DoA Trials: Strength 3 | Tatlitli, [Kuu], (Laverito)

"Oh, this is most wonderful. Yes, most wonderful indeed." Kuu fluttered about hither-thither, which was quite a sight to behold. The outcropping of fragile corals off to the right appeared positively dull in comparison to Kuu's vivid gradients. Kuu darted in, sneezed a touch more ice onto the hitch, and darted back out.

 

Tatlitli deliberately did not grunt. The broad aqrion was straining to haul the heavy burden ever upwards without revealing how heavy it really was. Although neither of her companions had half a chance of moving the thing, allowing the strain to show might attract additional, unnecessary, and unwanted praises. Tatlitli had no need to be told how strong she was. She knew, thank you. 

 

Kuu continued to flutter, keeping an eye or five on the clusters of ice that were keeping Tatlitli attached to the weathered hull of the sunken ship. Laverito's land-hopper know-how had been enough to jury-rig a sort of harness all over Tatlitli, and Kuu's magic was keeping the ship attached. 

 

"And you're quite certain they won't mind? Won't mind at all, no?" Kuu took a brief break from all the fluttering, to fret instead.

 

Tatlitli couldn't see Laverito at the moment. He was clinging to the ship like a four-limbed starfish, somewhere behind her. She continued to pull, slow and steady, while he reassured Kuu for the eighth time. "I told you, they'll thank you for this! You'll probably get sacrifices. Er, do you lot actually like those, or is all that princess-gobbling stuff made up?"

 

"A severely inaccurate effort to defame and decry our entire species, yes, quite. Terrible, most terrible."

 

"Oh," said Laverito. "Well, er, sorry about that. I didn't have a thing to do with any of it. Just saying."

 

Tatlitli felt one of the lines give, and paused in her efforts with a relieved slump, which she tried to pass off as mildly miffed. "Kuu, if you would..."

 

"Oh, oh, yes, of course, so sorry!" Kuu fluttered in, grabbed the trailing end of the line, and affixed it back to the ship with several layers of ice. After further reinforcing every other attachment, Kuu darted ahead, drifting over the rightward corals and acquiring a better overview of the situation. "Nearly there, most definitely nearly there now! Wonderful, just wonderful. Leftwards, Tatlitli, left of these rocky bits, yes, no need to bother with them."

 

Tatlitli began to pull once more, heeding Kuu's advice and canting off to the left, gradually but steadily leaving the delicate corals behind. Heave by ho, she pulled the wreck ever upwards and closer to the shoreline above. The water was far brighter in the warm bay than in the average kelp forest, and far warmer. Tatlitli did not have a great deal of appreciation for either of those facts, right now, but facts they were and she dealt with them in the same way she dealt with her heavy load; she simply pretended they were no problem at all.

 

"We're getting close to the surface. I guess I'd better go up and explain why a colossal sea beast is erupting from the depths. Y'know, mitigate the inevitable panic, and such."

 

"Are other land-hoppers truly so prone to panic?" Tatlitli had to ask.

 

"Oh yeah, panic and vengeful wrath. Can't count how many times I've had to dodge people fleeing from a fire."

 

"Start many fires, do you?"

 

Tatlitli had meant it as an offhand joke, but Laverito did not reply, and that was unusual. His manners were coarse, but he certainly had them, and by his own logic, ignoring something that could and would eat him was just a terrible plan.

 

Instead, Laverito swam past Tatlitli, with powerful kicking and thrashing of his long legs, as he called them. Tatlitli was a far faster swimmer, but not while laden down with the better part of a wrecked ship. Kuu darted forwards and shadowed the land-hopper for a moment, before leaving him to his mission of heralding the incoming sea monster, and coming back to retouch the icebound hitch. 

 

"Odd, most definitely odd. Land-dwe- er, land-hoppers, odd creatures, wouldn't you say?"

 

"I'd expect nothing less, in all honesty," Tatlitli grunted in reply. In a moment, her back had broken the surface, and Tatlitli found herself struggling with a problem she hadn't foreseen; she was heavy out of the water. Pulling her own body over the exposed sand was almost too much of a challenge, nevermind the ship she was trying to haul. And Kuu, with those fluttery fins, elected not to leave the water, which left the icy anchors unmaintained. Barely a few huffing, puffing heaves later, and Tatlitli felt them crack, and the lines went slack.

 

Laverito, unperturbed, and showing no sign of any faux pas Tatlitli may have committed, fearlessly hopped up onto her body and made short work of the ramshackle harness. "That'll be fine," he confidently opined. "Close enough to shore for them to worry about the rest. They've got their old legendary ancestral relic back now; they've got no business complaining about the details."

 

Tatlitli grunted in agreement. Squinting against the brightness of the sun, she beheld the many trappings of land-hoppers: the land-hoppers themselves gawking and strutting in their restrictive wrappings and hangings and billowings, trees like many strands of kelp tangled together at their middles, dwellings like tiny wooden caves propped up on stilts. None of that stuff interested Tatlitli in the least. She waited just long enough for Laverito to hop out of the way, before rolling back into the warm waters of the bay. She undulated ponderously, shaking off the sensation of being harnessed, and loosening up her well-worked muscles.

 

Kuu darted up, fluttering excitedly, "All finished? Wonderful! So nice to be rid of that eyesore. Absolutely atrocious ship design, and I've seen many a wreck, you know."

 

"I know," Tatlitli agreed, as she swam back down into the sensible sea, over the rocks and the corals, intent on finding some proper kelp. "But it may be a fool's errand to question the many oddities of land-hoppers."