Totoka River Help me do it myself

Szymon rarely ventured outside the bay territory; he was a Cairn, and tethered to the Sea as indelibly as the Leviathan himself. His duties as an aspiring Angler and Reefer kept him busy enough, and he found little reason to leave the golden sand and roiling sea Skellige had laid claim to — but the disappearance of Sharkbait was a concerning thing, and he set out to glean what clues he could from the undulating terrain. Measuring out each syllable so that they were perfect and unsullied by his stutter, “Which way do you send me?” he questioned his goddess in his splendid bass timbre, nosing the freshly slain, torpedo-like body of a sea lion pup into the shallows. He focused on his query and nothing else — which way which way which way whichwaywhichwaywhichway — for long, unhurried moments. Slowly, the carcass bobbed out to deeper waters — the Sea had accepted his offering, and he held his breath.

A dark, sinister shape approached, briefly hesitating, and Szymon’s heart sank. If one of Her creatures devoured the offering, he interpreted it to mean he was to stay within the territory and bide until Skellige commanded him to go. Yet the shape, long and lethal and razor-finned, slid by without touching the bloody offering. Streaks of crimson swirled in a miniature maelstrom for quite some time — and then the sacrifice began to make its way back toward shore, the nose of the sea lion pup pointing north as it stuttered to a stop at the shoreline. Bowing his head low and leaving the carcass for the scavengers, Szymon pointed his own nose north and broke into a purposeful, long-legged trot. He passed the pinnipeds’ shoals, feeling not at all guilty that he’d infiltrated their ranks to slaughter one of their own, and continued to move north. He saw no sign of the golden child, whose jellyfish-like spinelessness bred a proclivity for flight that lent her fleet paws wings.

His faith in the Sea was absolute, and Szymon knew he’d been rewarded for his piety when the bright, intrepid voice of a child reached his waiting ears. The twin triangles, tattered and torn, swiveled to capture each sound:

“Hey, you!”
“Yeah, you better run!”
“Chusi’s brave and big, Chusi not be scared of you!”

Here was a child worthy of the waves. The Sea had pointed Szymon to her; he was meant to find her. Still, he approached at a walk, not wanting to frighten the girl. He padded carefully through the glassy deltas, making his way inland just in time to see an odd sight indeed: a small black puppy and a small black…creature that did not appear to be a full-blooded wolf. Its ears were reminiscent of a cat, the texture of its fur like nothing he had seen before. Whatever it was dipped its paw — his nose told him keenly that both the feather-furred anomaly and the sturdy little wolf were female — and seemed to conjure a fish from the water with little to no effort. From Szymon’s angle it appeared that the fish had willingly slid into her grasp to be thrown upon the riverbank before the cub. She must be the pup’s guardian — a water spirit, or a siren. Her fur, streaming with water, seemed to glow with the brilliant blue-black of cuttlefish ink.

That Szymon had also met the lynx here, harbinger of a sea storm, with tufted ears, only underscored his swiftly burgeoning theory that he’d been meant to find Chusi waiting here. What was the phrase the cryptic lynx had uttered? The youngest Cairn wracked his brain and soon found the syllables, drawing them to his tongue and tasting their foreignness with a measure of unease. Gathering breath in a measured, controlled inhale, “Aka’Magosh!” he rumbled to the tuft-eared one, the sound resonating quietly through the relative quiet. He waited, crouching upon his stomach before the puppy he knew already to be his. She was very like Qilaq in appearance — again, only adding to his fanatic desire to bring her home to the bay. “Y-You are s-s-strong,” he murmured to Chusi, enthralled. “The S-S-Sea t-told me y-you would b-b-be.”