But the Fjords! D:

[Anonymous]

Wind blew towards the water, coming from over the Kilanthro Mountains, through the foots hills, down the beach past Releah and out to sea as Releah sighed sadly. The shoreline wasn't what it used to be. She wasn't what she used to be. It was a little cold, but it was midday, and the land breeze was going strong. She entertained the thought that it was another wind spirit, probably unaware that she was, or had been, a wind spirit, too. But sometimes, the wind was just the wind, just the after trail of a wind spirit. As she looked at the ocean, though, lapping at the gravely beaches than had never held any interest to her, she missed the old shape of the world. She missed the fjords! Releah always used to speed and race through them, in her moments of coherency. Why did they have to get rid of the fjords?

Seeing the ocean was so different. Releah finally understood what colors where, and  why the spiky waves were called "white caps". She still didn't understand hunger, but maybe she would eventually. For now, she reclined against the loan bleached, dead tree on the shore, closing her green eyes and letting her black hair falling away from her face, as well as the hood to the tan cloak she was wearing. It was nice out here, but lonely. Being able to interact was the best part of being silent. Aside from being able to see.

[Anonymous]

Sarivi dragged his feet through the leaves a bit as he moved, not caring about the loud crackling they made; it wasn't like he could expect to hide anyway, not with his coloring. He'd spent the whole morning wandering around, trying to find different things to explore. The day hadn't been especially fruitful in that regard... But he had found one of those funny food trees! And this time he didn't end up falling down until after he had managed to knock down some of the tasty things!

His rump and dorsal fin were a little sore from the inevitable fall, but the taste of the food more than made up for it. The sprite had already finished one of the food things, and he had another in each hand.

As he neared the edge of the trees he smiled to himself, licking the odd juice from his lips and tilting his head back as a breeze swept past him, making his longer fins sway a little. Even if it had been uneventful... This day certainly had seemed nice, if a bit too chilly for his likes. Far nicer than other days, when he had gotten inland just enough to have problems when it inevitably started to rain. Now he knew better; rainstorms seemed to happen -after- the sun had reached it's zenith, so he would just stick a little bit closer to the ocean at that point! It certainly was far more fun to slip beneath the waves than get stuck under the rain, which to his skin was almost cold enough to be freezing.

Just a few more moments and he was slipping from beneath the trees, toes curling a little over the sun warmed pebbles. He smiled lazily, hazel eyes flickering about as they adjusted to the sudden lack of shadows... Then inexplicably lit upon what looked like a figure, only a little bit away from him closer to the ocean.

The sprite's eyes lit up with curiosity. He hadn't seen a person since he got to this place! "Hello!" Sarivi said cheerfully, pale feet shifting against the sand as he took a few steps closer. He didn't even give a thought to the person maybe being dangerous. Not with the ocean right in running distance like that.

[Anonymous]

Releah started a little--she hadn't spoken to anyone except the mage child, far to the north in her rickety old house on the tundra. And to find them here, in what the mageling had called, "Really really really a bunch and a lot of no people", was a bit odd. But never the less, someone to talk to! She stood up, a little to fast, and stumbled a little, unused a little, still, to being solid. Releah looked at him--and how interesting he was! Was that a fin? A water creature! A water creature, oh, she had so rarely felt those, not able to reach beneath the surface of water.  Remembering that he had spoken she said brightly, "Hello!"

She jogged a little closer to him, clutching her cloak to her body--wasn't he cold? She would have to ask him. He was older than the mage child, maybe a little older than her body. She would ask him. And also about being cold. And also about being underwater. And the fins. And--and--and a bunch of things. But first! "I'm Releah! What's your name?"

[Anonymous]

Sarivi blinked in surprise as the person stumbled, but before he could move much it seemed that she... Was it a she? Sarivi was fairly sure it was... but humans were so hard to tell with sometimes. Apparently their whole obsession with cloth had some sort of stylistic difference that could help, but it did make things utterly confusing when they insisted on covering up as much as they did. At least... Was she even a human? The sprite really didn't know enough about the different creatures here to tell for sure.

His eyes lit up and he moved a few steps closer as she said hello back. So it was a friendly person! Who spoke the land language he knew! The mostly eaten red tree-food fell from his webbed fingers as he forgot to keep a hold of it, but since he still had another one he wasn't altogether too worried about that. His mind was more focused on all of the different questions he could ask someone, now that he had someone to ask! Granted, people couldn't always answer the questions he asked... But it was impossible to find someone who could answer his questions if he didn't ask things of everyone he met! Far as he could see, even without adding in people curious about people, that alone was more than enough reason to inundate land dwellers with questions!

"I'm Sarivi!" He exclaimed, bouncing on his heels as he studied the girl. He was pretty positive it was a girl now, definitely looked like it, though it was hard to be positive with how she was clutching that cloth to her... Maybe she was cold? It was chilly; almost enough to make Sarivi understand why people liked to cover themselves (though his loincloth really wasn't doing all that much to help him.), but it wasn't -that- cold... Was it? There was another question for him to ask, though he probably should at least -try- to keep his priorities straight or he'd totally forget about things.

"Is there a human place near here then?" He asked, waving his now free hand around at the surroundings, which certainly lacked any signs -he- could pick up. "I haven't been able to find anyone to talk to since I was a few days more south!"

[Anonymous]

He was exuberant, a little different from the mage child, but still acting very young. Her head was cold, and her hands--they weren't exposed, but she had bad circulation or something--and so she clutched at the cloak and smiled at him. They could trade questions, maybe? Why was he only in a loin cloth? But she had to answer his question! It was a he, right? She hadn't ever had to worry about these things before, but he didn't have--breasts, was it?, so he must be a he, if that was that the he's, the males' of his species looked like. If his species had males? Well, that was a good question!

"Well--" she said, and then paused to think, "No, I don't think so. No one but the mage child, at least. In the great flat place." She meant the tundra, of course, and then she asked a whole flood of questions, "What are you? Where did you come from? Does it really get warmer to the south? Are you cold? Do you swim? What's it like under water? Can I touch you, you look like you'd feel neat." Releah, unlike Sarivi, did not keep her priorities straight, though at least she asked for permission to touch him, instead of leaping on him as she was wont to do.

[Anonymous]

The sprite frowned slightly as she answered. He knew what mages were, he had gotten someone to explain that one to him, but what was the great flat place... Plains? Was that it? Maybe, he supposed he really couldn't be totally sure! His head tilted slightly, a little bit of pale green hair falling over his eyes as he opened his mouth to ask what she meant, then stopped as she started to speak again.

Sarivi watched with wide eyes as the girl suddenly started babbling out questions, grinning to himself as he tried vain to actually catch them and organize them in his mind as his ears caught them. "I... I'm a sprite!" He exclaimed, bouncing again and shifting his stance "We live out in the ocean, more down south most of the time, and somewhat far out!"

So many questions... In some ways it made the sprite inordinately happy, since he hadn't met another person as curious as he was! The only problem was that it was hard to actually remember them! "And... Of course I swim! I live there. And underwater is... Well it's different than being up here, all free and weightless and..."

The sprite frowned slightly, then shook his head and grinned again. "I don't know that I feel any different than anything else, but you can if you want to! Haven't had anyone ask me that before! Just be careful of the fins, they're delicate."

For a moment he stood silent, the fins on his ears twisting slightly as he tried to organize his mind and avoid saying a bunch of questions at once. He was sure he had missed something... But now was his turn! Or were they taking turns? Whichever, now he could ask a question again! "If there aren't any humans about, then why are you here?" He asked, staring at her and seeming rather childlike in his expression. "Or are they all in this great flat place? Or are you even a human?" He figured the last question was probably a relevant one. He was obvious in his own species, but not all peoples were!

[Anonymous]

She moved closer to him, reaching out to run a hand gently over the skin of his cheek, delighted to find it a familiar feeling. Like those mammals from the sea, that did flips sometimes! She reached up gently to feel his fines, but hadn't felt anything like that before. Releah was careful with them, ask he had asked her to be, smiling brightly at him. "Swimming sounds like when I was the wind! But more relaxed..." She took her hands of his fins, tucking them back into her cloak--it was cold.

"I was a wind spirit, but then the mage child made a mistake and I'm stuck in this human body! She said that she couldn't control her magic so I have to go south and find a better mage to release me because even though we think that I'll go back to normal when the body dies, we want to make sure. And--and I had to feel you because I'm not used to seeing thing, just feeling them, and your skin seemed kind've familiar and I was right!" She bounced back a little, grinning brightly now. "But I don't know why the mageling was up there, but she was the only one."

She looked around, considering for a moment, "She said that there was a city on the other shore, east of here, and also across the mountains, but she said that just going south was easiest."

[Anonymous]

Sarivi's head tilted a little at the feel of her hand on his skin and fins, grinning slightly. Touching was something he hadn't had very much of lately, which was a stark contrast to the constant twisting around each other that happened when he was with his own kind. For some reason most people on land seemed to view it as some sort of bad thing. Or maybe they thought it was special to not happen often? Either way, they rarely ventured to touch him and he'd learned that the random grabbing and brushing up against that he was used to back at home had all sorts of hidden meanings here.

It was -fun-, learning about different types of people, that was why he still kept coming onto land! There were just some things that were... Odd, especially with how he had grown up.

As she spoke again he blinked in surprise. The wind... Did that mean...? Maybe she was something like a sprite! Or... Well as she spoke it didn't sound like she was overly like him, since far as he knew all of his kind could go between liquid and solid form at will, but she was still an elemental, which was far closer to his kind than anything else he'd met!

His excitement shone on his face and he bounced on his heels as she spoke, fins flaring just a tiny bit. It seemed odd that a child would be on her own up there... but then that seemed to happen sometimes. Maybe humans didn't need to watch their littles as much as sprites did; he already knew that they were much more sturdy than his kind. "That's how it is when I change to liquid! Only my kind can switch back and forth as we please... Maybe it's something of the same thing just you guys can't change..." He trailed off, then his mind seized on something else she had said "What did it feel familiar to? Have you felt one of us before? Or one of the creatures with skin like this? I know there are some, lots of things that can breath air have the same sort!"

If he wasn't careful, he was going to start spouting off a barrage of questions to rival her earlier one, so he stopped himself before he could start babbling about the two earlier things, organizing his thoughts, "I've seen a map and there's lots way way over these big tall things called mountains... They don't look very big on the map, but the humans said they were. I know there are different places with humans south of here that I've been through though! Maybe that's what she meant?"

[Anonymous]

She listened avidly to his questions, bouncing up and down a little in excitement of something new and also someone new who didn't mind her questions, which had occasionally annoyed the mage child. But! Sarivi didn't mind questions or her touching him, and he was really nice. Maybe he would travel south with her? She added it to her list of questions. Having someone to talk to was good! Talking was new, too.

It was hard to describe being a wind spirit, because Releah had been one for a very long time, but only became aware of herself and others when something new happened. Something new to feel or hear, and sometimes smell. Sometimes one of her fellows would find something, and in brushing against her with their long trails pass on a memory of what they had felt, heard, or smelled. That was how she had learned language. She couldn't read, except for braille but that was gone now, wasn't it? Maybe she should reinvent it. There must still be blind people; from what she knew it was rather hard to cure.

"Are you conscious, when you're not solid?" she asked, thinking that they probably were, if they switched back and forth, and then followed his switch in conversation, "They were--uhm--fish? They chittered and leaped into the sky, and that's how i know the feel--they didn't have fins like you have, though, and I think that they were--oh, what do you call it? Mammals! Are you a mammal?"

Another shift in the conversation. "Yes, that's probably what she meant! She said the the mountains are dangerous." She glanced at them, "But if you want to see the humans, why don't you just go over the mountain?"

[Anonymous]

"Of course I am!" He answered, blinking in surprise at the question, "Are you not then?" Sarivi couldn't really imagine not ever being able to think. When he was viscous he generally was just as active as he was before, just with a whole different set of senses that he used in order to be so. Lots of bouncing around off of things and tangling with sea creatures in order to get to somewhere he could form solid again.

The sprite let his eyes go vacant for a moment, shifting his feet over the pebbles as he thought and tried to figure out what she was describing. Fish that chittered and leapt into the sky but didn't have fins... He wasn't entirely sure what the word 'mammals' meant, but if they didn't have fins... "Oh! Dolphins and whales, you mean! They do have the same skin as us!" The boy grinned brightly at her, eyes shining a little as he added, "And... I don't know. I don't think I've heard that word used before! Just fish and land creatures." He would have wondered if 'mammal' was a word for something like a dolphin... Except she asked if he was one, so it had to be something even more generalized.

At the question that came immediately after he frowned briefly again, sighing and glancing at the distant lumps that apparently were much more majestic to behold from right by them. He rather thought it would be wonderful to see... But there really wasn't much way for him to get that.

"I can't. Have to stay near the water to survive, and I've only been able to follow the rivers so far inland before it gets a lot harder to do so!" Sarivi shook his head at himself, tendrils of hair flying into his face before he pushed them back behind his webbed ears. "Are you heading south then? Or over the mountains? Is there a city down south too? I haven't explored everything so I figured I probably missed somewhere with lots of people!"

If she had any idea where people were then that could be really good for both of them... Granted, from what she had mentioned about her past it didn't seem very likely, but it could never hurt to ask!

[Anonymous]

The girl shook her head emphatically, "No, not really--I mean, we're kinda aware of what we're doing but we don't really think about anything unless it's new or different or exciting!" Like the end of the last earth, that had been fun! Spun her in a tizzy and destroyed the fjords, unfortunately, but oh, what a ride! She had been conscious for years, hadn't been lulled back into normalcy since the change! And now, well, look at her! Amazingly interesting! She could see! She still wasn't sure what love was, though.

Oh! But "mammal" was something that she knew! Excited about being right, and knowing something, she launched into an explanation of what a "mammal" was. "Well-uhm--there's a lot of them! They mostly live on land, but they're in the sea, too, like the-the dolphins, and they mostly have fur, but some don't, and they have their own body heat, and--oh!--their children aren't born in eggs!" She finished proudly, grinning for knowing something.

"I think that I felt more then I was south," She said with a slightly silly grin, "They don't really like the cold! But we can go find out together, right?" Traveling with him would be fun! They could find stuff out together and she would have someone to talk to and he could teach her to swim! She wished that she could teach him to fly, but probably not. Which was a shame, because flying was so fun. She couldn't fly anymore, though, either, but that was alright, because now she could see. It was almost a fair trade, except that she couldn't feel stuff as well as before.

[Anonymous]

The sprite's earfins twisted a little bit at the first words. Only things that were new or different? He could see how that could be fun... Old things could be fun too though! Sometimes little things were just beautiful, like trying to see the sunset from all different types of places. Though he supposed she hadn't ever been able to see that before now.

His mind swung back from whatever musings it had been on the brink of falling into at her next words, and his eyes lit up as he realized he was about to learn something he hadn't known before. Sarivi fixed his gaze on her as she spoke, filing the information back in his mind and grinning in amazement. So there was something of the same between water creatures and land creatures then? He had always just thought of Dolphins as fish who could breath air like he could! "I guess I'm not one then!" He said, answering the earlier question, "Our littles are formed in eggs. It's this whole complicated ceremony and they always do ten of them at once, not just one or two like land things do. I've seen dolphins with their littles though, and I guess they're the same way! I hadn't thought of separating on something like that! Fur makes sense though..." The sprite frowned slightly "I think I have my own heat though, so maybe I'm somewhat that but not totally or something."

Sarivi stopped himself from rambling on even more to actually contemplate what she had finished up saying with. He hadn't planned on stopping this soon... But it was already starting to get cold, and he really didn't love the cold all that much. One thing he had gotten one of the few humans he'd already met to tell him about was that it tended to get chiller as one went more north. Exactly why that happened utterly baffled the boy, but apparently that was how it worked.

"Well if you're going to find people I might as well!" He said, grinning brightly after a few more moments of consideration. The sprite shifted his stance a little, webbed fingers splaying out as he bounced on his heels again, "I would need to turn out sometime soon anyways, and you're the first person I've found who's looking for answers to questions too!"

[Anonymous]

Releah tilted her head, mulling over what he had said. "Maybe... it's only for animals?" she suggested, "I mean, you can't classify wins spirits like that because I don't think that we're born. At least, we can't remember being born or having a childhood or a family. I've often wondered what is was like--and what's being an egg feel like? Do you remember? Do you have sibling? What's that like?" Oh. She was off track again.

Heading south was beginning to sound good now--night was falling and her head was really cold. She pulled the hood up over her black hair, but that didn't help her nose. She needed a scarf! Releah sighed a little, at least she wasn't shivering. Temperature was such a bother! It was easier when the only time she felt heat was during volcano eruptions and forest fires. And now! Cold at the slightest wind! Horrible.

Finally getting back on track, she said, "Yay! We'll have so much fun! We can learn things and ask questions and get answers and double team people!"

[Anonymous]

Sarivi shifted his feet a little as he thought over that, barely getting his mind into wondering about that before the girl suddenly cut herself off and started in on the questions. Once she had paused he laughed, grinning at her, "I can't remember that far back! First memory I can think of was at least a couple years after I was already out of the egg." His mind flicked back to the ocean, to discovering things for the first time... Especially fish. Scary things, fish. He could the first time he had gone liquid, and it had been the strangest but at the same time most exhilarating thing.

Of course, siblings were something he had in abundance. "Lots of siblings though!" He half laughed to himself, thinking of the small tribe of people in his family... Which was considerably more than a small tribe if extended family was included, especially since sprites didn't define family within the same small unit that people here did "That was always fun, especially with the ones who were littles when I was one! We got into a lot of trouble together!"

He couldn't imagine not having grown up with them really. The other sprites had shaped him so much into what he was... "Do you not have any then?" He asked, tilting his head curiously. "I'd think it was a lot better than being alone. Do people do that? Keep littles alone? How could someone actually learn things right if they didn't have a bunch of other littles with them to figure out what they were doing wrong?"

The sprite stopped himself from outwardly musing more as the wind spoke again. Her words caused him to giggle slightly, imagining the trouble that they could get themselves into. Humans always seemed to be taken aback with just one person lashing them with questions! What would their reaction be to two? Probably something amusing, and maybe with two he would be more likely to get the answers that he wanted when interesting things came up!

"That's what I want to do anyways! It'll be so much more fun to find things with someone else looking too!" He exclaimed, grinning even more widely at her. Of course, that had more questions coming up in his mind, but he settled on the one that was bugging at him the most, "Are you looking for anything specific, other than the mage? Or just different things to find?" The boy shook his head at himself, grinning impishly, "I just love learning just about everything!"

[Anonymous]

"Oh, I've never had a family," Releah said, smiling sadly, "It would have been terribly lonely, except that I could never really grasp most feelings, except excitement or curiosity or patience. Hearing soap operas and the like was confusing." Releah would like a family; it would be nice. Maybe Sarivi would be her adopted family! But he had said that he had a lot of family already. Well, she would just consider him family, and not tell him! Yes, that sounded like a good idea. He didn't have to know.

Looking at her new family member—Brother? Cousin? Uncle? Perhaps not uncle. Brother, she had always wanted siblings. Older or younger? Well—she was older than him, technically, but it didn't feel that way. [i[Twins, [/i]  she decided. Twins would be fun. They should work on speaking in unison! It was too bad no one would actually believe that they were twins... Not that she was probably going to tell anyone. She might not know much about human customs, but she didn't think that they went around just randomly declaring people that they had just met their family. This was probably true with other species, as well. But if she didn't tell him, how was she going to convince him that they should speak in unison? Bugger.

To cover up this brief lapse in her thought process, Releah grinned brighter, "I want to see stuff! And know stuff! And make some friends! And I want to learn about emotions, because as for as I can tell it's like being orange!" Emotions, that is. She hadn't been able to really see any yet, which upset her, because that was what she was most looking foreword to.

[Anonymous]

That really was rather sad... Though he supposed it was totally different from how he had grown up, and it would have been hard for her to be sad about something she didn't really understand. Really, he couldn't imagine not constantly having a barrage of emotions running through his mind. That... That was just how he was!

One thing had him totally confused though. "What's a soap opera?" He asked, brow furrowing slightly as he tried to figure that out. He knew what soap was, it was that odd stuff that humans used to clean themselves, the slick blocks that they sometimes put flowers and such in to keep things smelling good. Maybe it was a type of soap? "What does soap have to do with emotions?" He added, shaking his head then brushing the resulting hair from his eyes and blinking at her in curiosity. "Does that go with how they're so body conscious maybe? I suppose to get soap on themselves they'd have to take all of those pesky clothes off, and they seem to link that to emotions and stuff... Is that it?"

It would have helped had he known what in the world 'opera' was. Though then he probably would have assumed it had to do with soap and singing on a stage... Closer, but not exactly the reality.

His mind flickered back as she spoke again. His fins flared a little as he grinned back at her, "Seeing and knowing stuff is what I want to do to! There's so many interesting things up on land that I've never even had an idea existed before!" That she needed friends went without saying... Sarivi couldn't imagine not having friends to go back to, even if they had all jokingly called him insane for wanted to venture up on land, where they suddenly went from strong and fast to impossibly weak. Their loss, they would have to learn things just from what he said now instead of seeing it themselves!

Of course, what she said actually gave something he could imagine... Though he wasn't sure exactly how emotions could be like being a color, that didn't make much sense to his mind. "Emotions are... Well they're like the feelings you said you had before, except a lot more of them! Like if you start acting differently or feeling differently about something, that's an emotion! Being happy at finding someone to travel with is an emotion, same with if you felt lonely before. There are a lot of them and we're always feeling some type of it!"

[Anonymous]

Oh. Right. "They don't have them anymore," she said, and was going to leave it at that except that he seemed terribly interested in it but had the idea all wrong and it wasn't like it was going to hurt anyone for him to know... She thought for a moment about how to explain it so that he would understand. Oh, why did the world have to go kablooey? It was so inconvenient.

"They were like really dramatic plays," She said, biting her lip for a moment, "And a lot of them were sponsored—paid for—by the people that made soap. They had really ridiculous love where everyone was jealous or in love or sleeping with or hating everyone else. Where is love, anyway, and how can it have that many people in it?" Maybe it was a country. "Is it a country?"

She'd always thought that emotions were like special patterns or something, because when she was a wind spirit she'd searched long and hard for something that felt like love but no matter where she went she felt nothing like "love" or "sadness". Just rock and ice and fur. When she had searched for "evil", for "trust", for "hope, she had found sand and water and people. Releah thought that it must be something that you see or taste, because she couldn't find it.

But now she could see and taste, too, and she hadn't felt it, she didn't think. Maybe she had missed it? But—he had continued talking—"Feeling?" she asked, confused, "But I felt all around the world, and I couldn't find it."

[Anonymous]

Sarivi fixed his eyes on her as she explained, his mind trying to wrap around it. He really didn't understand still, mostly because his culture didn't have an equivalent of theatre, but he figured from the word 'play' that it was some sort of game. Why people would play a game like that -- and what in the world it had to do with soap, she said that the people who made soap paid for it... but why would you pay for a game? -- totally elluded him, but he supposed it was just another oddity of human nature that he hadn't managed to figure out yet.

He would have questioned her more on the subject, but by that point she had asked her own questions, and the question itself caught him offguard enough that he simply stared at her for a moment.

"You don't know what love is?" He exclaimed, blinking at her incredulously. Concepts like that were ones that he had simply grown up with... But now that he tried to actually think of an explanation he found the possibilities slipping through his mind like air through his fingers. "It's... It's like a feeling. Not one that you feel with your hands, but it's an emotion! In your head. Like if you don't know what something means you feel a certain way in your head, and sometimes it'll make your body feel a different way!"

The sprite paused, arms flinging out and his head going back as he tried to think of some way to explain it. Especially love. The others he had felt more, but that one he had only felt in the platonic way, for his siblings and parents. From what he knew from others it was an even more amazing thing to feel when it was for someone in a decidedly less platonic way.

"Love is a really special feeling... There are different kinds too, like for siblings, or for someone more special. You won't always know when you feel it, but it means that you'd do anything for someone if you love them, even die for them sometimes." He shrugged, grinning a little sheepishly, "I guess you have to just feel stuff like that to really know what it's like. Little things you've probably already felt though!"

[Anonymous]

Did... he just say that she had to feel stuff with her brain? What?

Releah blinked and then nodded slowly, like she understood, and said brightly, "I see!" She didn't see. Didn't understand. But apparently it was only of those things that you can't really tell someone about. She would figure it out. Eventually. Hopefully.

But let's face it. She might enjoy sight, and taste. But she wasn't planning on staying in this mortal coil. She liked getting answers to her questions, she liked meeting Sarivi, but he had other people who liked him. They had just met. She had just met the world. She liked it, but it was too strange. For creatures who are only alert when something is out of the norm, this experience was like torture for Releah. Her dreams were frantic and muddled, and when awake she couldn't stop looking at everything. She wanted to fade again; she had been on the cusp of it when the mageling Diana had pulled her into this body. And now there was no escape because humans didn't do that. And it wasn't worth it.

So though Releah wanted to understand emotions greatly, though it had puzzled her for thousands of years, she wasn't heartbroken that she didn't currently understand. She would let the topic drop, and maybe she would grow to understand by the end of her term in this body. The woman would not be heart broken if she didn't understand.

TO change the subject, she said, "Tell me about what it's like to swim!"

[Anonymous]

Sarivi bounced on his heels as Releah said that she saw, a childlike grin spreading over his face. He was rather overjoyed that he had actuallly managed to get the concept across on the first try! It wasn't like it was something very easy to understand if she didn't know what it was. Especially if the concept was totally foreign... Though she did seem really smart, so maybe that helped her catching on so quickly! Usually Sarivi had to puzzle over things a bit before he managed to actually get the things he hadn't been exposed to before.

Her next question caught him a little by surprise, making him blink at her for a moment before grinning again, "I guess you wouldn't know how to swim either, would you? Not much use for swimming while you're all made of air stuff."

Instead of launching into an answer, he paused for a moment, head tilting and eyes going vacant as he tried to think of a way to describe what swimming was like, especially for him... He had a feeling it was different for humans, stuck with just their arms and legs and no fins to actually make it fun. They seemed to have fun though, maybe it was because they had no comparisons.

"Swimming... It's... It's exhilarating." He finally said, eyes flickering back to her with a smile, "There's so much pure strength in being able to send myself shooting through the water, dodging around things, twisting my fins just a little bit to get what I want. It's probably somewhat like when you were air, only instead of being water we're often in a solid form. Totally weightless, as it were, and able to go pretty much anywhere" The sprite paused again before speaking, "It's different for humans, I'd imagine, but really swimming is just something that we learn from when we're little littles on up. To use our muscles right and twist our fins right for directioning. Actual swimming is pretty easy, just using our armfins and legfins to propell us thorugh the water, using them in different ways for different cadences and speeds..."

For a moment the boy glanced out at the ocean, "We could swim here... Maybe not the best place for you to start though, since there are some strong currents in this area. I would be able to pull you out easily, but I know humans can only spend so much time underwater since they don't have gills to breath it with like we do... Maybe if I find a river in this area... Or a lake or something! Those don't have currents! Is there a lake here?"