Dobber Dolphin

I expected a dolphin. What I found was something closer to a seal that had been to a very good tailor. The Dobber is a heavy, barrel-bodied beast with a slate-grey back, a creamy belly and a ladder of gold stripes down each flank. Most surprising of all are its forelimbs: stout, clawed flippers that it uses to haul itself up onto the rocks with all the dignity of a retired sea captain climbing into a hammock.

They live along the rocky shorelines of the Deepwater Coast, and they spend a scandalous amount of time out of the water. A Dobber will lie on a sun-warmed boulder for half a day, rolling occasionally to bake its other side, and then slide back into the surf the instant a fishing boat comes near, purely to inspect the catch.

The Mystery of the “Evening Parliament”

Every evening, just as the tide turns, every Dobber within sight of the shore gathers on a single great rock and begins to click. It is not the idle chatter of the daytime. It is formal, almost ceremonial, with one Dobber clicking at length while the others fall silent and then erupt all at once. I sat through a dozen of these sessions and came away convinced I had witnessed a debate.

The Cephalyn of the mid nation, whose children learn to read Dobber moods before they learn their letters, told me it is a sharing of news: who has seen sharks, where the herring are running, which human has been rude. Her skin flushed a mischievous pink as she said “which human.” A Mer-folk youngster, on the other hand, swore blind that the Dobbers are holding trials and that the accused is usually a gull. I would dismiss this entirely, except that I did once see a gull leave the rock looking deeply ashamed.

On the Matter of Bonding

Bonding with a Dobber is the easiest thing in the world and also the most exhausting, because the price is conversation. They want you to talk to them. Constantly. They do not need you to make sense, but they will not tolerate silence, and a summoner who sits quietly on the jetty will soon find a Dobber spraying a bucket of seawater into their lap to restart the discussion.

The Cephalyn are the undoubted masters. A young Cephalyn summoner showed me how she greets her Dobber: she taps the rock three times, blows a bubble through the water, and then tells it, at length, everything that happened to her that day. The Dobber clicks back the whole time. When I asked whether it understood her, she shrugged several arms and said, “Does it matter? It listens.”

I tried this myself with an older bull. I told him about my journey, my aching knees, and the dreadful soup at the last inn. He clicked politely throughout, then rolled over and showed me his belly. The fishermen nearby assured me that this was an enormous honor. They were laughing as they said it, so I remain unsure.