It took several brights for the gathering to organise itself into a ranging proper, and by the time the various shoals were joined in their right places, with lines of communication established, the darkness of the darks themselves had been lessened by the pale hood of J'leef rising high to shine down upon the surface, lighting the brine with silvery threads.

Like others in her pod-tribe, Qi'tik couldn't help but leap higher when J'leef showed herself so; the beauty of the wide horizon stirring something deep within her soul. It gave her a feeling that if she only leaped a little higher, she could leave the brine altogether and rise up into the light-flecked, ink-black nothing above.

The journey they would take to the northern brine was difficult to measure with anything like certainty. The pod-tribe had perhaps the best reckoning of time among the beings and selfs of the gathering, keeping note of the brights and darks and reckoning the count against their own lifetimes. It was thought that the journey would take a quarter year, give or take, depending on how quickly the slowest of their gathering could swim for such a prolonged period, and how readily available food would be on the journey. It was understood that some pod-shoal members wouldn't make it to their destination, either falling behind with exhaustion or injury; the ranging would not slow or stop. Unseen and unsaid, it was known the liners would feast on the weak or injured, keeping them satiated and so lessening the risk of the more enlightened among the ranging becoming a victim of the more aggressive and base.

An innate sense of place was common throughout all members of the gathering - many brine dwellers made long journeys alone or in pairs or in shoals to mating and spawning grounds far away, some travelling distances almost as vast as the journey they were now embarked upon. They were lucky in timing; most of the necessary members were still nearby or just returned from a long ranging themselves having followed their own instincts. So they knew, each of them, where they were, and so knew how far they had come. And in this journey they had something unique; a route given to them by the descendants of the outcasts of long ago, describing taste and temperature that would lead them all to a place far, far from home.

*

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."