Lost but Not Alone

Undulating through the crystal blue water, Bubbles spun and tumbled. She couldn’t help but giggle as a school of rainbow gillpies flittered by. Their scales tickled the bare bronze skin on her arms and neck. Her sunset-hued, locked tresses hid a few stragglers. A few hundred yards away, Bubbles spied a disturbance on the surface. Ever curious, she kicked her tails and quickly approached the vessels.

Two ships floated in the noontime sun above, one much larger than the other. A small family-owned island fishing vessel had been hooked by a Najimman raider and was being boarded. Bubbles had found the remains of plenty of shipwrecks before, but never came upon a scene such as this. At first, she was fascinated by the human activity; they stomped around as fast as she could swim; it looked funny. Then she heard the screams of children. Terror sounds the same in every culture, above or below.

“Run, kids, I’ll hold ’em off.”

She heard the stamping of footsteps and one splash.

“Ugh! Noooo! Sis, sis!”

A booming voice, like an anchor scraping across coral, made her think twice before getting any nearer.

“Ah, ah, ah, I don’t think so.”

Bubbles made a snap decision and rushed forward. She didn’t have many options but threw all she had at them. A jet of water swirled out from her hands, knocking away their boarding plank and rocking the smaller boat, giving the occupants another chance to get free. She rushed to where she saw the ripples from the splash, diving quickly. She caught sight of a flash of purple sinking.

The girl’s hands were already bound, so she couldn’t swim effectively. Thankfully, Bubbles always carried her shark-tooth knife and could easily cut through the rope bindings. As soon as they surfaced, the girl gasped, and a sudden shift in the wind kicked up a huge wave. Bubbles’ scales tingled as they were tossed past both boats, crashing and capsizing. Tumbling and clinging to each other, The human child prepared for the worst while Bubbles held onto her quarry tightly in the hopes of at least saving one person.

When Bubbles woke, the girl she’d pulled from the salty depths was splashing a handful of water on her face. Her tails were lying in what appeared to be a small river up to the waist, brown water lapping at her belts and pouches, completely obscuring her fins. There were no boats anywhere to be seen, and the land was unlike any she had ever encountered. It was lush and wet, another larger river on the late afternoon horizon. No sand beneath her, only mud.

“What happened? Where are we? What’s going on!”

Bubbles was kind, strong, and curious. She was young but renowned among her people for her early developed water-casting abilities; unfortunately, none of those had prepared her for being tossed into the world alone. The more Bubbles sensed around her, she had no idea what had happened or where they were. She couldn’t have done this, whatever this was. Not entirely alone; when she glanced back, the girl was sitting, curled up, tucked into her rainbow patchwork dress. It was mostly dry, and she realized she must have been lying there for a while. She answered Bubbles’ string of what amounted to only one question meekly.

“I don’t know. I was hoping you might have some idea.”

Bubbles was trying not to panic, but she couldn’t completely get a hold of herself. It was making her frantic. She was easily able to discern that she was sitting in fresh water when she had just been swimming in the salty seas near her home. That alone would be enough to alarm any Melusian.

“How could I? You just woke me up. Do you have any idea where we are? Gods, this adventure has really gone belly up. Oh, ah, my name is Bubbles, by the way.”

The distress was making her cranky, but the concern on her newfound companion’s face made Bubbles slow after a few sentences, realizing she hadn’t yet introduced herself.

“That’s beautiful. My name is Anasa.”

Bubbles finally stopped and took a moment to evaluate Anasa. The child had pale, opalescent skin and vibrant, translucent purple hair, now a violent, tangly mess. She hadn’t had many dealings with humans. All of the humans she had seen had dark skin like hers, and most had darker hair. She thought this one’s was more like the Melusian’s hair than a human’s hair, just finer and more delicate. It seemed to tangle so easily in the water. Bubbles pulled a comb from her pouch and handed it to the girl.

“Here, do you want this?”

“Thanks. I don’t know where we are, but it seems far away. There’s nothing around, and I can’t hear any people. We can’t have just drifted into a river on the coast. They are all more populated than this. And I don’t recognize many of these plants.”

Bubbles looked around at the mention of the plants and plunged her head under the water. It was entirely unknown. The plants, the fish, the taste and the smell. It was murky, but that was because the area was shallow and muddy. The small tributary river ran through a forest, eventually dumping into a vast river maybe a half mile away across relatively flat land. There was a small cloud of glowing candy stick pixies at the treeline a few yards away. The red and white stripes blinking, their squeaky voices a chipper tweeting.

“Anasa, do you cast spells?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? You would know if you could cast spells.”

“Well, I sometimes get the feeling that something terrible is going to happen, or if I’m in danger, or if one of my family is, I feel something welling up inside me, and then, it doesn’t. Or something strange happens instead, like today.”

“You would call what’s happening now strange?”

Anasa shrugged, still in some shock. While the two tried to come to some consensus over what they would do or where they would go, as if that mattered, the sound of movement caught Bubble’s attention. There wasn’t much to hide behind, and the two were busy with an attempt to slip back into the water when an older woman came strolling out of the woods chatting with an orange-striped Feline folk. The two were both shocked and elated at the sight.

Anasa doubly so when Bubbles blew on a high-pitched whistle, made from a small conical shell, that got the Feline Folk’s attention immediately and drew the two right to them. They were decidedly less shocked to see the new arrivals.

“You there? Where are you coming from friends? Newly arrived, I am guessing?”

“I don’t think you could call it arrived. We woke up here is more like it. Where is here exactly?”

Anasa quietly added,

“I’m Anasa, this is Bubbles.”

The two were still a little dazed, but the arrival of new people sent their minds racing again.

“Where do you think their boat is? Where is your boat? Have you walked far along the river?”

It wasn’t until they got closer that they could see Bubble’s true nature.

“Oh, dear.”

was all the woman could muster when the new duo arrived at the bank.

“Tabby, how are we supposed to get back with her? She can’t walk all the way back, even through the forest. Do you have a map she can look at to swim back?”

Bubbles was relieved there was somewhere for them to go back to.

“Back? Where are we? Can you tell us how far Najima is?”

“Hmmmm, My name is Tabby. You wash up in Felina. Most maps name for us is Untamable Lands, but we come to tame. Maria wash up much the same way you do, only few months after we get here, only she was on ship with others. Are there others of you we should be looking for?”

Anasa finally broke down. Tiny, pathetic chirping sobs that drew the pixies over, too. Cooing and blinking as they bobbed around her.

“I don’t think so. I fell from my family’s boat when it was being boarded by raiders. I don’t know what happened after that. A big wave tossed us here. But that doesn’t make any sense. How could it?”

Bubbles slogged up the bank and sat next to her, petting her back as the woman, Maria, tried to comfort her.

“There, there, I know it’s scary. This is like a transitional place between our realm and the fairy realm. We all come through the forest or some kind of water disaster. There’s one man I met who says he crashed in flying overhead; according to him, he’s from the future. My daughter is lost somewhere out there. I go out looking for her every day.”

“My people come here on purpose. We needed a safe place to live. There is an entrance at the end of the land. The big river empties into the sea. It wasn’t easy for ships to navigate. For you, I’m sure it is piece of cake. You will come. The King will know how to fix. We walk in the forest, you swim in this river, follow us. It will work out.”

Bubbles was surprised there would be a king anywhere around here. They ventured into the woods, where the dark and fearful coexisted with the brilliant and fantastic. Neither of them had ever seen so many varieties of fairy. It was as if every tree and flower was alive. There were dozens under the water, too. Before they could shake off their wonder, the group was heading back out of the tree line again.

“We can’t have gone a quarter mile. Bubbles, where are you going!”

Bubbles started to swim ahead; the big river was only a couple of miles downstream. Farms and ranches spread out and filled the landscape below the setting sun. A castle was under construction in the distance, and what sounded like music carried on the evening breeze.

K.B. Silver

This one-off magical journey is set on Fractallus, the Sci-Fantasy world in which the book series I have been writing, Emerald Dreams in an Azure Reality, is set. I am considering sharing the rough drafts one chapter at a time, along with lore drops about the world I am building, as paid content.

There is enough to drop a chapter per week, along with some lore content, such as character or location bios and bestiary entries. I'm curious to know if readers here would be interested in a Sci-Fantasy Romance with a long arc set at college, exploring themes of LGBTQ+, self-discovery, and antifascism.