and swinging her hand, “When you toss it, just say ‘yeet!’”

            “No, I understand that part. My question is, why?” Kaelonne titled his head in complete curiosity, accepting the cloth she shoved at him. “Would it not simply be easier to toss the cloth without the added effort of the yelling noise?”

            “Think of it as a battle cry.” She shrugged her shoulders, face stiff in her attempt to hide a smile. “Look completely serious as you do it.”

            “Okay, that doesn’t explain much, but there seems to be no harm in it.” Kaelonne mutters as he finally mimics the stances close enough, rocking back and tossing the cloth as hard as he could, feeling quite silly, “YEET!”

            Nora immediately collapsed on the floor with shaking shoulders. The young royal rushed to her side, worried that the invocation had cause the human some sort of harm, he knew he shouldn’t have followed through without a proper explanation. Heart beating in his chest, he turns her over to her back to note that her shaking shoulders was a product of her… laughter.

            He sat back disgruntled, feeling very messed with. While he didn’t quite understand it, he mutters a soft ‘Well played’ that made her dissolve into more laughter. It was totally worth the look on Hartley’s face hours later when he tossed the same cloth at him with the ‘battle cry’.

            He’d explained the situation to them as he’d done to Hartley, if with a little less detail, his mind still nagging at him for revealing things to people he wasn’t quite familiar with. Hartley sat down with them and conversed the prospect of adding two more people to this research, people that would be able to help them actually put a plan in motion.

            Kaelonne had disagreed with it initially, but Hartley’s eyes was a little hard to say no to. If Hartley trusted them, Kaelonne would try to. He just couldn’t help but feel a little disgruntled that they would be, after all, trying to help him with his problem. They were supposed to be extremely smart, a ‘bio-chem’ and ‘mechanical’ engineer.

            “You have that lost look on your face again.” Kaelonne hummed questioningly as Nora pulled him out of his musing. They were currently by the dolphins, Smarty and Betty, the love pair who accidently got beached and were severely sun damaged by the time a human came across them. Alister would been keeping them until they recovered and releasing them. “What’ve you got in that brain of yours?”

            “If I understand your textbooks well enough, a lot of liquid and other questionable materials.” The young royal returned in the same tone, familiar with the aspect of their causal banter. He puts aside the textbook of the day on the bench beside him and turns his full attention to the human.

            “Genuinely, I can say that you could be considered a questionable material.” She shot back with no fire, leaning dangerously over the railing with reckless abandon.

            “Fair enough.” Kaelonne snorted.

            “So… thinking about your boyfriend?”

            “I assume boyfriend is some sort of amicable term?”

            “It’s not as fun when you have to explain it, but I’m basically asking if you’re thinking about your intended.”

            “Oh.” Kaelonne rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue out at the small human, walking up to the railing to watch the dolphins whistle at each other, “In that case, no. Hartley is not my intended, nor was I thinking about him.”

            “Fine, what are you thinking about then?”

            “Nothing much.”

            “You’re still fretting about the whole ‘getting humans involved’ thing, aren’t you.” She sighs and turns to face him completely. Nora shakes her head at them as she catches the frown on his face.

“I’m not…” Kaelonne fumbled as Nora fixed him with a glare, “I believe that this is my problem, I shouldn’t get all of you involved.”

            “And why is that?”

            “It’s not right to have a human do a Mermatian’s job. Do not take offence to my words but you’re not as strong, nor do you have the ability or technology to defeat them.”

            “We do not, but you do need people to support you in something like this. Like it or not, one person can’t defeat a whole army by themselves.”

            “I will not forgive myself if something were to happen to any of you.”

            “Look, you’re going to get our help whether you want it for not, Hartley is the kind of guy that wouldn’t forgive himself if there was a chance to help someone and he didn’t take it. In another sense, if you wanted to feel more like we weren’t just people helping you, consider it as us doing research for our own benefit as well.”

            “That does not reassure me much.” Kaelonne glances at her, he understood what she was saying, but it didn’t make him feel much better.

“Look, that witch being, Viatris, she said you needed to get help, right? What if she was leading you to us?”

            “Viatrix…What do you mean?”

            “You’re smart, think about it. You met with Hartley, take that as your grounding point. In the middle of an entire city, you happened to find one particular person without direction. Then, that person knew a marine biologist, and his assistant, and is now planning to introduce you to two other people fully capable of building whatever technology that we may need.” Nora waved her hands at him with a raised eyebrow and half-c****d grin.

            “Now I just realised how much I owe Hartley.”

            “Harts is a sweetheart; he probably isn’t even thinking about that.” The small human shrugged her shoulder, she talked about him with a familiarity Kaelonne wanted to ask about. Nora and Hartley were a human parallel of Eirian and himself, it made his heart ache for the Mermatian from time to time. “If you want to make it equal to him, keep talking to him, tell him about your home, take walks on the beach with him. He likes those sorts of things.”

“You’re more intuitive that you let on.”

            “Yea, well. Can’t let everyone know all my secretes, now can I? Don’t tell Alister?” The young royal couldn’t help but return the bright grin that lit up Nora’s face.

“Kellon, Nora, please come up to the main office, please.” Alister’s voice came over the intercom. Kaelonne rubbed his ears in discomfort, still not agreeing with the loud, static sounds.

            “Come on, the boss is calling.”

            “What’ve you got for us, Al?” Nora opened the door with a smile, Kaelonne right behind her. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of two people standing next to Hartley with raised eyebrows. Alister was sitting in his chair with a curious look.

            “Hey, Kellon, Nora, I would like you to meet the two people I was talking about.” Hartley greeted him warmly.

            “The name’s Axel, I’m the mechanical engineer, nice to meet you.” The young man walked forward, hair tied up in a low tail and hands covered in dust and dirt. “Excuse the appearance, Hartley pulled me out of the garage without warning, so I didn’t really get time to get ready.”

            “Honour to meet you.” Kaelonne nodded his head with a smile, turning to the next occupant.

            “I’m Madeline, bio-chem engineer. Pleasure to meet you.” The woman smiled, holding out her hand, Kaelonne took it and shook once like Hartley showed him.

            “Pleasure to meet you as well.”

            “So, Ally.” Axel turned to the man sitting in the chair, “Maddy and I happened to have ended up ditching our boss without a warning This whole new discovery thing you wanted to talk to us about had better be good.”