Wave Rider. That's what the rays call her. She has a human name too, but a fish given name is nearly as sacred as a life-bond. They gave him a name too: Land Squid. The rays do not have a word for "extinct" as the humans sometimes call him, and therefore sometimes call him Odd Squid instead. Being a fish himself, he prefers the names the humans gave him. Vishtunalli. Tuna.
He doesn't know much about humans, growing up on a volcano like he did, but it sounds regal. Worthy of a sea king. Since they discovered he is a fish, Aswang had begun to call him Tuna Fish. Plant Talker had simply calls him Squid or Tuna. One-Eye and Scissors must not know that he can understand them because they usually do not talk to him. Wave Rider keeps them busy, and they like being busy, but that means they only have passing glances or comments for a fish.
Tuna likes to at least say hello to them as they rush about. He doesn't use words much, but he always tries to smile at them. Humans don't usually understand his words, or the rays. They talk, and the humans often understand they desire to communicate the simple things, but not even Wave Rider can hold a conversation with them. Not yet.
He likes talking to her, though. He watches her as she lies awake late at night, watching him and watching the pictures on her wall. He tells her about what he hears the rays saying about her, about what he's heard and done around the island. She smiles at him and closes her eyes to sleep. He knows she doesn't understand him, but something between them is communicated.
When they'd first met, he'd seen her fighting the dragon bug and watched one of them drop. He'd been hoping it would be the dragon bug, but things turned out better for him. He'd seen the big humans on the islands, the ones that fought with big rock weapons and liked to laugh. He'd thought Wave Rider would be like them and was curious, so he'd snagged her out of the air. He was rewarded with a change of habitat. He doesn't like hot places. He can adapt, he can always adapt, but it's hard to move when you have skin as tough as rock.
He immediately felt a kinship between them and wanted to watch this small human. He liked learning about new things. Wave Rider taught him things right away, like where he'd been living was called a volcano and the big humans were the ones of abnormal size. He'd met plenty of small humans since. He'd wanted to call her Sky Rock, but his vocabulary wasn't very advanced and he soon learned she already had a fish name. He liked Wave Rider much better.
He liked Duck Girl too, but she'd stayed at the volcano island without volcanoes. He'd heard Duck Girl call it a "desert" and Fruit Spider sometimes spoke about her old home, but she didn't say much around bites. He likes Fruit Spider and being red, but he could do without the biting. It took a lot of work to adapt to her poison and doesn't like having to fix the tiny holes she leaves.
His brothers and sisters that had come along liked being away from the teeth lizards. There are lizards here too, but their teeth are small and their bodies tasty.
Plant Talker sometimes asks why he doesn't leave his pot, since he only looks like a plant. For his species it's rude to show your beak, even if it's to eat. It's why they have two mouths. The rays do not understand this custom, but the humans have a similar practice. Clothes, they call them. He doesn't understand why they chose to wear dead plants and animals, but if he didn't have tentacles to hold the dirt and rocks around his lower face, he'd probably do the same.
Parvati often gathers her children to assist her bond. They love Wave Rider. They like the travel. Tuna would like to travel on occasion too. He knows his time is coming. Wave Rider had promised to introduce him to the pictures on her wall. He'd never seen living pictures before and is excited by the possibility. Would they be papery thin like they are now, or would they be larger and strong like the trees? Walking trees would be amazing to meet. He can't wait.
Hand Talker enters Wave Rider's quarters, eyes passing over the pictures on the wall and silent fingers trailing over the quills on Wave Rider's desk. Finally, she comes to him and crouches. He smiles at her. He always likes this part. "Hey there, Squid," she says. "Do you want to come help me in the gardens?" Hand Talker's words are rare and given only to those she chooses to honor.
He nods. Hand Talker picks him up by the pot and rests it against her hip. She bounces him gently a few times the way he'd seen grown humans do with their hatchlings. "We'll go sit in the poison garden and then we'll go visit the others out on the beach. Does that sound good?" Tuna nods again.
He likes spending time with Hand Talker. Her company is as exclusive as her words and she tells the plants interesting things, things that even Wave Rider doesn't know. At least, he thinks she doesn't. Wave Rider keeps a lot of things to herself.
He thinks that's why she stays up so late after she's told the others she's going to sleep. Wave Rider gets very little sleep most nights. She's as restless on the island as Hand Talker is when she's away. He knows she sleeps while traveling. Aswang makes sure of that and the rays say she sleeps a lot, mostly because she works too hard. Wave Rider isn't the type to bury her tentacles in the soil or put down roots. She's happiest when she's moving, when she's busy. Days when she doesn't have anything to keep her busy turn into late nights of the watching.
And when she's away, Hand Talker doe the watching for her. She watches the ocean for Wave Rider's return and for Predators above and below the ocean. She watches the island and makes sure things go smoothly, even if the other humans don't know she's there. She looks after the hatchlings the most and listens in when "Goldilocks" talks to Wave Rider through the voice snails. She always looks sad when she's watching the small ones and never stays long. She always keeps a distance and tells the plants about hatchlings that didn't make it to the migration.
Today Suspicious Fish stood by Tuna. He looked down and asked what Wave Rider was really up to here using her human name. Tuna just grinned at him. There's no point answering what he already knows. He asked if Tuna could understand him and was answered with a nod.
He was using his fish speech, so Tuna could understand him especially well. He seemed frustrated that the squid didn't speak back, so it gave his hand a little nibble and adapted an extra slime coat before doing a little dance. Suspicious Fish seemed to calm down.
He kept talking then, saying that Wave Rider was probably going to get someone killed, maybe herself. Tuna doesn't quite get this. Wave Rider already died. She says so all the time. He was curious about her poisons. He even tried to open the door to her lab, but it was locked, as always. This made him angry too, even though he said it was a good thing that she was being safe about that at least.
Tuna grinned at him. Suspicious Fish is funny. He doesn't have anything to be angry about, but he's always looking for something. One-Eye made him join a "pottery class". It's where humanoids play with river mud and make shapes out of it. He just made a bunch of squares out of mud. Everyone else was making "dishes" and smaller humanoids.
Tuna took a bite out of one of the mud squares. His skin turned gray and his fins became very squishy. He made one into Wave Rider to show Suspicious Fish what One-Eye was wanting him to make. Tuna turned the other fin into a pot and then a bowl, just in case he wanted to try something easier first. He just grunted and kept making his squares.
Upright Shrimp talks to Tuna too sometimes. He likes the way the squid talks and Tuna likes adapting to him. His adaptions give him chitin plates that cover his body. He likes to pretend that he's one of the warriors in the stories Wave Rider tells the hatchlings. She and her friends from before seemed to get into a lot of fights, but they never wore any armor. Tuna shed a few plates, wondering if Wave Rider wanted to use them the next time she left, hoping it would make Aswang less anxious. She seemed excited about them, but she only gave them to Scissors and had Aswang cut a couple up for her to study. I stayed in to help her out, getting lots of compliments.
Suspicious Fish asked what Tuna did in the lab, so he bit him and showed him how his spines regrow. He doesn't seem to like Tuna's kind of work. He said something about secrets and unhelpful plants. Hand Talker would probably be sad to hear that. She grows all her plants to help the island. Maybe he means the weeds up on the cliffs, though they make pretty flowers that the hatchlings like.
He went on to ask Tuna if he thought Wave Rider was dangerous. The Odd Squid thought about it and how she handled those sea kings and nodded. This seemed to make Suspicious Fish happy, so Tuna grinned at him, which made him look confused.
Tuna nibbled at his legs, trying to ask why his species didn't find it shameful to show the extremities that poked out of their tailfin coverings. Wave Rider calls them feet and toes. Maybe it's the joints. Aswang doesn't seem to mind his feet tendrils being exposed either, but he's always wrapped up in his fins.
After not talking for a minute, Suspicious Fish asks the same question again, only adding "to the island" this time. Tuna shook his head. Wave Rider is dangerous to anything that threatens her territory, like Mother Kudra. She's a hunter. A predator. A coral snake. "To others then?" he asked. Tuna nodded vigorously. "What about fishmen?"
He had to think about that one. Waver Rider told them about some Fishmen that her crew beat, but she says she stayed in some kind of… barrel? Cabe in? She didn't fight them at all. And now she's friends with this guy's pod leader, but she could probably give them a run for their flowerpots. He cocked his head, not sure how to answer. Suspicious Fish sighed and walked off. Tuna saw him asking the rays questions too. He must be tired by now.
Wave Rider collected Tuna soon after and got Fruit Spider. She seemed excited, so he grinned expectantly as she carried him to her lab. He watched her as she prepares glass rectangle after glass rectangle. She calls them "slides", but there's nothing fun or slick about them besides the fact that they're see-through. He likes that about them. She doesn't feed him anything in a while, so he picks one of the glass rectangles up and adapts. Instantly his fins and body turn transparent. This makes Wave Rider laugh and he feels a warmth spread through him.
Wave Rider is so focused that she doesn't laugh often. Even with Aswang, her concern doesn't allow her to enjoy the little things. They're close, but rigid, like the glass rectangles when they're in their storage box. Sometimes Wave Rider laughs in her sleep and when she's looking up at the papers on her bedroom wall. He prefers those nights to the ones when she wakes up suddenly looking like she'd just climbed from the ocean. Glistening and damp.
Being able to make her laugh makes him feel included, even more so than being able to stay in her room and helping her with her experiments. He likes to help her make the children and patients laugh too. She likes it best when their smiles aren't adaptations to make them blend in or make chances of survival better. Just like Tuna and his species, they don't have to hide themselves here. He hopes Wave Rider and Aswang know that they don't either. He thinks Wave Rider knows this, but some days he's not so sure.
She certainly isn't hiding now. She has a big smile on her face as she looks through the tube at the rectangles. Fruit Spider gives Wave Rider some of her venom and it gets put on the rectangles too.
Fruit Spider doesn't like the experiments as much. She just enjoys biting things. Back on the hot island, people would do everything they could to stay away from her species, so she only bit what wandered too close to her nest. Here she gets to bite something every day. Whether she's eating an insect or a lizard or giving venom to Wave Rider, she gets to sink her teeth into anything she wants, within reason. Tuna prefers it when she gives her Venom to Wave Rider.
After several long hours of growing excitement, Wave Rider laughs. She picks up Fruit Spider, allowing her to bite her knuckle as she ferries the spider to her hair. She then picks Tuna up by the side of his pot and begins to dance around her lab. "I think we've done it," she says joyfully. "I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you, Tuna." Tuna felt warm to the tips of his fins. This moment is his.