Sequoia Coast blue raven

A seal hunter. Grief flashed openly across River's delicate countenance as he came quite suddenly to the truth of it: she did not live as the Sea-Snakes of old. She did not live as a Sea-Snake at all. Marina of the seal hunters; Marina the trader; Marina the lost.

River took a slow breath, a lingering step forward. You were stolen as a child. Our mother, Thalia - did she tell you nothing? None of the tales of our people, our ways, our history? Without waiting for an answer, he went on. Did she not tell you that you belong to the sea?

His sister answered not in words but a slow shake of her head. Yet he saw the recognition in her eyes as he spoke the name of their dam; the woman whose life had amounted to nothing but a growing list of precious things stolen and then lost. Marina's name sat at the top.

Another step took him closer. He cast a single glance to Marina's husband, wondering if she would send him away now to hear these secrets of their blood in solitude. But she did not — and so he would know, too, this man whose blood undoubtedly mingled with the saltwater of their own line now.

The witchpriest sat, and the mantle of brother and son and man fell away. He was none of those; only a Sea-Snake, only a siren, only a bearer of the great history bestowed on each of them. In quiet words he made a gift of this knowledge now.

Sea-Snake; an ancient name, sea-witches and sirens once feared for their power. For countless generations they'd lived in seclusion — until the fire came for them. All of them. Not only the Sea-Snakes but the Cyanean line, the Keils, the nameless gem-dancers, the valley coyotes. The Vaels.

Together they'd fled from one coast to another, west to east in a great migration still remembered so many generations later. But a siren taken from the sea could never thrive — and so the Sea-Snakes dwindled, picked off one by one in the process of their great journey.

Then the curse: the wrath of some crazed mountain-witch, the vow that no Sea-Snake should ever find peace as long as she sang to the sea.

And their proud line fell ever further.

Only a single Sea-Snake had been among the first wolves to set foot in Viridian Sound. The first Sea-Snake to step into servitude; the first to promise her life and her magick to another for protection. Yet the price had been too high. Their name, always bowing to the Cyanean line; always melding, fading until —

I am the last, These words were mournful. It is all Cyanea now, all of it.

But that is not my purpose here, River continued. I came in search of a girl. Alara.

Instead he had found a sister.

Marina, His voice was earnest, his gaze searching. Are you truly a seal hunter? Did the knowing change anything at all? Or would she only remain lost, even with her ignorance erased?