[private] even though we are strange and exquisitely scarred

[Moira]

The light from the sun has long since faded, though hours ago it had illuminated this long and shallow canyon, as well as the seagrass meadow below that is nothing more than shifting shadow. The corals of Baltia have become as familiar to the nereid as those of Ischia had once been, but the novelty of their glowing beauty has yet to fade. The occasional luminescent shapes that sprout from the canyon sides as she swims past light her way, and she is grateful for their dim light.

When at last she sees a familiar red branching coral, its span as large as any above-water oak, the mare slows her swimming. She looks around, but it is not truly her eyes with which she searches. Instead, it is the water itself, and when she finds nothing unexpected, the white nereid turns and dives into the sea-grass, disappearing entirely.

Hidden by the waving greenery and a few boulders is the entrance to a geothermal vent. An ancient shift in the earth far below had caused a cave, which turned the blasting hot water into a weak trickle, diluted by the sea around it to little more than tepid.

In that tepid water, a few dozen feet into a rocky cavern, is the perfect place to leave an egg.

Moira does just that. She’ll return in a few months, just to check in, but she does not have high hopes.