[FULL KELS SERIES] When Ande wakes up on the bottom of the ocean with a fish's tail, she's not sure what she did wrong. Getting sacrificed by her island is a likely bet, but why---and why her---is a mystery.
Out of her depth in an unfamiliar world...
TW: This chapter contains a brief depiction of suicidality. If you need to stop reading or skip paragraphs at any time, you are (obviously) more than free to do so. Please look after yourself 🧡
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Neither Ande or I says anything to one another that night. If it's even night. I haven't slept since before the Seers appeared, and something tells me my mind wouldn't let me do so anyway. There's a new memory to relive for every shame I try to pack away, and I don't think I should be fighting them. There are too many, and I brought most of them upon myself. One in particular has taken form since the original beating, and in a lot of ways, it cuts deepest of all.
Sar told me before that I wasn't willing to truly to help my people. They were wrong. I feel like I can say that still. They were stressed, and I was pushing back against the work they were trying to dot. I have been trying to help my people. I've given a lot to that cause. Makeba told me last time we were with the Sandsingers that Ande was the third person I'd brought to them, thinking she was the Singer. I don't remember the other two, but the fact that those instances existed is enough to tell me how fixated I've been on this, no matter my state of mind.
I've found and befriended three people who I thought were the Singer, and braved the trip to the Sandsingers with them, only to be crushed the first two times. Ever since Ande started showing more promising signs, I've been to the Sandsingers and back with her twice, swum all the way to Rapal to try to find the prophecy, and then all the way here. That's not nothing, and I'm not going to discredit myself by saying so. It wasn't the only thing I knew how to do, but I made a decision that my time would be best spent focusing on the Singer, who would have the greatest impact on the islands and the sea.
I just wish with my whole heart that it hadn't been for nothing.
Sar's words stung so badly not because they were wrong, but because inside the wrongness was a fragment of truth. I wasn't friendly to them, and missed out on everything they knew as a result. Now I don't even know if they'll ever talk to me again. Their knowledge of the eel-Kel writing suddenly makes sense—not just learning the language itself, but having access to its best-preserved samples in the Ashianti palace. If Andalua attacked the giant clam demigod in the days of the Karu queen, meanwhile, we need any stories we can find about that. I've been thinking all along of using Sar as a guide to the Seers or a shark-Kel shield, but the knowledge they carry is so much more valuable.
Not to mention their position. As the true heir to the Ashianti nation, they'll know it inside and out, better than probably anyone else we're going to get our hands on. They'll know things about the Alliance. About the dangers of war in the surface waters. And that knowledge has dropped straight into our laps. Finding anyone else would require sneaking into Rapal again, or if the people we'd want there have fled, tracking them down and convincing them we're on their side.
They probably know all about Arcas, too. She's their cousin, after all. She's older—more than half again as much, if I'm correct in guessing that Sar is just older than me—so they'll have known her their entire life... or so I can assume. I don't actually know Arcas's relationship with the rest of the Ashianti royals. That information was irrelevant when I only cared about when the war would start, but it suddenly feels like a gaping hole in my understanding.
