[Sunken Conumdrum]C'mon in, the water's fine! (Rey)

[Niello]

Winter 10, 514 OK, so, this was something Niello just had to check out. A submerged library? It sounded right up the seal Kelvic’s flipper’n’fins alley, and when a townsperson happened to mention the place to him, his eyes widened with delight. At the first available moment, he had gone to look for the place, which was a feat in itself. It actually took him several days to hunt the library down – the Sunken Conundrum it was called. He had no idea what a conundrum was, but he got the sunken part alright. He’d had great fun exploring sunken wrecks he had encountered in his travels in the Suvan. Of course, he didn’t expect that the library would look like a sunken galleon or anything. Libraries were for books – he knew that much at least – although he’d never been inside one. He’d been taught to read as a child, in a rudimentary fashion. But his tastes never had run to the written word. And a wonderment and love of books was definitely not what was drawing him to this one in his new home. No, he was simply curious, to see how land dwelling patrons negotiated the waters and he even gave some thought to whether or not the people who ran the place might need a worker such as himself, to dive and fetch the books those who could not operate too well underwater wanted to borrow. Puzzling over all of it, he walked right up to the doors, happy to have finally chased the place down, and, hand on handle, he opened it, outwards. Niello was unfamiliar with the saying ‘you could have knocked me over with a feather.’ But if he had ever heard it before, it would definitely be the idiom he’d have chosen for how he felt, looking at that wall of water. A sheer wall – translucent and liquidy – presented itself and he could not for the life of him conceive of how it was held in place like that. It didn’t flow by, like a river or stream. There was no containing wall of glass, say – although if he’d thought about it a bit, he would have probably concluded it was all held there by a wall of magic of some sort. Despite his ability to shift into a seal, Niello was well aware of the interface of air and water, even when he slid from one to the other with an ease regular land dwellers could not attempt. This was – this was – entirely different, and as he looked at the still, aqueous surface, and the room beyond, his eyes almost popped out of his head, when he spotted several library patrons placidly moving about, swimming as it were, to find what they needed – and with apparently no trouble whatsoever in the marine environment. For the water well and truly filled the whole space, top to bottom. It was like being, well, underwater! Still unsure of what was going on exactly, Niello quickly divested himself of his clothes, shifted in the blink of an eye, and, in harp seal form, tested the barrier with his whiskery nose. The tip of his snout went into the water, easily, just as if it had not been a different phase of matter at all. Hesitating for a moment longer, he blinked in confusion, but then plunged inward, his streamlined form gliding quite naturally through the water that filled the first room.

[Yisanareysin]

The Sunken Conundrum was surprisingly warm. And in this weather, Rey needed all the heat he could get. Slipping into the water, he took a deep breath with his new gills, and bounced/swam/flailed over to the shelves, trying not to knock into anyone or anything.

Slowly, he began to climb the shelves, careful to make sure he had a good foothold before moving. Last season he'd managed to slip and smack his head on a shelf, and Micah still hadn't stopped teasing him about it. He kept an eye out as he climbed for any book that looked interesting, but the titles on this shelf had the driest sounding titles, and he was half convinced reading one would send him straight to sleep.

Reaching the top, he glanced over to the librarian to make sure she wasn't looking, then scooted over the shelf to the next row. This set of books seemed a little more interesting, but nothing stood out to him as he pulled himself along the shelf until he reached a book near the very end.

"Ssuvan Spiess and Alahean Assasssinss" Rey read out slowly. Sounded good. Plucking the book off the shelf, he floated down to the floor, settling into a chair, and began to read.

Reading had never come easily to him, given the lack of a written form of Snake Tongue, but he continued on stubbornly. He was reading through a passage about basic cryptography (for the third time, and it still made no more sense than it had the first time) when a flash of white caught his attention.

Setting the book down, Rey turned to see a bizarrely round, furry animal swimming through the library. "What in Ionu'ss name...".

Rey bounced closer for a better look. Another one of the city's illusions, no doubt. But just what kind of animal was that? A creature like that looked so... unwieldy, he doubted it could swim like that if it was real.

What an odd sense of humor Ionu had.

Snake Tongue : Common : Arumenic

[Kaleidoscope]

 

Niello

Comments
If/when you return, please PM me for your grades.

 

Reysin

Skills

• Climbing: +1
• Stealth: +1

Lores

• Climbing: Checking your feet before moving forwards
• Strange, white, aquatic creature

Comments
Seals are strangely dynamic in water, aren't they? O.o

Enjoy your grade, and please don't forget to delete/edit out your grade request. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me a PM.