Welcome to Gaia! ::

The salt ocean swallowed her.

Cold against her bared skin, it nipped and made Naqenni’s nerves twitch, her antennae curling as the rushing water pushed between and chilled them. She kicked onward. Behind her, her feet beat the sea, driving her small body forward, and in front, her long fingers cut into the rolling surf and current.

There was nothing, in Naqenni’s opinion, quite like swimming. It was to be engulfed, surrounded on every side, and yet equally supported. It was a wild thing, here on the shores of Yael, riddled with currents and rocky outcroppings from the shoreline, not to mention its natural inhabitants. But Naqenni felt at home in it just the same—at peace, when she could sink herself into its roiling depths and test all her body’s muscles at once as she danced in its rhythmic push-pull.

As she aged, the shoreline became her favorite retreat, with only the rocky inner cliffs and climbable sections of jungle terrain coming close to competing. Familiar as it was, however, the shoreline also had the added benefit of being the most likely place to encounter something truly new. While the island was set and static — home to things and places the likes of which she had not seen, but were not overall changing — but the sea was an adaptive beast, curious and deep. And with its waves, it often deposited ‘gifts’ to the dark sand.

Usually, these things were small: shells, dying fish, or occasionally a broken piece of weapon, jewelry, cloth, or a bit of long-seasoaked foliage in the form of a branch or net of seaweed. Today, however, the goddess and the great sea had more in store as it related to ‘surprises’ from the far shore.

Naqenni couldn’t have said how long exactly she swam, or how far. Depending on the day and the shoreside current, she could swim powerfully for the better part of an hour and make little progress at all. Other days, slow, lazy strokes and a tug of the sea in her favor would take her miles down the beach in half that time. On this day, she planned only for a short, energizing swim. Relaxation, after the stresses of the day’s training and her turbulent thoughts.

So, after not too terribly long she turned her body sidelong and headed shoreward. Her clothes, thin that they were and minimalist, would dry in time even with the island’s humidity. Before she could even begin to wring the water from her hair, however, she spotted something in the distance. A structure. And something washed upon the shore.

A boat?

And a body.

‘Tell someone,’ her rational instinct suggested immediately. But too slow. Her curiosity had already propelled her legs forward. She did at least stoop to pick up the nearest manageable, sharp-edged stone and kept more towards the protection of the forest as she edged in, but — as became clear the nearer she got: the ‘body’ was Alkidike.

For several long seconds Naqenni lingered near the treeline, safe in the shadows of Yael as she eyed the woman. When she didn’t move, however, Naq became quickly impatient. Was she dead? And if not, or even if so, what was she doing here? This was their island. Her island. That of her sisters, cousins, and mothers, and infested by earthlings, but this—this was new. She edged closer, rock at her side but just out of sight if the woman happened to look up and seem dangerous.

She knew, after all, that only her tribemates were true daughters of Aisha. All those from the far island were traitors, most as bad or worse than the earthlings and hybrids themselves. Were there to be an attack, however, she would have expected more…

Well, more. Generally, and in every way, than a single, sopping wet, visibly unconscious young alkidike. She did not even look that much older than Naqenni herself. She carried blades. Naq debated attempting to take one, or both. Upon noting that the woman was breathing, however, she took one step back, bare toes burrowing half into the sand.

“You—” How to address an off-islander with no invitation? “Who are you? You’d best get up, if you don’t want to be eaten.”

Naqenni’s pulse picked up as the woman moved, particularly so when her fingers moved towards her blades. She wouldn’t die. Elzira had plans for her that decidedly did not involved being gutted open by a soggy and bedraggled looking Alkidike teenager. All the same, instinct made her blood beat fast in her veins and her fingers shift to affirm the grip on her rock. She could throw it, if necessary. She was a good shot.

No need to resort to drastic measures yet, however. Her exhale came tight from between nearly pursed lips. She set back her shoulders and notched up her chin, chest puffing a fraction intuitively. “I,” she said, “am the first daughter of Elzira, the goddess of this island, my sisters, and everything under it. We are Aisha’s future, planted in this soil, and one day, the world will know of us.”

She considered the words in retrospect and how they might sound to an outsider, who truly knew nothing of such things. Squinting, she realized it was difficult to even imagine such a perspective. She shifted her weight.

“I’m an Elaria. My cousins…and the mothers who raised me after my blooming, are Alkidike…” She tipped her head. “Are you one of the traitors?”

Naqenni eyed the woman. At least she was listening, that was a start, and she didn’t look especially aggressive, which was promising. Leading her back to the village, however, came with its own slew of issues, and little as she expected the woman would pose much threat on her own — a lone Alkidike against a village of the earth’s truest warriors — but still, she remained wary. How could she not know of the traitors if she had come from where they lay nesting?

“The hybrid sympathizers, who lingered back like cowards and infested my mothers’ island while they watched what the polluted blood was doing to their own mother tree,” Naqenni said. “The ones who would sooner side themselves with earthlings than their own sisters. The ones who looked blindly on to the damage they were doing and when Aisha called to them and their sisters to stand for themselves, they hid their faces in the sand like slugs, not women.”

It was a long narrative, riddled with detail and rage. A narrative that ought to have been beyond Naqenni’s years, but so instilled was it — so oft-repeated over all her years of life from the time she was a young babe still too tender in age to even understand the words — that in time, it became a part of her despite its depth, carved gradually into her memory and set there, like stone.

“Those traitors,” she said. “You’ll be killed here if you are. Safer back in your…” She eyed the waterlogged, shaky contraption a hair’s breadth from being dislodged from the shore by the current and swept to the sea. “‘Boat.’”

Naqenni eyed the hand.

‘Not one of them,’ she said, but she came from the sea and the island of traitors. Naqenni was not a fool. Perhaps the woman had changed her mind. Perhaps she had, in time, seen the wrongfulness of their ways. Or even further to her credit, given the relative look of her age now, perhaps she had been too young to break free of them at the time of the war. But still no matter.

She had lived with them. Stayed with them. Been one of them at least in some sense, and Naqenni had heavy reservations about how much ‘benefit of the doubt’ would be given by her cousins to this far away sister of theirs from across the sea, no matter how she plead her loyalty.

She supposed, however — sparing a glance to the bedraggled and waterlogged conglomeration of wood pieces that had served as the woman’s transport as the sea toted it off and back out to where it would no doubt assume its final and rightful form of ‘driftwood’ and nothing more — that with no transport back and no army at her heels, there was little harm in leading this one alkidike to their camp. The ‘worst’ that could happen she thought, was that they would kill her, and that was no skin off of her back. It might even be exciting if they made any show of it.

So, at length, Naqenni shrugged, ignoring the hand — she wasn’t going to touch the hand of a traitor until she knew otherwise and the woman’s loyalty was confirmed by the elders of her tribe — she turned, keeping half an eye on the woman even as she went along, notching her head towards the treeline.

“This way,” she said, and then she broke into an easy run.

“Near enough,” Naqenni said. “It makes a good run.” Amusement spiked the words. Regardless of whether or not the other woman was telling the truth about her loyalties, she was new, intriguing, and much as she’d been conditioned to expect of mainlanders: weaker than her current cousins and quick to tire. Of course, the conclusion wasn’t fair or based on all the evidence, but Naqenni wasn’t in any position to be making objective, unbiased judgement calls, and as for what would happen to the woman when they did reach the tribe—well, quite honestly, Naqenni did not know what exactly to expect.

The answer, though, came sooner than even she anticipated.

A grown alkidike dropped from the trees to a scant few feet before her, and Naqenni skidded to a halt, nearly tripping over herself. She opened her mouth, expecting to at least get to make some form of introduction or explanation of this outsider she’d found washed up on the shore. But that opportunity never arose. Before she managed more than, “Ynasi, I found—” the woman was being accosted and manhandled into restraints by three other armed amazons.

Surprised though she was, Naqenni found this more interesting than immediate argument, her antennae curling with curiosity as she watched. Once they’d more or less finished though and began driving the outsider forward, it occurred to Naqenni that this might be the last she saw of her—and that didn’t seem fair at all.

“I found her, though!” she piped up, trailing after the ankles of the last amazon in line. “If you kill her, I want to see! It’s not fair if you don’t let m—”

“Hush, child,” Ynasi quipped, voice guttural as ever. “We will all see blood soon enough…”

Naqenni shot her a dubious Look, but by some miracle managed not to argue immediately.