Skade's Adventures: The Coral Graveyard

Word Count: 886

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“I think that the best way you as woldren could help is by digging out the dead coral.” offered Coral. “The soft corals break down on their own quickly, but hard coral will take far longer. It’s taking up space that new living coral could be using.”

“Makes sense to me.” Skade nodded in agreement. “But how can we tell if the coral is dead or not? I don’t want to accidentally dig out a healthy plant.”

“Coral structures are actually animals!” Coral happily shared. “Tiny little creatures called polyps that all live together. But I suppose that’s beyond the point. I’ll show you the field that I think it would be best to work on.”

The sea glider lead them into the ocean, using magic that in some way helped the two woldren breath and maneuver in the water. Skade and Thora were unaccustomed to swimming, and were both caught off guard by how the water interacted with their bodies. They expected that the water would log their fur and drag them to the ocean floor, but instead air bubbles got trapped in their double coats. If anything, it was difficult to stay under the water without tremendous effort.

Coral patiently waited for them to get their sea legs, happily darting about in the water while keeping an eye on the furred dragons. In time, Thora and Skade managed to get the hang of swimming and followed the sea glider deeper into the ocean. They would soon see the coral reefs they were sent to repair.

They were every bit as colorful and vibrant as Skade expected. It stretched an unimaginable distance in all directions. It didn’t take a keen eye to spot the multitude of fish swimming between the reefs. If he looked even closer, he could see shrimp and eels hiding between rocks.

“It used to be teeming with life.” Coral sighed. “We did our best on our own, but you can see why we needed help. It was a hit to our pride, but it was better to swallow that than to let the ecosystem die.”

Skade’s eyes drew wide and he shot a glance at Thora. She was clearly thinking the same as him. This was bad? Suddenly, the coral reefs lost their color. Some of them were in the process of being drained. Beyond them was a field of ghostly white reefs.

“It’s… beautiful.” Thora gasped under her breath.

“It is, in a way. But so dreadful.” Coral barely kept the emotion out of her voice. “The white coral is dead. That’s what needs to be dug up. Think you can do it?”

“That’s… a lot.” Thora observed. And she was right. The colorful reefs originally looked to stretch on forever, but the graveyard was several times larger than what they saw.

“You won’t be alone. And anything you do, no matter how small it may seem, will help a lot.” Coral encouraged.

“We’ll do it.” Skade confirmed with a determined nod. If anything like this happened to his homeland, he would want everyone to help.

Skade and Thora got to work, digging their large claws into the coral. He thought it would be easy enough, just tedious work. He had dug through hard ground in cold months before. Thora and Skade worked under the coral, trying to dig them out of the ground they rested on. The dead coral was jagged and scrapped at them, pulling out their fur and scratching at their exposed paw pads. Even if they managed to reach around the coral, the base that they rested on appeared to be porous rocks, and they were not going to dig through that without magic.

“Well that isn’t working.” Thora said, declaring an official end to their current tactic.

“Guess we need to tear up the coral itself.” Skade offered.

Skade was expecting the coral to be like a tough wood. Instead, it was like digging into stone. Stone that gave away with enough force or clawing away at the weaker structures, but stone nonetheless.

They had to take frequent breaks in between pulling apart the coral skeletons. By the end of the day, they cleared a patch that was about ten feet around. He should have felt accomplished. They had helped. Instead Skade could see the miles long stretch that still needed work and felt hopeless, like he might as well had done nothing.

He rested on the beach with Thora, drying off their fur next to a bonfire. He noticed her claws shaking and saw that her claws had been blunted almost down to her quicks. If she worked anymore tomorrow, she would certainly bust into those and bleed.

Skade looked at his own claws. They were cold, but he wasn’t throbbing and aching like Thora. Despite doing the same amount of work that she did and doing it no differently, his claws were almost intact. As he twisted his paw to observe his claws from different angles, the light of the bonfire danced along his claws in an natural way- like they were polished.

He barely caught that his claws were covered in a thick casing of ice before it melted away from the heat of the bonfire. Skade furrowed his brows and chalked it up to a case of an active imagination.