The ocean brings silence, and roaring at the same time. Even in this night full of sleep, the ocean never sleeps. None of the merfolk under the surface of the ocean have been affected, but those far away from it have been. Amaros wakes to find his ceremonial gem necklace missing right from his chest, which it never leaves.Â
Meaning, someone must have taken it off of his throat, without waking him at all. It is not the only thing disturbing on this lovely morning, the sand poured into words on his living room floor is as well:
âIn books and tales,
Iâm guarded with might,
hidden in mountains, out of sight.
Heroes seek me, villains too.
What am I, gleaming and true?â
amaros coralin, welcome to the hide & seek! who are you playing with? well, wouldnât you like to know. your character is missing one sacred object. they can choose to search for them, or they can get lost in their worry and donât. (but who knows, maybe theyâll find their way back home on their own).
your character was sorted into search group number 6, alongside alexios and rosita.
please post this plot drop and your characterâs reaction to it, which can be as short as one paragraph, or as long as you want.
you can make two choices for your character: are they searching for their lost object? can they solve their riddle or not? please include these choices in your reaction response.
Great. Someone has broken into his home. One first thought is that at least it wasnât a vampire, one of those Solune assholes that cannot seem to give him peace. A second thought is that it may have been someone that sneakily got permission to get into his place, someone that he trusted wrongly, and could not detect to be a vampire. Theyâre good at hiding, after all. Lurking in shadows, supposedly still is their thing, even after all this time.
Thing is, they could have taken anything from him, and Amaros wouldnât have cared. It could have been his favorite annotated book, the last few pictures of his mother he has, anything, but the one thing that keeps the merfolk in control, or rather in his control. His ceremonial necklace is gone. The crystal that chose him two years ago, crowned him the leader of the merfolk and took every ounce of respect for him out of his siblingsâ and parentsâ souls. The faint glow that he wakes up to some nights, that alarms him of wrongdoings and those in danger, is entirely gone. Fuck.
Amaros is up within seconds, and starts searching. Weirdly enough, nothing else in his apartment has been moved, and there are also no signs of someone breaking in. Had someone trusted, or untrusted from his family barged in at night and taken it from him? The merman feels unusually groggy, weirdly tired and incredibly exhausted, which is even weirder, considering he went to sleep early last night. The young man drags himself to the living room to check on the door, and feels a weirdly familiar crunch beneath his feet. Someone has poured sand into words, and Amaros has just smudged the last two words, âand trueâ, without ever getting the chance to read them. âOh, what the fuck.â As creepy as it gets. âOh, a riddle. Very funny.â No one is to be seen around, and the sand is weirdly only on the living room floor, no foot steps or else to be seen.
Even though Amaros despises the idea of even having to talk to him, Amaros rings up his older brother, Chelan, in hopes of getting the chance to yell at him for this stupid prank he pulled, but he doesnât pick up. Neither do his step-mother, or his father, or any of his other two siblings. Itâs as if theyâre gone, wiped from earth (which he wouldnât really complain about to begin with).
But when the emergency notification beeps in, he realizes they might be truly gone, missing like most of the other residents in Westray that really shouldnât be. Merfolk start calling him, of course they do, heâs their leader, but he does not have a solution to their problems, and faces a significant one of his own: The greatest source of his power, his amplifier, it is simply gone. And for the first time in his life, he truly feels helpless.
The merman doesnât immediately figure out his riddle, it is only when he takes the bus to the city hall that he thinks about it, and wonders -- what does gold have to do with my stupid fucking necklace?