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sound that told her someone, or something, approached.
    Two grey shapes descended toward her from the surface, their long, muscular bodies moving effortlessly through the water faster than even a mer could swim. The dolphins raced around her in circles, teasing her with their superior agility. She smiled at them and made the signal that she was not amused at their joke. One of them nudged her and rolled to rub the length of his underside against her. This, she knew, was another joke, and a rather suggestive one. Dolphins could be aggressive if given any kind of encouragement, so she discouraged him with a firm pulse of sound that she knew would be just short of painful to his sensitive sonar.
    The two darted away, duly abashed, but returned with no hint of rancor. They never took anything personally, and never stayed angry long. To a dolphin, everything was either play, a joke, sex, or something to eat. She was rescued from further cetacean mirth by the arrival of the sleek mer scout, Chaser.
    Cynthia always marveled at the beautiful harmony of the mer body with its environment. Their upper torsos were slim and muscular, vaguely human above the waist save for the five gill slits along the lower ribs on each side and the prominent dorsal fin. At the hips, however, mer changed to all piscine. Their lower extremities were compressed laterally, with dorsal and ventral finlets running along the crests, ending in powerful tails. They swam like sharks rather than dolphins, lashing their bodies from side to side, their arms set at angles like pectoral fins.
    Chaser snapped to a stop before her and made a quick chopping motion with one webbed hand, then a circle, sending the dolphins up to patrol around them. Dolphins and mer were long-standing allies, though the relationship was far more than a simple domestication of an animal, like a dog or horse. Dolphins were the only air breathers that the mer truly trusted, Cynthia Flaxal included.
    *Greetings, Seamage Flaxal’s Heir,* he signed, welcoming her formally by sweeping his short spear in a wide arc, but also grinning with double rows of needle teeth. Chaser always used her correct title and addressed her respectfully. Others weren’t so polite.
    *Greetings, Chaser,* she signed back. *I need to converse with Trident Holder Broadtail. Is he in his home?*
    Cynthia had worked long and hard to master the mer language. They spoke using a complex sign and body language and some simple sounds, and they had writing, but there were distinct curiosities to their vocabulary. They did not give proper names to specific places; locations were inferred according to their distance and direction, or by some event or designation of purpose. Only the location “home,” meaning “place of birth,” had a specific meaning to the territorial mer, so Cynthia always started with that and hoped she was right. Otherwise, she had to decipher directions such as “Ten tail flips west from the elkhorn grove north of the outer reef of the seamount where the leviathan sleeps.” It took some getting used to.
    The organization of the mer society was just as confusing, but was slowly revealing itself through her study. “Trident Holder” was a literal translation for the office held by their most respected elder. Calling him a king or an emperor would not have been accurate, since the sociopolitical system of the mer, at least these mer, was nothing resembling a monarchy. Even after two years, Cynthia wasn’t sure she understood their means of choosing a ruler, or what powers that ruler had. The Trident Holder was a chief defender, speaker for the community, enforcer of laws, and war-leader, but he had no power to create new laws or make decisions for the community. Cynthia thought that this must be a difficult position to hold: all the responsibility of a leader, and none of the real power.
    Decision-making was a community function, though exactly how that worked, Cynthia was still unsure. The Trident Holder