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SUMMARY: The introduction of a minor character, Dancer, from the underwater kingdom of Torre Tan. This is a bit of culture clash.

Twenty blocks away from where the residents of a Brooklyn brownstone are trying to salvage what they can from their ruined homes, Dancer Light Hessol is crying into his forearm in the back end of an alley. He sits on the tail end of the coat that is draped over his shoulders.

It has been a rough couple of days. First was the dreadful flash gassing of the sea that left him and the school he was shepherding thrashing about on the floor of one of these flat-walled structures on this alien world. The school was destroyed. None of them were able to withstand the enormous change in pressure, but of course, none of them could breathe gas either.

His own seldom-used lungs coughed and sputtered reflexively as soon as his gills sucked dryness. It was painful – much more painful than the gas rooms in Das. There, a body had time to prepare. You took that time if you were smart. He was very well trained, and yes, very smart about that. A temple dancer has to be or it would be a short career, indeed.

To come to air in such a shocking way – to such a shocking place – is extremely painful and confusing. He only barely managed to stay conscious; only barely had the focus to get away from the angry, yelling mob of people who popped into existence all around his fish. There were walls and halls and stairs and drafts that blew some foul smell through the gas. By the time he threw himself out to the cooler, wetter hardness outside the maze he was bruised from bouncing off surfaces in nearly every direction.

Wet did not mean water. The surface of the thoroughfare he ran along was consistently wet, but there was only more gas as far, and as high, as he could see. There were more people here, too. They walked or rode in boxes, yelled at him in a strange tongue and made gestures that looked like threats. It was not safe. He had to run farther. He wanted desperately to find the sea again – any sea. No matter what else happened, the familiar press of water all around him would make him feel better, he was sure.

He did not find the sea, though, only this outside maze of dark narrow places. There were people in here, too, but they were far less angry, a lot slower and even kind. They were all robed, just like the gasroom priests of Das, just like the hateful people in the closed rooms he arrived in and the ones on the thoroughfare who shouted. He was alone in being skin-sleek.

He spent his first few hours squeezed between two bent hollow boxes there. It was the best shelter he could find against the terror of the unknown. People passed him without detecting him against the other smells and tiny movements of the narrow passage. Eventually, the strangeness of the gas world doubled. A lightness came all through it. Even in shadowed places there was lightening, but above his head it was magnificent – painfully so when he looked too long.

Hunger and a need to find answers drove him from his hole. He was not cold, but he started to shiver, anyway. It was fear. He thought this might be the end. He would never get back to the sea.