Various SP pieces: New friends in unexpected places

It had already been a full morning for Trellia and Eien, who had been talking her mentor's flippers off! The young phin had been talking about everything under the sun as the larger female was gently nudging her to keep Eien near the surface. Eien had started to show some improvement on her balance, keeping herself upright and even trying to beat her tail to drift up to the surface. They were in the shallower sections of the lagoon region, since there would be fewer aqrion or predators to disrupt the trial. Trellia had slipped off into thought as they slowly swam around 'I wonder if she has anything else on her mind...or is it all questions about what rock that is?' Eien had suddenly gone quiet, much too quiet. The elder aqrion looks at her ward and discovers her staring at a rock that rests above the water. 

 

What Eien had been staring at became clear as a white body followed the black head looking into the water. A Black Headed Gull, ah. The bird had it's head tilted at them letting out a few short squawks of confusion. Eien had pushed her little self to the surface so her head was out of the water, Trell quickly swam under her to make sure she didn't drift down all of a sudden. "Eien! What are you doing? That's a seagull" Eien starts to make a series of screaming sounds back at the bird. The bird stares for a long moment before seeming to answer Eien. Trellia looks dumbfounded as her ward screams to her hearts content at the bird. 

 

Trellia carefully swims away, trying to see if Eien is actually keeping herself afloat. Sure enough the little phin is beating her tail to make sure she doesn't accidentally dump herself in the water mid scream. Before Trell can say anything the bird dives into the water after the small school of fish that Trellia keeps around, grabbing a few into its mouth. The older aqrion lets out a loud warning click and smacks the bird with her tail. The hit was dead on, sending the bird shooting toward the surface with a disgruntled squawking sound. 

 

Eien looks worried seeing her new friend be swatted, taking a second to get herself turned to check on the bird. The bird was currently flailing in the water, the hit threw it's senses off. Eien swam over slowly, Trell carefully watching. The young phin was quiet for once, concentrating on the challenge at hand. She carefully angled herself to be below the seagull, bringing her head up under it and holding it above the surface. The bird flops onto her head for a minute, breathing hard. Soon it gets up, fluffing it's feathers. The gull made no effort to get off of Eien, squawking gently and rubbing its beak on her. Trellia can nearly feel the..odd connection coming off the two.

 

After a few more minutes of Eien carefully dipping under to rehydrate herself and going back up to let the bird rest on her the gull took off once again. It flew up high and kept circling over Eien with lazy wing beats. Trellia shrugs off the encounter, turning to swim off. "Come on Eien, I want to see how well you can swim on your own." With an excited nod she follows her guide, unaware the gull was tagging along overhead. The young phin singer was doing pretty well in keeping herself steady in the water, clicking and chirping happily. She seems proud of herself for being able to keep up with Trellia..who's actually swimming quite slow, but isn't going to say anything just yet. 

 

As they arrived back to the kelp forest they were stopping in for the night they went up for some air. As they basked in the cool evening breeze something hit Trell in the face, making her jump. "What was that??" Eien looks to discover it was a dead fish, as she's about to ask how that got there one hit her. Trell happened to see a white shape circle over them..it looks like Eien made a companion. The elder starts to laugh as the bird calls to Eien and swoops down to land on her head once again. These two are going to be an interesting pair, that's for sure.