It was the beginning of a new month. Like Ayumi and Deandra promised, they came to Black Elm to see all of us. Moira and I went with Izumi to pick the two women up at the port.

"Hey, guys! You look good!" Deandra greeted us as I helped her with the suitcases. "Especially you, Nardho. You've grown a bit taller since last year."

"You finally get to see him again and the first thing you commented on is his appearance?" Ayumi shook her head. "Ignore that goofball, kid. She's excited, that's all. So, what else is new?"

"I don't mind being complimented about my height," I smiled. "By the way, everyone is planning to go in a mini submarine at the end of this week. It would be wonderful if you can join too. Gibran and Risma already knew to expect some company."

"Awesome!" Ayumi beamed. "How could we possibly say no to that offer?"

"You'd be crazy to decline the invitation," Izumi chuckled. "It's not every day that we get to see the deeper part of the ocean!"

"Indeed," Moira gave her an approving nod. "I'll bring my sketchbook with me. I'm sure we'll cross paths with many new creatures native to this peninsula and I'd be happy to draw the most interesting ones."

"Oh, I'd be so happy to see more of your art!" Ayumi squealed. "I remember Lee showing me the pieces you painted for Vannie a while ago. You're good at realistic paintings."

"Speaking of art," Deandra interjected. "Check this out!" she rolled her left sleeve and showed me and the girls a tattoo on her arm. The tattoo was a compass with a cursive underneath it that read "Where your treasure is."

"Ooh, this looks like a type of tattoo that matches a significant other's!" I exclaimed. "Ayumi has the other half, I assume?"

"You bet!" Deandra nodded enthusiastically and Ayumi showed us her right arm, on which there was a tattoo of an anchor and a cursive that read "There your heart is also."

"A compass and an anchor do complement each other. Did you get those for your anniversary?" Izumi asked admiringly. "Maybe I should get matching tattoos with Hamza and Alex too."

"Ooh, my little niece has boyfriends!" Ayumi grinned and pinched Izumi's cheek.

"Auntie, stop, that hurts!" the girl pouted but her eyes sparkled gleefully. "Just one boyfriend. Alex is just my friend I happen to share a partner with."

"Fascinating," Deandra chimed in. "Nice to know Blue Orchid is becoming an even more progressive institution. I have some advice, though. Make sure you're dating because you love who you're with," she glanced at Moira and me before winking. "Don't just do it because you thought you ought to or because everyone else is coupling up."

"I promise you I'm learning to love Hamza for who he is," Izumi turned redder than the reddest Crimson Yeast. "He has been incredibly nice to me and I want to be good to him."

"So you're saying he flatters you and you feel inclined to flatter him back, is that it?" Ayumi smirked. "Don't toy with someone else's precious heart, mija."

"I'm not, Auntie. He is wonderful, you'll see when you finally meet him!" the girl blushed even more.

"As wonderful as Nardho?" Deandra asked with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

"Oy, don't drag me into this!" I protested. Moira burst into laughter and poor Izumi looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her whole.

"Okay, that's enough teasing, mi cariño." Ayumi stared at her beloved before smiling at me. "Let's get going to the bungalow."

----

The five of us reached the bungalow just in time for the briefing session about the submarine trip, led by Gibran and Risma. The professors had handed out booklets about how the submarine worked and everyone took turns reading the information it contained aloud and sharing their first impressions.

"This is impressive, alright!" Moira shouted excitedly. "Apparently, this particular mini submarine the professors had rented would be capable of taking us as deep as three thousands and fifty meters below the surface of the ocean. To put things into perspective, the first two hundred to three hundred meters would be where we could find swordfish and seals."

"Oh yeah, that's the sunlight zone, isn't it?" Izumi said and then turned to the next page of the booklet. "The booklet says right here that since the light of the sun could still warm up the water, at that depth scuba divers and swimmers could still explore around without being crushed by the water pressure. Beyond the four hundred meters mark would be where the shadowy twilight zone or mesopelagic layer begins and we could expect to see a lot of bioluminescent organisms. This layer of the ocean was also home to the Kulambas, along with zooplanktons, microscopic microbes, and phytoplankton. I bet this layer is gorgeous."

"I have a question for Gibran!" Moira raised her hand. "Didn't you say during one of your lectures that the Kulambas can't swim very well as they have problems with buoyancy? How do they survive living in the mesopelagic layer?"

"Yeah, that has stumped me too!" came Hamza's voice from the back of the conference room. "Seahorses and dolphins both are only found in shallow water, right? Even if the two species get hybridized it still doesn't explain how the Kulambas moved away from the shallower ends."

"Hamza isn't wrong," Izumi spoke up. "But I do wonder if human intervention has somehow affected how the Kulambas evolved. Could the fact that they are hybrid species and not naturally occurring species mean their evolution was speedier than normal?"

"Good theory, Izumi, and one that many scientists have studied for years!" replied Gibran. "Humans have indeed been intervening with the progression of the Kulambas' ability to withstand extreme water pressure. This all started with overharvesting. Risma can explain more."

Risma took the projector controller from her colleague and showed the room a news excerpt about how overenthusiastic aquarists had forced the Kulambas to retreat deeper and deeper into the ocean. "Just like how necessity is the mother of invention, desperate circumstance calls for desperate measures and the Kulambas developed stronger fins as well as a unique respiratory system. In addition to gills, they now have lungs with enlarged blood vessels!" she marveled. "When they are closer to the surface of the water, they rely on their lungs as they inhale oxygens. When they go beyond the surface, the gills help them breathe. As you can imagine, Kulambas are highly adaptable."

"Wow, nature really knows how to adapt, improvise, and overcome!" I exchanged a look of bewilderment with Nardhia. "But this morphological evolution confuses me. Given their unique respiratory system, are Kulambas mammals or not? Since they have lungs but also gills, do they still need to come up for air? "

"The exact morphology might seem debatable but there actually is a definite answer," Risma laughed. "The consensus among xenobiologists is that they are pseudo-mammalians. True mammalians can't breathe underwater. Take whales, for example, who need nostrils to breathe. Whales have blowholes on top of their heads. When they sleep, they're partially awake and their brains are alert to control their breathing. Kulambas are different—even when they're asleep, their breathing is involuntary as they don't have to consciously control their central nervous system. This means Kulambas are blessed in that when they sleep their brains can truly rest."

"I swear Kulambas are magical!" Nardhia's eyes grew bigger than dinner plates. "I don't believe in magic, mind you," she quickly added, "but this information flabbergasted me. Risma, are Kulambas also amphibious? Can they temporarily leave the ocean and come to land like mudskippers, semi-aquatic eels, and snakehead fish?"

"They can," the professor said. "When on land they breathe through their skin. As long as their skin is wet or at least damp they are good to go. Kulambas are one hardy species."

"Is there anything the Kulambas can't do?" Moira asked rhetorically yet Gibran still answered her seriously. There was, in fact, something they couldn't do: breathing through their mouths. Gibran showed everyone X-ray of Kulambas neck before explaining that they had an anatomical idiosyncrasy in which their tracheas were not connected to their throats. This was a good thing because it meant the Kulambas had separate systems for breathing and eating, which minimized the possibility of their air passages blocked by any food remains that got trapped in their throats. Additionally, this allowed them to swallow their food underwater without swallowing too much water and taking it to their lungs.

The discussions that came out of this briefing session made me think a lot about the relationship between humans and the natural world. On one hand it was unfortunate that the aquarists overharvested the first batches of Kulambas but on the other hand this unintentionally caused the innocent animals to gain more features that benefit them in the long run. The way we as humans act would always alter the environment and in this case I was not sure if the alteration was necessarily a bad thing. I was glad the Kulambas gained traits useful for their own survival but I had to wonder if there could have been a way for them to naturally be endowed with such magnificent characteristics without having to endure trauma at the hands of thoughtless humans.

---

Once the briefing session ended, Hamza pulled Nardhia and me aside to talk with him and Alex about the progress of our fundraising effort for the ongoing construction of the Kulambas sanctuary. Alex wanted to know if Nardhia and I would be interested in writing a jingle we could use as a sort of an 'official anthem' to accompany the Kulambas-related content Hamza had curated for the various social media accounts Blue Orchid University had.

"Hamza has been hard at work improving the accessibility of the biochemistry and xenobiology departments' websites," Alex said. "He is ensuring our websites are compatible with the most widely used screen reader software blind and low vision visitors rely on. When visiting and navigating websites, blind people are disproportionately disadvantaged when the content isn't audible or when the content isn't convertible via synthesized voice over."

"Basically I'm transforming our websites to be more blind users friendly," Hamza nodded. "I'm testing and optimizing them both on mobile and desktop versions. All platforms need to be accessible. Coding takes time but I don't mind since I want my fellow blind peers to be able to access information about what has been going on with the Kulambas."

"I hope this question isn't offensive, but how is your experience with the website fundamentally different to that of sighted people?" I asked him. "I mean, I know that sighted people can just look at a whole webpage and quickly scan through page headings and graphics to get the gist of everything, but how do blind people do the same?"

"It can be a bit tougher," Hamza smiled sadly and Alex squeezed his hand. "You are right that sighted people grasp the information presented in a webpage in a holistic manner. Blind people who utilize screen readers have to 'read' the page in a linear fashion, one line at a time."

"So, does it mean you're primarily working to ensure the content of our websites make sense both linearly and holistically?" I was in awe of his tenacity and resourcefulness.

"It's very commendable that you use your familiarity with codes to help out those like you," Nardhia praised him and clapped her hands approvingly. "But how will my writing a jingle with Nardho be helpful in the context of this website management attempt?"

"We compared our websites to those of other universities and realized that most websites have background music enabled to improve interactivity," Hamza replied. "Alex agrees with me that there's no reason why Blue Orchid can't afford to also make our websites interactive."

"Wouldn't that be distracting to the screen reader users? I'm not sure how I'd be able to focus if I'm trying to read a website while music plays simultaneously. I'd be torn between wanting to hear the lyrics and wanting to be able to understand the website." Nardhia scratched her head.

"Valid concern, but no worries, I've thought about it," Hamza smiled again. "I'll write more codes so that our websites are automatically embedded with a function that allows blind readers to choose how loud the background music is or to have the video clips turned off until they are done reading the entirety of the webpage they are on."

"Such functionality exists? How neat!" I mused. "Teach me more, man, I'm all ears."

"I can help you install a screen reading App on your laptop so that you can see for yourselves what I mean," he chuckled. "In the meantime you and your sister can just worry about being the best songwriters you can be, okay? Alex can help too, I've seen his sound engineering skills. He's madly talented when it comes to arranging music."

"Yeah, it's gonna be exciting!" Alex gave me a thumb up. "You'll be on your guitar, Nardho, and I'll be on my violin. You play ukulele too, though, so maybe some parts of the jingle can have you playing solo and then the three of us can harmonize with Nardhia's vocal."

"Do you know how to operate the keyboard in a digital interface software?" I asked. "I'm thinking we can play around with adding drums and piano too if you're familiar with synthesizers."

"Yup, I've worked with such software before," Alex's eyes sparkled. "I'll assist you with the recording and the processing of audio outputs, leave it to me."