Mith loved Tru's house. It was always warm with something cooking. Unlike her own home, there were knickknacks from all of the traveling her parents had done before settling down. Mith had learned early on not to touch them. It was one of the few times Mith had ever seen anger from her friends parents.
She passed through the doorway and hung back to admire the various pieces while Tru went to find her parents.

Tru found her mother, O'ana, in the kitchen, carefully tying packets of salt salad over the thermal vent opening to heat the ingredients so they'd mix. The kitchen was deliciously warm, and the water was clear and still. "Truilla," her mother said with a smile. Tru saw the traces of strain behind the smile, so she rushed over to hug her. She opened her eyes to look at her mother's scales up close like she always did. Like all albinos, O'ana's scales were white at the tip and pink at the root. They were beautiful, like pearls.

"How did it go? Tru asked, still in the hug. Her mother didn't answer, just squeezed tighter briefly.

"We couldn't give them what they wanted." Tru turned to see her father in the doorway. He was large, with a barrel chest and dark blue, almost indigo coloring.

"Tobias..." her mother said warningly. He shrugged and drifted to the counter where he began preparing fish for lunch. "They asked us to keep looking. I'm sure we'll find something," O'ana said to her daughter reassuringly.

Tru smiled at her, but felt disquieted at the agitation between them. "Mith's here. Can we sit and talk?" Her mother's smile broadened.

"Of course."

So, Mith told them what had happened. With the Sun Eater attack and seeing the odd wall of darkness. By the time she was done, both O'ana and Tobias were frowning, studying Mith with a mixture of fear and worry. They were sitting up straight and kept glancing between her and Tru. Mith didn't think it was possible, but O'ana seemed more pale than usual. She fought the urge to stand up and back away, trying to write the whole thing off as a joke.
"Whatever you did... it was powerful enough to scare away a Sun Eater?" Tobias asked, sounded disbelieving.
Mith nodded, staring at her hands, wishing with everything she had that it had never happened.
"There are legends... but no..." O'ana said, looking to Tobias for help.
He nodded grimly and Mith's heart sank. "The way she is describing what happened, I can't think of another explanation."
"I don't want to know." Mith blurted out, closed her eyes and tightening her hands into fists. "I won't ever go near there again, I'll keep whatever happened to myself.
O'ana laid a hand on Mith's shoulder and she jumped, her eyes springing open. There was the familiar feeling, heating up her core and hands. She willed it away, but not before everyone had seen the odd waver the water had made, herself included.
"This isn't something that will go away by ignoring it and it can't be harnessed here. You would need to go into the city. We have some friends that might be able to help...
Mith nodded, her mouth feeling as if raw kelp had been stuffed into her mouth. She licked her lips. "Are you sure it's not just an extra powerful manifestation of my electrical abilities finally surfacing?"
Tobias gave her a sad smile. "Would that I could, little one. But don't worry. We can make arrangements and maybe Tru can go with you, help you keep your head in Yan Ziank."

O'ana reached over and gently squeezed Tru's hand. But though her eyes were wide and her shoulders were again trembling in spurts, Tru swallowed and nodded. "I could. Yes, I could."

She didn't know how she would, but she would anyway. She couldn't let Mith go to the city alone. Swallowing again, she looked up into her mother's pale pink eyes. She could hardly stand the worry she saw there; it made her heart feel like it was being pinched, painfully. "W-what friends?"

Mith felt her heart rate double in her chest. Going into the city alone was daunting, to say the least.
"Couldn't we wait a week? By then my parents will be going into the city to drop of their crop."
Tobias stroked his chin, his eyes unfocused. "We could wait to see what happens. But Mith..." he met her eyes and held the gaze. "This isn't something to play around with, do you understand? Leave it alone, do not try to summon it or utilize it until you are in the city and with our friends."
It was the first time Dalina could remember that Tobias was the serious one. She swallowed hard and nodded.

Mith spent the rest of the time at Tru's doing research on possible schools. If she was going to go into the city for education, she might as well use the time she had here wisely. It was annoying have to constantly ask Tru around to refill the battery pack she had, but her friend never complained. At least, not with any real venom. It was one of the reasons Mith valued her friendship. They could sit in the same room, doing completely different things and be completely comfortable. When it was time to go, she bid them good night.
O'ana offered her dinner, but Mith declined. She had a lot going on in her brain and wanted to get home where she could go to sleep. She bade Tru and her family goodnight, with a promise to see them the next day, and skirted out the door.

Later that night, Mith sat at the table, pushing her food around her plate. The rest of the family was chatting, but the mood was sullen.
“Did you manage any research over at Tru’s house today?” Her mother asked, breaking away from a conversation with her youngest sister.
Mith gave a shrug. The truth was she had. None of the schools seemed to interest her. She wouldn’t mind being a scientist, like Tru’s parents, but it required a lot of time away from home. If the crops were failing, she was needed here.
“I don’t like that look,” Gregory said, pointing a fork at her.
“I researched, like you said,” Mith said, staring at her plate. “I didn’t find any that I liked.”
She heard her mother sigh.
“You’ll need to make a decision about the future,” her mother said after several awkward seconds.
“I know I do,” Mith said, the words coming out more harshly than she intended. She wanted to stay on the farm, to follow in her mother and grandmothers footsteps. But that was a futile argument.
“Mith…” her father warned, but she cut him off as she stood up.
“I’m done eating and am going to bed.”
She was only partially surprised when no one tried to stop her.

Mith was standing at the edge of the ravine, darkness opening up before her like a giant opening it’s maw to swallow her whole. Behind her, Sun Eaters swirled and prevented her from going back. She could see her house just behind them, shrouded in shadow. The fields were barren, husks floating lifeless in the current. In front of her the blackness flickered, switching between dark expanse and deep blue nothingness.
She looked up and watched as the sky darkened, like a scab forming across the sky and blocking the sun. Then the current picked up, whipping around her and causing her to shift towards the crevasse. She tried to grab hold of the rock, but suddenly it was gone. Sand surrounded her as she clawed at the ground, desperate to pull herself away from the water as it rushed into the hole.
The familiar warmth of something rushed up her arms. On a baser level she knew what to do. She let go of her efforts to stop from being swallowed and pressed her palms towards the hole. The energy reached a pitch and she thought she might explode if it wasn’t released. Then a bright, white light surrounded her and she was flying away from the hole, back towards her home, back towards -

THWACK!

Mith’s eyes flew open as her body made contact with the rock ceiling of her bedroom. Spots danced in her eyes as she tried to orient herself in the still water. Then the smell of something acrid and burning met her nose and she righted herself.
Her bed, made of various types of coral and sponge, had two hand-sized holes several inches deep on either side. Her body still tingled from the dream and she felt as if she had slept a week. The sky outside was just becoming lighter and she decided she couldn’t wait. She’d had enough of that area haunting her dreams.
Donning her clothes, grateful no one else seemed to have woken up, she slipped out the door and began to swim across the sand fields, not bothering with the path down. It took her longer than she would have liked to reach the rock outcropping. She could recall with life-ending clarity exactly where she had been when the Sun Eater attacked.
In front of her, only a few hundred yards away, lay the crevasse. She swam up and over the small hill that separated herself from the crack in the ocean floor. She noticed her heart pounding her chest as she crept over the last of the rocks to look down. The hill came back down on the other side, leveling out to sand for about twenty feet and then ending in an abrupt drop off. The crack was only a few feet wide, but it was jagged and uneven, stretching into the distance and out of sight.
The darkness of the crevasse was beyond even the dark she had seen the day of the Sun Eater attack. It seemed to swallow up the light around it and Mith could imagine what sorts of creatures lurked in the inky blackness.
Unable to stare at it any longer, she backed down the rock wall and placed her back against the solid stone, breathing hard.
What had she been thinking? That seeing it would make it less scary? If anything, it had heightened her fear. She knew there would be no sun eaters there, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something else… something worse. One thing she knew for sure, she would not be coming back.
With one last look behind her, as if there were tendrils of darkness reaching for her, she raced away from the rocks and back to the relative safety of her home.

Tru woke slowly that morning, some troubling dream or other trying to hold her down in the soft darkness of sleep. She stirred fitfully until she heard her mothers voice.

"Tru? Mith will be here soon. Come have breakfast." Tru opened her eyes and rubbed away the film of sleep. She watched little translucent blobs of mucus disturbed from her scales float away from her face, and sighed forcefully to make them flutter and twirl through the water. She smiled, but then remembered why Mith was coming over. She quickly rolled her hammock up and out of the way, checking the charge on the battery packs she had set up the night before. Full.

Tru wandered out to the kitchen to join her mother at the table. They both picked at their food, distracted. Finally Tru noticed something. "Where's dad?" she asked.

Her mother looked up, flicking her hand at her face to make her long white hair flow back away from her eyes. She looked lost for a moment before she found the thought she was looking for. "He's out talking with some friends, dear. Making some inquiries."

Tru frowned. "You have a lot of friends I haven't heard about. Who will Mith and I be staying with in the city?"