Greenfield Harbor

Coral walks into the harbor, helmet under his arm and Red in tow.

"This is Greenfield, Red! Welcome! I love this place! See that ocean? I've walked there."

He points to the smooth, blue water.

"The only place you can land for miles and miles. Everywhere else is too dangerous."

"Oh yeah, I'll get that done. Here, my house is this way. We can chill there until the suit is done."

Coral leads her to his house, which turns out to be a small flat in a rather sketchy part of town.

"Here we go. There's the couch if you want, or you can take the bed and I'll take the couch if you're brave and don't get ill easily."

He gives her a brief tour of the messy apartment. Bottles lie on tables and food containers lie on the floor, but otherwise it isn't too bad. It has a "lived-in" feel to it all.

"Here's the kitchen, and there's the bathroom, and there's where I sleep. And, ah! Right here's my workshop!"

He opens a door to a small room (a closet, really) with a desk covered in tools and scraps. A harpoon hangs on the wall.

"Here we go! I'll sew you up a suit, it'll take all day. You can stay here, or go check out the town or whatever. Your choice."

He grabs a sheet of the same canvas-like material his suit is made of and gets to work.

"I have a spare helmet. My first prototype. It might be a bit large for you, though."

He points to a helmet lying on the kitchen counter. It looks a bit like a fish bowl, but with runes drawn on the inside.

"It has better visibility, but is more fragile."

Coral looks up from his work.

"Hmm? Reinforce it? I wouldn't recommend that. If the reinforcement spell goes wrong, it could shatter, and it's the only spare helmet I have. Believe me, I know. The enchantment shop guy tried to put some strengthening spells on two other ones, and they both broke. One of them broke underwater, with my head in it. Stick with how it is, it'll be fine. I dove in that thing almost fifty times before I built this."

He knocks on his brass helmet, producing a hollow clunk.

"I don't think you should try reinforcing it. Hold out your arms."

He pulls out a measuring tape and measures around Red's torso. After the attempt fails, he goes and gets a longer measuring tape, then does the same.

"There we go. Thanks."

He gets back to work.

"So, Red. Tell me a little about yourself."

Coral raises an eyebrow when she stumbles over her name, but doesn't mention it. Maybe she got married and divorced or something. Who knows.

"Alright. This shouldn't take all that long, since you're small. I'll have it done before dinnertime."

He cuts a loose thread and starts on a sleeve.

"So...anything you'd want to know about me?"

Coral realizes he's sewn a sleeve shut and curses as he cuts through the stitches and tries again.

"Hmm? Didn't I say? I got into treasure hunting because it's the family business. My father Carl taught me, and his mother Carol taught him. It's a lucrative trade. And I got into undersea diving because all the good ruins are getting looted. It's getting harder to succeed as a treasure hunter, and it isn't going to get any better. We'll need to wait for another major civilization to fall before any new ruins pop up. So I figured, why stick to land? Why not go underwater? There's lots of wrecks, just off the coast here! And think of all the sunken cities, the civilizations swallowed by the sea! They must have had lots of gold, to sink to the bottom like that. It's just right there for the taking. So here I am. Taking it. Grab those lead weights, will you?"

He points over to a bag of heavy lead weights in the corner.

"We need to weigh down your feet, or you'll float. And you'll float with your head down. We weigh the feet down to prevent that."

"Ah, thanks."

Coral continues his needlework carefully.

"Oh, you know. Fish. Seals. Sea serpents. Jelly fish. Leviathans. That sorta thing. Treasure, too. Sunken pirate ships, things like that. Say, what's the one thing you've been looking for but can't find? I'm not sure if you said or not. Why that one thing?"

"Neat."

Coral sews up some booties with weights in them, then stitches them to the rest of the suit.

"What does it do, though? Surely it's not an ordinary pendant? Or did it belong to a famous emperor? It must be magical, to have survived from before the Cataclysm. Try this on."

He hands her a pair of baggy canvas pants with the feet attached.

"I'll stitch the top to that when I'm done."

"Neat."

Coral takes the pants, then starts on a shirt.

"Have you ever been swimming in the ocean, Red? Like, actually diving down, rather than just splashing around on the surface? Oh, that reminds me. Open that cabinet over there."

He gestures to a large wooden cabinet. Inside, Red would find a couple of oil lamps inside glass enclosures, plus some other bits and pieces. Attached to the lamps are small brass bottles, and several more bottles lie stacked haphazardly beside them.

"Underwater lamps! It's awfully dark down there, so we need those. They last about ten minutes, then you have to replace the oil bottle, which you can do underwater. They have a flint inside, so you can just twist that key and they'll light. I have six spare bottles.give it a try."

"Oh? That's a good thing! You want to sink, we are walking on the seabed, after all."

Coral grabs a small brass valve, attaching it to a small hole in the upper part of the right sleeve.

"This will let the air out of your suit so you don't blow up like a baloom. If you ever need to get to the surface in a hurry, close the valve and your suit will inflate, and you'll float. It's dangerous, though, because of the pressure, so don't do that. We'll take the elevator up instead. If all goes well, you'll never need to worry about this valve. So, anything you want to know about diving? It's really very simple. Moving is super difficult, so you'll get tired fast. That'll make you use more air. At most, we probably have half an hour before we need to go to the surface and replenish the air runes."