A loud, drumming roar echoed in Riley’s ears as she hovered in the water. Before her, an expanse of twirling water twisted its way through the deep ocean. Here, the shelf dipped very low, and if Riley peered upwards, she could barely catch any glimpse of sunlight glistening off the water’s skin.

Riley twitched her fins to keep upright as she examined the vortex. Twister currents were wild and dangerous. They formed in higher pressured waters and were highly volatile. They often burned themselves out and dissipated after a couple of moons, but some of the larger, more powerful ones stuck around for longer.

She could feel it pulling at her fins, and her hair was flying wildly towards it. It was fast, and she knew it was likely to be deadly. She hesitated. She had taken risks before, and would normally relish the challenge, but this was more unruly a beast than she had ever dared to engage with. The scrap of self-preservation and logic she retained warned her to continue on her own speed and power, but she knew this would cut her journey short by a significant amount.

Riley chewed her lip. She could not deny that mixed with the worry was a fair amount of excitement. A powerful current was always a thrilling challenge. Twisters were exceptionally riveting, though she had never dared to enter an apex one.

Riley turned at the sound of the new voice, one that had spoken in a foreign language she could not decipher. Behind her, hovering in the depths, was another Mer. His head was cocked do one side and his slender tail was twice the length of hers. It twisted and coiled beneath him, and a large fan fin flared at the tip. His colors were soft and neutral, a light gray with large scales more like sheet armor than the tight links she sported. His fin was nearly translucent, his skin veiny and ashen. His hair blended with the depths, but she could see it waving about, displaced by the energized water around the current. Despite the solid neutral tones, the Mer was wreathed in pulsing veins of glittering gold and neon reds. His eyes were illuminated with a bright, emerald glow.

Riley had not met many Mer of the depths. They stayed where the pressure was crushing and the dark pressed in on all sides. She had ventured down once or twice, but she could not see anything that deep down, and it unnerved her. She was not equipped fully for the environment.

This one was still looking at her expectantly, and she remembered he had spoken to her. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “I do not understand,” she replied. She spoke slowly in a common tongue, but she was not sure he would understand either. Their people did not interact often.

His head tilted and he frowned. Then he spoke again, in a different lilt and Riley listened carefully. It was closer to something she could make out, if he would just keep talking. Unfortunately, he fell silent afterwards and she sighed.

Then, after a moment, he tried again. “Are you thinking of riding?” he asked.

Riley grinned. Whales had very similar speeches, and several dove to impressive depths. Finally, a tongue they could share – even if his accent was a little harder to grasp – and she shrugged again. “I am considering it, yes.”

“So, you do speak,” he observed.

“I am not well versed in deep water languages. You seem equally impaired with the tongues of above,” she countered. He shrugged. “Speaking of,” she continued. “Is this not a little high for you?”

“Is it not a little deep for you?”

Riley grinned. “There is still light. As long as I can see, I have not gone too far down.”

The deep-water Mer nodded in agreement. “It is a fool idea,” he stated.

“Pardon?”

He jerked his chin towards the current behind her. “That is a brutal vortex. Only a fool would think of riding it; you would be killed,” he warned.

Riley felt indignation begin to bubble in her gut. She was not the type to back down from a challenge. “What makes you say that?”

He blinked slowly, his gaze unwaveringly fixated on her. She tried not to shudder under his gaze. His eyes were enlarged, took up over half the space on his face. While she imagined it was to better his vision in the low – practically nonexistent – lighting of the depths, it was still eerie when he stared. “This twister is locked,” he told her.

Riley nodded. “I know,” she agreed. A locked twister was not overly uncommon, but it was what made one like this particularly dangerous. Once one got in, they could not get out until the end. The water became too high pressured that it would rip both her skin and scales to shreds if she tried.

“You would be in it for at least two cycles of the plankton drift.” Two turns of the moon, Riley translated mentally. She remembered that luminescent plankton drifted from the depths at night.

The statement gave her pause and she turned back to glance at the current. That would take her exactly where she needed to go, and cut down her journey by a quarter of a moon. Still, while riding a current could be a very riveting and rewarding experience, it was also incredibly draining. Two full days without a chance to rest or eat was guaranteed to push all her limits beyond what she was certain she could handle.

“Even if you were not thrown, the exhaustion would kill you,” he continued. “It makes me wonder what has you so desperate to travel swiftly, that you would contemplate a lethal risk.”

“Catching up with a pod over half a moon ahead of me into a migration,” she admitted.

He frowned and Riley wondered what it was she had said that would prompt the displeasure. Though she supposed he might not be familiar with a migration; she had no idea the customs or habits of deep dwelling Mer. She did not even know if they kept to pods or roamed solo.

His tail lashed in a writhing motion, not unlike a sea snake, and he drifted closer so that they were face to face. She got a better look at the glowing lines laced across his body. They were most vivid along the ruffles of his three-layered fan – as well as the spines that spiked down the length of his back and tail – but were also present beneath his light gray scales and running through the skin along his arms and torso.

The swirls of light were mesmerizing, and Riley supposed that was the point. She wondered what it would be like to have prey attracted directly to her, rather than having to hunt it down.

“Sounds like you are quite a ways behind. Still, that seems like a fragile reason to risk your life. What is the consequence of being tardy?”

Riley shrugged. “If I do not catch them before the next new moon, I will not be able to reach them for three turns of the season. And I cannot wait that long.”

The other Mer nodded. “Is it worth this risk?”

Riley sighed and nodded. “I have no other choice, unfortunately. The sooner I can catch up, the better.”

The other Mer nodded and then swept his arm through the water. Riley raised her hands to catch what he had thrown at her and grimaced as her fingers curled into the squishy mass of reddish-pink flesh. A sea cucumber. Deep water, by the looks of it. “Eat that. I came up here to harvest kelps to go with it for my family, but I can catch another slug. They are high in energy; might earn you some extra time in the tube if you are determined to go,” he announced.

Riley bit her tongue and tried not to let her disgust show. He was extending a kind gesture towards her, despite having never met or engaged with her before, and she appreciated it; even if she had never had a taste for the slimy, gummy taste of these creatures. “Thank you,” she replied. “I am grateful for the generosity. My name is Riley,” she added, figuring the least she could do in return was introduce herself.

“Do’horun,” he responded in the strangest series of whistling clicks, that she was not certain she would be able to reproduce.

She shook her head. “Doren, got it,” she replied.

He grinned widely, revealing sharp, but short fangs. They were curved, and there were eight, rather than four, with side by side incisors that glistened with a neon hue at the tips. He chuckled and shook his head. “Close enough.”

Riley laughed and shook her head. “Sorry. I would need a few tries to attempt to get that pronunciation right.”

“It is fine,” Do’horun replied. “We are of different cultures and speeches. You should eat and go; the current gets more violent when night falls.”

Riley nodded. “You should cut kelp at the root. More nutrients and better flavor near the bottom, plus it is easier to wrap and carry a full stalk than to keep track of several pieces. You might taste a little sand while severing, but it tends to be worth it,” she suggested.

Do’horun nodded. “I will try that, thank you. Safe travels, Riley. Try not to perish in the center. It would be a bad fate to meet.”

Riley’s head bobbed in agreement. “I intend to live past this,” she assured him. “Thank you again. I hope your future hunts are prosperous.”

He blinked slowly once more and then turned and shot off further along the shelf. Riley stared after him for a moment, but he quickly disappeared in the gloom of the water. It had been a strange interaction, but not unpleasant. There were a lot of differences between the Mer of the various oceanic depths and Riley figured one day – if she could brave venturing that deep again – she might like to experience more of their culture.

Her gaze drifted down to the dead sea cucumber still flopped limply in her hand and wrinkled her nose. Maybe she would make sure to eat first, though.

With a sigh, she sank her teeth into the goopy flesh and ripped a mouthful away. The taste was bitter and bland, but she forced herself to swallow quickly. She was not one to be picky about food, having grown used to eating what she could catch for sustenance while alone, but the slimier meats had always made her cringe a little. There was not much need to chew, so she polished the squishy creature off in a few bites.

Once it was gone, she turned her gaze back to the roaring current. She really was facing a massive risk by taking it. Sophie would probably never forgive her or allow her to leave the cove of their new home again if she found out, but Riley could not help but long to try. She wanted to reach her aunt and uncle as soon as possible so that Luna would no longer be without her family. She had not told them at the time, but she truly doubted her ability to reach them on time under their own power. A pod tended to travel more slowly than a small group or an individual, but they were still moving on a migration, and every time she rested or stopped to hunt gave them a chance to reduce her lead.

This current was shaping up to be her only choice, so Riley set her jaw and shook out her fins. She was an experienced current surfer. It would be hard, but she could make it; she had to.

Determined not to balk at the challenge, she cautiously approached. The closer she got, the more powerful the suction effect of the current became. It was always best to get a feel for how a current moved, but before Riley could properly get close enough, the force of the twister yanked her hard and sucked her into the center. A surprised squeak escaped her seconds before it morphed to a groan as she was tossed around in the center of the vortex.

Currents were not sentient beings, they had no true life force, but the water always felt alive. There was a determination and a power to them that humbled Riley, and this one clearly had no desire to accommodate her.

It took immense effort to roll back over and get her bearings. Riley flared her gliders for balance and winced when the force of the swirling water nearly ripped them back from her tail.

She growled her frustration and closed her eyes, carefully angling her gliders in response to the various tips and patterns of the wild stream. She gradually gathered a feel for how it moved and began to lash her tail in unison. A hum built in her throat to match the reverberating ripples along the current’s inner walls.

It was not finished trying to throw her as of yet, however, and Riley had to flip sideways and press herself dangerously close to the razor walls of the tube as a series of jagged rocks speared up through the body. She winced as the sharp edges grazed along her spine, gouging scratches along her back.

Immediately after, there were several sharp turns that had Riley contorting her body like an eel.

Worry began to gnaw at her gut as she flipped upside down to keep with the motion of the current. If it was going to be like this the whole trip, she doubted her stamina would hold up even halfway.

Are you done? She growled mentally. It was not as if she anticipated an answer, but it felt like the current had sensed her thoughts because it smoothed out more after one more backbreaking bend. With a sigh, Riley stretched out her gliders, slowly flapping them twice, and continued to glide with the current at a thrilling speed that kept her hair streaking behind her. She whooped with delight.

The longer Riley cruised with the vortex, the more she began to slip into a state of pure reaction. This was what she loved about catching a current. There was a powerful feeling of melding with it, following every twist and turn like a natural, instinctive movement as if she was part of it. This was when a current started to feel like its own entity, one that was accepting her as part of its being.

She sighed happily and felt her heart rate beginning to slow. She let go entirely and drifted with the flow of the water.

***

It felt like coming out of a heavy daze or deep slumber as the current began to slow. As its strength ebbed, Riley snapped back to a state of awareness. It was time to leave the current, though her mind was foggy and had no proper sense of how much time had passed. The waters around her had slowed enough that she could safely exit, but it felt like she was ripping out of a second skin as she peeled herself away from the current back out into open waters.

She gazed around. The area was entirely unfamiliar. Her internal sense of direction was telling her that she was incredibly close to her end goal, but she had definitely never been through the area before.

They must have rotated their migratory route. She realized then that with how long it had been since she had been with her pod, they could have moved to a new home entirely, and naturally needed an alternate migration path. A move may have even forced them to change patterns altogether. It was not uncommon for pods to stop communal gatherings or to find new areas to travel to at parts of the year if they were displaced from a main home.

The knowledge that taking that current may have been entirely unnecessary weighed heavily on her, though she knew it was more the disheartening realization that she no longer really knew anything at all about the pod that was supposed to be her family. While she had left seasons ago – and had thought she had buried all the painful feelings that came with feeling chased off – she still had moments where she deeply missed most of the members and silently wished things had gone differently.

She brushed those feelings off now – they no longer mattered – as she would not trade her new family for anything in the world.

Riley gazed out over the area. The current had climbed higher on the shelf and bright sunlight shone warmly down on her back. The sand beneath her was dark brown, but interrupted with many smooth and coarse rocks. The ground was more pebbled than it was sandy, with sparse strips of kelp and sea grasses pushing through.

The area was also not a stretching expanse, but rather several rolling dunes and rocky rises mashed together. Really it looked like two shelves had violently collided and this area was the messy fallout.

Riley was still in a bit of a daze from being joined with the current for so long, but she was vaguely aware of the rampant hunger gnawing at her gut. It did not feel like two moonrises had passed, but she knew that Do’horun had given her accurate information. She needed to eat.

Turning her head, she flicked her fins with the intent of drifting over to one of the kelp strands; she did not have the energy to hunt or forage, so the plant frond would have to be enough for now.

The moment she moved, however, angry black dots swarmed over Riley’s vision and her head spun. She brought a hand to her head with a groan and sagged in the water. She sank like a rock and was unconscious before she settled on the ground.