I looked at the water, then at the high cliffs, feeling the weight of the silence. My mind was racing, trying to pull a solution out of thin air.
"Damar, we're in a real bind here," I said, my voice low. "I can't filter an entire sea even if I knew how to, and we definitely can't move an entire tribe of sleeping mer-folk either. There are hundreds of them, I believe. What do we do?"
Damar looked out at the oily, brown film resting on the surface of the blue sea. He didn't look defeated; he looked like he was calculating.
Ooh, Damar's about to come up with a killer idea. I just know it.
"Poison like this... it is like silt," Damar said, his voice a deep vibration. "It settles where the water is still. In the caves and the shallows, it will definitely settle and suffocate them. But if there is a storm, the 'bitter dust' cannot settle. It will scatter and be carried away by the deep currents into the wide ocean where it is too thin to harm anyone."
I snapped my fingers.
