chanter1944 | help_haiti lightning round 2 fic for megotelek

Here's the second of my lightning round 2 fics. This one's also Young Wizards 'verse, though focused on a very different subject.

megotelek asked for fic about the cetacean wizards, preferably Fang from Baffin Bay, and when I went sniffing around the ErrantryWiki, I stumbled across a couple possible spoilers that made me go hmm. So I gave Fang a daughter, and this resulted. I really hope you like it!

Her name translated, for all intents and purposes, as 'Broadtooth'. From her earliest memories, her own name had been held up against her sire's, humorously, interestedly. He'd never once resented or rejected the comparison, and she'd taken her cues from him even before she was aware she was inheriting his easygoing nature by education at his fins. Once she'd aged enough to realize how closely her reaction paralleled his, she was far beyond minding the similarity. There were far worse mentors one could have than Fang of Baffin Bay.

Broadtooth had never met the land-based subjects of her sire's Twelvesong story. S'reee was familiar enough, even before circumstances brought the youthful senior into closer contact. Others she knew by brief glimpses caught in transit; the passing arc of an elegant fin, the water-shaking rumble of a voice like localized plate tectonics. Hotshot, of course, had darted in and out of their lives in a silvery streak for as long as Broadtooth could remember. True, he hadn't frequented Baffin Bay with regularity, but even before their pod had relocated, Broadtooth had been no stranger to the concept of currents moving in more than one direction. Even without her father's intervention behind the motion of the water.

The Sea didn't ask the question of her until after the battle of Earth's satellite was ended. The fine details didn't become available to her until later - all Broadtooth knew at the time was that S'reee was suddenly far too busy to contact casually, that the tides rushed and swelled in unnerving ways and boiled with humanoid signals of looming war, and that her sire had never been so disinterested in life since she'd known him. disinterested. In life. In wizardry. and even before the Sea asked what it asked of her, she knew that to speak of one was to speak of the other.

It was only after events unfolded and altered in a rush, only after S'reee's jubilant return, only after her sire's personality and wizardry reasserted themselves and the names of those two elusive land-dwelling Twelvesong friends came up again, that the Sea spoke to Broadtooth.

She knew very well, knew moments after the question became clear, just what was being asked of her. Young she may have been--little more than a calf, to be sure--but she was, after all, her sire's offspring. Fang schooled his children thoroughly, and beyond that, Fang led by example.

And she was, after all, so very like him.

Broadtooth's hesitation could have been measured in seconds, even with realities and implications at the forefront of her mind. Humanoid seconds. A breath, if that. It was so momentous, but so very obvious, and she was so very certain. So very like her father.

"In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I--"

Broadtooth
Bering Strait and surrounds
Rating level 5.81+-.4
Status: Novice, post-Ordeal; available/limited, pod travel