Snippet #2104806

The expression on Liryamm’s face turned to amazement. For one, he had been discovered on the beach by twin royalty, and for another, the princess spoke fluent Mer. It was a relief to him, but also, oddly, a burden. He would have to explain what had happened to him. As she asked him why he had been suicidal in that moment, he knew he would have to answer her. Her voice commanded the truth.

“I am amazed, Princess Ainra, that you speak the language of the Mer,” he replied to her, still stunned. “You can call me Liryamm. I come from the Mer... and used to be one.” He looked down wretchedly at his human legs. He thought them very ugly, like two knobbed trunks of a tree, and littered with tiny black hairs. The knees were the most unsightly part of all... rough and bald, like the top of a wrinkly walrus’ head.

“I have recently been wounded in my heart. But I can not speak of it now,” he added, nodding to her suggestion that he can talk about it after some rest. He tentatively took the hand she offered, but then he dropped it when he was startled by a woman calling in the distance, in another language.

“Good! Bring him in. I’ll meet ya at te gate,” the woman shouted to Nanji. She waved a moment from the balcony, and then disappeared as she made her way through the palace interior.

“Dafarzi...” Lir repeated the place she had told him. He looked worried again. “Is that part of the Kalgrist Empire?” The Mer had not much concerned themselves with the surface world, and so his knowledge of land geography was lacking.