Fish Eye looked up at her client, who roosted on a sea-rock. The waves broke below Fish, the turul’s enormous talon rested on the rock above her. The turul’s other talon held the half-eaten remnant of a small shark, and the great bird chewed on another mouthful of the morning’s meal. The Bitalian coast dusted the eastern horizon brown and green, and here and there, extending into the distance parallel to that coast, other sea-mounts and tiny little islands dotted the blue sea as the sun crossed the sky.
Above and overhead, stretching into infinity, spread a pellucid blue heaven of deepest summer, come a few days earlier than expected, searching, lost. Not that days or nights or time made sense out here. The only time that the sea held was ticked out by the half-broken metronome of the tides, the splashing of the waves, and the beating of her heart, in hypnotic half-harmony. Not a moment touched the water, while clouds hid from summer in their infinite skies.
The turul crouched between waves and that infinite sky.
Far below all of this vastness, on a rocky shelf between the turul's perch and the sea, Fish Eye sat, and worked at her own dinner. Well, with the sun middling-high in the eastern sky, it wasn't proper dinner-time yet. Call it 'second breakfast'. Fish couldn't eat a third of a shark in a single bite like Gyongyike could. George? Fish was still trying out the various methods at her disposal for thinking of her quest-companion.
Hercegnő Gyongyi was far too much of a beakful, and Gyongyike was almost as bad. But somehow, knowing her for a princess, 'George' was just too… familiar. And didn’t sit right on the great bird perched between heavens and sea.
And then there was that feeling again, the goddess behind her eyes.
"Auntie! You're back. Did you speak to the bats that called on you?"
I did as you asked, my priestess. I offered them what I could give them.
"They gave you quite a bit, didn't they?"
I can only offer what my nature allows me to offer, little fish. What would I have left for you, or mine, if I gave to those who are none of mine?
"Reciprocity is a thing, Auntie. Where would me and Hawk and Mom be if the ponies hadn't given us shelter when everygriff else disappeared into your depths?"
Hmm. I offered, he declined. Violently. Let us move on. Are you eating your fill, little fry?
Fish looked down at her shrinking heap of smelt. She could gobble up these little fish all day long, and as long as the pile of little blue-silver fish lasted, she would. It had felt a little uncivilized at first, just biting down on the living creatures, but after the third or fourth one, and that sensation of the aching hollow in her gut being filled, she'd gotten over herself. And today? After days of feasting like this?
Well, if it wasn't for that empty feeling that always reappeared an hour or two after a feeding...
Fish Eye ate another smelt, and wondered if they really were smelt. Were they still smelt when you moved to another ocean? Or sea?
"Auntie, what am I eating here?"
What a boring question, little fry. Atherina. A common snack fish in these waters.
"Well," Fish started, before popping another bite-sized morsel in her beak, and chewing. "Mmm, I can see why. Are we going to talk about why I need to be eating half the Inland Sea today?"
I have the same answer I have every morning, my priestess. You have been too far from the sea for too long. I need every salty measure you can pass through your little self, little fish. You are still too much of a fry. Eat more!
As she chewed, and held another 'atherina' in her right talon, Fish fingered a loose lock of her pink-streaked lavender mane. Her severe military mane-cut was growing out.
"Will I still have my mane, Auntie?"
You will see, little fish. Do you not remember your festival-days in the deep, in the seas under Mount Aris?
"It was a very long time ago, Auntie. I've been a bird for so long…"
Eat up, little fish, eat up.
Fish Eye choked down beakful after beakful of little blue-silver morsels, until she laid on her salt-encrusted rock shelf, bloated and listless. Above her, the great bird looked down, smug in her gastrointestinal superiority, her shark long since devoured.
"Are you feeling quite yourself, lance corporal?"
Fish's eye rolled upward at her client. Was she feeling herself? No, not really. "Call… me priestess, Princess." Yes. That was right. Not a time for intimate names. She was… "Names are important, titles, epithets. Names are how the world sees us, Princess. Titles are how they know us. My goddess is a goddess of names, as well as storms."
"Is that so? I have gotten used to this cursed crown, that keeps every bird I meet from knowing me for who and what I am."
Fish felt the goddess rising in her like her gorge. "The curse of Hera, who was once the mother of us all. Your curse by the child-lost mother, whose stolen get was taken by the wind-courts. You, the turul, who were the wing of the courts, who took infant Eurus from her divine mother and hid her among your highest, most secret peaks, were made monstrous as penance for your wind-blown sins until you worshiped the nameless Mother in mockery of your mothers-roosts. She did not even leave you the names or the aspects or the understanding in your crippled memory, only the Act itself."
"Is that… my mother never said. I never learned…" the great turul asked, looking faintly horrified.
"There is much that the mortal world has forgotten, of the sins of their foremothers," Fish's goddess said with Fish's mortal tongue and beak.
Fish herself laid limp, her torso spasming and her nethers aching. The magic of the sea was in her, and like drew to like, the waves below stretching unnaturally upwards along the sea-rock upon which she and her client roosted.
"The old gods were jealous, and without morals, little bird. Their sins wrapped around your ancestors' sins, until the braided wreath, gifted through time, fell in its turn upon your brow. I am now an old god in my own turning, little princess. And I have very little time to make things right for my hidden, frightened, broken childr-."
All Fish Eye's muscles locked at once, and the pain, the sudden, omni-present muscular pain escaped her beak like steam through a boiling kettle, cutting off the goddess's lecture.
She twitched on her rock, spasming again and again, trying and failing to find a posture that would ease that throbbing agony.
The Princess looked down from overhead, alarmed.
"Th-the essence of the sea, little t-turul, is change. The sea is nothing if it is not change."
And Fish Eye and her goddess screamed in two-part harmony, startling Lady George aloft for a brief, wide-eyed second.
By the time the turul had returned to her rock, the pain was more manageable, and Fish could give her goddess back her beak.
"And change… hurts."
The great bird, her eyes as large as full moons in the sky, stared down at them. No doubt terrified of the display.
"Let… me take over, now, Auntie," Fish Eye said, her attention inwards, probing for the return of those transient, alarming aches. And the goddess retreated, leaving a warm feeling of understanding, affection, and encouragement.
"Auntie has one myth for you, Princess," Fish Eye said of her own accord and inspiration. "This is the myth that keeps you and your people imprisoned, locked on what was it, Auntie? Their mountain? Chained like Prometheus on his rock, waiting for their own children to come and eat their livers?"
Something like that, child. You have it now. Bring it home. It's time for you both to come home, the goddess said, silently, in her inner-ear, just for her Fish.
"Let me sing you a different myth, Hercegnő Gyongyi, heir of the turul, lost princess of lost children, long-forgotten, hostage to the whims of the winds, and the jealousies of dying gods."
Fish got up off her rock, and, spreading her wings, dropped. After falling a few short feet, her wings caught the warming air, curving out into a spiral just over the thrashing waves. The tips of her feathers caught the twisted sun-warmed thermal, gyred in the heat-carved groove in the moist air around the seamount.
Fish Eye sang.
Amphitrite!
Terrible queen of the sea!
We sing, we fleeting fish, our love and fear of thee!
Child of Wisdom, child of Time,
From foam to abyss, dominion be thine.
Hear, O Goddess, thy priestess’s plea:
We call, petty mortals, in deference to thee!
From your inky waters all creatures were born,
And though from your bosom these children were torn,
As the river inexorably flows to the sea,
Our hopes and fears return inevitably to thee.
Fish Eye stooped from her rising spiral and struck, swiftly, at her wondering, wide-eyed audience. She cut a bloody furrow across the princess's brow, just below the turul's cursed coronet, and darted away before the startled bird could respond.
By blood and nail, I call thee, sister.
By beak and bone, I bind thee, sister.
The freedom of the winds constrains us.
The yoke of the depths shall relieve us.
The turul swayed, astonished, more surprised than harmed. Fish continued her flight, and banked into another tight, spiraling turn.
From the waters you rose; to the waters return.
Home to her arms as the tides against you turn
The tempest whipped up by ephemeral storm
May rage against earth and howl over blacked loam
May soar through the measureless mansions of air,
May hate and love without heart or soul or care.
But in time, when its transient fury is spent,
Shall settle again and in cool waters repent.
Fish Eye broke from her tight spiral, and rose into a hover, above the bleeding turul, whose blood dripped drop by drop into the disturbed waters below.
Your scansion and meter is lacking, my priestess. I am astonished that the audience has not gotten up and left in protest. Especially given that wound you have given her.
Fish squelched her impulse to snap at her patroness. It wasn’t her fault Aunt A’s full name didn’t scan in any proper meter! But Fish couldn't spare breath or words to react to her divine heckler while she was in the grasp of song. She felt the blood of the royal turul staining her talon, stinging, cooling, her own blood boiling in return. There was power in the blood, but only for so long...
Fish opened her beak again, and the song poured out of her once more.
Our storm, spent, flows liquid through the land,
We trickle at last over delta-watered sands.
Winding our way back to you, mother-waters,
Exhausted and weak, your prodigal daughters.
Take us back into your watery embrace,
Dark and deep is your infinite grace.
Oh, dearie me. Well, if all my priestesses were poets and singers, I suppose I'd be Apollo. Poor, poor Apollo.
Proud we rose, on thermals of conceit,
To conquer the heavens, out of our reach.
Roaring like thunder, lightning's white heat,
We charged their gates, without a breach.
Your storm-birds we flew, the skies to unseat,
But every battle cry was a failing screech.
Receding over the sands now we retreat,
Beating like your waves upon a stony beach.
And today we recoil, spent, in defeat,
Weary daughters your refuge, beseech.
Fish came, at last, to her talons, settling in front of her bloodied client, who was staring down at her. Fish could feel the last of the changes happening, the goddess's gift like a stone settling just above her most maidenly seat.
Amphitrite, adored All-Aunt!
Beloved crone, lay down your skein!
Bind us again by love's chain.
Let not our heartfelt prayers be in vain
Great with our race, thy womb to increase
Into that womb, take your humbled niece
As thou art ever-change, be our surcease
As the sea’s daughters return to thy peace.
And still, though in your waves be found
Nothing but rest, to cease, best then to drown
Expire, release, and in your bottomless womb
Sink forever, fall into silent, lightless tombs
If we, laid upon your loom, unraveled and torn,
Find no woven self, remade, to return, reborn!
The Priestess, pink-coated and with lavender and streaks of fuschia and salmon in her mane, looked up at Gyongyike, burning with inspiration in her blue eyes.
"Ok, I think that’ll do it. Gimme a sec, I'll be right back."
And the transported Priestess of Divine Amphitrite dived backwards off of the sea-mount without a glance, and fell into the raging sea. A fish's tail streaked in lavender and shades of pink broke the surface of the stilling sea, and was gone.
The Princess of the Turuls sat for many long minutes on her lonely sea-mount in that endless nearly-summer afternoon, gazing pensively into calm, mirror-surfaced waters, waiting for the sea’s niece to return from the deep.