It was almost noon when Lìadan saw the Great Dragon cross the Sea-above. It soared over her, the blinding white trail of its tail cutting the blue in two. She would have expected a deafening roar, had she expected to ever witness such an impossible thing at all; there was just a strangely faint, faraway purr.
She was petrified. Had she been in the water, she would have dived straight down fast, sought the deepest crack in the reefs, and hid until her lungs burned with the need to breathe again. But she wasn't; she sat on a pale copper-green beach, the carved fortune-casting bones still in her cupped hands. It was as if she were held in a cupped hand, too -- as small and powerless as a captive tadpole, held out of the protective embrace of the sea, utterly vulnerable, utterly exposed.
Just like the Great Dragons from the depths-below, the Great Dragon from the Sea-above didn't even take notice of such an insignificant being as she. She watched it, breathtakingly slow in its descent toward the sea. Its scales glinted in the sun. She thought she could see fins on its flanks, but the Dragon wasn't using them to undulate in the currents; it held firm and steady, holding the perfect mid-leap curve.
The moment seemed timeless; but eventually the Great Dragon reached the Sea-under and disappeared. The spell of stillness broken, she arched up on her tail to see -- and perhaps there were waves there, amidst the smattering of reefs, white foam topping huge ripples that eventually smoothed down into the normal ebb and flow of the ocean.
Lìadan had never heard of a Great Dragon who didn't dwell exclusively in the deepest, darkest chasms. But here was one who seemed to think he was a flying fish. A strangled giggle escaped from her throat.
"What amuses you, child?"
"Ah--"
Lìadan had forgotten the shaman was even there. She looked up at the tanned face, and then lowered her eyes on her own cupped hands, reminded that she hadn't even cast the bones yet.
"Did you see...?"
"I am not yet so blind," the old woman replied, fanning her arthritis-knotted tail in a teasing flick. Lìadan hung her head, flustered, and wished her hair weren't so tightly braided, that she could hide behind it. It was just as old-gray as the shaman's, but Lìadan didn't feel half as wise.
She wanted to ask if it was true, if they had really seen, but the trail still hung overhead in slowly breaking stretches of white foam, and only fools and rude men asked a question twice. Lìadan had already received all the answer she would get.
Her hand tightened on the casting bones, and she made as if to throw, before she lost her nerve and wasted the moment; but the old shaman held up her hand to stop.
"...Wise Mother?"
"You wished for a sign to point your path, didn't you?" The old woman nodded once, with clear satisfaction. "A whole, live Dragon gives better signs than would a few pieces of a dead one."
"But it wasn't for me," Lìadan whispered.
Such a powerful omen... It couldn't have been. She was just a girl-child -- on the brink of her Huntress season, true, but no matter how she wished, she'd been born under the Matron's eye, to be a guardian of memory, a mediator, a teacher of children. She wasn't long-bodied, or especially hardy; and she was better with gathering plants than with hunting fish. She would likely be a drifting, solitary huntress only for a short time before her new pod found her and she became a wife -- if she managed not to drown or get eaten first.
"Of course it wasn't," the old woman replied placidly.
Lìadan's cheeks flushed and her long toes curled in mortification until the webbing pulled taut.
"The reasons of Great Dragons aren't for us to understand. They do not concern themselves with human affairs. They do whatever they wish to do, and go wherever they wish to go -- even if what they wish is to play flying fish."
Lìadan's mortification reached new heights, both for her presumption and her accidental broadcasting; but the old woman just nodded thoughtfully, as if having forgotten her silliness already.
"There is your answer, then."
Lìadan met the old shaman's eyes, voiceless, shocked.
She'd always been dutiful, helpful, never shirked her duties. The choice, she thought, had been between three currents, three mer-pods, three husbands. There was no going back to the path her old birth-pod followed.
"Go before the trail fades, child," the shaman advised gently. "See how far this current goes."
Lìadan deposited the bones into the gnarled hands, slow and reverent; and then she gave a beaming, slightly shaky smile, breathed in a lungful, and leaped for the waves licking the pale green sand. She pulled with her hands, tail coiling in the breakers, and then gave a last push and dived underneath.
Later, her husband and her pod would come first, as was proper; but it was her Huntress time, her selfish time, and perhaps it was appropriate to selfishly wish it would last a little while.