Summary

The harbor town of Greyport was a small, secluded community on the east coast of the Free Republic. Greyport's people had always kept to themselves, though immigrants to the Republic were known to settle there from time to time. Still, Greyport had a poor reputation - the reclusive nature of the people, coupled with their eccentricities and often unusual appearances, gave rise to ill rumors and prejudice by their neighbors. The truth of the matter lay in the waters a mile off Greyport's shores, marked by the rocks of Fang Reef - for just beyond the reef exists a trench of impossible depth, where live the Deep Ones in their ancient underwater city.

For many of the people of Greyport, the Deep Ones were family - and to all, they were friends and guardians. Having made a pact with the townsfolk early on, the marine-dwelling people provided bountiful fish and golden treasures in exchange for the secrecy and environmental protections of their fellows on land. As years passed and this alliance grew strong, the two populations began intermixing - in part as a favor to the Deep Ones, as their children are healthiest when born of other species and able to undergo a gradual metamorphosis rather than beginning life beneath the waves. These children grow up in open air and will, when they reach maturity (generally around what would be considered middle-aged for the land-dwellers of their bloodline), fully transform into Deep Ones themselves and join their ancestors underwater to live for centuries more.

Marris is one such child of the Deep Ones; her father had been born of the sea, and her mother was a larval Deep One herself who had not yet changed. Yet, when Marris was still very young, the slander against Greyport came to a head and the police of neighboring towns laid siege against the community for the entire winter. In the ensuing raids, Greyport's people were arrested en masse and many were killed, the town itself almost entirely demolished. Some families were able to escape the violence, fleeing far from Greyport and their Deep One kin. For Marris, her once large family became just her and her mother, older brother, younger sister, and cousin.

The family made their way inland to find work, but before long their mother's health - which had been deteriorating since the raids began - failed her, and she died before her transformation could be completed. Marris's brother Cheln, barely an adult himself, took over as caretaker of the family in her absence. When Marris was 10, her cousin left for the ruins of Greyport in the hope of contacting the Deep Ones for help and never returned. Not long after Marris's 13th birthday, her sister contracted scarlet fever and later passed away. Marris and her brother got by on their own for a time, but as Cheln aged and began to take on the "Greyport Look", work became harder to find and keep. After years of moving from town to town, farther away from the coast than they had ever hoped to be, Cheln was killed coming home from a job interview and Marris was alone.

At the time, Marris had already been used to crossdressing and posing as a man in order to find work more easily and now continues to do so. As industry has become more robust, she has found that there are always openings in factories and currently works in the production of automobiles. Though she too has started to show signs of her Deep One ancestry, her employers have been more willing to overlook it due to the high turnover rate of their workers. She meets Solakk and Lu as they are passing through her area, and rescues them from the trouble they had gotten caught up in. Reluctant to leave two children to travel the country alone, she decides to offer herself as an escort.