Meant to publish this chapter on Christmas but I got a little too invested in finishing some lore stuff for late in the book 😅

Well?

Any memories?

No?

Good.

...

I'M NOT LETTING YOU READ ANOTHER ONE!

You little shrimp, don't you DARE-

I hate you.

Fine.

Let's do this.

Still your fault.

Day 5

6:00 A.M. ...more or less.

Four days had past since Jimmy's brilliant maneuver. Lizzie was now fully back up to health, minus the bump on her head, and the four of you were finally moving north again. At one point, fishing boats had been spotted and Lizzie ordered all of you to the ground, much to Sally's displeasure.

Once the boat had gone a safe distance away, you surfaced for a moment to eat a snack and relax for a second. Jimmy passed out dried kelp and some crab meat from his seapack while Lizzie flipped onto her back and floated on the water like some kind of sea otter. You were floating over what looked like a dead coral reef, which was minorly sad but also kinda cool.

After the snack break, Jimmy dived down into the dead reef for a second before swimming back up. You shot him a confused look, but he just gave you a cheeky look and darted away through the water. Sally immediately flashed past, quickly overtaking your brother. Sally followed quickly, and you were left floating in the water, confused. They disappeared quickly through the gloom, and you decided to catch up with them a different way. Shiftenergy flowed through you and your eyes glowed softly as your skin turned smooth and gray. Your betta fins changed to smooth white dolphin fins.

Your bottlenose dolphin-self darted through the ocean like a seagull through the air, dodging ash-gray coral and coiling around rocks. Soon, Lizzie's pink hair flashed underneath you and you did a somersault in the water to turn around. Jimmy immediately smiled and stroked your back but Sally got what was going on.

"Y/N, that you? Get out of the dolphin. We can't have you wasting energy." You narrowed your eyes but turned back into a normal ocean spirit.

"Okay, Sally. First of all, what am I supposed to be saving my shiftenergy for? If it's an emergency, I'll have enough energy to get out of there. Second, I have enough shiftenergy to constantly change shape for fourteen hours. I don't think I'll run out by being a dolphin for five minutes. Third of all, if I 'save' my energy, I'll end up losing it. Abilities need exercising, you know."

The salmon spirit crossed her arms. "Listen, I know I might not be the best at shapeshifting, but I do know a fair bit about energy from swimming, and Lizzie can back me up on this from spell energy. Yes, it needs practice, but prolonged use of a shift or an ability can weaken the ability too much and put a drain on the energy even after you have stopped using your skill. So buck up and stop being a fish, all ready." Sally's ear fins prickled up slightly, indicating annoyance.

"Riiiight. Or you're just jealous," Jimmy teased, flicking his tail and grinning. It was an interesting grin, not quite his normal easy smile you saw every day. It wasn't the cheeky, scheming grin he had when he was plotting a prank. It seemed... forced. Strained. Stressed. It was the kind of smile that made you want to bundle him up in kelp in place him in a beautiful coral reed with all the anvils and metal his heart could desire.

It was the kind of smile that scared you when you saw it on someone like Jimmy.

Lizzie clapped her hands. "Right, stop bickering and start acting like the shoal of fish we are. Work together. Got it?" A round of nods. "Sally, if it pains you so much, you have permission to go a little bit ahead and scout. Jimmy, you'll be our tail. Make sure we don't have anything we don't want following us. Y/N, you can practice your shifting and be useful at the same time. Change into something strong and carry our bags. It'll let us swim faster as a group. I'll keep track of our heading and relay the information to Sally through any fish I find. Now get to work."

Ah, thank the Sea Spirits for Lizzie. It was true, you were a Shoal of fish, but Lizzie was the one who called the shots and made sure The Shoal moved as one. She made sure you stuck together and didn't end up with dive knives at each other's fins.

Sally immediately flashed away, probably desperate to get away from you and Jimmy. The pufferfish in question immediately dropped to the back, probably happy to be able to swim a little slower than the rest of you. You cycled through several forms for a second, trying each one's strength before settling on a killer whale. Then you double checked that the packs were tied on and stared ahead into the clear teal water where your beloathed seabling was disappearing.

God, she was a bitch.

->->->->O<-<-<-<-

Day 11

Before dawn

Submerged cave next to an island

It's been a few years since we met each other.

That's... surreal.

It's our anniversary, I guess you could say. The anniversary of The Shoal.

You have a tradition for this day. All of the Shoal separate for the day to make gifts for each other. Some... go better than others. Like the time Lizzie tried to summon a huge boat and ended up spawning about five dozen whales and a hippo. Or the time you'd accidentally started a forest fire. Or the time Jimmy nearly caused a volcano to erupt. Or the time it turned out all of you were highly allergic to Sally's potion. Or the time the fishing boats nearly ran over Lizzie. Or the time a pod of dolphins blundered through the festivities and nearly died.

Fun times.

It wasn't actually the date of the first time everyone met. No one had any idea when that was, and some of your siblings met before others. But, it was agreed. On the first day the sun only barely skimmed the horizon and the water turned cold and icebergs appeared, the Shoal celebrated.

You already knew what you were getting Lizzie, but Jimmy and Sally you had no idea for, so the moment you woke up, you waved goodbye to everyone else and swam off into the murk.

Soon, you spotted an iceberg. Diving down around twenty or thirty feet, you whirled around and charged towards the surface. Water streamed from your head and fins as you broke above the waves, hovering above the water for a few seconds before slowly starting to fall. Twisting, you angled your body so the iceberg was directly below you then ducked into a somersault as you landed with a thud.

Standing up, you shook yourself dry and shifted into a polar bear for warmth and disguise. The unfamiliar dry air scraped through your lungs like gaseous sand, turning the breath through your gills into a grinding wheeze.

"God, this is weird." Even your voice sounded strange when you were in the Abovewater. The air around you was far more frigid than the depths of the ocean you were you used to, but it was private and it was a good place to think.

Lizzie's gift was one you'd been working on in secret for quite some time. It was a collection of drawings you'd made of the Shoal in your free time. There was Jimmy when he saw his first pufferfish, Sally and Lizzie racing through crystal waters, the fishing village, and a group shot of all four of you smiling together. The ink was from a squid you'd brutally murdered, but the cool part was when the drawings were in a dark place. The waterproof paper was soaked in glowink, resulting in the normal ink forming a silhouette of the scenes. Thus, it work in both normal light and in shadowy waters.

But your other two siblings... those gifts required a bit more thinking.

Jimmy... a new pufferfish hat? That might work. His current one was wearing down to near nothing. Buuuuuuut that was kinda un-original. Sally had made his first one two or three years ago, and like HELL were you gonna copy her. So what else...

You sat deep in thought until you started getting light-headed from the air. Slipping back into sea spirit form, you dived back into the cold waters and let yourself sink to the bottom. Your descent startled a small black and yellow fish which darted away. The weak sunlight caught on it's scales, however, and an idea flashed into your head. First, you needed to find Lizzie though.

You knew Jimmy had chosen to stay at the cave, but you were fairly certain Lizzie had gone up onto the beach of the island. Sure enough, as you started to swim back towards the boreal-forest-covered island, a dot of bright pink was sitting on the beach. Once within earshot, you poked your head out of the water and shouted, "Lizzie! I'm coming over there!" This would give your sister time to hide her projects.

"Y/N! Hi! What's up?" Lizzie greeted you with a smile. "You took me by surprise. I thought all of us were stay apart for the day."

"Yeah. We are. Look, how many fish scales can you create?"

Lizzie raised an eyebrow. "What? Fish scales? One hundred, two hundred? Maybe? I'm not sure. I mean, I don't really go around summoning fish scales every day, y'know?"

You nodded. "Yeah. Makes sense. Okay, just summon a bag and as many scales as you can." Lizzie nodded and turned towards the beach.

"It might take a minute, just so you know," She warned, then started chanting some strange thing. As the air started to turn a vague shade of green, Lizzie lifted her arms like she was carrying a large weight, slowly hoisting it towards the sky. The green tinge in the air spread, turning into a fog which rolled across you and the beach, blinding your sight. Lizzie's chanting started getting faster, then the fog condensed together, turning into a pile of sparkling emerald scales.

"Thanks!" you said, tackling your sister, who was breathing heavily and sweating despite the chilly air. While Lizzie slipped back under the water to catch her breath, you surveyed the island. It was thickly wooded with evergreens and firs, with very little undergrowth in between the trees. There was no sign of life other than the rustling in the bushes which signaled either a boar or a bear was lurking around. Somewhere out there, a single bird cawed loudly.

"Are you planning on bagging those up so I can finish oooooor..." asked Lizzie from behind you, making you jump.

"Ack, yes, sorry," you muttered. "Got distracted." The bag quickly grew heavy with the glimmering green scales but was considerably lighter in the water. You slung it over your shoulder and slowly waded down the shore, the waves lapping at your feet with an impatient chill. The salty smell of the sea mixed in with the drifts of evergreen scent that were carried out from the forest on the wind. When your head had gone under the surface, you breathed through your gills deeply, letting the cold water filter all the dry air out in clouds of thin bubbles as you swam.

->->->->O<-<-<-<-

Day 11

Before sundown

It was close to ten minutes before the exchanging of Meeting Day gifts and you had just finished Jimmy's. Sadly, you still had no idea what to give to Sally. You thought about it while dragging your gifts behind you as you swam, anxiously fidgeting with the bag. The problem with Sally was you didn't really have any idea what she liked. Potions, Salmon... what else? Shifting? Maybe... Would that work, though? A single dose of shiftenergy, captured in a bottle? You did have the one bottle Jimmy'd found a few weeks ago...

You swerved to the left, taking a detour to run by Jimmy's stuff. Opening his pack, you found an assortment of random things. Bits of seaplants, a sea-blue scale, a spyglass, seaglass, rocks polished by the waves, shells with fanned edges. And the bottle. Perfect.

Theft.

Having acquired your spoil, you retied his bag and uncorked the thin glass bottle, taking a deep breath of seawater, you concentrated on the energy humming at the base of your skull and forced it down, through your fingers and out of your skin.

It was unlike anything you'd ever experienced.

Once free and drifting in the water, the energy wiggled and tried to twist out of your grasp. It glowed and stretched and shimmered in thousands of colors the world couldn't even imagine, colors you couldn't describe. Colors which mortal eyes were not meant to see.

The energy nearly managed to escape your control in your distraction. Gripping it tighter with your mind, you forcibly shoved it into the bottle and corked it quickly, watching the energy swirl inside as though alive. The very surface of the bottle shimmered as though shifting, taking on hues of green and blue and gold and scarlet, warping its surface into ornate patterns then molding it back to normal.

"Y/N!" a distant yell drifted into your ears through the water. Lizzie.

Wheeling around, you shot through the water towards the underwater cave, darting inside the mouth and accidentally bumping shoulders with your eldest sister.

"Ack, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm late, had to make a stop." Turning in the water, you sat next in between her and Sally.

"It's fine," Lizzie said dismissingly. "Jimmy, want to go first?" Your brother nodded and stood as much as one could when sitting in the water.

"Right. Sally, this is for you, Y/N, this is yours, and Lizzie, here's yours." A smooth gray bundle was shoved into your arms, extremely small. Slowly, you unwrapped it, revealing a small box with two brass pins inside. The first was square and meticulously carved into a pattern of intertwining tree roots and kelp fronds. The second was round and had a hammered, intricate picture of a crossed sword and staff.

"Jimmy... wow." To your left, Lizzie was holding up a smooth shoulder armor of carved wood with painted filigree decorating the top. Sally, meanwhile, was looking at a bracelet of interlocking silver links. "This is amazing."

"Where'd you get the brass?" you asked.

Jimmy grinned. "Remember the dead reef?"

"Oh my gosh, I knew I saw something."

"Jimmy, this is astounding. Sally, want to go next?" Lizzie was still staring at the armor, which fit perfectly on her shoulders.

The salmon spirit nodded as Jimmy sat back down. "Right. Here, y'all." She swam by quickly, dropping a single potion into each person's lap. Yours was a cobalt blue, Jimmy's a dark gold, and Lizzie's an icy mint green. "Jimmy, yours will let you swim just as fast as me for around five minutes, Sally, yours lets you see just as well in the daylight as you can see in the dark, and Y/N, yours will give your fins an increased level of resistance."

Well dang. Sally just single handedly solved all the groups problems. Lizzie had extremely weak eyes during the daytime, your fins were about as tough as lacy silk, and Jimmy swam like a snail.

"Sheesh, that makes my gifts look like trash," you joked as you stood up and opened your bag. "Jimmy, this is for you." Using the scales Lizzie'd conjured, you'd been able to make a set of scaled armor for Jimmy's arms. The problem was figuring out how to let the fins on his arms still be usable while protecting them. "Lizzie." You handed her the pictures and explained about the glow-in-the-dark mechanism. "And Sally." You brought out the bottle.

"What the flounder is that?" Sally gasped, staring openmouthed.

"It's... shiftenergy. Pure shiftenergy, captured into a bottle." As if on cue, the shimmering energy pulsed, changing the bottle from glass to crystal for a second.

"Hoooooooooooly fins." Sally's leaf-green eyes looked more silver than any other color in the strange light as she peered closer at the swirling, pulsing ball of pure power.

Lizzie allowed Sally a few more seconds of ogling before clearing her throat meaningfully. As the salmon sibling tucked her gift away, Lizzie stood up and handed each of you a ring.

"Four years ago, roughly, I met the three spirits who would change my life. More than my friends, they were my family. More than my family, they were my friends. They were a part of me. But... things change, sometimes." She glanced away. "Sometimes drastically. And... I wanted to make sure that we stay together." Lizzie glanced up again, swallowing hard. "These rings are enchanted. They can swap thoughts, emotions, and mental images. They help us find each other when we can't even find ourselves."

You turned the ring over in your hand. It was a simple silver band, unadorned save for a few runes carved on the inside and one etched into the outside. Slipping it onto your finger, you felt a small zip of energy course up your arm and into your head, where it hummed quietly just behind your forehead.

"Whoa," Jimmy said from his seat as he scrambled backwards and tried to tug the ring off. "Thaaaaaaaaaaaaat's weird, that's sooooo weird, what on earth-" He continued trying- and failing -to take the ring off. Finally, Sally got tired of watching him fumble with it and yanked it off for him.

"He'll get used to it," you told Lizzie, wanting to make sure her feelings weren't hurt.

She flashed you a smile. "Oh yeah, don't worry. I thought it was strange when I tried mine on for the first time too. But we're ocean spirits, everything's strange to us." Lizzie floated in the water for a second, a peaceful expression on her face as she stared into space. Across the cave, Sally and Jimmy were bickering and poking fun at each other, locked in one of their many arguments.

"Y/N." She spoke suddenly. "If anything would happen, anything that would split up the group, would you follow me?"

A question.

Your siblings typically refrained from giving you questions which didn't require big decisions. Those questions... those questions would get you trapped in your own brain for hours, tracing logical loops through all the possible combinations, all the things which could go wrong. Those questions ended with you stuck in your own head. Those questions made you second-guess everything you'd ever decided.

They were dangerous for you.

And here Lizzie was, giving you a question just like that.

She was staring expectantly at you.

"Lizzie, I..." you hesitated, and a flash of realization and guilt flickered through her gaze as she realized just what kind of question she'd asked.

"I can't answer that." Already your brain was tracing paths forward, forward, forward, and you couldn't stop it. "Not now, maybe not ever." Lizzie nodded slowly.

"I understand." She turned to swim over and separatethe wrestling Sally and Jimmy but turned around again. "Figure it out, Y/N." Therewas raw desperation in her eyes. "Trace the paths. Come to a decision. Please."

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3211 words

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MMm, Fish-spirit Christmas, my beloved.

Farewell, children