"I've decided. I'll go on a journey. I've stayed here for too long. Here, in this dark cave.
I don't think my family will be alarmed finding me gone. Rather, I think they'll be relieved. After all, I'm just a Spikeless.
Oh well, I don't care anymore. I want to have an adventure! I'll show them. All alone in the ocean, on my own.
I can feel my tube feets getting excited! I'll write this diary to showcase my journey through the seas.
Every time I find something interesting, I'll quickly write it down. I need to get prepared, so I'll keep this brief.
Write you soon ~Lulu"

This is the introduction to the Proteus Diaries, my project for this May and Mermay challenge entry. Each day I'll expand the worldbuilding of this world. Here's our narrator Lulu, a proteus who'll go on a journey to explore the ocean and meet many other underwater races. Each entry will have a italics portion, which will be the diary entry written by Lulu, and a normal portion, that will be my comment/reflections. This entry also shows the quality and type of painting I'll be going for this project.
Now, let's talk about Lulu. It was hard to find a pleasant color scheme for her, but between the 3 I have made, I went with this, more vibrant, one.
Onto worldbuilding, there are multiple "mermaid" races in this world. Lulu is a Proteus (which gives the name to the project). In general, each race has many "clans" or "tribes" which defines how they look and what powers they hold. In this case, she is a peculiar proteus of the Echinoidea tribe. Most mermaid races speak Hawaiian and use this script (found here). They write by carving hard, levigating rocks with a basalt chalk. Protei have the technological advantage among other aquatic races, but they are slowly falling behind as other mermaids build more connections with surface-dwelling races.

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