Now, Kit was suggesting with S'reee, a recently native form of "pollution," to back him up a possible compromise. Here in this one place, at least, the

ocean had an opportunity to return to that old purity, to water in which any chemical except salt was foreign. Maybe in other places this same

intervention could be brought about, with wizards to power it and the ocean's permission. But first they had to get this initial permission granted.

It was a long argument, one which the ocean was reluctant to let anyone else win, even though it stood to benefit. Kit knew from his research in the

manual and from a number of conferences with S'reee that there was always difficulty of this kind with oceanic wizardries. The waters themselves, far

from being fluid and pliant to a wizard's wishes, could be as rigid as berg ice or as hostile as hot pillow lava to action from "outside." The

discussion had to be most diplomatic.

But Kit and S'reee had done their homework, and they didn't have to hurry. They just kept patiently putting their case in the Speech, taking their time.

And Kit thought he started to feel a shift  I think it's starting to listen! S'reee said privately to Kit.

Kit swallowed and didn't respond...just kept his mind on the argument. But now he was becoming certain that she was right. Just this once, persistence

was winning out. They'd both been hoping for this, for though the waters had flinched under those early lashes of lightning, they also had conceived a

certain sneaking fascination for the wild proliferation of life that had broken loose in them over a mere few thousand millennia. Now, as Kit and S'reee

hung in the center of the spell sphere they had constructed, they saw the light of the Sea around them start slowly, slowly to shift in color and