The hiss of bubbles woke Ni’ma up, like it always did.

The air only shut off when it was time to eat, so if she didn’t wake up to the sound, she’d wake up when the gas coming through the tube suddenly turned to liquid. Waking up choking was unpleasant, so she’d learned to wake up before it.

Ni’ma was very smart.

She knew so many things, and she learned more things every day. She knew that when the food was watery and thin, her father would shout at the small bald man who helped him. She knew that she was pretty, because so many people often came to stare at her in her tank. She knew that her father liked it if she let him know when the fluid in the tank changed temperatures, or got dirty. Father liked it when she helped, so she tried to help whenever she could.

Very smart, and very helpful.

Ni’ma’s food began arriving through the tube, and she swallowed it dutifully as she watched what was happening in the room beyond the glass. A man she hadn’t seen before, his black hair shaggy and unkempt like Ni’ma’s, was talking to her father. He was handsome, but he had an odd shape, only sometimes. Only when he passed beyond the edge of the light from the room’s single lamp. Then he was a little scary to look at. Sharp and dark.

Her father was very excited to see the man, so Ni’ma was too. She loved it when her father was happy. Once, when her father was the happiest she’d ever seen him, he’d taken her out of her tank, swaddled in cloth, and let her visit the garden. It had been the most wonderful thing she’d ever experienced.

He looked happier than he had then. Ni’ma focused, coaxing their words into her ears so that she might hear them over the bubbling of the fluid in the tube.

“...all the way down? A tunnel?” her father was saying, laughing from deep in his belly.

“I’m sure of it, sir,” said the stranger. “I flew all the way to the bottom while the others were fighting.”

“You got close enough, then? Did you test it?”

The man held up a small vial. Inside it was one of Ni’ma’s hairs. She knew it was hers, because she’d never seen anyone with hair so bright and silver. It was something she was quite proud of. Her hair was silver like the sleek, shining fish that swam around outside the only window she could really see out of from her tank.

“It reacted,” the man said. Her father took the vial from him with trembling hands. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen. It absorbed so much energy it hurt to look at.”

Her father pumped his fist in the air, letting out a wordless, victorious cry. Inside her tank, Ni’ma clapped her hands together, kicking gleefully in the heavy fluid.

“Didn’t keep, though. It had lost its energy by the time I made it back out of the shaft. There should be some residual signs left, anyway, with a reaction that strong.”

“This is fantastic news, boy,” her father said, clapping him on the back with one hand. He didn’t look like a boy, but her father was quite old. The oldest person she knew, possibly the oldest person in the world. “And the others? Do they…?”

He gestured vaguely.

“They suspect nothing, sir,” the man -boy?- said confidently. “Fulgencio was defeated, only one bloodmage lives, and the Council is starting to feel the strain of the Mantles.”

“You’ve gone above and beyond, boy. You’ve done your family proud.”

The boy nodded once, and reached back into his pocket once more.

“There’s more, sir,” he said, producing another vial.

Ni’ma’s tube switched back to air, and she squeezed her eyes shut, sucking it in greedily. Food time always lasted just a little longer than she could comfortably go without breathing. She’d considered telling her father, but he didn’t like it when she made suggestions. He said it wasn’t helpful, and she wanted to be helpful.

The sound of breaking glass made her open her eyes in fear. Her tank had cracked once, and that had been the scariest thing. The opposite of the garden. Thankfully, her tank was fine. Her father had dropped the vial with her hair in it, which made her sad. Her hair was beautiful, and her father usually treated them so carefully…

Ni’ma’s eyes fell on the vial now in her father’s hand. Her breath caught in her throat.

Inside the vial was a single hair, longer than any hair she’d ever seen, easily three times longer than Ni’ma’s silver strands. It changed colors seven times over its length, and it was the most beautiful thing Ni’ma had ever laid eyes on.

“This...this is…” her father stammered. “Is it…?”

The boy nodded. “Straight from her head, after she’d spent the better part of two hours wielding raw Agarthan magic.”

“Do you know…do you have any idea how much this will accelerate the plan?”

“I had a feeling,” the boy said drily.

Ni’ma’s hands pressed against the glass before she realized she was reaching. Startled at her sudden awareness of the tank, Ni’ma glanced around the curved glass until she caught sight of something else.

Her own face, reflected back to her. White eyes that were far too large in a face that was far too narrow. Pale skin, with paler hair that had seemed so shining before. She now recognized it for what it truly was. Devoid of color. Everything about her was colorless and blank.

Ni’ma was so...hideous.

Her breathing became shallow and frenzied. She wasn’t getting enough air. She heard an alarm tone begin to sound on the console near her tank, though it was distant, distorted. Her father looked at her sharply, then rushed over to her, though he stopped at the console instead of addressing her.

“She’s reacting to the hair,” he said panickedly. No, that was excitement. Why was her father excited? Ni’ma was frightened, she felt like she couldn’t breath, and still all she could think about was that shimmering strand.

The person it belonged to must be so beautiful. Ni’ma tried to imagine an entire head full of hairs like the one in the vial. Her gaze flickered around the room, from her father examining the screen to the boy watching her with curiosity in his eyes, and she realized with an even heavier panic that she couldn’t see the hair any longer. Had her father put it away? In his pocket?

Ni’ma closed her eyes and did her best to imagine the hair, and the beautiful colors it held. She didn’t have names for them, but she’d seen a thousand colors in the water outside her window. In her mind, she lingered on the stretch of color that was like the water at night. When the deep, smooth color of the ocean absorbed the darkness and became something sublime, and all its own.

When she opened her eyes, the vial was inside the tank with her, and she clutched it to her chest. The vial was sealed tightly, so her fluid wouldn’t get inside and taint the beautiful hair. She could look at it all she wanted.

“Did she just…?” asked the boy, and her father nodded in disbelief.

“Ni’ma…” her father said quietly, coming to place his hand on the glass. As soon as his palm touched the surface, one of her hands pressed back against it on her side, though the other hand still held the vial in front of her large eyes.

She reluctantly tore her gaze away from the beautiful strand, and met her father’s stare.

“Ni’ma, do you like that hair?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“I have a lot of work to do with it, dear Ni’ma,” her father said, and she felt panic burgeon up from her stomach. She didn’t want to part with it. She wouldn’t part with it.

Her father made shushing noises, and she relaxed as she heard them. He was such a soothing person. “If you’re a good girl, and you give me the hair back, I’ll let you hold onto it when I’m not working. Would you like that?”

Ni’ma’s eyes locked back onto the hair. She could keep it, when her father didn’t need it. She could be helpful, and still have it sometimes. She nodded reluctantly.

“Can you send it back out to me? Like how you took it?”

Took it? Ni’ma didn’t understand. Her head cocked to one side, her face wrinkled in confusion. To her surprise, the reaction made her father even more excited.

“She didn’t even realize,” he breathed, the words fogging the glass.

Her eyes found the part of the hair where the dark ocean transitioned more into what the water was supposed to look like. The brighter, livelier ocean.

A flood of images flashed before her eyes. A boy with hair the color of the seafloor held her hand as they ran. Two girls who looked exactly the same danced in a circle around her, smiling and laughing. A tall, beautiful woman held her in her arms in a room filled with bright lights. Hundreds, thousands of glimpses, memories that she didn’t remember. She wanted to see them. She wanted to live them.

The sound of her father’s excited laugh filtered in through the bubbles.

“This reaction is stronger than I could have possibly imagined! By this timeline...Merciful oceans, we could be ready to surface in months. Xalaster, can you get a message to your contact in the royals?”

“Of course.”

He grinned, and in the instant that Ni’ma glanced at him she saw his face, wrapped in steel and colored light, a cry of victory on his lips. Then, it was gone, and he was just her father. Happy and excited.

“I think it might finally be time for Atlantis to surface.”

Ni’ma was excited too. Her father was happier than she’d ever seen him, so she might get another treat. Like the garden, or maybe something even better. But more than her excitement for another chance to escape her tank, Ni’ma felt a thrill at the glimpses that she’d seen.

Ni’ma would have hair just like this someday, only hers would be far, far more beautiful.