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Huarvaa had long since recovered from their brush with the deadly water by the time Iuinti-vay-or invited them to a celebration feast. These were usually held during a particularly exciting dignitary visit, and given that this dignitary was a phocid, the celebration was to be held within Huarvaa’s reach and not in top of the Spire itself, where they hadn’t a hope of climbing.

Huarvaa watched from their shallow haunt by the docks as the floating platform on which the guests would be received was unrolled over the sea. It seemed less robust than the pontoons but covered a much larger surface area, allowing landstriders to leap gracefully across it as though it were dry land. They ferried goods to and from the Spire store houses bored into the sides of the cliff, while the other end of the platform just continued to unroll further and further, covering such an area that a whole party of phocids could have easily gathered on it.

From underneath, the platform blocked out a huge rectangle of sunlight and threw the bottom into shadow. This attracted the night creatures, thinking that the sun had gone down too soon, and Huarvaa enjoyed an easy feast of their own in the cool shadows, curled up on the field of sea grass and cracking worm shells with their teeth.

It did not occur to them that they would ever be invited to the evening’s party, and had mostly been able to dismiss the hustle and bustle as some new Spire political business that had nothing to do with Huarvaa or those who worked around the docks.

But as they sat there, thoughtfully picking stringy black flesh out of a narrow tubular shell, there came a gentle buzz in their whiskers. Somebody, by the shore, was click-calling loudly for Huarvaa’s attention. Huarvaa huffed out a small stream of bubbles and considered simply swimming in the opposite direction.

The aquatic dockmaster probably just wanted Huarvaa to stay out of the way of the party, keeping them on land in one of the nursery pools where they wouldn't disturb anyone.

Unfortunately, enough people had seen Huarvaa under the huge platform, given their distinctive markings, and the aquatic rulekeeper’s clicks were getting louder. Until, eventually, the selkie appeared by the edge of the shadow.

“You, come up now,” the rulekeeper clicked, gesturing straight up at the platform itself. “Hurry.”

Huarvaa let their empty shells float away, then sighed and did as asked. They surfaced by the edge of the platform. From this angle, they saw the food urns being rolled out into place, the cushions and flat leaves, the bright green canopy cloth stretched over it all. Torches burned at each corner.

“Don’t worry I’m outta here,” Huarvaa said, before the rulekeeper could speak. “I know the rule by now.” They were fluent enough in Spire tongue to hold a conversation, but these words in particular had been some of the first they’d learned. And Huarvaa used them every day.

“That’s not it,” the rulekeeper said, their fur ruffled and spiked up in agitation even when dripping wet. “Iuinti-vay-or has invited you, did you not receive the invitation?”

“Invited?” Huarvaa’s relaxed voice grew unsure. After all this time, they were still unused to being included in anything, but this was particularly unusual. The thought that the ruler of the Spire had requested Huarvaa specifically, but to bring them into the fold, to include them, was almost inconceivable. Huarvaa had often thought of Iuinti-vay-or as nothing more than a tiny feathery All-bearer, and could not remotely imagine the All-bearer inviting Huarvaa to anything at all.

“Yes, big fella, you gotta be up there by the time Davide is over the cliff. Maybe bathe? You got a damp cloak, yeah?”

“Don’t think it’s damp anymore,” Huarvaa said, still internally reeling.

“Then make it damp. I ain’t your nurse, get going.”

Huarvaa dived, to make a swift sprint for their patch of beach. The grass fields flashed past underneath as they raced their shadow to the bore-hole at the cliff foot, where their precious few belongings sat. They had dug a trench between the hole and the water, so that they did not have to fully expose themself to air and gravity to reach their belongings. But now as they tugged out the damp cloak, beach mud squeezed in on all sides, and they belatedly remembered the request to bathe.

They tossed the somewhat crispy cloak into the clear water, then dived out again to find the tufa stone platforms around the corner of the cliff, where the aquatics could perch without having to lie on the bottom mud. The area was already quite busy, selkies and phocids scrubbing themselves on the humped platforms of rock that rose out of the mud like frozen bubbles. Huarvaa saw Kemi at one of them, chatting with another similar-looking phocid carefully braiding fresh new ferns into their hair.

As soon as a platform was freed up, Huarvaa dived for it. They bowled over a much smaller selkie heading for the same spot, clicked a faint apology, and laid out over the stone platform. The rough surface scratched itches as well as the beginnings of greenish build-up on their skin, which had begun to dilute their striking markings. In the much colder waters of their home village, this was never an issue.

Huarvaa took a handful of tufa pebbles and used them to scour over their body, while the segmented worms living among the rocks crawled up to pick off dead skin and any green scum Huarvaa had missed. The water buzzed with lively click conversations, some of which were a little too accented for them to decipher still.

A fight broke out by one of the nicer platforms, two young selkies tumbling head over tail while screaming obscenities at one another. It did little to dispel the relaxed and cheerful atmosphere. It was something Huarvaa always found incredible about the scuffles at the Spire: they never killed the mood. Back home, a slightly sharply spoken word could poison the atmosphere of an entire warm hall, leaving everyone present to sit and stew.

Their damp cloak had somewhat rehydrated by the time they were finished cleaning, though some of the crispier parts were likely not going to bounce back from desiccation. They fastened it to their collar and surfaced to check the time. The huge white moon, Davide, had just about touched the cliff, ready to sink beneath it. Huarvaa swam back to the big platform, hating the drag of the damp cloak around their neck.

At the dock that led out to the platform, there was enough space to get out of the water. Huarvaa dropped to the bottom, then surged up at full speed, breaching all but the very tip of their flukes. They came down onto the dock, making the old wood creak harshly, and found themself almost face to face with Iuinti-vay-or himself. The harpy had been perched on the edge of the platform, overseeing the provision of more refreshments.

“Ah, there you are,” Iuinti-vay-or said, beckoning with a lazy gesture. “You will be seated here. The royal delegation has great respect for leviathan hunters and they’re always fishing for new information about any hunts, so you may be able to satisfy them.”

Huarvaa stepped onto the platform. It dipped under their weight, but surprisingly did not crumple and fold like a floating piece of cloth. It held them, even as they committed their full body to it. Iuinti-vay-or had already moved on, a yellow blot among all the decorations, and Huarvaa had not been paying attention to where they were supposed to sit. They guessed the pile of cushions on the right and stretched out over them, their tail neatly curved around.

As someone who normally slept on a bed of soft mud, Huarvaa was a stranger to cushions and soft furnishings. They were supremely comfortable, easing the annoying pressure spots that developed any time they had to sit under gravity for any stretch of time. With the damp cloak a cool and wet blanket over their back and the afternoon heat fading to evening, it was very pleasant.

The other guests were arriving, now. Huarvaa recognised some of them - Kemi was there, wearing the colours of the medical craftclan, lying alongside the tiny green harpy Ikki-amv and another few medics. Huarvaa caught Kemi’s eye and smiled, shyly, unsure of the level of formality the occasion merited. Kemi smiled back, then ducked their head and nudged affectionately against Ikki-amv, moving him away from the pot of fermented fruit that had been placed in front of them.

Although there were plenty of harpies of all kinds, it was the few phocids who caught Huarvaa’s curious eye. They still had not met most of the Spire phocids, who tended to work further out at sea, pulling barges and rafts. Not many of those workers had been invited, leaving only the sea-craftclan leader, a very pale phocid with bulky shoulders, and two phocids who wore the colours of a craftclan Huarvaa didn’t yet recognise.

The chatter died down briefly, becoming more focused. Huarvaa glanced around, saw Davide dipping out of sight, and followed where everyone else was looking. A wet-dry raft had come to dock near the platform, pulled by two monstrously large scalefish in flashy harnesses. Most of the time it would remain underwater, it seemed, kept aloft in the water column by the air bubble in its interior. Now, the bubble had been inflated, making it float on the surface even with the weight of the royal delegation from the farthest point of the Eastern continent.

The royal phocids wore trailing black clothes dense with white embroidery. The underwater drag must have been immense, but, then again, they wouldn’t be swimming anywhere. There were two adult phocids and two smaller ones who were not full-grown, though to Huarvaa’s eyes all of them were a little undersized. The adults had densely speckled patterns, while the youngsters were more solid coloured, with large patches of lighter or darker grey instead of speckles. One of the children wore a veil over their face, which must surely have been incredibly obstructing of their whiskers.

The aquatic rulekeeper and Iuinti-vay-or greeted the party, making way for them to walk onto the platform. They seemed able enough on land, clearly not pelagic. Coastal people, though, as Huarvaa got a better look, they were surprised to see that these phocids were very long, even if their other dimensions were quite small. The largest adult was as long as Huarvaa themself, and their tail flukes were smooth and round, without a notch in the middle to divide it into two halves.

Tektei-var looked positively thrilled to be an interpreter for the party, though it seemed that the larger of the two adults, the elder, could speak Spire tongue easily enough. They travelled along the line of guests to the largest bed of pillows at the head of the place settings, exchanging a few words with each guest.

“Ah! Spiral villager, it is an honour,” they said, as they drew level with Huarvaa. “Some of my favourite drinking bowls are carved sipho scales from the Ii!wal region. Excellent, I will have to ask you about it later. You are?”

Huarvaa was completely underprepared for this endeavour, but was in such a state of ignorance that they didn’t know what they didn’t know. They had nothing to fall back on but friendliness and charm, and they’d developed that in spades.

“Call me Huar!aa, or Huarvaa in Spire-speak. Love the raft, so convenient. You ever swim anywhere, or you just ride around in that all day?”

They caught a glimpse of Tektei-var looking like he was about to faint over the royal phocid’s shoulder. There was a short silence, as the speckly grey guest seemed to chew over Huarvaa’s words, before finally they snorted with laughter.

“No need to sim, of course. Yakua, come. Your place is here.” The royal phocid gestured back at one of the smaller ones, the one without the veil. They came over, glancing up at Huarvaa, and sat down in the empty space beside them. The adult moved on.

“Hey, well,” Huarvaa said, before the adult had cleared their area, “what’s your name?”

Tektei-var looked like he wanted to wring Huarvaa’s neck. Even the aquatic rulemaster looked faintly annoyed.

The royal phocid had been able to handle what they had taken for a joke on Huarvaa’s part, but now looked mildly irritated. “Aarmala,” they said, then moved swiftly on.

Yakua snorted and flopped down on the cushions, making the platform rock a little. “You talked back to my all-sire,” they said, as if this needed pointing out.

“Yeah. What’s it to you?”

“You’re not allowed to.”

“Says who?” Huarvaa plucked a fermented berry from the urn and tossed it high enough to catch in their mouth. “So what’s an all-sire? I thought they was royal. Whatever that means.”

Yakua looked scandalised, but fascinated nonetheless. “Aarmala birthed me. Royal is when you are born like that. It is in my bones.” They spoke with a strong, unfamiliar accent, clearly less accustomed to Spire tongue than their all-sire, but pretty coherent nonetheless.

Aarmala had reached their pile of pillows, finally, and now addressed the whole party. “Greetings from Waela-an! I am Aarmala, bones of the hall. We enjoy a wonderful trade relationship with Spire and I try to visit whenever I can, you are always so welcoming.”

Iuinti-vay-or now stood up to give his own speech, and then the rulekeeper said something, too, and Huarvaa had stopped paying attention because the lids had come off the pots of food and revealed piles of sipho nymphs baked to a crisp, on top of folded parcels of worm meat wrapped in thick green weeds. At the bottom of this was an immense serving of scalefish meat, bleached a ghostly white by the pickling process. Fruits had been strewn throughout, as well as some frozen coils of Spire sap.

“This is one of my favourites,” Yakua said, using an eating stick to pull a spiral of sap out of their pot. “We invented this at Waela-an. Do they have sap in the pelagic villages?”

Huarvaa didn’t bother to respond until they had finished savouring their mouthful of food. It was miracle enough any time they ate something that was properly cooked, or cooked at all, so to have actual fancy food was an incredible treat. After chewing thoughtfully for a good few seconds, they swallowed and said, “What’s sap?”

“This,” Yakua said, pointing again at the cloudy greenish cone. “It comes from inside a tree.”

“What’s a tree?” said Huarvaa, who knew very well what a tree was.

Yakua looked a bit put out, but seemed to take it upon themself to explain, in great detail, what kinds of plants one might encounter on land.

“-and my bearer says that there are phocids in West who can climb trees, too, they saw them. So the trees must be very big and strong there.”

“In West? I never seen giant trees in the Spiral.”

“Well, the Spiral is not all of West.”

“Guess so. So Aarmala is your bearer? What about veil-face over there?”

Yakua glanced across at the veiled phocid. “That is Takati. They will be the new royal all-sire, like Aarmala. We see their face when Aarmala is passed on. Seeing it before is bad luck.”

“Right. How they get to be next in line?” Again, Huarvaa made good and sure that they were paying more heed to the delicious food than the conversation.

“You really know nothing!” Yakua exclaimed in apparent disgust. “Takati is born from Aarmala and Aarmala’s chosen consort. I am only born from Aarmala and a lesser consort.”

Huarvaa actually had to pause to consider this. It was an alien concept; that someone might be linked to their birth-giver in such a way. “Well, who chose Aarmala?”

“Aarmala’s all-sire,” Yakua said.

“And them?”

“Their all-sire!”

“Be calm, don’t shred your ferns. You gonna eat that?” Huarvaa pointed their eating prong at Yakua’s almost untouched pot. Yakua’s lip curled, revealing sharp white fangs, and they tugged the pot closer to their body, between the guarding embrace of their arms.

“Are you really a leviathan killer?” Yakua muttered.

Huarvaa still was not confident in their ability to lie in Spire tongue. Instead, they used their eating prong to hook the edge of the damp cloak, tugging it aside. There was no direct sun under the canopy, anyway, and the sunset was not strong enough to cause any burns. Under the damp cloak was the gouged mass of scar tissue, which was the first thing that seemed to truly impress Yakua.

“What kind of leviathan? How big?” Yakua demanded. “How did it do that?”

“What’s it worth to you?”

“Wh-“

Huarvaa pointed at Yakua’s food. The younger phocid seethed visibly for a moment, their tail lashing against the pillows, then they shoved the pot across. Huarvaa accepted it greedily and made short work of the leftovers, leaving Yakua in a state of tense anticipation. Finally, Huarvaa raised their head and the pot with it, to tip out the remainders into their mouth.

“Giant sipho,” Huarvaa mumbled, crunching down on sap. “The scales are sharp. It hit me and cut.”

“Did you kill it?”

“Dunno.”

Yakua continued to pester, but Huarvaa was impenetrable. They didn’t dare make their story any more elaborate than that; as far as everyone knew, the sipho they had fought had escaped, with Huarvaa’s spear-point stuck in it. Which was the truth. Huarvaa’s framing, however, liked to imply that there had been any sort of purposeful fighting about it at all, when in reality themself and the leviathan had collided by chance.

When Huarvaa was not forthcoming, Yakua finally snapped. They raised their voice, louder than Huarvaa expected a phocid to be able to shout, and called for Aarmala.

“Aarmala!” They went on in their own tongue, clearly complaining about Huarvaa. Aarmala’s gaze fell on Huarvaa, conveying a clear unspoken demand for Huarvaa to just do whatever Yakua wanted of them. It was very reminiscent of the old all-bearer back at Ii!wal.

Yakua turned, triumphantly, to face Huarvaa again.

“What?” Huarvaa said. “You’re not my all-bearer, or Iuinti-vay-or. Get out of my face, runt. If you want this back you can try to take it.”

Yakua’s shout had alerted the whole party, so when Huarvaa responded, everyone heard it. Huarvaa realised then, as Iuinti-vay-or’s feathers stood on end, that they had misjudged the situation.

One of the first adjustments to living at the Spire was the expectation to always fight if need be, and that these challenges and scuffles were critical to vent bad emotions and leave the combatants on better terms than before. It didn’t make much sense to Huarvaa, but they wanted to fit in, and to adopt a different way of thinking than the ill-formed rules they’d grown up with. But it looked like this was not a situation that called for open argument and fights.

The rulekeeper dived off the edge of the platform, making scarcely a ripple in the water. They came up right beside Huarvaa seconds later, with their fan of whiskers in bristling agitation.

“Iuinti-vay-or asks you to retire early,” the rulekeeper said. “Come.”

Huarvaa shook out the last of the food from Yakua’s pot and turned to enter the water. The muffled conversation from the platform faded fast, as they followed the rulekeeper to a spot under the docks, where more workers for the party lay in wait, playing with gamepieces on the substrate.

“That royal didn’t like you,” the rulekeeper clicked by way of explanation.

“I didn’t like them,” Huarvaa said.

The rulekeeper didn’t look particularly shocked. “You’re not important enough for that to matter—you're only their entertainment for the evening. Go home.”

Back by Huarvaa’s little bore hole at the beach, close to the tufa stones, they found the first wave of an afterparty. Phocids who had not been invited, or who had left the celebration early, were dropping off their damp cloaks, their voices carrying a meandering, inebriated quality. Two of the dock workers swept past, loudly chattering about some celebration around the side of the cliff. Huarvaa tossed the damp cloak in the direction of the bore hole and bumped into Kemi, who seemed to be doing the same.

“Never have I wanted to laugh so much,” they clicked at Huarvaa, as the last few rays of sunlight pierced the water by their side. Kemi drifted alongside Huarvaa, bumping companionably.

Huarvaa regretted that the Spire tongue had such broad clicks. It was difficult to express finer thoughts when one click might mean many different things, and not all of them were obvious. But they thought they understood what Kemi meant, and grinned.

Luckily, Kemi knew enough Spiral speak that Huarvaa didn’t have to dumb down their own clicks in response, and could lash away into a barrage of thoughts, confident that Kemi would understand most of them.

“What is going on with those people? That Yakua brat acting better than everyone else, and that strange shit with their sires, like it makes you special to be—to be what they are.” Huarvaa stuttered for a split second, realising that there was no word for ‘royal’ that they knew in Spiral speech. “Only good thing about any of that was the food, which was very good, but sitting next to that little shit would spoil anyone’s appetite. And Aarmala, what is so special about them! Telling me to leave - only my All-Bearer tells me to do shit. Those people are touched in the head, what a load of assholes. Iuinti is a dumb fuck for dealing with them, I thought he was better than that. Liked the fried sipho nymph, do you know who cooks those? I could eat more. Portions like for children.” All this was conveyed in a scattershot blast at Kemi, at the exact same speed as Kemi’s singular sentence.

Kemi just drifted there for a few moments, bars of light playing across their pale stripes. Around the corner of the cliff, past the tufa, an endless plain of water grass rippled and danced. Golden lights smeared through the water from the party platform in the distance. There were other phocids around, stretching out on the tufa or in the grass, relaxing together for the evening. Huarvaa had witnessed this before, following various social events, but had never dared assume they were invited.

Another few seconds, and it seemed that Kemi had finally worked through the storm of spiral clicks. “You are very talkative so suddenly,” they said, descending to the field of grass. It was long enough to almost hide them completely, until Huarvaa settled beside them on the bottom. “Those visitors are not as important as they think, but we get supplies from them. So Iuniti has to play nice and show them a good time. I think he liked you causing a scene, too.”

“You liked it?” Huarvaa asked. “If those people came to !Uamaa our warriors would chase them out again, nobody would respect somebody who did nothing all day but sit and boss everyone else around. Especially not that child, they have no experience to be making demands. Know-nothing runt. How you gonna teach anything when you have no knowledge?”