Chapter Eighteen

For a few minutes, me and Jules just stood in the bubble and stared at Morgana who was usually cold and unfeeling playing around and acting affectionate with the little ball of light. As our bubble got closer to the two, I realized that my thoughts on the matter weren't quite right. First of all, Morgana was the queen of the fay which isn't like any other monarchial position. Sure she has more power over her people than any human king or queen but she also shoulders tons of responsibilities on their behalf and loves them dearly like her own flesh and blood. All in all, her position was very similar to a mother. How could a mother be cold and unfeeling? The second part of my sentence was also quite faulty. I have been referring to the ball of light as 'little' when in fact he was actually a little larger than I was. Relatively speaking he was little but now that the large one was gone, the word little didn't really apply to him.

As time ticked on my thoughts started to wander following random tangents until Jules coughed lightly to get my attention, "John, what do we do now?"

"We should find another tribe to look after the little dude. Although his own tribe has been destroyed, there are others in this sea that could take him in."

I don't know how, but Morgana heard me speak even though we were underwater and she shouldn't have been able to hear me. She stopped playing with the ball of light and turned towards me.

"You are thinking of abandoning poor Leucetius?"

Her mouth moved but the sound of her voice was actually coming from behind me, from inside my own shadow. I guess she could manipulate sound using shadows and that is how she heard me. I started wondering how versatile her shadow powers were when the last part of her sentence finally registered in my mind.

"Leucetius? You named him?"

"Of course I named him! He is my son and I can't let him be nameless."

"Morgana, you do know that we are going on a particularly dangerous mission, right? We can't just go around adopting every orphan that we see. Look, I know that you have grown attached to him but there are nearby tribes that could raise him better than we could and he would be in less danger than he would be in if he came along with us."

"No."

"What do you mean no?"

"By no I mean no. Leucetius is my son. I will not leave him behind."

I was going to continue to argue with her but my power was telling me it was pointless so I just sighed and gave in to the unreasonable woman.

"Fine, but it is your responsibility to take care of him and make sure he doesn't get hurt meaning that you are going to take care of him and Merlin."

Morgana happily accepted those terms and we were once again moving towards our ultimate destination, me and Jules were moving through the unfathomably large sea in our little bubble while Morgana stayed beside Leucetius in the guise of a giant shadowy squid.

As we were traveling, we ran into some of the tribes that I had talked about earlier. Each time we passed them, I would use lights to convey that we came in peace and they would leave us alone.

I had just finished 'talking' with the third group we had encountered along our way when Jules asked, "They are all the same species right? Why do they look so different?"

Jules was referring to the fact that the three groups we met looked very different from each other. All of them were massive like the giant squid we met earlier, all of them were also formed from semitransparent jelly like substance and had the same 'twinkling stars' all over their bodies but all of them had different shapes. The first group we met looked like Manta rays gliding majestically through the sea. The second group were similar to jellyfish and the group we just passed looked like seahorses.

"They are the same species. The reason they look so different is that they have a very unique maturing process. When they are young, they all look like a ball of light like Leucetius but when they become adults, they get to choose their own form. Most of the time they choose the form of their tribe but very rarely a child chooses something different and that is how a new tribe is formed."

I continued to tell Jules about these creatures' social structures and behaviors and by the time I was finished we had already reached our destination, the same multicolored wall that we had used to come here.