Spindrift

Chapter One

Author's note:

To my knowledge, the medicines mentioned in this chapter are not real medicines. I am not a medical professional.

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Two weeks earlier....

Ariel dove down to the bottom of the bay, kicking with her tail, scanning between the plants and rocks of the shallow shoreline for her prize.

Her goal for the day was eskma mollusks, a mollusk native to Nereid, and the beholder of priceless pearls. The fact that she fed her family with the meat with little effort was beside the point.

There, on the lava rocks left behind to erode after the last eruption of the volcano that formed the island where this bay was.

She brushed her hair from her face, breathing easily in the water, as she studied the muddy brown and black shells of the mollusks.

By law, since she was half Nereidian – on her mother's side – she was exempted from harvesting and fishing laws. She could harvest these mollusks as often as she wanted to, not limited to any time of the year.

But what laws never seemed to take into consideration was that native practices were often best in the caring for native populations. She harvested the mollusks, but took care to only harvest mollusks of a certain size.

Ariel drew her knife from her belt, finding a mollusk of a reasonably large size and began to pry it from the rock. She tried to be as careful as possible to not disturb the smaller mollusks around it, for multiple reasons.

1. The smaller mollusks were still growing, and if left alone, in time would be of a proper, healthy size to harvest.

2. Disturbing the smaller mollusks would hinder their growth, if not outright kill them.

And 3. Proper conservation of the mollusks depended on these smaller mollusks.

Ariel hovered in the water, flipping her tail fin occasionally, as the waves tried to shift her position. As she placed the mollusk in her water bag, she took note of the size of the mollusks remaining. Perhaps if she dove and harvest elsewhere for a time would be a good thing.

She swam on, looking for more colonies of the mollusks as she went, answering her communicator as she went.

"Ariel," Wade said, the exasperation strong in her voice. She pronounced Ariel as Ari-el, the proper pronunciation for the Nereid name. "He's having an episode. I don't know what to do with him."

"Wade, does he recognize you?" Ariel said, shifting her directionality only slightly in the water.

"He recognizes me as Nereidian -." There was a loud crash on her side of the communication line, along with a garble shout of a male voice.

"What about Ian?" Ariel asked.

She shifted her movements outright, now, swimming the bay to return to the houseboat where she lived with her father, husband and four-year-old son.

Her husband wouldn't be home for another couple of hours, and Ian – well, with the old man's temper and medical history, there was little the boy could do.

"He is on the deck outside, playing," Wade said.

"Keep him there. Lock the door if you have to."