Fifty Pilgrims

Arista stood on Nettle's deck, a fresh stack of luminescent ore waiting nearby for whenever Squishy next surfaced to collect it, staring at the corkscrew helicopter for long enough that Nettle came over to see what had captured her attention this time.

The thing looked absurd even by the standards of things Arista had personally built. A tall wooden spiral rose from a wicker platform, hand-carved and painted with obvious care, meant to twist through the air the way Da Vinci had once sketched on paper, purely for the look of it, never once meant to actually fly. Between the Rubik's cube, the dome construction, and the lead tube itself, the deck had simply never had room to spare for it.

"The guild wanted it back," Nettle said. "Apparently it's our statement piece."

"You run the guild, Nettle."

"I didn't say I disagreed."

Arista looked back at the gloriously useless contraption, turning it over in her head the way she turned over most things that refused to make sense.

"...So the statement is that we don't understand lift?"

"The statement is that we survived long enough to build something purely for fun and put it back on display anyway." Nettle patted the spiral fondly. "Function's optional. Vibes are mandatory."

Arista let herself study it a moment longer, some small, stubborn part of her brain wondering whether a lighter frame or a different pitch angle could ever coax the thing into the air, before deciding that was a problem for a slower afternoon. She turned back toward the railing instead, and that was when she saw the tail.

It broke the surface a short distance from the hull, dark, scaled, gone again before she could get a proper look at it.

"...Selen?" she called, already moving toward the rail.

The tail surfaced again, and up close it was clearly not Selen's, a deeper, near-black hue instead of her familiar silvery blue. Arista leaned over the railing, and a moment later Selen herself surfaced beside it, five other mermaids drifting up around her in a loose half circle.

"Selen! Haven't seen you in a while."

"We had preparations to make," Selen said, tilting her head up toward the deck. "We noticed your boat on our way to Dryva. I wanted to take the chance to speak with you."

Nettle joined Arista at the rail, counting heads with an idle, habitual glance. "Six of you. Little escort?"

Selen's gaze shifted briefly downward before she answered, and Arista followed it without quite meaning to. Beneath the surface, past the six visible mermaids, several more pale shapes hung suspended in the deeper water, patient and still.

"Something like that," Selen said.

Arista leaned further over the rail, squinting into the blue-green dark. More shapes resolved out of the murk the longer she looked, first ten, then twenty, then enough that she gave up trying to count them individually and simply stared instead.

"...Selen. How many of you are there?"

"Nearly fifty," Selen said, unbothered by the scale of it. "We are making the pilgrimage."

Arista looked back into the water at the mermaids still waiting below. “To Squishy. You’re actually doing it. The whole route.”

"The pilgrimage only takes six days, but yes," Selen said, restrained pride in her voice.

"Only six days," Arista repeated. "Selen, the route's been finished for two months. Why now?"

"We could not visit Dryva empty-handed."

Arista looked past her, toward the water where the gathered mermaids drifted, and noticed for the first time what several of them were carrying, bundled cloth, woven satchels, objects wrapped carefully enough that their shapes stayed hidden.

"...You spent nearly two months collecting presents?"

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Tributes," Selen said.

"Presents."

Selen didn't argue the point further, which Arista privately took as a win.

"Our own city held little worth offering him anymore," Selen continued. "Since the doorway opened, we have been able to travel beyond the old boundary for the first time. We searched. We gathered. We chose carefully, and we prepared what we found, so that when we arrived, it would mean something."

One of the nearby mermaids shifted her grip on a woven satchel, and something inside it caught the light, a flash of pale crystal, quickly hidden again as she adjusted the wrapping.

"That's..." Arista started, then simply let herself take it in instead, the six visible faces, the dozens more waiting below, every one of them carrying something they'd spent weeks deciding was worth the weight of carrying.

"Since this pilgrimage would not have been possible without your help," Selen said, formal in the way she got when something actually mattered to her, "we hoped you might join us for a short while, if you—"

Splash.

Splash.

Selen looked up at the now-empty railing.

Two heads surfaced a moment later, already in bathing suits, equipped somewhere mid-fall between railing and water. Arista grinning, Nettle pushing wet hair back from her face with the put-upon expression of someone who had absolutely chosen this outcome anyway.

"We got the important part," Arista said.

Selen studied them both for a moment, amusement flickering across her expression.

"Ready?" she asked.

Arista and Nettle ducked beneath the surface. Selen followed and cast Water Breathing over them both.

"Lead the way," Arista said.

They descended together, the gathered mermaids falling into loose formation around them, dozens of shapes moving through the blue-green dark with the unhurried grace Selen always carried, tributes held carefully against bodies, satchels drifting on short tethers, nobody in a rush despite six days of travel already behind them.

The City of Worship came into view gradually, the open seaward court taking shape out of the gloom, tribute alcoves and gathering space built wide enough for a creature far larger than anyone swimming toward it now.

Squishy was already there, drifting near the court's center, and the moment the first mermaids came into sight his rings lit up bright enough to catch even at a distance.

Arista watched him surge forward, not with any particular grace, more the enthusiastic scramble of someone who'd been waiting and had stopped bothering to hide it, tentacles spreading to meet the approaching group before they'd even fully arrived.

The mermaids slowed as they reached the court, forming a loose gathering around him, reverent and quiet enough that Arista found herself holding still too, unwilling to break it. Selen moved forward first, presenting her own bundle, unwrapping it with slow, deliberate care to reveal a piece of pale, veined stone, polished until it caught the ambient light in soft, shifting patterns.

Squishy took it between two tentacles, turning it this way and that, rings pulsing steadily brighter.

One by one, the others came forward. A woven bundle of colored shells, arranged by size. A twist of old metal, greenish with age, clearly recovered from somewhere beyond the ring's old boundary. A cluster of unpolished crystal that caught the light in jagged, uneven flashes. Then came a single, smooth stone that looked, to Arista’s eye, almost unremarkable. Squishy seized upon it with obvious, disproportionate delight, turning it over and over while his rings flared bright blue.

The mermaid who'd offered it looked briefly baffled by the reaction, then simply pleased.

Nettle, treading water beside Arista, watched the whole scene unfold with amusement. "He likes the rock more than the crystal."

"He likes what he likes," Arista said. "Nobody's arguing him out of it."

More tributes kept coming, an old brass fitting worn smooth by decades in the water, a cluster of luminous coral fragments, something that might once have been jewelry and was now mostly just an interesting shape. Squishy examined each one with careful, patient attention, arranging his growing collection across the open court floor, occasionally pausing to compare two objects side by side before deciding, apparently, that both deserved a place.

A different group of five approached next, working together to guide something much larger through the water, a broad slab of dark stone, its surface worn flat and polished to a near-mirror sheen. Individually none of them could have managed it. Together they maneuvered it toward the court's center, angling it carefully until it caught the ambient light and threw it back across the water in one wide, rippling sheet.

Squishy noticed immediately, drifting over to examine it, one huge eye reflected back at him from the polished surface. He tilted it, watched his own reflection shift, tilted it again.

"...I think he just found a mirror," Nettle said.

"I think he just found a toy," Arista corrected. "Should we be worried he'll become vain?" She grinned, watching him tip the slab a third time, rings flaring bright at whatever he saw looking back.

The five mermaids exchanged a glance, visibly relieved, and let the tide carry them a little farther from the slab now that its reception seemed settled.

Arista drifted near the court’s edge as Squishy tilted the polished slab against the edge of an alcove. He held a shell before the slab, turned it until its reflection caught the light, then swapped it for another. After a careful comparison, he switched back to the first.

Selen drifted beside Arista, watching the scene. "It is going well."

"It's going perfectly," Arista said. "He's having the best day of his life."

"He often does," Selen said, "when someone brings him something new."

Further into the court, one of the younger mermaids was showing Squishy a small, carved wooden bird, turning it slowly so he could see every angle, and his enormous eye tracked the motion with obvious, unhurried delight.

Nettle nudged Arista lightly. "You built him a museum, and he's treating it like a toy box."

"Same thing, really," Arista said. "Just depends who's curating."