Spring in Santopae

Nerthus let out a sigh as she brought herself up onto land again, handing the bag of various junk she’d found to someone else to deal with. She honestly wasn’t sure how she had let herself be convinced into doing this.

She was currently spending her weekend down by the beach, where she would be given a biodegradable bag before going out swimming and gathering all the trash or other junk she could find out there, then bring them back to the organizers of this little event for them to deal with. It was horribly boring, and she didn’t know why she was bothering with heading out yet again to fill what must have been at least her fifteenth bag.

Indigo had invited her out to go visit Santopae for the spring season, but it sounded like a bit too much work for her; she didn’t do well with long drives and the over abundance of salt in the area didn’t mesh well with her. The salt of the ocean? That was fine. The waters of what was once massive salt flats? That was pushing it.

So she had turned him down and he took it in stride; he understood how she was. She did appreciate the offer at least. But then he had suggested she could try helping out down at the local beach, they were always looking for Mantagrems to help make the cleaning of the sea easier. She didn’t plan on actually following through with that suggestion, but after lying at home for a few hours alone. She decided to say ‘screw it’ and might as well go check it out anyway. Surely it would be better than doing nothing, right?

The verdict wasn’t out yet if this was better or worse than staying home.

But… she had to admit, even if it pained her slightly. It did feel kind of good to help. Knowing that she was in a position to actually be effective at helping clean up the trash out here, and seeing others being thankful about what she was doing.

That didn’t change the fact that the act of doing it itself was still terribly boring.

She shook her head with another sigh as she walked back into the water, it would take a minute before she was deep enough that she could actually swim around, a small curse of her massive height. But before long, she was back at sea, swimming around in the deeper parts, looking for sunken cans and other junk that people had just tossed away into the water.

Nerthus never realized just how much people were willing to just throw out like this, it was kind of absurd. And while she was lazy as well, she always made sure to toss garbage where it needed to go at least.

A small glint caught her eye, and she couldn’t help but swim over to it. At first she assumed it was just another bit of trash, but as she got closer she realized it was something else.

A small pearl, rounded to perfection, sitting alone in the sand. She found herself looking this way and that, trying to find some sort of explanation for how this ended up here. There was nothing around to indicate why this pearl was just randomly sitting innocently on the sea floor. But hey… finders keepers!

Picking up the small pearl, she tucked it away in a small separate bag she had brought, it had specifically been for sharper objects that might have cut a hole in the bag she was storing the trash in. But for this trip through the water, it could hold her new little treasure.

Some small part of her wondered if that pearl was a small gift from Eden herself… A little thank you for Nerthus doing her part in cleaning the waters of the world.

But the larger part of herself said it was probably just a coincidence.

Whichever one was right, it didn’t really matter, cause now she had a neat lil prize from this excursion, and you know what? That was enough to make it exciting to her.