Keeping our eyes peeled, we saw several members of the colored tribes exchanging things with each other. Every so often, an injured or sickly looking merfolk would swim up to a member of the golden tribe. The eldest female would be given a gift and she would touch the gift giver. Their whole body would glow gold and they would be healed. "It looks like the golden tribe are healers. I thought this might just be a social hub, but it might be more than that. Maybe this is a market or a temple." He bristled when he heard the word temple. "These creatures worship some false gods then? We have to take them out!" I gave him a chop to the head. "We don't know that. It's going to take several trips and studying them to even understand. The ones in the river have to be there for a reason. Are they spawning? Are they training? Until we can determine what they are doing over there, it would be better to not mess with them much. It is a bit too late for the red and blue tribes up stream, but we can observe the others." I said. Corey shrugged. "Who cares!? We're just going to kill them."
Losing his interest almost immediately, he just crouched and sighed deeply about the big injustice. We watched them a good distance from the water for an hour. Several of the merfolk pointed us out. Some of the more adventurous merfolk came and swam to our side of the mouth of the river. They gurgled at us and waved shiny stones and other cool looking things at us. I looked at Corey. "Looks like they want to trade with us. Do you have anything that you want to give them?" I asked. He just rolled his eyes. "You know the only thing that I want to give them is a bullet between the eyes." he said. That gave me an idea. I took my hand gun out and cleared the bullet in the chamber. "Cover me." I told him as I walked closer slowly. I reached out to a purple scaled male and held out 2 hands to him. One had the bullet and the other was empty. The purple merfolk had retractable spikes for protection from what I could see. Some of the more hostile ones had the spikes out as we passed. This male had all of them of inside his fish tail. He scrapped my hands as he swapped items.
purple tribe
My empty hand had the shiny stone he had. The bullet was gone. Both of my hands were now totally slimy. The sensation made me cringe. "Ewww. Fucking gross. What the fuck is this!?" I said. I took out a flask and scraped all the slime. I also placed the shiny stone in it. That could all be analyzed. Maybe their bodies produced this slime for some reason. Or they could just be swimming among a lot of pond scum and slime. The river water was similar to earth's water, but the sediment was slightly off. The young purple scaled merman gurgled happily as he swam back to his own cohort of other young purple scaled merfolk. Corey approached and said "What was all that about?" he asked. "I told them about the slimy texture of his hands." Corey cleared a bullet from his gun and squat in front of a yellow scaled youth. I had a white shiny stone. The youth was waving a decently sized red rock. It looked like a gemstone of some sort. They swapped items as I covered him. He winced a bit. "Is it the slime?" I asked. "The cheeky shit shocked me!" he snapped. "Does it hurt?" I asked.
