A rocky peninsula (01.05) juts into the Ocean of Bitter Regrets (00.06). At its very end is a small and twisted willow leaning well over the Ocean. At its base rests a boy with a battered straw hat tugged over his eyes.
Laughing Sam – when he is awake – is a cheerful dryad who invites other to sport with him along the peninsula. If a brave soul follows him all the way out to the willow, Sam showers them with ‘trifles’: pearls, fish that shed their scales and cough out their bones when asked politely and the cowrie-shell currency of Naros (05.14 and 29.14.12).
Sam was one of the dryads who escaped Naros, but he has forgotten that nation’s fall in the horror of diaspora. Sam cannot move beyond the peninsula, and his selkie friends will ask him to pass on requests for brave surface dwellers. Recent problems include the King of Salt and Brine (00.06) swallowing a selkie shield maiden’s helm and the Pirate Kings making underwater raids.