A Letter from the Waterfolk

Dr. Amil Nguyen steps into her darkened home, picking up the mail on the floor that had been slipped into her mail slot over the week she's been gone. It had been a long week at the Capitol, trying to get people who can do something to act, trying to lobby for better environmental protections and for these people to actually uphold the laws they swore to protect. She sighs deeply, flipping through each piece, most of it junk, as she kicks the door shut behind her and wanders further inside.

Amil doesn't see much of any interest among them. A few bills, mostly promotions to get her to buy things.

She pauses at her kitchen counter, brows furrowing and a little frown on her face as she comes across a blank envelope. It had clearly been sealed and had something in it, but there was no return address. In fact, even her address wasn't on it. The only indication she had that this was meant for her was that it had been put in her mail slot.

Amil opens a drawer, the sound of quiet rolling barely making it past her ears. She pulls out a knife, discarding the other envelopes, and cuts open, with some difficulty, the mysterious envelope. The knife clatters on top of the stone countertops as she sets it aside. With one hand, she turns on the light over the stove and pulls the letter out afterward. The envelope is discarded as she unfolds the letter.

~~~~

The humans think they're alone in this world, the only sapient species on the planet. They yearn for those like themselves, a species with whom they can converse, share, and befriend as equals and not subordinates. They created robots and AI that are not really intelligent, to try to mimic a fraction of their consciousness. The others like them, who were on a similar level of thought, they believe to be long dead, extinct thousands upon thousands of years ago.

They have forgotten us, those who dwell below. We are myths, legends, supernatural beings who do not and cannot exist within their world. They do not remember. They dream of us as fiction, just as they once walked and swam beside us in reality.

They are wrong.

The Great species of this planet numbered five. Now, there are only three that still remain.

The oldest were the Naturefolk, dating back to a Time long before Life as we know it. Even my kind can scarcely understand the sheer enormity of their existence. Humans called them all manner of things, as their ability to shift and change their forms, their incredible ability to know one another through merely looking, to be able to feel and see and understand each other across continents, all of that led to some large claims from the humans. There is no creature who has reached their level of interconnection. They were once one with the humans, walking side by side, interbreeding, building together. Then the humans changed and turned on those they once considered kin, and the once great Naturefolk fell, and the rest of us began to flee. Over a billion years of life, only to be nearly terminated by a species only 300,000 years old. It would be funny if it wasn't sad.

My kind, the Waterfolk, came next. There are many types of us, altered to our environment. The Deep Folk, for instance, came from the Deep Below, or the lowest parts of the water column, as you might understand. My people, the Ice Carvers, come from them. There are other Shallow Folk who do not, namely the Tropikin, who live in the warmest waters, splitting the Ice Carver tribes. It made it easier for them to dominate their cousins, us, but not forever. Nothing lasts forever. We still don't know exactly where they came from, but they are here to stay, and so are we.

The next Great species to show up are the Firefolk. We have no idea where they are from, or how they came to be. We Waterfolk came from Naturefolk, but the Firefolk just… showed up one day, crawled out from the volcanoes, some say. Beings of fire, lava, and the like. They don't need to eat or drink; they only need oxygen and heat to keep going. It's a wonder they left with the others, into the High Above, beyond the reach of any of us. They have not been seen in a very, very long time.

The fourth of our kind are the Airfolk. They certainly act the most mature, or try to. They learned from the first of us how to be peaceful, but they are exceedingly judgmental. They spat on us from their place in the In Between, called us barbaric monsters, as if it was our fault that we needed meat to survive, that we needed to hunt; as if it was our fault that we differed from each other, that one of our own kin betrayed and attacked us to take our resources and use us. They fly high above us and act as if they are our betters. Not much is known of them since they left, and needless to say, our kinds did not interact frequently. Wherever they are, in the High Above, I wish them safety and the peace they sought so fervently.

And that brings us to the last, and youngest, of the Great species.

You.

Yes, you, little human, the one reading this. The ones who come from the earth, from stone and mud and all the little things of the planet. The ones who learned to utilize its most abundant and rarest of the planet's treasures. But we did not give you that name. Human. You gave it to yourselves. We called you Earthfolk, the same way we named ourselves and the others. You decided to make something all of your own. You have such short life spans and even shorter memories. We could not fault you for forgetting; neither could the Naturefolk. The Airfolk fault everyone for everything. Do not take their hatred to heart. The Firefolk merely sought to have fun, new experiences, and the Airfolk provided them with that; they are ambivalent toward you. And that is okay. My kind are bitter for what you've done to our oceans, to our home, but we didn't exactly defend them from you, and most of us couldn't at the time. The Naturefolk warned you a long time ago, a warning you have forgotten, and now there are too few to do much of anything. But we are still here, and some part of you must remember that, or you wouldn't be trying to fix what you've broken. We see that, those of us who still remain, and while you work in the light, we shall work in the shadows. We know humans well enough to know how easy it is for just a few of your kind to panic or to use differences to attack; we know it takes only a few to start a genocide. But we trust you, reader of this letter. That's why we've written in your language, in the hope that you'll understand—that you'll help. You've already done so much so far, all on your own, without even remembering us.

Our friends on land say that you care very much, Dr. Nguyen. That you have worked a great lot of your life away to learn of our oceans. They say you are called a "marine biologist", that you have been seen in the same halls they walk every day, fighting for very similar things. You fight for our oceans, for our homes beneath the waves. They call you a conservationist, a lobbyist of a sort, a good person. We have forgotten what that means to see outsiders as such, but strong arguments have been for you, Dr. Nguyen. We thank you. But your work is not finished. Neither is ours. We will fight in our own way, from where we can, to rebuild our glacial homes; we only hope we are not too late. We can only hope you are not too late. Please, we know it will be difficult, especially without being able to tell anyone, but we need you to keep fighting in the places where we can not. We are not ready to reveal ourselves once again to your world, to your kind. That makes your work harder, we know, but please, do not tell anyone.

You won't, will you?

~~~~

Amil slowly leans back against the counter, staring in disbelief.

She skims over it, but pauses to linger on that last real paragraph of the letter. She'd tried, yes, as hard as she could, to do the right thing, especially after what she'd seen on her dives, but this, to have a people who are supposedly directly affected by her work say that she's a good person, that was something else. To know they are in the same boat as she is, to doubt they have arrived in time, done something in time, to protect their homes… It's surreal, but also warming. Like they understood her exact fears. Her thumb rubs along the edge of the paper before she reaches to trace over the messy handwriting. It hadn't been typed.

Amil lets out a harsh breath and looks away from the letter, glancing around like maybe she's just imagining the whole thing.

This has to be a prank, right? There's no way this couldn't be one. The grammar's adequate, the punctuation no worse than the average English writer. But it seemed so genuine, Amil thinks to herself, but then again, most pranksters do try to make it seem as authentic as possible. Those sorts of words of praise, they're the exact sort of thing someone who wanted to make her seem crazy would write.

She sighs, turning and setting the letter on the counter. She braces herself against it, staring down at the granules of the counter, as if trying to find the answer within them.

They did say, essentially, "don't tell anyone", that they are afraid of humans and what they could bring. But how could she know if it's real if she didn't talk to anyone about it? Surely, a prankster would want people to know about their prank; they'd want some reaction or another. Unless they merely wanted the satisfaction of knowing they'd fucked with her head.

It wasn't even telling her not to tell anyone, though, was it? It was asking. Like the writer was afraid she would tell and something awful would happen because of it. Or maybe she's just reading too much into it.

Amil's eyes fall back on the letter, and she picks it up, skimming over it again. Handwritten, not typed, like she'd noticed earlier. Maybe the writing could be a clue, like in that one episode of Criminal Minds.

She takes a steadying breath through her nose and straightens, reaching for her phone. "Don't tell anyone," she mutters as she unlocks her phone, her chest hurting as she knows what she's about to do.

She doesn't have to tell anyone that it could be real. She just… wants to check on what kind of prankster it was; that was all—maybe narrow the potential suspects down if this ever escalated. Yeah, that's… mostly believable. Either way, she has some calls to make.