The Magical Herd

You wander along the beach as before until you come to a region of water which seems to go into the forest itself. As you were not in the mood for a swim, you decided to take you chances with the trees. You push through the brush till you come out into a sort of lagoon. It was lovely, the water clear and surrounded in lush vegetation. It was also quite large. And it wasn't empty.

The handsome hippocampus stallion swims to the surface to inspect the visitor.

"Greetings. I am Daymar and welcome to our lagoon."

You must have had a strange look on you face for he slips under the water a moment to return with another.

"Hi, I'm Sharess. A lizquini pisces. Daymar is the resident pike."

You assumed that pisces and pike meant mare and stallion, while lizquini was their species name.

The pike speaks up with his deep voice, "We are both from the Lizquini Depths but we felt it to be too crowded there so we came here. And no, everybody seems to ask but no, we are not mates and are not planning to form a pod together. We're just friends since we were proals."

Sharess nods, "Yup, yup!" Then she looks around. "We musn't forgot Kaleel." She disappears under the water and returns with another pike.

The brightly coloured lizquini popped his head out of the water to see what was so interesting. He seemed rather fierce looking, but appearances were deceiving here.

"Why hello, nice to meet you, my name is Kaleel, I came only recently to this lagoon, just getting used to my new home you see, but I like it here, friendly companions, clean water, lots of food, very happy I am, yes!"

It came out rather quickly as one really long sentence. You wondered if he took a breath at any point during his greeting.

The other pisces just watched on bored. You blink. You hadn't even noticed her as she had drifted slowly over from the other side of the lagoon. She appeared to be studying you, coldly, without emotion.

Sharess broke the moment, "This is Mitra. We respect her greatly, she is very important." Turning to her she added, "We did not think you would be interested in the human." She sounded like a child apologizing to an adult.

Mitra tipped her head from one side, then to the other. Then she frowned and appeared about to say something when she changed her mind and sank beneath the water. The others looked worriedly between each other and sent glances towards you. Finally Kaleel laughed. The others stared at him.

"A fish tickled me!" he said between giggles.

You chat a while with the friendly Lizquini. Daymar seemed somewhat serious, though pleasant, while Sharess was without a doubt completely out of her mind, she was so hyper. It seemed impossible for her to stay still a moment and she'd dive under the water in mid-sentence, only to pop back up a few minutes later and continue where she left off. Kaleel didn't have time to dive underneath, he kept up a steady stream of chatter about just about anything. He didn't bring up the kitchen sink, but only because he wouldn't have known what one was. Mitra never resurfaced.

Name: Daymar
Gender: Pike
Parents: Wild
November 2000

Name: Kaleel
Gender: Pike
Parents: Wild
September 2001

Name: Mitral
Gender: Pisces
Parents: Wild
April 2002