Trelluby
| Species | Sea serpent |
|---|---|
| Home | Ovallia |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Trelluby is the sea serpent of Ovallia and the closest friend Lumikki Otsby has, at the lighthouse window with the day's gossip whenever the Sacred Ruler would rather have a bath in peace.[1] She has floated at Lumikki's side since the day the Book of Water chose her, was present at the oath, and keeps what she knows about it to herself.[1] Ovallia has no other sea monster, which is how Lumikki knows who the Nelazgians have chained up at the port of Veskadoth a book later.[2]
Appearance
Trelluby is enormous. Her head alone fills the lighthouse window, and her broad pectoral fins have to press flat against the sides of her head for her to push through it, after which she rests her paddle-like fins on the sill and knocks the candles off it.[1] Her eyes are huge and she rolls them freely. She bats her eyelashes, purses her lips, puts a fin to her chin when she is thinking, and once blows out every candle in a room with a dismissive wave of the same fin.[1]
She is big enough to carry both Lumikki and Remidigon Otsby on her back through open sea, big enough that a Nelazgian throws her a piece of meat about the size of Lumikki's whole body, and strong enough, in Lumikki's judgement, to have broken the harbour chains any time she liked.[3]
The narration calls her a sea serpent and counts her among the Eslurians rather than apart from them, remarking that unlike any of the other Eslurians she has stood, or at least floated, at Lumikki's side.[1]
Personality
Trelluby trades in gossip and delivers it as care. Lumikki knows what to expect the moment the head comes through the window: a fresh batch of local talk, usually about Lumikki. She calls her Lumi, love, hon, sea star and "my little sea star", and uses the affection to get answers out of her.[1]
She is not impressed by the things that worry other people. Told that Remi missed their standing tea, she answers that everyone's tea goes cold eventually and asks what the big deal is, and tells Lumikki she has bigger things to worry about than her brother.[1] Told to stay in Ovallia and mind the city, she agrees out loud and does the opposite.[1][2]
Chained under a row of harpoons she is exactly as cheeky as she is at home. She tells the Nelazgian guard that what she said is none of his business, is threatened with a chain around her snout, points out that he has just told her to keep her mouth shut, and refuses the meat on the grounds that she does not eat meat anyway.[3]
Background
Trelluby has been at Lumikki's side since the Book of Water chose her, and was there on the day Lumikki laid her right paw on the Book and swore away every hope of falling in love.[1] She therefore knows what the Rulers' law costs, and knows that Lumikki is in love with Alpin Loomin anyway. She teases her about it in a room where the Sacred Guard might have heard, is told to watch what she says, and tells her the secret is safe.[1]
Her visits are to the Ovallia Lighthouse itself, through the window of Lumikki's own bathroom, and she knows Lumikki's Guard well enough to shout for him by name in an emergency. That Guard, Harp, has no article of his own.[1]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Trelluby arrives at the window while Lumikki is in the bath, startles her, and works out that something is wrong. She guesses Alpin, is scolded for it, and gets the real answer: Remi has missed their tea. She dismisses it.[1]
Lumikki then collapses, poisoned. Trelluby shouts for Harp, and the remedy she suggests is dringrys, the fish-gut serum fed to gullys before overnight flights, which empties Lumikki's stomach and saves her. Told that her own friend put her through it, Trelluby laughs that she was not given much of a choice.[1]
She then argues against the decision Lumikki makes next. Leaving Ovallia on a hunch is compulsive, the Ruler has a kingdom and audiences to attend to, and Morgaedion is not high on any list of safe places, particularly for a Ruler among prisoners. Lumikki overrules her, tells her to take the audiences with Harp and to say she is sick, and Trelluby gives in with one condition: a souvenir. She clings to the side of the lighthouse and watches her friend ride a tidal wave out to sea.[1]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Trelluby does not wait. She follows Lumikki across the sea to Veskadoth and is captured there. Hidden in Ferra Ellisvat's wardrobe, Lumikki hears Calamity threaten a subordinate with being thrown into the water with "that hideous sea monster", one that travelled all the way to their port from Ovallia, and understands at once who it is. She takes the blame for it herself.[2]
At the port Trelluby is held under chains the width of tree trunks, with giant harpoons trained on them from the pier. She spots Lumikki behind a stack of crates while trading insults with the guard feeding her, and is quiet about it. Lumikki raises a wave off the horizon that tears the harpoons from their stands and snaps the chains, and Trelluby rides it clear.[3]
Calamity, now in a serpentine body of her own, seizes Lumikki out of the air. Trelluby launches Remi at her, then bites into her scales and draws purple ooze, and both are flung off. Lumikki cuts Calamity in half with a shot of seawater and falls into the sea, where the water heals her broken arm. Trelluby puts her head in front of her friend's face, tells her to get on and that the show is over because these guards will not wait for them to clear out, and carries her and Remi away from Veskadoth toward the Sacred City, having already been filled in on the plan.[3] She has not been paid her souvenir.
Relationships
Lumikki Otsby is her best friend and her Sacred Ruler, in that order. Trelluby stands by her, disobeys her, and is forgiven both times, and Lumikki says outright that having her back scratched an itch a sibling could not.[1][3]
Remidigon Otsby is Lumikki's brother and the Captain of the Guard at Morgaedion. Trelluby is dismissive of Lumikki's worry about him in Book 1 and throws him at a Shifter for her in Book 2.[1][3]
Alpin Loomin is the secret she keeps. She thinks him the most foul-spirited little thing she has ever met and cannot understand what Lumikki sees in him.[1]
Calamity commanded the Nelazgians holding her at Veskadoth and called her a hideous sea monster. Trelluby bit her.[2][3]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives her name as Treh-luh-bee. No surname is recorded.[4][5]
Sea serpent is the word the narration uses for her, while Calamity calls her a hideous sea monster and Lumikki thinks of her as the only sea monster Ovallia has. The books describe no other of her kind, and do not say whether she is the last of them or simply the only one anybody has written down.[1][2]