The ocean raged against the high peaks of the land, spewing upward. Narumi had been trying to get onto that land for ages. Today, conditions were just right. The tumultuous ocean was in a rage, churning and turning. Massive high waves, almost tidal waves were beating against the sides again and again. One after another. What Narumi wanted more than anything was to get up to the land and look around. She was all by herself now, no parents, no nobody. And that meant that nobody could tell her no. She was an independent young woman and she could take care of herself. She was the determiner of her own destiny. And her destiny was to explore the land, the land which the people back in her village and her mother had forbade her to explore. None of them were here now after the attack by fisherman which had wiped out the village. Narumi had swum off alone, wandering the oceans for as long as she saw fit. It was a life of freedom. At last, she had come upon land and she was more determined than ever to get up and onto it. To see what terrestrial beings lived there. When the next massive wave arrived, she was ready. She rode along the wave like her whole body was a surfboard, flickering her tail to keep pace. It had all been orchestrated perfectly. Narumi arrived near the crest right as it reached its highest point. The wave was much higher than anticipated. It reached all the way to the top of the peaks. Seeing over the edge, Narumi swam upward with all her might and jumped right out of the breaking crest. She was airborne for a long time until gravity gradually kicking in to bring her trajectory back downward. The young mermaid landed flat on her face in the grass at the cliff's edge. The grass was soft, but the impact had knocked the wind out of her. There were no further injuries, fortunately.

Narumi rolled over onto her back, gasping and heaving in an attempt to suck in air. It felt like her lungs were turned inside out. Now, interestingly enough, she immediately wanted to go back in the water so she could use her gills instead. She lay there in pain, still gasping as she tried to obtain oxygen. The pain was slow to subside, but she was able to refill her lungs just a little bit at a time. It took maybe thirty minutes before she was able to get back her full lung capacity. Narumi had fallen into a meditative state during that time, her eyes closed. When she was sure that she had recovered, she sat up and immediately screamed at the top of her lungs. For the first thing she saw upon opening her eyes was not at all what she had been expecting to see. Her tail. Her fishtail, it was gone. Transformed. Something else was in its place, two things in fact. Two elongated appendages of some sort. The ends had fingers just like her hands did, although they were shorter. What was this? Were these... legs? Legs that she had grown on land. From a distance, Narumi had observed creatures moving about with such legs. She wondered if it was difficult at all to move in that way, as opposed to swimming. But now she had a chance to find the answer to her question. What was it like to move with legs on land? Was it harder than swimming? Did it feel more or less free?

"WEEE weee weeeeeeeeee!" came an animalistic calling sound from above her. She glanced up and looked at what appeared to be a monkey-goblin of some kind hanging from a tree overhead. It was pointing and shouting at her. A symphony of such calls were heard in the distance. It was calling others to their location. Narumi was immediately alarmed. What did this animal want with her?

She clumsily pushed herself up onto her new feet, crying out in pain as she fell over. Oh, to put pressure on her new feet felt like walking on knives. It hurt so bad! She would need to adapt to walking slowly. But she needed to get away now! So she dropped to her hands and knees and started to crawl. She crawled through brush and grass and dirt and even over rocks, scraping herself. Whatever these creatures were, they seemed to be after her. She could hear them coming. There had to be somewhere to hide from them. What did they want with her anyhow? Did they plan to eat her? Throw her out of their territory? Kill her or maim her? She had to escape from them, yet by crawling she was going at a snail's pace. She tried to get up on her feet again, and again fell over. It was so painful, but she had to try. Ack! Take one step. Stabbing pain. Take another step, more stabbing pain. Again, more pain. Eventually, she could take it no more and collapsed to her knees. At last, she regretted her decision to come on land. That was the very last thought that went through her mind as her consciousness faded and she passed out cold.

It had been months since Narumi had been rescued by a lone group of Wanderers on the Goner Seaboard. She had come to see the clan's matriarch, an elder woman who the mergirl had come to know as Grandma Giliadora, and the rest of the ten-person clan as family. None of them knew her secret yet, that she had come from the sea. In the few months she had known them, she had learned a great deal of their language, and she had also learned that they questioned the existence of her kind. Some believed the merfolk to be a myth, others claimed beyond a doubt that they had seen one in their lifetime. There appeared to be no absolute consensus on the matter.

But the topic of merfolk had only come up once or twice that Narumi recalled. She tried to avoid the topic, pretending that she did not understand the reference. Over the months, she traveled with the Wanderers north along the coast. The family group made a living by fishing and gathering land plants. While Narumi had primarily survived on fish and seaweed before, she had gained a new taste for the terrestrial plants and vegetables that made up the majority of the Wanderer diet. Having discovered in secret that her fins would regrow when submerged in water, she had pretended to have a phobia of the water so she was not expected to help with the fishing. Instead, she became a full-time gatherer, learning the names and properties of the different plants that populated Precaria.

For a few days, the Wanderers had been camping in a location referred to as Mer Cape. It was a great fishing spot, and Narumi certainly loved the taste of fresh fish, mussels, and crustaceans of all kinds. After a successful day of fishing and gathering, the family had sat down on the beach to a festive evening of feasting, dancing, and music-making. Narumi clapped her hands in time to the beat of the drums and flutes. It was still daylight when the world as they all knew it changed very abruptly. An enormous... thing appeared in the sky. The first man who spotted it, pointed it out to the rest of the clan, bringing the music and dancing to a sudden halt. Everybody gaped at the sight which none of their eyes before had ever seen. What was it? Was it dangerous? Should they run and hide?

Nobody seemed to know what to do at first. Not a word was spoken. Until some unidentified dots dropped out of the hovering sky object. Grandma Giliadora was the first to speak. "Everybody, run! We don't know what it is. We must hide! Get off the beach!" she cried, beckoning the lot of them to follow her. They left the bonfire burning bright, grabbing as many of their things as they could carry without properly packing them up first. Narumi was immediately frightened, so she followed the others in quick pursuit. The family disappeared into the forest, peeking out from the dense trees to observe just what it was that had arrived in their world from a safe distance.

Another Ellyrian roe buck had died mysteriously. The corpse lay all alone and with no obvious signs of injury in a small forest clearing. This one was even smaller and skinnier than most, which could either be a sign of immaturity or of ill health. It was hard to say from mere visual cues. Big, healthy game were becoming scarcer by the day, or so it seemed. Ziara's olfactory senses were of little help in determining the source of the creature's demise. Indeed, it had to be a radical new disease of some kind, but she could not identify it. It was almost as if the animal's spirit had just up and left the body for no earthly reason at all. The tigress stretched out one of her striped wings and used the tip to close the creature's lifeless eyes respectfully. "By Gaia's grace may you rest in peace. For reasons of caution, I cannot honor you with consumption of your flesh. Please forgive me and my kindred. If this has happened to you, we have failed to do the duties given us by the carnassial goddess," she spoke in an almost ceremonial chant. Ziara bowed her head woefully and turned northward to continue her patrol of the territory. She knew she was going to have to report the death to the local forest guardian, who was already troubled enough by a recent series of events that had begun to plague the woodland. Strange weather, disappearing game, and invasive vegetation, among other signs, pointed to trouble on the horizon. What was the source of these misfortunes and how could Ziara and the other forest keepers even hope to combat them? Ziara did not know, but she was willing to do whatever it took to find out.