Kisai

A bottle floats in the waves of the Sea of a Thousand Currents.

Kisai sits on the edge of one of the many piers of Flotsam Town, fishing line in hand, when she spots the bottle, shining opalescent in the midday sun. Stray bits of garbage floating in the water are not unusual around Flotsam Town. Things roll off the boardwalk all the time.

Seems this piece of garbage had been unnoticed until now. Kisai gets a strange, uneasy feeling from the bottle, though, and elects to ignore it. She's normally as gung-ho as the rest of them to work hard to keep the waters clean, but this bottle gives her a strange sense of anxiety, restless nervousness. Her scales itch at the thought of the bottle. She ignores its presence.

Not long after its arrival, Kisai feels anxious enough to decide to pack up her fishing gear early today and head elsewhere in town. Perhaps she'll visit Steelwing and get him drunk enough to complain about his cheating ex-wife again. He always tells the funniest stories about her antics, Kisai thinks.

As she makes her way down the boardwalk, she notices with disdain a ways down that she can still see the bottle, which is weird, as she's moved upstream from its initial landing point. She continues to ignore it, her anxiety over the bottle causing her to walk faster to Steelwing's shop .

She finds the old ridgeback counting the coins in his till. Seems he's closing up shop. Odd. It's much too early for that.

Steelwing looks up as she approaches, and gives her a wide grin. "Ey, Kisai! Fancy seeing you here. What's my favorite lady up to today?"

"Don't let Saphine catch you calling me that," Kisai retorted. That earned a laugh from Steelwing.

"What the ex doesn't know won't hurt her!" he roared.

"Sure," she smiled, chuckling with him. "So what's going on with you? Closing shop so early? It's barely three!"

"Eh, the ex-missus has me taking care of the kids tonight. She's got a hot date." Steelwing rolls his eyes. "Never mind that I have a shop to run. You'd think my life would stop revolving around her after the divorce!" He shook his head, lifting the till off the counter to lock it in the safe.

He grumbled to himself as he placed the money in the safe, a habit he's had for as long as Kisai has known him. Probably longer. "So I suppose drinks are off the table for tonight, then?"

Steelwing looked up at her, surprised. "Drinks are always on the table! I thought we'd been friends long enough for you to know that by now!" His bellowing laughter echoes in the empty corner store, the counter he was leaning on shaking slightly with its force. "They're teenagers, Kisai. They can handle being around a little booze. They, uh, just can't be left alone right now, on account of the whole--"

"--them burning down the town's celebratory goat this year?" Kisai finished for him.

"Uh, yeah... that." Steelwing scratched the base of his neck, embarrassed. "They're still on house arrest for the next 2 months for that one."

He span the lock on the safe as he shut it for the last time that day. "Shall we grab the booze on the way over?"

"You're the boss," Kisai responded. She followed Steelwing out the door, the latter complaining about some loud mouth customer he'd gotten earlier. Some kind of traveler, full of himself, who felt like he was entitled to bartering for every item he pulled off the shelf.

After debating which liquor store to stop at on the way over, they begin to walk along the boardwalk, when Steelwing stops her. "Ho! Hold on a sec."

"What is it?" she asks, raising an eye ridge at him as he reaches down below the dock.

He fishes out the bottle. The bottle almost glows in the hot sun's rays, glimmering with so many different colors, it could put a rainbow to shame. "You dropped this! Be more careful with your things, will you?" Steelwing holds the bottle out for her, smiling wide, thinking he's done her a favor. Both his expression, and his arm, drop a notch when he sees the dark expression on her face.

The air is still between them for a beat, as Steelwing tries to piece together whatever has gotten Kisai so worked up. "Is this... not yours?"

She scowls in return. "Apparently it is" she hisses, ripping the bottle from his grasp.

"Woah!" he jumps back a bit in shock from the sudden aggression. "Kisai, what's going on? Talk to me."

She does just the opposite, tearing the cap off the bottle in silence. As soon as it is removed, the anxious and nervous energy leaves her body--she stares at the bottle for a moment before realizing that itching feeling was coming from the bottle, not her own instincts. This doesn't provide her any comfort.

The bottle contains three things: 3 misshapen pearls, a piece of driftwood crudely carved into the shape of a skydancer hatchling, and a letter.

The letter reads:

Kisai reads the letter over three times, but is just as confused by the third read as she was the first. It's frustratingly vague, to say the least.

Steelwing clears his throat. "Is uh, everything all right?"

Kisai starts, her focus broken. She looks up at Steelwing, incredulous. "I have a sister, apparently."

Steelwing is stunned by her words for a second. "I thought--you said you didn't have any family?"

"Neither did I."

Slipping the note back into the bottle, Kisai turns around. "I'll have to join you for drinks another time." She ignores Steelwing as he protests, calling out to her, asking her to tell him what's going on. But she has more important matters to tend to right now.

It isn't long before she's home. She grabs a water proof bag, throwing some food and basic necessities into it. She doesn't think too much about what she's grabbing. All she knows is that she has to find the sender.

It's not like there's anything else she needs to tend to, anyways.

She takes the shortest back alleys to the shore again. She opens the bottle, makes sure the pearls are still safely tucked inside, and drops it into the waves below. True to the author's words, it floats against the currents, quickly making headway towards the Driftwood Drag.

Now this is interesting indeed, the guardian thinks.

Slinking into the waters, she follows the bottle, intent on meeting the sender face-to-face.