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Adam has been exploring this underground town. He's known one or two of them before, in Europe. Or at least, similar things, catacombs and Undergrounds. But this one has a twist. It's inhabited by monsters. Monsters with…families? Leave it to America to innovate. He's standing in the high central space, which is tall enough for him not to scrape his head, investigating the pool of water. Where does it go? He keeps meaning to get in it and find out.
In the water, there was nothing but the sense that the darkness was looking back. Mainly because in this case the darkness was looking back and the darkness was in teh form of a fishman. Fountains had a tile bottom generally. This was some nature of giant recess with a waterspout. Slowly from the river runoff's waters the top of a scaled head and two large half-orb black eyes crested the surface of the water. It blinked, first interior then exterior eyeslids shuttered close-closed and then open regarding the man staring in with a vast curiosity.
Adam observes the scaled man rise from the water, with cool interest. "Does the water lead out to sea?" His voice incredibly deep, with the potential to be incredibly loud. He's got an accent, somewhat British, somewhat Scandanavian, as if he'd lived in many places around northern Europe.
Triton had his own odd accent, without the effort of blending in it had definite undercurrents of harmonic vowel trees,central Asia maybe? the mIddle east? China? Still, it stayed faint. "English then?" More to himself than anything else. He paused and offered, "eventually. Hudson River mostly. Waterway runs under the city but seems to fork in … unintended ways." Adam was a curiosity wasn't he. The fishman looked around and considered this. If nothing else and there was threat he could easily drag someone into the under currents; deeper than they could swim back to air fast enough. However, things were so far amicable and as a diplomat? He seemed inclined to leave it as suck nad offer name instead of blade. "I am called Triton. Have you name you wish to go by, neighbour?"
"I have no nationality," Adam says, staring at Triton in a way that could easily be terrifying. That awful face of his makes all his expressions at least somewhat terrifying, to humans anyway. "Ah. The river." His eyes track away from Triton, towards where the Hudson might run, then back. "I greet you, Triton. My name is Adam. Others have tried to call me by the name of my creator, but that is not my name."
Triton lifted a webbed hand to his forehead before extending in a slight greeting of welcome. "You are here, then for right now, you are neighbour enough." The submerged man tread water idly, hough his hands remained still considering this. "Among my people when we become whatever we will become we give ourelves a name instead of the one given. I suppose it seems that way, among them, that they- above- seek to label all things but not listen to learn what that name already is. But, I digress, good to meet you. You are not resident from here then?"
"Your people. Who are your people?" Adam crouches, bringing his huge head closer to get a better look at Triton. When he moves, it's fast, perhaps startling. He doesn't telegraph anything. "No." He answers Triton's question, information for information. "I came across the sea, having heard of this place. I have seldom resided anywhere in particular."
Triton considered as they were not 'out' yet and Adam, for all purposes, was a total stranger. Still in teh spirit of offering he gave, "A place not entirely unlike this in some ways. A place where the privilage is in difference, not similarities. But, yes, over seas." Triton was in water which made the ability to withstand these surface discussions far more enduring; pausing to dip his neck below water level to keep the gills happy. "My… people asked me to come here. REach out an olive branch. See if there is potential foramicable relations to be had as it were. I will say it is…interesting, but welcoming. The surface is quite trying but it still ahs its charms too."
Adam's sharp eyes pick out Triton's gills, and the way he wets them. "Permit me to wish you luck in your findings, sir." At mention of the surface, he looks up at the ceiling—so far below the streets. "It is as ugly here as it was in London at the turn of the century," he says, lip curling. "They make the same mistake everywhere they go, Englishmen. They have no love in them for the wild world."
Triton considered this thought with much consideration. Triton was more one to observe and think than ready an answer for the sake of being loud and impertinent of any knowledge he held. "I think with all things they are capable of the best and worst of their efforts. It is good, perhaps, they are not aligned in one thought on this matter. It allows room for adaptation and growth." Speaking around the sum of it as it were. "The surface has its own set of problems. SOmetimes they are not a problem for us, but as we share soil, does it not, in a way, still become our concern based on the outcome?"
"You are a true diplomat," Adam says, switching back to observing Triton. "A difficult fate. I do not envy you it. Alas, they have made things our concern. There are few places one may go to escape them, any longer."
Triton considered the compliment with a simple, but grateful nod of his head in a distinctly Eastern fashion. "In the up-world yes. This is true. With work, maybe we will not have to seek places without but beside." He paused bringing up both scaled hands to unfurl webbed fingers. "Until then, we do have here and here? Here can always use assistance if you are of mind to lend it, Adam. Up-worlders do not come down here."