THE
STROMFLY
("DANDEREL") |
In late spring around the Eight Winds Bay, when the wind blows from the great maelstrom that boils perpetually at the bay’s centre, inhabitants of the outlying islands and the shore are witness to an eerie spectacle – clouds of glittering creatures, a little like spiny worms or strange airborne fishes, drift on the wind like lotann seedheads. The strange, insect-like appearance of these “Stromflies” has long made them a mystery, and it has only recently been confirmed that these are fish, which will grow into large, considerably less helpless ruffed eels.
Appearance.
The fry (newly hatched young) are very small, light creatures, hardly like fish
at all. They consist almost entirely of a long, silvery body a palmspan or so
long but less than a nailsbreadth across. Bony and fragile to the touch, this
worm or grub-like body has often led to them being classed as some form of
insect or even an airborne jellyfish, and earned them the name Stromfly.
The eyes are very large and bulbous, with the glassy look is common to fish out
of water, and the mouth is tiny and
underdeveloped, as of course they have no use for it at this age, subsisting
entirely off the pinkish yellow yolk sac which acts as ballast, attached to what
will be the fish’s belly. This being the only note of real colour to the
Stromfly, they can look quite striking when the injera’s light is behind them,
and a cloud of Stromflies before the sunset is a sight to behold, with each
yolksac glowing like a small lamp, and their silvery fins reflecting the light
between them in a constantly shifting, glittering cloud.
The gills are extraordinary, and quite beautiful – the gill plates lift up
around the neck like a silvery ruff, and the thin red tendrils of the gills are
exposed to the air, where it seems the high moisture levels in the maelstrom
allow them to breathe out of the water. The gill-plates themselves are hardened
and quite sharp, enough to cut the mouth or hand of anything snatching them too
injudiciously from the air.
The rest of the body is little more than a bony tail, studded with the
extraordinary fins, which fan out and lock together by means of little hooks at
the tips to create two sail-like ruffs around the body of the fish - the larger
from the pectoral fins, behind the gills, the smaller from the dorsal and
ventral fins, a few
nailsbreadths down. These fins act like sails, catching the gales of the
maelstrom to let them fly for
strals and strals. These
fins are transparent, but reflect direct light much like
water, so that they sparkle and flash as they
twist through the air.
The adults are so entirely different that it was long a matter of doubt as to
whether they were in any way related to the Stromflies. Known widely as the
ruffed or dandy eel (modified to “Danderel” around the
Eight Winds Bay),
the adult is a substantial fish, growing to over a ped long and thicker than a
man’s forearm. They have no fins, save a faint spiny ridge down the backs,
lengthening to an oar-shaped tailfin, and the same double row of ruff-shaped
fins that the young Stromflies have. What were magnificent silvery parachutes on
the tiny fry, however, are tiny in comparison to the adult fish, as they stop
growing nearly entirely when the fish matures, giving the impression that the
adult ruffed eel has been fitted with an undersized collar.
The gills recede, back to the normal concealed kind common to most fishes, and
the rest of the skull grows to fit the bulbous eyes, leaving a head
characteristic of bottom-feeding scavengers – a large, versatile mouth and
upturned eyes. They have a formidable set of teeth, up to two hundred tiny sharp
fangs, backward pointing so as to grip any prey fast. Their bodies, though
without the usual arrangement of fins, are strong and well muscled, without
scales, as is usual for eels, and with a slimy skin which is nonetheless
slightly rough when brushed the wrong way.
Special Abilities.
Of course the most obvious ability of Stromflies is that they can fly. As a
defence against water predators, breeding
Ruffed Eels take advantage of the unique permanent maelstrom of the
Eight Winds Bay
to scatter their thousands of young far and wide. The young, whipped up into the
air by the boiling
water, need only unfurl their fins to be
borne out of reach of most predators, and dispersed over vast areas. Unable to
steer themselves, many will of course land far from
water, or in otherwise hostile areas, but
enough hit water that it is well worth the
loss of the minority of fry.
Both adult eels and young Stromflies can breathe out of
water, provided there is sufficient
air moisture. Adults are less efficient at
this, as their gills are not exposed to the air,
but instead their slimy skin allows them to stay moist for long enough to cross
barriers to their migration, breathing through their skins much like some frogs
can when underwater, and closing their gill plates entirely to keep from drying
out. Over land they move like somewhat clumsy serpents, wriggling their bodies
from side to side with more determination than grace.
The adults also have a great homing instinct, able to find their way back to the
bay every year, even slithering over land. They are believed to navigate by the
moon, knowing its orientation in relation to the
Eight Winds Bay.
The fact that they can notice this as fry, and memorise it well enough to find
their way unaided across strals of unknown land, suggests intelligence far
greater than is generally attributed to eels.
Territory.
Danderel are found in the waters of the
Eight Winds Bay,
as well as surrounding rivers, lakes and shores. They can live in salt or fresh
water, though they do best in salt
water where there are rocky areas to hide in.
Adult Danderel are especially common round the three islands within the Bay,
particularly Galnós'chrónn, where the connection between Stromflies and adult
Danderel was discovered by the researches of the
druid Steverin the Blue. Young
stromflies originate only from the maelstrom, as this is the only place where
Danderel breed, but can float far and wide, leading to a fairly dispersed
territory for the adult fish.
Habitat/Behaviour.
Danderel favour sheltered areas of water,
preferably with rocky shores where they can hide, or at least rotting wood or
muddy banks where they can make their lairs. They thrive around the shores of
the three isles in the
Eight Winds Bay,
which offer the perfect rocky nooks and crannies, but also do well in brackish
marshlands and muddy riverbanks. Adults are solitary outside of breeding season,
attacking and sometimes eating other eels that get too close. They are strictly
territorial against other large fishes and animals, guarding their lairs
ferociously. They will not hesitate to bite hands which get too close and try to
eat your fingers off, as the druid
Steverin the Blue remarks in his notes thereon.
Diet.
Stromflies eat nothing but the stored yolk with which they are born. It will
hopefully last them long enough to drift to a safe body of
water where they can develop into adults. The
adults, by contrast, will eat anything; mostly they subsist on small fish and
carrion, even taking newly-hatched trologs if they should stray close enough.
Because of this indiscriminate diet, they are valuable cleaners in dock areas,
eating waste fish from fishing boats, and anything else thrown into the
water. They hunt by ambush and opportunism,
grabbing and wrapping round prey to hold it still while they try to get their
teeth into it. they have been known to attack almost anything small enough like
this, including other eels, and even the hands or feet of unwary paddlers off
the shore of the
Eight Winds Bay.
Mating.
Every year in spring, when the waters are high from snowmelt and heavy rains,
full grown Danderel (no younger than ten years old, and sometimes as much as
thirty) start to change, going off their food, and darkening in colour. They
hang around the surface, in a dramatic reversal of their usual bottom-dwelling
habits, and can even be stroked without fear of being bitten. They wait until
the moon is full, and it is then that they begin their journey, apparently using
the moon as a guide, towards the heart of the
Eight Winds Bay,
in a straight line as much as possible, even travelling over land.
When they arrive the bay fills with eels, offering a huge fishing opportunity
for both humans,
elves and animals (especially greater hooded trologs, which frequent the
stormy centre of the bay), but this opportunity is brief, because they soon
collect right in the maelstrom where boats, and most animals, can’t go, and
breed in the heart of the storm. Of course nobody knows the particulars of their
breeding habits, because it’s never been seen firsthand, and they won’t breed in
captivity. A few days later the eels are gone, dying and washing up on the
shores, drawing seabirds, pinnip and fish to feast
on the dead and dying fish. Then the Stromflies start, appearing in clouds and
drifting past the islands on the wind, getting tangled in shrubbery, fishing
lines and the rigging of boats. In a few days the Stromflies too will have
disappeared, blown to waters of their own
where they will grow into Danderel, starting the cycle over again.
Usages.
Both Stromflies and adult Danderel are a versatile and cheap source of food –
the Stromflies are a staple of flyer crabs and flying fisherman, as well as land
birds, fish such as kuk’arg which leap to catch
them, and even frogs. The Arthyrón elves
catch them for bait, using fine nets held between two poles. This is a simple
task often given to children, who delight in running to find high ground ahead
of incoming clouds. As well as being used simply as fishing bait for
line-fishing, the Stromflies are dried and eaten salted as a delicacy, and the
yolk-sacks are removed and eaten raw, or else added to other dishes to add a
characteristic rich flavour. Since the work of Steverin the Blue confirmed the
link between Stromflies and Danderel, some Stromflies are also kept to grow into
captive eels, housed in custom-built wicker cages that are hung underneath
pontoons and jetties into the water and fed on scraps.
The adult Danderel are, as aforementioned, an important consumer of waste around
settlements, as well as being a useful source of food and bait for larger
animals. They are raised from fry (a fairly recent practise, the fact that the
Stromflies are their young being only recently confirmed) or else hunted with
barbed spears and tridents, as they tend to slide through nets and creels.
Myth/Lore.
The Stromflies are seen as a sign of good luck around the
Eight Winds Bay,
with large clouds believed to be an omen of good fishing for the year. A
favourite game of Arthyrón children
is to try and catch them in bare hands, or to tie lengths of string to their
tails and follow them around like kites. After such games are finished, such
individuals are more often released into the water on the three islands than
eaten like their net-captured siblings. It has long been reckoned that
Stromflies grow into some sort of sea creature, but just what kind was only
recently confirmed. There is still a widespread belief that they grow into
mythical silvery fish which watch over the maelstrom and the beast which
supposedly dwells at its heart, the notorious “terror of the Bay”, or
Tuu'marásh.
Further afield, where Stromflies are rarer, they tend to be seen as more
ethereal things, often called regarded as a kind of fairy or wild spirit, and
regarded with suspicion, much like a will o’ the wisp.
Indeed, there are stories of the glittering creatures leading wanderers on the
shore of the Sea of Tears off cliffs as they drift out to sea.
The adults have garnered less mythology, being such a stolidly useful and
unglamorous creature, though as with many fish there are tales of ones which
have grown to great size in certain areas. A popular tale heard in Silven tells
of a deep pool on the borders of the Dinali territories, where that legendarily
savage people took their dead, to be devoured by a Danderel as big as an
Ophochio, which lurks there, grown fat from eating corpses for hundreds of
years, patiently awaiting the next offering. Of course this is likely simply a
fanciful tale told to pass time and scare the gullible.
Researchers. Steverin the Blue is a
druid whose researches in the
aquatic fauna of the
Eight Winds Bay
often touched on the Danderel. He was the first to confirm that they were the
same creature as the Stromflies, mapping out their lifecycle and raising several
in captivity. They apparently made excellent bait for greater hooded trologs,
the creatures which formed a major focus of his researches, and which are used
to eating them when the eels migrate to the maelstrom to breed.
|