Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (read 50 shades of grey .TXT) 📕

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Chidi felt the gentle hand of Watawa upon her shoulder, his soft voice in her ear. “Come with us, child. And quickly . . . for the green waters sing his name . . . and soon he must heed the call, like all the rest long gone before.”

Chidi wasted no time in donning her hood as the other Nomads took Allambee’s body fully into their charge. Not knowing what lay in store for her beneath the Salt among the Nomads, Chidi found herself glancing back at Marisa and Bryant too.

“Go with him, Chidi . . .” Bryant whispered. “We ain’t going anywhere without you.”

Nodding in reply, Chidi briefly locked eyes with Marisa Bourgeois. Then, Watawa was nudging her onward toward the Salt before he dove in.

Chidi followed the Nomad shaman into the water. The Silkie changes swept over her the moment she struck the surface. Chidi embraced her seal form, despite the warning from her primal mind to flee all that gathered around her. A lone Silkie among a slew of Nomads in half-human and a swarming school of Hammerhead sharks too, Chidi comforted herself with the presence of Watawa and the sight of another face that she well remembered from her time ashore.

The Silent Hammer from the zoo . . . Chidi thought when Atsidi Darksnout took his fallen son’s broken body into his arms.

The Hammer chieftain cast his harsh, if broken gaze upon her briefly. Then, Atsidi Darksnout bore his son away for darker waters. A host of other warriors flanked them, and all with tails matching both the father and the son.

Chidi watched them vanish into the depths, uncertain of whether to go with them.

Watawa swam alongside her, then stirred her to follow after the others once more.

Chidi did, trailing the one-eyed shaman into the darkened depths and the Nomad infested waters where no Silkie would dare to swim otherwise.

18

GARRETT

Garrett tread water alongside his Nomad father, Cursion White Shadow, their Great White Shark tails cutting their own currents as they swept back and forth in tandem like a pair of pendulums keeping time together. Peering through the blurry ceiling that was the surface of the Salt, Garrett watched Watawa aiding what he assumed to be several of the boat crew members above. Coupled with the blurry surface, the night sky shielded their identities from him, but he gathered that all were working as one to ease the injured, Nomad brave into the water and then into the awaiting arms of Atsidi Darksnout and his Hammer warriors.

To Garrett’s mind, the Nomad boy looked dead already. The makeshift wrappings around his wounds were dark-stained, devoid of any original color that the cloth may once have held before it was wrapped around the ill-fated warrior.

Atsidi Darksnout took hold of his son, clutching the boy’s broken and shattered body in his sinewy arms, his eyes gleaming as the warriors of his tribe swarmed around him in protecting watch. No sooner than they turned to descend as a single unit, the water churned with a pair of others diving in.

Watawa was the first of them to shift, his human legs replaced by a Mako shark tail the moment he struck the water. The other diver was a seal with a design unlike Garrett had ever seen – the animal’s skin cream-colored with a gorgeous pattern that reminded him of swirling ribbons. He assumed the seal to be one of the Selkie boat crewmembers, but, with their human face shielded by their Salted form, he had no way of knowing the Ribbon Seal’s true identity.

The mere sight of the animal had him reflecting on his Silkie mother, Cristina, again. For a moment, he thought to convince himself that his mother had survived her own encounter with the Orcs in New Pearlaya. That she would have then coming searching for him too. Reality begged him to suffer the truth once more; that his mother was neither alive, nor did the seal swimming in front of him now have the same coat, or color, that his mother had worn. Mom was a Gray Seal, Garrett recalled, his mother’s Silkie skin paling in compare to the Ribbon Seal’s multi-colored and beautifully swirled design.

The Ribbon Seal before him also took no notice of Garrett, nor those swimming with him and Cursion. To his mind, the seal had eyes only for the injured boy in the arms of Atsidi Darksnout. When the Hammer chieftain and his warriors left the remaining Nomads behind, the only non-Hammers to follow were Watawa the Open Shell and the Ribbon Seal that he motioned to swim alongside him.

Cursion stirred too, then, reaching his arm around Garrett’s shoulders to embrace the healthy, living son at his side.

Even as his mind wished it were Tom Weaver, or Cristina, to hold him, Garrett relished the squeeze his blood father, Cursion, gave him all the same. What will happen to the boy? He asked.

Who can say? The high chieftain replied, squeezing Garrett’s shoulder once more before releasing him. But if the boy is truly the son of Silent Hammer, then I will pray for them both that he makes a recovery in full.

Garrett looked to the blurry boat above.

Where there had been three crewmembers helping Watawa to move the boy into the water, now Garrett saw only one remaining. By the height and size, Garrett estimated the person above to be a man, but he could not be certain. For a moment, Garrett considered venturing up to speak with the crewmember to learn of all that had happened before he and the other Nomads had arrived.

Garrett . . . Cursion called his attention. Come, my son.

Where are we going? Garrett asked, even as he followed his father in descending in the opposite direction of where Atsidi Darksnout and his Hammer warriors had gone. Shouldn’t we talk to the Selkies from the boat and find out what they know?

We will find out soon enough what they