History: Like many at High Cove she was born to the sea, shaped for it, and spent most of her life within it. Had she been in the water when Blue Mountain was destroyed all the way across the sea from their home, she would definitely have felt the massive churn of the waters - but 'it was a party please you have to come out!' ... She has never regretted a decision more than going to that stupid stupid party. She could have warned them all to run from the shore, instead she had to watch in terror as the water receeded by the entire length of the coral reef, exposing the beautiful colorful area - making everyone curious... And then rush back with a wall of water the height of the very cliffs they called home... Those who weren't immediately killed were swept out with the wave, herself included.

It took nearly a full year of recovery, she spent much time nursing her wounds, and thanking the High Ones that she'd only broken one arm and not 'everything'. Searching the water with her power, she found only more and more death and destruction. Human encampments had been pulled out miles away from their coastal roots, ships and boats from those harbors had been ruined and hundreds of human lives destroyed. It wasn't just elves, then, and while she still holds a little anger about the ones she'd seen... humans didn't really deserve this. So she spent a lot of her days moping, but also trying to coax the coral and wildlife below the waves into health too. It was her own collection (halfway unconscious, since they were just stuck in her now-wild hair) of corals that their shaper Coral was able to reset the inland Cove with it, growing the little polyps into healthy safe colonies again.

She still has nightmares of the party, she still won't agree to attend them now.

***

"You don't need to actually come out anywhere," Apogee said, sure that this sea-born elf would listen to Squall more closely due to their similar powers. But as time had gone by, Deeptide seemed to be a bit more friendly and open to chatting than she had been when they found her and brought her here. Her tribemates helped, there, though she seemed to blame them for - well, for 'something', Apogee hadn't really ever gotten the whole story from anyone about this specific legless elf.

Apogee's thoughts drifted back to her own youth spent at Twin Peaks Shimmering Falls holt, and her gut tightened. That one legless elf, beautiful but blind, lost forever in the ground quake that destroyed their home... If Deeptide sensed this memory from Bald Mountain's leader, perhaps she'd feel slightly better - even though it was a very sad memory indeed. One of loss and contemplation.

So Apogee did that, gently sending to the dark-skinned mer-elf with first a query, may I share a sad memory? and then, the memory of Strongmind, born without legs and half an arm, blind, but with a spirit and mind that were as broadly strong as a thousand-winter old evergreen. The sea elf's own green eyes widened, first because of the shock of seeing such a girl - not an injury, born that way? How? Recognition would never... And then, because of the deep adoration that Apogee and many others had had for her. Apogee had learned from Strongmind's lifemate Symbolmaker how to create the signs and hand signals that allowed them to begin communicating with the Humans in the area; symbols which they still used to this day, hundreds of seasons later.

Then ... memories of the loss. But even Apogee believed, correctly, that Strongmind, and to a degree even Symbolmaker, were 'with them', here at Bald Mountain. Their memories or bodies may have been gone, buried forever under an impossible fall of rocks. But their spirits, of hope and generosity ... they remained.

"That is why we welcome all," Apogee said, quietly, as the green-haired elfess bobbing in the shallow pool pondered this. "And why it would be good for all of us, you most of all perhaps, to have a companion."

"But how would I know where--" Deeptide began to speak, but the look of amusement on Apogee's once-somber face indicated that wasn't as much of a problem as she'd thought it might be.

"Come up through the Spout, we'll meet there when you're ready." Apogee gently bowed and bid the mer-elf come up to the mountain's central point? Hm. It was a good thing they had the rock and water shapers on hand.

That 'Spout' had been shaped more recently than most of the rest of the interior of this odd bare mount. Deeptide could see the peak from virtually anywhere in the lake she and others lived in, poking out with its tan dirt and short grass over the trees. Why had the trees stopped living on it? No one knew for sure, but that lent the place its name. This lake, now inhabited, had also been recently shaped. From a smaller pond into this massive inland lake, fit for many hands worth of elves and even dragons to reside in and around. But to make things more easily reached, those sea-worthy elves and smaller dragons in the water could sweep through tunnels from the closer edge of the lake, directly under the Mountain itself, and up a spiraled tube into a grotto within the mountain. Where that grotto had once fed the pond below from runoff and naturally occurring seepage, now held its pressure and somehow allowed easy transport between a hundred-height above ground, and a dozen-heights below water!

Even though she knew simply by running her webbed hand over the smooth rock surface that all of this was shaped by elf magic, Deeptide still marvelled a little at it. It was almost alive, almost like a heart with valves keeping blood moving but not backing up.

Wait, it was a heart - there was another entry, a slip-slide down through the bulk of the Mountain, which fed water to many of the interior chambers through smaller branches... It was a whole circulatory system! She would descend through that system once more, in a while. But for the moment...

The grotto, where the Spout let out, held not just a few elves, but... This slender, elf-length dragon! She knew it wasn't merely an eel or a sea-serpent, by the way its golden eyes looked directly at her own. Not a hatchling, but definitely far from grown, this kelp-shaded dragonet would have room to become as big as he liked, down below.

"W...where did he even come from?" Deeptide asked, and the dragonet answered.

Vallen Cove was where my egg hatched, he replied, his mental voice gently bobbing with his own tide of energy. This place is inland, but I still like it. This elf told me you might show me where I will be living?

Mutely nodding, Deeptide bit her lips together and smiled, hardly able to see with tears in her eyes. Though the dragonet wasn't bonded to her mind ... yet ... there would be time for that. She felt something true and strong within his mind and spirit, and she did as he asked. They went down the 'Slope', laughing and sensing the glee that this dragonet expressed as they did the quickest tour on record!

A rush of 'that's a dragon! wait that was Deeptide! oh hello! a splash for the glow-fungus thank you!' as they went by, a dozen or more chambers very briefly visible as they tumbled out of higher tubes and into still-descending pools. They arrived into a waterfall next to the main lake, not too deep, not too shallow. Fit for diving, apparently, because Apogee did so from a ledge that she'd raced down to herself.

What is his name? He didn't say to me. Apogee asked, as the newcomer explored his home.

He says it's Kelpfrond, Deeptide said, not even knowing how she could tell. She just knew. This would be a lovely life here, with a companion to make it worthwhile.