Black-Water Eels
The long blind eels of the Roothollows' still black water, the creatures of the black water that the Dark Elf houses leave alone, whose bite festers.
Overview
Black-water eels are the long blind eels of the still black water that fills chambers nobody drinks from in the Roothollows. They are the creatures of the black water that the Dark Elf houses leave alone. Nobody fishes for them or eats them, which is part of why they grow so large, and their bite festers. Parents keep children away from the black water, and these eels are one reason.
Appearance
A black-water eel is far longer than the eels of the surface rivers, as long as a grown Dark Elf is tall and as thick as a forearm, with a smooth, scaleless, slimy skin that is not black at all but a dead, bloodless white, faintly grey along the back. It has no eyes, only two pale smudges under the skin, and a wide mouth lined with small backward-curving teeth. A ribbon of fin runs the length of its back and belly.
It moves slowly in the black water and almost never breaks the surface; what people see is a pale shape turning under the dark. Lamplight on the water does not seem to disturb it. The black water smells of stale stone and rot.
Habitat and Range
Black-water eels live only in the still black water of the Roothollows: flooded chambers, dead-end hollows, and the pools of chambers whose root has died. They are few in any one pool. Whether they also live in the water behind the bars of the sealed Upper Roothollows nobody knows.
Behaviour and Temperament
A black-water eel lies still in the deepest part of its pool for days and feeds on whatever comes into the water: pale fish washed in, cave creatures, and anything that falls or wades in. It finds prey by the stir of the water and bites, holding on and twisting. It is not aggressive, but it does not distinguish a wading foot from a fish.
Life Cycle
Nobody knows how they breed: no house has seen their eggs or young, and they appear in a pool that had none, as if the water had made them. They live very long.
Uses and Dangers
They give nothing, because nobody takes them. Their danger is the bite: a child or anyone wading in the black water may be bitten, and the wound festers badly, as everything touched by that water seems to. Houses keep their children away from the black water and do not drink from it.
Lore and Belief
Dark Elves leave the eels alone as they leave the black water alone, and say that what lives in water no one drinks from is not food. Some houses hold that the eels are the underforest's old creatures, gone pale in the dark, like the pale cave creatures of the reservoirs; others say only that they are the reason for the rule. A child who has seen one turning under a lamp does not need the rule explained.