Danika invited Sea Song Tione to the party so that the NPC dolphin bard could find her easily and he met her at the reef. She'd forgotten that they couldn't understand each other naturally, but the dolphin quickly sang the strange whistling song that activated the translations between them, and then he talked continuously for awhile.
When she admitted that she hadn't heard all of the songs about their adventures together, or any of his new ones, he sang them for her. Fortunately the magical translation worked on the songs as well as his speech, because Danika could hear the faint whistles and clicks beneath the translations and really wasn't sure that she'd have identified them as music. With the translations, they were long ballads, more like lyrical epic poetry than song, but Danika supposed that some of the quality of the music was lost in translation.
He helped her find the oysters, and she used her Animal Identification on a number of fish and other aquatic animals that he pointed out to her. In return, she targeted him with her Impartation, and as she'd suspected, he learned the skill that she'd already managed to teach to four others even faster than anyone else had learned a skill from her yet.
"This is so cool!" Sea Song Tione declared after acquiring the skill. "Even though I know what most things are already, it's amazing! It's like being able to see the song of their identities!"
Danika wondered suddenly if all spoken and written word was experienced as song to a dolphin. She kind of wanted to find a player who had a dolphin character and ask.
Sea Song Tione also insisted that they should visit the mermaids after she finished acquiring the pearl from Stubbles Och'tern. "Mermaids are quite rare!" the dolphin insisted. "Especially the males, for some reason. I've only met one merman in my life, and he came north to seek the Black Turtle, and waited at his temple for a hundred days! Do you want to hear his song?"
Danika replied quickly, "I'll listen to his song on our way to find the mermaids then? First I should take these oysters back to Stubbles."
"Yes," the dolphin agreed cheerfully.
He accompanied her all the way to the docks, with the basket of oysters dragging along behind him. Danika wasn't sure how she would have transported the living creatures if the dolphin hadn't been available.
Collecting them from beneath a meter or so of sea water would have been quite a challenge too, although Danika had been rather shocked to discover that she could look around underwater without it making her eyes burn. Swimming was becoming a more important looking skill to acquire, although she hoped that she'd be able to use a fish transformation, like Kit could, in the future.
Danika flew up to the dock and pulled the spidersilk string she'd tied to the basket. She braced herself as well as she could and used her dragon strength to heave the basket up onto the dock. A couple of oysters slipped out of a gap that she hadn't properly tied, but Sea Song Tione collected each one back up for her and she used her binding string to tie them up and lift them out of the water to stuff back into the basket.
Fortunately there were goblin porters available for hire near the docks, so she soon had a minion of more robust stature to help her transfer the oysters to a barrel filled with sea water to keep them alive. Even for the goblin, transporting the heavy barrel to the tavern where Stubbles still waited as evening fell upon the port town, was no easy task.
Stubbles cheerfully handed over the promised pearl. It was a small irregular pearl that he withdrew secretively from a grubby pocket. Danika tried engaging him in further conversation, but he would only repeat, "Even a hungry fellow like myself cannot possibly consume more than one barrel full of oysters in a day!"
It made her wonder what happened when many people tried to complete the quest at the same time. She checked the time, and decided that Shrubbery and MatchlessMinion were probably out of school, and tried messaging them both. Neither of them replied right away, and she considered messaging one of the characters of her co-workers, but then decided that it must certainly have been tested before the quest was released, and that she'd just ask when she was logged in to her work account in a couple of days.
She zipped back to the docks to meet Sea Song Tione in time to see the spectacular sunset over the ocean at the western edge of the horizon. Her enthusiasm for the sight made the dolphin ask curiously, "Is it that wonderful to watch the world go dark? Isn't it inconvenient when you can't see the world through sound like I can?"
It was such a complex question that Danika was speechless for a few minutes. The contrast between Sea Song Tione and Stubbles Och'tern as NPC characters was just too vast. Finally she replied, "I don't know how much you can see of the beautiful patterns the light makes when it is shining from the edges of the world, but I love them."
"A dragon's eyes are wonderful things," enthused the dolphin.
Danika followed the dolphin bard across the ocean beneath the moon, where the light glimmered and reflected on the dark water. It even shown through the clear translucent waves as they curled and splashed around the leaping dolphin. Danika could only agree that a dragon's eyes were indeed a wonderful thing on ZipZing's enchanting night flight over the water.
They accurately reached the island where the mermaids dwelt before the night was half over, thanks to the dolphin's bardic skills. Danika wouldn't have imagined map skills as part of a standard bardic repertoire, but the dolphin laughed when she questioned it, and pointed out, "Bards record the events of both places and times in their songs. And it's difficult to describe something that you can't identify isn't it?"
"It is," Danika agreed happily.
She logged out for a supper break, while the dolphin slept for a bit, and they agreed to go meet the mermaids after the sun rose.
She had a text waiting from Aishin that said: "I won't get time to play tonight, but I think it's looking pretty good for tomorrow evening!"
Danika grinned at her phone and replied: "I'll be looking forward to it then! Should I be doing anything to prepare for our date?"
He must have been pretty busy, because he didn't reply until she had finished and was about to pull herself back over the edge of the VR-medi pod. "Just plan on staying up late? Until midnight if that's ok?"
She replied quickly, "That's ok!" It wasn't late at all compared to her old gaming schedule, but with her new work schedule it might mean that she had to shift some of her usual morning routine to her evening. It would be worth it though.
She returned to "Living Jade Empire" to meet the mermaids at the beginning of the new "day".