Naida woke early, noting with pleasure the slightly crisp spring mornings were starting to warm further as summer crept in. Standing, she stretched deeply, feeling her muscles tense and relax deliciously in waves down to the tips of her nails. Nothing felt quite as good as a long stretch after a warm nap, and this one had been a bit rough. Far from her home cave in Palu'au, Naida was making the best of the unique housing in Ealei's wriggly branches but she still wasn't very comfortable, each day waking up just a bit stiff. The twisted wood had a certain texture to it that was unlike her smooth stone cave filled with pillows. With the first day of summer on the horizon, it was the prime time for sea activity - the water was warm and the days weren't yet too hot. Naida had made friends with a group of kittoms who claimed to know the best spots for diving, pseudo-caves that were really tide pools hidden beneath the wiggly roots of the trees with corals that had attached to them creating colorful underwater walls like miniature houses designed by an architect gone mad. Some of the coral was even said to be edible if steamed, and Naida looked forward to trying new dishes as special cuisine ingredients came into season. Setting off at a trot, she meandered her way through the sprawling branches, admiring the fine smooth wood under her toes and appreciating the woven texture that made Ealei's tree interesting to walk on but not quite comfortable (to her) to lay on.
"Pomu!" a high-pitched chirp interrupted her and Naida paused in her trot to greet the small shadow the voice belonged to. Pomu friends were hardly a rare sight, this one having blue cloud-swirl markings around its eye mask that were strongly familiar but Naida couldn't quite place it, her brain was still slightly sleepy. Her own pomu was still asleep in her shadow, so that wasn't why this one had called to her. The pomu stood in the shade of a thickly blooming branch of the Ealei world tree, Yggdrasil, holding a mushroom it had probably picked from the cluster nearby. It seemed oddly alone which was concerning as pomus never strayed far from their elnin, so Naida began to inquire. "Hello there! Where's your-" she let her sentence fall short as she spied a faint blue glow behind the leaves and her eyes focused on a kittom peeking at her from between the leaves just inches from the Pomu. Giggling, she swatted at the leaves. "You! You!" she cried playfully as the hidden kittom swiped back. Leaves rustled strongly as the unseen kittom moved back and forth, grabbing at her toes and dodging her strikes. The Pomu chirruped and hopped around happily under Naida's feet, playfully trying to distract her but taking care not to be stepped on. The battle didn't last too long, two black paws wrapped around one of Naida's pale seafoam green back legs and pulled her down while two more black legs gave her several quick bunny-kicks to the side. Her friend Gloom, a shy-at-first kittom with smokey swirls of grey playing along his black body and vibrant blue cloud markings around his eyes and ears - matching his pomu's mask, or vice versa - laid across her prone body proudly.
"I gotcha!" Gloom declared. Naida rolled to her feet and pushed him gently. Gloom happily played along, falling onto his back before springing up. Naida gave Gloom a friendly nip on the ear. "Alright, you win this round. Have you been waiting here all morning?" Gloom smiled in his timid way, on another kittom it might have looked sly or wicked but with Gloom there was almost a fear behind everything he did. "No, I saw you pass on the upper bridge while I was playing, so I decided to hide. You almost walked past us!" Gloom pushed his nose into her fur. "C'mon, c'mon!! Didn't they say we were going to learn diving today? Hurry up!" He continued to push against her as his pomu circled them, cheeping happily.
Naida allowed herself to be dragged along to the beach, listening to Gloom talk about a local type of fish that was supposedly very tasty. As they approached the hidden pool of seawater beneath the twisting roots of the great tree, they realized the rest of their friends had yet to arrive. Naida shot a sneaky, mischievous glance at Gloom. "Should we try on our own?" she asked. Gloom backed away from the tide pool, staring into the deep water speckled with colorful life. It was fairly still, and the tide covered it at certain intervals but between those times it was almost like a wide, deep well cut into the rock below. Naida and Gloom hadn't been solo diving before and knew better than to go very deep or without proper gear. Gloom considered, then nodded slowly. "Okay. But only as far down as the roots we can hold onto, and not out of the light."
Naida's eyes flashed eagerly as she stared into the depths. Orange and pink coral grew like a latticework on one side, with thickly clustered mussels and wrinkly coral down the walls. Shrimp, crabs, and fish darted about below, some seeking a way out of the stillness of the pool and others contentedly picking at their prey. The kittoms pointed and talked about what they could reach on their own, "I think those mussels would be easy to pray off the rocks, and if we pick some of the kelp maybe we can see a bit further down." Naida suggested and she dipped her feet into the water. She reached for a small crate tethered to a root floating just a little way out, pulling it back to shore and checking that the contents were dry - fire kit, metal skewers for roasting fish, a spear-fishing rod, and a net for collecting things underwater among other items.
Gloom wrinkled his nose. "What recipes could you make with kelp and mussels? We should go after the fish, there's still a fish spear in our size from the other day here. The yellow fish move pretty slow and they taste good, maybe we could try for one of those." he insisted. They slipped into the water still arguing and swam slowly around in circles, dipping their faces in the water here and there to reach for a small creature darting past. Each failed attempt made them laugh as they did another lap. The kittom-sized fishing spear could mainly be described as a stick with a sharp end and a loose wrist tie on the other side, but Naida didn't trust herself handling it without someone more experienced around to help if she got it stuck. Naida gained some confidence with her shallow dives and picked a hearty number of mussels from their shelves, collecting them in the mesh-net bag from the box which she tied to a root under water near the surface of the pool. Even Gloom tried his hand at a dive twice the length they agreed to reach a projecting shelf of stone with a medium-large blue and orange crab that had caught his attention, and he was clever with handling it to avoid being pinched as he stuffed it in the net. When Naida returned to the bag she found the crab had crushed and eaten several of her mussels, to her chagrin. Each of them found several other edible, slow-moving creatures to add to their collection, until at last they had enough for a huge lunch.
After an hour or so of playing and diving to the comfortably well-lit shelves of the pool, Naida and Gloom found themselves pleasantly exhausted. Their friends still hadn't arrived, and Naida's pomu Marinus finally woke up, only to remind her that they were a day early for the diving lesson. Laughing even harder at their mistakes, Gloom and Naida steamed the crab and mussels over the small cooking pit they cobbled together from the skewers, tinder, and other small bits of material left over from the crate. They would take care to bring replacement tinder and clean up their mess from their day, but they would happily show off their new diving tricks to their friends another day.
