Episode 6: The Rules

Recap:  I was now rescued from my fall and floating with the swimmers.  I wasn't dead, but had no idea what was to come next.

The Rules

They kept looking at my hair.  Some of them tried to sneak glances while I was facing the other way, others just stared.  My rescuer with the kind eyes didn't pretend not to be interested in the look.  I didn't mind, it took me years, was constantly in process, and was never meant to be subtle.

My folk like to preen like the birds we emulate.  We are not afraid of wearing bright colors, puffing our chest out, or having some wild feathers.  We are a very social people.  Chattering away, patting and touching, giggling and twittering.  One way we show affection and appreciation is to preen or pet the people we know well enough to sit with on a regular basis. If I were to sit with my closest allies I would be sitting with them, very near them, attentive to them, looking them in the eye, stroking their hand, hearing their stories, re-braiding one of their sail ropes, or their hair.  I have since learned that this practice would be considered feminine in other clans.  It was a very masculine practice as I grew up.  I think the men spent more energy worrying about their look than the females.  If a male looked unadorned, he appeared uninterested.  A female didn't have to try to attract a male companion.  Nature did that for her, but us males had to work at being noticed.  Trends come and go of course but one relied on their social circle to achieve certain looks.  We had no large reflective surfaces as a general rule so if you were going to look attractive you had to rely on your friends to do the work for you.  The more intricate your look the more friends you had, and having more friends implied others liked your company.  Not a bad message to send to a girl you were interested in attracting.  

It was common practice to emulate our braided chute and sail cords in our hair  and clothing with intricate strands of braiding or knotting.  We also liked to use sharp items to affect the shape and textures.  While sitting and socializing with friend and family it was accepted procedure to converse casually while braiding, knotting, or cutting in patterns to your friends' hair.  Mine was splendid.  I am not surprised it garnered the attention of the swimmers.  Honoring the noblest of birds my hair was tallest on the top in the middle, knotted to stand even taller.  The sides shorn very short, the top very long.  I was well liked, happy to help a friend and did so regularly.  My circle of scavengers were kind of the most brazen of bold and brazen youth.  One could not leap off a platform that floated above the clouds while being timid or shy.  We began cutting in patterns shapes and pictures into the short-haired areas of our scalps.  Every rest period our patterns got a little more intricate and fine tuned as we cut in the most amazing patterns.  The sides of my head showed air currents at first glance that seemed to shift and move as I turned my head.  At closer inspection those air currents contained images recounting my teams past glories and tales of valor.  Watching the swimmers watch me made me miss my friends even more.

The amount of friends one had implied one's social status, and the amount of friends one had affected the amount of time and energy that went into how groomed and decorated you were.  I was popular and very groomed.... the swimmers however would fail the test on my home platform.  They would appear to be un groomed outcasts.

We weren't opposed to facial hair, it was a great canvas at times, but the swimmers seemed to have never trimmed theirs at all.  Their beards were long enough to curl in places and lay flat and matted in others.  Their hair all seemed to always be hanging in their faces, kinky and partially curled by the sun and the salt water.  Clearly they did not play with each others hair while they rested in their floating pod.

I did not mind the swimmers trying to look at my hair, it seemed to be the only time they even noticed my existence.  They floated, they sank, they came back up, they floated, they sank out of sight... over and over.  There was never any interaction or conversation.  Not even with each other.  I wondered if the salt in the sea was what rendered them mute. I began speaking to myself just to make sure I was capable still of speech.

There were rules in the floating pod. Rules I usually learned by breaking them.  I was surprised by the amount of physical contact this method of resting produced.  My friends were close and we played with each other's hair, but we avoided laying naked on each other.  The first rule I broke was thinking the physical contact was haphazard, mutually accepted, or random.  One's head was never to be too near another swimmers head, and if one's head was near, it was especially important to not face another swimmer eye to eye.  If for example you happened to rest your head on the chest of another swimmer and didn't know these rules you would find yourself in an awkward situation being too familiar with a large muscular bearded man who would for example shove you back into the water when he looked down and saw you looking up into his eyes with a big happy smile on your face.  You would then sputter and cough until you regained your composure elsewhere. 

It was also important to not lay parallel to another swimmer, it apparently felt too familiar.  Watching your hand placement was essential in avoiding a very embarrassing situation as well as you may imagine. At first I thought the swimmers were naked, which was uncomfortable, but I started realizing that I never actually saw complete nudity.  The cords and ropes that were tied and braided in apparently random places around their bodies always seemed to cover the most private areas of the groin.  Clearly those placements were intentional as everybody successfully achieved that level of basic modesty.  

Every other muscle was clearly and constantly exposed.  I was in the strong days of my youth, but clearly pushing and pulling water created a different musculature.  We were a lean people.  The swimmers were massive and I felt dwarfed by their rippling masculinity.

I also learned more about the garbage and debris floating about us.  It wasn't debris at all.  Every bit of it was attached to the end of the long cords, knots, and braidings that entwined the swimmers.  Every time a rest period was ending and swimmers one by one turned and sank into the water, part of the debris would go with them.  At first I was scared to remain floating by myself. Second I found ways to use my remaining chutes and sails as beds to float on.  Lastly I became accustomed to laying in a calm manner and letting the swells of the ocean hold me aloft. I started to knot my chutes and sails into cords.

Not all of the debris would disappear with the sunken swimmers.  Two types of item always remained.  Both clear and both spherical and all attached by cords and strings to the swimmers who were too far in the deep to see.

Some of the clear spheres were hard glass.  There were many of them.  I quickly learned that these were drinking vessels.  Throughout the day condensation would rise inside the glass bubbles and then pool inside.  As the swimmers returned each drank from their own stash of glass spheres.  Each contraption produced relatively small amounts of salt free drinking water, so it took many spheres to quench their first.  They were a silent lot, but they shared their water with me.

The second type of sphere was very different, but still almost clear.  They were very pliable and almost sticky to the touch.  If you poked them they jiggled and they were the only things not attached by braided cords.  The were attached to the swimmers by long clear tubes of the same sticky material.  I learned their purpose by accident and angered one of the largest most terrifying swimmers at the same time.  

I had paddled myself over to where one of the clear-ish bulbs floated and started poking at it. Fascinated by the texture I picked it up and started rolling it around in my hands.  It was stretchable and mutable.  I also found it interesting that when I submerged the sphere it did not rise to the surface again as fast as the glass spheres.  On my second or third submersion of the squishy ball the water shot upward to my left as a mountain of a man crested the surface just past me.  He came out of the water with such force and surprise I forgot I was still holding the odd sphere.  His face was bright red and he clawed off another sticky sphere that had been attached to the lower half of his face; panting deeply and trying to catch his breath.  

When he saw me he came at me with aggressive terrifying wild strokes.  As the mountain approached he  roughly grabbed my wrist bending it the wrong direction while ripping the soft ball from my hands. His eyes were aflame with anger and I thought he was going to strike me.  Instead his hand shot forward in a claw-like motion and he grabbed the center of my chest.  At first I thought I was lucky not to have been hit until he started to clench the claw.  He continued to dig and clench until I was whimpering and writhing in pain.  As I started to make louder noises of pain he half threw me back out of his way..

I lay there in the water holding my newly wounded skin.  The angry giant delicately inspected the soft sphere before recovering his mouth and nose with the other similar sphere that was attached by a long clear tube.  He took a few practice breaths before setting the sphere gently back on the surface of the water.  As he slowly sank again out of sight there was no confusion by looking at his face that I was not his favorite person.  Don't touch the squishy spheres, got it.

I do not think he was going to invite me to braid his hair or cut patterns into his beard anytime soon.

I missed my friends.

Next Episode: Poison in the Water