Sean Davitty’s head still ached from Cousin Seamus’ all Irish wedding. He slept most of the flight back from Shannon, although Inis Mór to Shannon was a series of puddle jumpers and windups that hadn’t helped his hangover.
But Seamus was his favorite and he was Seamus’ Best Man and Dia could that man go on about his research and studies.
Archeo-linguistics. First Languages. Paleo-linguistics. Languages before there were languages. Going back before France’s Trois-Freres.
Sean smiled, nodded, and drank up another glass.
Besides, if he couldn’t dive in it, Sean wasn’t interested. Even while back home he twice brought his gear down to the harbor to practice. Seamus helmed his father’s boat out to deep water and Sean would go down down down, deep deep deep, and come up laughing at Seamus’ panic stricken face.
“It’s free diving, Seamus. I’m next in line for ONR’s DSEND testing and this puts me near the top.”
Seamus answered with a thick brougue. “I never thought my cousin would be working for the Yank’s Alphabet City.” But on Sean’s second dive, he drew some symbols on his tablet and told Sean to look for them when he was way deep. “Can you do that for me, Sean?”
“What do I get if I find them?”
“Ah, you’re too long among the Yanks, for sure you are.”
“Is this that Sheila Na Gig thing you use to do when we were kids?”
“Aye, them’s pretty stones we found as childrens were carvings of the Mother Goddess and we didn’t know. I’m still on the hunt, but now with the Uni backing me all the way.”
Sean was thrilled his cousin’s childhood fancies were financing his adulthood quest. And when he met his cousin’s bride-to-be, he smiled and nodded; his cousin’s found his Mother Goddess at last.
But Sean came up from the deep with nothing.
Now back in Boston and with a remedial throbbing head to remind him of his week in na hÁrainneacha, Sean practiced the techniques he spent a year learning from the Bajau. He didn’t have their genetic disposition, but he came close – his best dive was ten minutes at two-hundred feet. His teammates shook their heads at him. “You’ve already got all the certifications you need, Sean. You working at being a whale?”
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