Juliassa walked to the weir carrying a pail of rockfish and a filet of raw gleebor chuck. The western sky was dark purple hemmed with dusky gold, while overhead stars gleamed between tall dissipating cumuli. The tide had peaked and was ebbing again. She could make out Sleekit's dark form, somewhat seal-like, somewhat dolphin-like, different from either, waiting by the stream's edge below the weir. He'd been fishing in the sea; his body had left a trail on the wet sand.
"Hail, Sleekit," she said. Her approximation of sullsit was practiced but inevitably crude. "How was the fishing?"
"For this season on an open coast, not too bad." He made the low, throaty, warbling sound she'd come to recognize as a sullsit chuckle. "I might have tried harder, but I knew you'd bring supper." He voiced an approximation of the Hrummean word for evening meal; among themselves, the sullsi didn't name their meals, eating when appetite and opportunity coincided.
Juliassa squatted down and dumped the rockfish on the damp sand beside the stream. Sleekit preferred fish to the chuck; eating red meat, he said, was closer to cannibalism than he preferred, though he accepted it cheerfully enough as a supplement.
With his long, rather human-like hands he rinsed the sand from a rockfish, then tucked it headfirst into his mouth, bit it in two, and swallowed it without chewing.
"What did you think of the big-ship man?" she asked curiously.
"Don't know enough to judge him as self-being. But know big-ship men killed two of the long ones without good cause. No warning, just . . ." he coughed sharply, a resonant sound, a second-hand imitation of a cannon shot. "Two dead. Lord of Ocean cannot be happy at that."
He rinsed and swallowed another rockfish, then another. Juliassa, squatting, watched without comment. She'd liked the foreigner, Elver. He was different, polite, and interesting looking. No, he was interesting, period, and handsome in a way. Especially his eyes! If his clothing looked peculiar, it was not uncomely, and he wore it well. They'd talked for a bit in the garden before supper, while Eltrienn and Zeenia, in the sitting room, caught each other up on their lives. Elver had seemed intelligent, thoughtful, and an odd mixture of ignorant and informed.
"What you think about?" Sleekit asked.
"The big-ship man."
The sullsi nodded, then rinsed and ate the last rockfish before speaking again. "Tonight I go from here," he said. "I am strong enough now, and my pack has stayed close by, waiting. They wish to go elsewhere where the fishing is better, and I would not delay them longer."
The heavy body heaved nearer then. The hand that reached and touched her shoulder was pebbly-rough, harsh textured, and smelled of fish. The sullsit eyes glinted obsidian, reflecting the lustrous jewel of Little Firtollio. "You saved me from death," he went on. "Of having to be born and grow up again, or maybe—" he chuckled. "Maybe from being hatched as a clam." His voice softened. "No one cares to die, I think, no sellsu. To lose identity. While there is hope of pleasure, the life one has is dear.
"Also, you became my friend, even learned to speak with me, a strange thing told of only in an old story. Now you have given us a new story to tell. I will tell it always with love, and it will be repeated far and wide as long as there are sullsi, for we travel far with the seasons."
His voice softened further. "I will always remember you."
Hot tears blurred Juliassa's eyes, and she began to sob, softly at first. Then emotion overwhelmed her, and crying hard, she hugged the thick round body. Sleekit said no word. Nor did she; she wasn't able to. And when she'd straightened, quieting somewhat, he silently turned and humped his way into the stream below the weir. For a moment his head was visible, moving down the current to the sea. Then he dived and was gone, but it seemed to her that he'd turned to look at her one last time before disappearing.
That brought another flood of tears, but briefer this time. Then, wet-eyed and distracted, she picked up her pail and the sandy filet and started for the house.
* * *
Soon after the sun had disappeared below the horizon, Brokols had walked down to sit on the bench beneath a sprawling, wind-molded evergreen and watch the western sky, vivid at first, its play of colors changing from minute to minute, losing intensity but not, for a time, beauty.
There'd still been considerable light when he'd seen the sellsu waddle from the gentle sea, then flop its way to the weir no more than eighty feet from where he sat. It hadn't noticed him though, apparently, motionless as he was, at least it showed no sign, and after a moment Brokols' attention had returned to the sunset.
The color display had dwindled nearly to nothing, and Brokols had been about to leave, when Juliassa walked by toward the stream, following along the tide's edge. It still was not yet fully night, and he stayed to watch and listen. Their words meant nothing to him, but as they went on, their tone changed, and it seemed to him he was witnessing a farewell. He saw the sellsu touch the girl, which startled Brokols and for a moment alarmed him. He did not recognize the first few sobs; the hiss of even this gentle surf obscured them. But he heard when she began to cry harder, and her grief wrung his heart.
Then the sellsu returned to the sea, and after a minute Brokols saw Juliassa start back along the beach, angling toward the landscaped grounds. He held still, scarcely breathing, not wanting her to see him, to know her grief had been witnessed. But this time her path took her closer. She was fifteen feet away when she noticed him and stopped.
"I'd been watching the sunset when you came by," he said quietly. "I grieve with you in your loss." It wasn't strictly true. What he'd felt was not loss, but heartfelt compassion for her own.
For a long moment she stood without moving or speaking, pale in her chemise. Then she stepped quickly to him, knelt and hugged him for just a second, kissing his cheek, and hurried away, all without speaking.
When she was gone, he remained seated awhile, still feeling the press of a young breast against his shoulder, the wetness of her tears on his temple.
And it seemed to him that no man before could ever have been so totally and suddenly in love as he was with this girl. This stranger. This descendant of pleasure droids.