A more conscientious traveller might remember to watch where she plants her hooves, but Caldwell, curious thing, has lapsed momentarily in her awareness. Alright, perhaps not just momentarily, if the way Noctiluca had been fizzing and flitting about her face says anything about it, but she knows she can hear a new source of water around here somewhere, if she could just locate the- ...

If asked today, Caldwell couldn't reliably tell anyone, perhaps even themself, why they had left the warm embrace of their kin to enter the depths. Why does water flow downstream? It must. To do otherwise would be to defy their very nature. Perhaps that made their forebears better, somehow- their defiance of nature, seeking a life above the surface instead of succumbing to the call of the darkness below. Perhaps what is natural is simply not ubiquitous. Perhaps curiosity could claim in...