Alien Waters

I had expected to greet the clan’s new home with some sort of fanfare or at least some special words; a moment of silence? Something. But nothing of the sort actually happened. It was mid morning when we reached the beach. I know I’ve been using vague terms for time. It’s probably annoying. But you and every school kid knows the Minervan day is only 21.73 Earth hours long, and it really doesn’t give as good a frame of reference if I say it was 0800 on the Minervan clock. Mostly, though, I’ve started to fall out of the habit of thinking of time as a number, and more of a state of the day. It sounds stupid, but it fits my current situation a lot better than 0800’s.

The shore was surprisingly quiet. There weren’t much in the way of waves, and the usual watery beach noises were mostly absent. There were no mewing, squawking gulls or pelicans, or any other sea birds. Instead, there were other calls that were disturbingly alien. One was a series of odd, low, mournful sounds. Have you ever played “music” on a wine glass? That thing where you wet your finger and run it around the lip of the glass? You get these lovely pure notes, with a faint echoing quality. This was a bit like those sounds, only lower, much deeper, and with an organic sound to them that vaguely reminded me of a whale call. It was a haunting sound to begin with, and the fact that I couldn’t figure out what was making it creeped me out even more.

The other noises weren’t really creepy, but they messed with my head a bit. For example, the clicking chirps that immediately made me think “songbird,” were actually coming from pack of little six-legged ground creatures that were prowling the wrack line several hundred meters away. And a series of mechanical clacks and snaps that registered in my hindbrain as belonging to an insect of some sort, actually belong to this ocean’s “sea birds.” There seem to be several kinds of them. They’re really hard to see, since they go shooting by really fast, but all the species I could see seem to have two sets of wings. They aren’t actually birds, of course. But I can’t help seeing a flying thing and immediately thinking “bird.” I’m hoping to get a better look at them as we spend time here, so I can tell you what they actually are.

The Azu-nah were fairly leisurely with setting up camp. Everyone chose somewhere to live. There were a few coveted caves that caused a few disputes, but they were settled surprisingly quickly. There weren’t enough caves for everyone to have their own. I ended up sharing with Nandi. Kohric’s cave is only a dozen meters away, and Oreeaht is our next door neighbor. I’m pretty happy with the setup.

After we’d set our things down and had a short rest, most of the clan, myself included, headed down to the water for a wash up. It took all my willpower to test the water’s composition first. The ever present chlorine is there, but it’s more or less entirely been bound up by the other minerals in the water. So it means the water is really, really salty, and a little gritty. It had my eyes burning at first.

The Azu-nah are very picky about keeping their belongings clean, but absolutely no one went into the water wearing a bag or clothing of any kind. But while the Azu-nah run around more or less in the buff to begin with, I was feeling a bit more …shy. I’d stripped to my underoos and was about ankle deep when Kohric and Nandi both came splashing up to me.

They didn’t exactly forbid me to wear anything in the water. But they said that the salt and other assorted particulates would make me sorry I did (well, they said “sand”, but I got the message. Chafing sucks, no matter what species you are). Also, it’s apparently a bit of a social faux pas, and would make me look like a total idiot; the Minervan equivalent of a noob.

It took me a good twenty minutes, but I did manage to get up the courage to strip down. I practically sprinted to the water and submerged to my shoulders. But other than a few innocently curious questions about what the funny things on my torso were, they didn’t give me a second glance.

And, really, by the time I was in the water, I was so grateful to finally get clean that I wouldn’t have cared if the global counsel president had walked by at the moment. There wasn’t any soap, of course, but the salty water got most of the grime off by itself, and a good scrub with a handful of sand took care of the anything more stubborn. It was heaven.

The only downside to my bath was at the end, when the Terrible Trio decided to pay me a visit. Or, rather, an ambush. Now, I’m still not sure what’s IN the water here, right? And when three splashy, roaring somethings descend on me and give me a good dunking, I kinda, sorta, maybe freaked a bit.

The trio found this utterly hilarious. I chased them around a bit, attempting a revenge dunking, but they were too fast for me. Damn tails. I need better propulsion. They found my failed attempts even funnier. I contented myself to splash them ruthlessly for a few minutes, and they eventually took themselves off to harass some other victim.

But it’s not over. Vengeance will be mine!