Friza had made it to the water's edge a few days ago after commissioning a dragon carriage to take him to Soma Lae, the capitol city, so far as everyone in the desert nation of Aenhert was concerned. After arriving, he had spent a few nights before heading out north, following the river with no intent in mind. Why had he started going? Crippling boredom, perhaps? The Mer, native to forests and nature, looked as if he were displaced in the desert, even by a source of life-giving water. He had a bag full of dried and salted foods to keep him going, unless he wandered away from the river and grew hopelessly lost in the seemingly endless desert. He had never explored much, not like the nomads did, and could only track his life tree---the tree his soul was bound to, which grew with him and gave him life and health.

He had stopped for the cool night under a small outcropping of stone. The sky was growing dark, but not so dark it made the environment black---Ithis's two huge moons lit up the sky gently, and the billions of stars twinkled in their cosmic dusts. Friza crawled under the outcropping and found it had been dug out by something that didn't seem to be here anymore. He reached into his satchel and pulled an oil lantern out, lighting it carefully and setting it on a flat rock. His horns collected small, dry roots when he moved about, fixing the area to make a comfortable place to lie. The dirt was generally soft, mixed with sand and still warm from the sun's daylight rays. He was too tall to stand up straight, so he had to bend at the waist to rearrange his clothing---no more than a lightweight brown vest and a sarong around the waist, generally covering him well enough.

The river was beautiful. It flowed several feet below him and rushed in this particular area. The Mer, considered a nature sprite for their deep connection to nature and their ability over nature itself, smiled and closed his deep, dark blue-green eyes and listened to the water. Sometimes it splashed with the action of a fish splashing, or something jumping in. Absently, he reached into his bag and pulled out a smaller one, full of dried berries. He, like his kin, never ate meat or killed. It was wrong, in their eyes.

The land was a lot bigger than he had imagined. It seemed to stretch on forever, flat and sandy like the ocean floor. The sun burned brightly in the purple-blue sky, making him duck back under the waves to escape the heat. Maybe he should wait until night fell before he made the journey from his ocean home to the strange land mass known as the Surface. He drifted down the river a little, watching the shoals of silver fish dart past him.

It had taken him the best part of the day to swim up the Aen river, away from the Kisho ocean where he had been born. His flowing blue fins may look pretty, but they were powerful too. He found a small calm spot near the river bed and rested, digging into the grainy sand and looking for crabs to eat. He caught a few small eels, and a hermit crab, eating them to refill his energy. The creatures tasted nothing like the ocean fish he was used to eating.

He swam to the Surface again, watching as the sky slowly turned different shades of red and orange. He had always loved to watch sunsets, and being so close to the land made the experience even better. At the two moons started to rise and the tiny white lights turned on in the velvety black sky, Finn finally jumped from the water and landed on the river bank.

He focussed on the small amount of magic he had stored inside, until he felt his body start to change. Soon his fins had changed into legs and webbed feet. He stood shakily on his new legs and started to walk alongside the river. He was afraid he'd dry out and die before he could even meet someone.

As he walked, he realised that the land had become hard and started to slope. He was glad to see some change in the flat landscape, but struggled to walk up the hill. He dove back into the water, and right into a cleverly hidden net. Panic struck him and he struggled, becoming more and more tangled in the net. Stones had been tied to the corners, making it heavy and hard to escape. He had seen nets like these before, and knew that many a Nuzul had died in them.

That was why his kind hated Surface Dwellers. They found their nets and destroyed them, they sunk boats if they came close to their home and they drowned any swimmers they could get their hands on. Finn hated the way his kin treated them, and decided to run away. He had never learnt how to cut through a net like this one.

After trying to bite through the rope, he swam back to the surface with the last bit of his strength, and looked about wildly. "Help! Anyone?" He cried in his own language, which to others might sound like the screeching of a whale. "Help? Please!" he added in the other language, the one he had heard Land Dwellers spoke.

Friza loved it all. The way the water rushed, the way the moons shifted their bright silvery light onto the desert and showed the glowing eyes of the creatures that dwelled in their little burrows or hid under sand. He often missed his forest home, looking after his willow tree, communicating with the sweet, soft animals that called the forests home. But providing fresh food for herbivore dragons was a bit of a calling. He could cultivate what few could, sometimes what no one at all could, even his kin. It was what he was born to do, help others, look out for them, grow food for them. He wasn't the only Mer in that small town, Tafford, which linked to the capitol of Soma Lae, so he didn't feel terribly alone.

He slid out of the small cave-like area, watching the water slide by and splash. Silver ocean fish swam along, glittering in the moonlight. They would often come up the river, then get caught in the nets placed by Soma Lae fishermen. He sighed. Not everyone was stuck to a meatless diet like his kind were. He didn't mind that he was---in fact, all his teeth were flat, none built for chewing or tearing meat. But perhaps if no one ate meat, dangerous animals would be much more abundant. Friza liked to think of it like that.

He smiled, shifting back his layered hair and feeling his brown-black horns. They would grow even more eventually, because he was barely beyond a thousand years old. Now, they were only small things, up and away from his head, curled back and over his ears. He smiled. He had a long life ahead... Moving to turn back, Friza suddenly paused. A strange whalesong hit his ears, until it was more than obvious that the entrance to the river was far too small to accommodate a whale. He jumped out of his shelter, gasping and running forward at the sight of the creature flailing. A swimmer? No---his skin was too blue to be unnatural, and his hands... Friza ignored it and grabbed the net, hauling the being up and onto dry land. "Oh, by the Gods!" He cried, using his sharp nails to rip the net open. "Oh my, oh my, oh... Are you okay?" His voice was high with a combination of fear and worry for the stranger---a Nuzul? It had to be, but this one looked so human. He tore the net off, a difficult feat considering its masterful creation. "Oh, I hope you aren't hurt, these nets collect so many of your kind... Please don't be angry..." He grasped the Nuzul's wrists and hauled him up.

Someone had come to his rescue. He gasped for the air his kind were never supposed to be able to breathe as his rescuer pulled the net off him. He heard words spoken, soft but panicky. They were indeed spoken in the language of Surface Dwellers, a rare language for Nuzul's to know, but Finn had his ways of learning about forbidden things.

He spluttered again as he was pulled to his feet, brushing the rest of the net off him. He blinked and looked up at the person that had saved him. He had never seen anything like the being before in his life. He looked like seaweed, but the kind that grew in wild forests at the bottom of the ocean. "I... Th-Thank you," he said, hoping that he had grasped the language good enough. He couldn't stop staring up at the seaweed man. He was much taller than Finn too. He wondered if the other surface dwellers looked like this one. "I'm sorry, it was my fault... I didn't watch where I was swimming."

Friza breathed out with a sharp puff of air, relief filling him. "Thank Harri..." He sighed, referring to his kinds' god of good luck and chance. "It's okay, it's not your fault... Some nets are lost and forgotten because fishermen hide them so well... And it's dark, you couldn't have seen it... But Harri was looking out for you..." He stepped back, rearranging the cloth around his waist and studying the Nuzul. "So... amazing. I didn't know your kind could take on human forms." He grinned, tilting his head and studying the creature. Webbed hands and feet, obviously. And skin that looked as if it were an odd shade of blue, even under the changed lighting.

Shaking his head, Friza sighed. "Oh, I shouldn't gawk, I'm so so sorry. Look, come on now, how about you sit with me in my shelter? My name is Friza, by the way, it's such a pleasure to meet you." He grinned, offering a friendly hand. He couldn't help but stare a bit, however. He had seen Nuzul from a distance, but they were always finned, and scaled. Bright things, they shone in the light and liked to play tricks. Friza never looked to the ocean to swim, however, and always found it was so far away compared to lakes and ponds so frequent in the forests and grasslands.

Finn followed Friza back to his 'shelter', which turned out to be a dip in the ground under the rock. He laughed nervously, and sat near the river, not sure if he liked the idea of sleeping under something that could crush you. "My name is Finn," he said, trying not to gawk himself. "This is my first time on the land..."

He looked up at the sky he always enjoyed watching. Somehow he felt closer to it than ever before. "My kind can become amphibious, but we rarely have a reason to do so... I heard we used to live in lakes and ponds, but when threats developed on the land, we migrated to the ocean." An old legend. He wasn't sure if it was true. "Who's Harri?" he asked curiously. "And if you don't mind me asking, what are you? I've never met someone like you before."

He was feeling hyper, probably a mixture of thankfulness that he was alive and happiness that he had met a land dweller.

When he was settled by the lantern, Friza tiled his head at Finn, a curious name for a creature that, indeed, had fins. "Oh, you can come in. This stone is very, very sturdy." To prove it, Friza reached up and hit the stone a few times. It was simply a jutting out that had formed over time, perhaps when this place was entirely covered in water. He wondered what strange creatures lived right where he sat so long, long ago.

"Harri is my kind's god of luck and chance. Positivity and all that good feeling, as when the cards fall in your favor. And I'm a Mer. My kind are seen as spirits of the earth, connected in a way no other race can connect. Our souls---or at least part of our soul, is implanted in our mother tree, which gives us our life and health. As long as our tree is alive and well, we are. A bit of a complex life, I suppose, but..." He reached into his bag, revealing a small branch tied at the end with a soil bag. "This is a cutting of my tree. As long as I have it, the mother tree can die because a part of it lives. Though I'm still very young, this is a... something that few elders can even accomplish... I'm just a bit... talented I guess." He shrugged, and smiled.

"So, Finn, what are other Nuzul like? I've always been so... so curious about them... But I've never been able to actually speak to them!" He couldn't help but feel excited. Finally talking to one of the few races that seemed rather distant, and he knew Nuzuls tended to dislike general surface walkers.

So Friza was a Mer, a being of the earth. So he didn't look like seaweed, he looked like a tree, Finn corrected himself, though he had only ever seen logs and driftwood. "I've never seen a tree before," he commented as he looked at Friza's branch. Such an interesting life the Mer seemed to lead. "And your God sounds a bit like Resed. She loves to play tricks though, just like the other Nuzul." Most of Nuzuls didn't believe in the old legends about Gods. They only worshipped their mother - the ocean. It gave and took life, some days she slept peacefully and others...

"We... Well..." He supposed the Mer wouldn't have ever met a Nuzul before. They tended to stay in the ocean. "They don't like Surface Dwellers." He didn't want to talk about his kin. He wanted to learn about the Mer and any of the others that lived on the land. "Is it true that there are beings who are really tall and big and they live on things called muntans?"

He nodded. There was some kind of apprehension in Finn's voice when he spoke his his own kind. Maybe he didn't like them. He certainly didn't seem like them. He seemed to like the surface. Seemed to like Friza. "There are. Giants." He looked around as if he could see them from where they were. "They're more than twice as large as I am, and much, much stronger. They have dark skin, red, like the mountains they live by. They do live on the mountains, but never go so far up that they reach the colder weather... When you go high enough, it starts to get cold... icy... Everything seems frozen. But not like down here... Down here, the weather gets dry and hot... You might not want to get too far away from the river, if you don't want to feel... parched?"

He tilted his head at the Nuzul. In their amphibious form, did they need to stay so close to the water? He didn't want Finn to take any chances. Stranger though the creature was, Friza preferred to make friends fast, and already considered the creature whom he saved a rather good friend already. He was so very curious, and Friza loved to talk, and would do so forever if given the chance. "What's gotten you so interested in life up here, anyway?" He asked curiously.

Finn stared off into the distance, trying to imagine a place that was so high up, that it grew cold. He knew of ice, though had never seen it with his own eyes. There were Nuzuls that lived in the Dimashk ocean, a place covered entirely by ice. They were blubbery and hunted seal to keep themselves fat. He had only ever met one in his life, but he didn't stay in the tropical waters of Kisho for long.

"I think I have to stay near water..." he said, looking back towards the river feeling concerned. "Or I think I feel safer if I do..." He hated the idea of the desert and hoped he could go somewhere less dry. Maybe towards these mountains to see the red giants. "I've always wanted to explore the Surface," he replied, looking to the Mer and taking in his appearance again. It seemed Friza made friends easily and this suited Finn. He could finally learn more about the Surface, and safely with someone who had lived here all their lives.

Friza nodded slowly and carefully. Of course. "I get it. Safer where there's water because you basically live in it. But I'd be glad to bring you along the river! The capitol city isn't too far away... A half-night's walk. It's so beautiful there, and you'd see so many other people... Human, and Kel, and some Kiiri... They're very welcoming of others, as long as you don't cause trouble. And they have plenty of water---their city is built over a wide section of the river, actually. I'm sure you'd love it... And dragon-drawn carts pass through every day to transport water to other cities and towns and little villages... You could see a dragon for the first time... I help raise them." He was so excited... How could the prospect of a simple tour---or whatever it could be considered---send Friza into an energetic jitter?

"Oh, but it's best to go at night... The day gets so hot so far away from the ocean... And the city is so cool, with their big buildings that stay cool even when the heat of the day beats down... So many good inns... You could see what a bed feels like for the first time, or try surface food? Meet people..." Maybe he was getting ahead of himself. It would be such a culture shock for the Nuzul, but Friza could hardly talk sense into himself.

Finn couldn't help but to laugh at the eagerness Friza was showing. It did seem a little much, but he was also excited and keen to get going. "I know people eat fish, else why would they set those nets...?" The nets that took the lives of many of his kin. His father had been one to be caught in a net, savagely beaten and thrown back into the water to be eaten by the sharks. Or so the story went. Finn could never understand why someone would beat a Nuzul, unless the Nuzul started the attack first.

He stood up, his shimmering skin so like the scales he usually wore. He saw some scratches and scars on his arms and legs. The others had been so jealous of his good looks, they would tear at his fins to try and cripple him. The boys of his city were even worse, teasing him for not looking like a proper male Nuzul. But they didn't know about that up here. He couldn't wait to make a new life for himself on the surface.

"I must admit, being away from Mother for awhile might get some getting used to." He was talking about the Ocean Mother, of course. He knew that the Sky Father and Earth Mother were related, but he didn't know how the Earth Mother acted compared to the Ocean Mother... It both scared and excited him.

Friza stood when Finn did, stretching as much as he could in the smallish space and gathering his things, slinging the bag onto his shoulder and settling his sapling into a pocket on the outside, grabbing the lantern. "I'm sure you'll find being away from her a little easier as time goes on." He assured the Nuzul. "I know it can be difficult to leave something or someone you've been around your whole life. I found leaving my mother tree to be very... taxing. But she's with me no matter where I go!" He didn't refer to the sapling he carried with him all the time. It would eventually need to be planted as well, and continue his life cycle, but not until his mother tree died, many, many years in the future.

Stepping out with the lantern, he gazed at the sky. Such beauty there, unlike where life dwelled below it all. "I think you'll enjoy the city." He said, looking back down to Finn. "It's not too long a walk, really. And it'll be so nice to take it with someone to talk to..." He smiled, touching one of his horns absently. It would sometimes catch on low-hanging branches, but otherwise didn't cause him trouble. Friza had no idea what he would do without them, even. "What has you so interested in the surface? I feel like the ocean has so much more mystery..." Maybe it was because he couldn't get there. He wanted to see what was below that dark, shadowy water far, far away from dry land, where islands dotted the landscape and icy lands were drifting in eternal freeze.

Friza seemed to really be interested in him, but then again Finn was probably the first Nuzul to walk on land and talk freely with a Surface Dweller. "It's not that mysterious when you have lived in it for 20 years," he replied, waving a webbed hand at the comment. 20 years... So young for a Nuzul. He wondered how long Friza had been living for. "I've visited a few other oceans, but the tribes there aren't very welcoming... A lot of Nuzul don't like the Kisho tribe because we live near fresh water." Nuzuls liked to think that fresh water was bad for you. The Kisho were thought to be utterly insane for swimming up river.

"I just wanted to meet new people and see it for myself..."