Page 41 of Why Broken Wings Fray

“He is a friend.” Killian pointed at last to the dolphin who finally stopped having a hissy fit, coming to a quiet stop just ahead of the orcas. “He means us no harm.”

He meant the orca I was about to approach harm, but I didn’t want to offer that.

“Seriously, Urram?” I scoffed. “You’re jealous?”

Just like how he could in his avian form, Urram looked insulted at such a label being placed on him. “You are my caraid.”

“I’m allowed to have more than one,” I shot back, wondering how this conversation sounded on the one-sided end that Bryn and Killian were listening to. It was a strange sort of mercy when Raegan was around, at least he didn’t think I was completely insane.

“No, you are not.” Urram barked. “You need no other but me.”

“You are jealous!”

“Urram is jealous?” Killian chimed in, which was wholly not needed as Urram looked prepared to kill everything in sight.

“Look, are you going to offer me transport on your slimy back or should I go back to this one–”

Urram’s growl was undeniably that of a dragon’s.

I turned to Bryn with apologies in my eyes. “I think my dragon might set the entire sea on fire if I don’t bring him with me.”

“That’s a dragon?” Bryn, more experienced than me, managed to keep her mouth closed as her face revealed her shock.

“Yes. And he is a very jealous–”

“I am not.”

“–very jealous animal. He can come?”

She looked nervously to Urram, who looked more reptilian than fish as he glared at her. “I don’t plan on denying him.”

“Great,” I huffed, swimming my way towards Urram who had intentionally chosen to take the size of a dolphin bigger than the orcas.

Grinning to myself at my strange companion, I slipped over his back and squeezed at his sides with my legs.

“That hurts.”

“Ah, quit your whining you big softie,” I hummed, stroking at his silky-skin. “I don’t know how else to hold on.”

“I won’t let you fall, Little.”

A sweeter, more knowing smile took to my face as I tried my best to lay flat. “I know you won’t, Urram.”

20

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Choilltean had taken the dark-brown and the moody-green of a forest and given new meaning to both. Cluaineach had taken the bright-green of the grass, the blue of the sky, the yellow of the sun, and the spread of flowers and brought them to a place of brilliance indescribable.

But Uisge?

We dove deep into the water. By the time I saw anything other than the stretch of blue around me, I could only guess we were within the depths of the ocean itself. And it was there that the colours changed. They all resembled colours that I knew of the real world, back on the surface, but that would forever be dull in comparison to what ruled the ocean-bed around me.

Blue was no longer blue but some rich, powerful indigo-blue that was overwhelming in every sense of the word. Long gone was the soft, sky-blue that most looked into the water and saw. This was something else entirely.

Next was the bed itself, what I had always assumed would be somewhat sandy in both appearance and colour. I had never been so wrong. I wasn’t sure there was a colour to describe the levelled out bottom of the ocean that we approached, but if there was, I’d place it next to gold. It shimmered with magnificence, as if it was some sort of metal that had formed from the heavy pressure of the ocean over thousands upon thousands of years. It looked sharp and lethal to touch, yet stunning and awe-inspiring to look at as it reflected and refracted a thousand lights from a thousand different sources.

We had swam so deep into the water that I knew the light around us was not that of the sun high, high, high above us, but something else. Sure, there were the pixies that swam from place to place around us, each emitting their own soft, ethereal glow just as Bryn did, but the light that illuminated Uisge was different. And it came from many sources.