4.

Some tens of brights out, while the ranging was moving slow so as to allow members to hunt away from the gathering, Qi'tik was paid a visit. She heard, long before she saw, her visitor approaching. Mil'pek's speak was unlike any other in the pod, comprising strange tones and oddly clipped pulses. Coming up from below, appearing wraith-like in the deeper gloom, his pale form and the white scar that extended from his snout, over the top of his head and back almost as far as his dorsal fin was unmistakable, and even if he hadn't been speaking to himself as he was want to do, she would have recognised him instantly. Hearing him come, she had taken a some rapid breaths until she felt slightly giddy, then dived several lengths below the surface to wait.

Mil'pek swam up past where Qi'tik waited, cruising at a leisurely pace that she could maintain for a while without surfacing again for breath; a trick she had learned many years before when dealing with Mil'pek and his kind. Mil'pek took one breath at the surface, then dived down to cruise alongside Qi'tik, rolling through the customary spin as he did to show he was unarmed and meant no threat, continuing his informationless muttering. Qi'tik stayed silent, waiting for Mil'pek to speak first, as was polite. Eventually Mil'pek fell silent, and in the pause, Qi'tik heard the deep rumble of Bastions sounding to each other somewhere out of sight below, their speak modulated to a whisper so as to not deafen nearby members of the pod-shoal.

"Greetings, cousin," spoke Mil'pek. "A problem."

Such brevity of speak was typical of Mil'pek. The pod from which he came was not the same as that which Qi'tik was born and raised. His brethren had come from someplace far away generations before, back when the brine was foul and the line between life and death very fine indeed. At first, his pod, with a different language to hers, had caused consternation and conflict when it arrived. Escaping some cataclysm that left his pod with a deep and enduring mistrust of others, it had taken many seasons and false starts before the families were joined. It may never have happened at all, if not for a particular skill that Mil'pek and his kind possessed throughout the generations; they could converse freely with the Bastions, a feat that up till then, Q-tik's pod could only do through the use of sign and body language, and then only painfully slowly, with many misunderstandings. The joining had made the Nam'bia pod-shoal the greatest that had ever swam in the southern brine.

"With you Mil'pek, everything is a problem," Qi'tik replied with humour. "Why don't you tell me what it is, and I can, ah, breath more easily."

Mil'pek half rolled a shrug, then said, "There is disagreement between the Bastions." His aspect betrayed a host of emotions; a vexation of spirit that Qi'tik had rarely seen in Mil'pek, who usually presented as a self that was infuriatingly confident and all-knowing. Never before had he seemed so uncertain and, Qi'tik realised with a chill of her heart, frightened.

Mil'pek moved closer and held himself still, a clear sign that what he had to say held deeper meaning. "They argue," he spake.

Qi'tik felt her chill grow a shade deeper. Could things be as bad as she feared?

"Show me."

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