Choptank Bay is an estuary lying inland from the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by The Northern Continent from the west and the Delmarva peninsula from the east. It is the largest such body in the Contingent Discovered Areas.  More than 150 major rivers and streams flow into the bay's 64,299-square-mile drainage basin, which brackets four towns (Teleost, Shetland, Ramsar and Cape Charles), one Astrologists Embassy, and twelve subspecies of the common Northern Sugar Toad.
Like all estuaries, Choptank Bay acts a freshwater-maritime middle-ground, and is thereby subject to both marine influences, such as waves, tides, and a regular influx of saline water as well as riverine influences, these being flows of freshwater and sediment. Great swathes of riverbed have been revealed to be calcified in the years past, some even bearing the faint yellowish markings of what is thought to be an elusive fungus.
The banks of our earthly estuaries are among the most populated areas in the civilized world with about 60% of the world’s proud surplus living along estuaries or in other coastline environments. For this reason, populated estuaries often face considerable degradation in the form of soil erosion, deforestation, and pollution as a result of sewage input. In spite of all this, both the Sugar Toad population and air quality of these areas are believed to be some of the best in our biosphere.
Choptank Bay, being both sparsely populated and more aquatically segregated than all other estuaries excluding ‘Spencer Gulf’ of Australia, is expected to experience a great migratory influx within the next 20 solar sweeps. For now, it’s spritely cities gleam with the soft lighting of sparse human habitation. The sugar toad population undulates, ever-large and chirring in the early mornings.
The sound of a sugar-toad in the morning is not an acquired taste, but rather one that is voraciously devoured by those stretched tight parts of us until it begins to make us all ill. Some vendors wear nubs of rubber in their ears on the way to the market-place. The toddlers in Old Bill’s Child Care and Raptor Restoration Center press their faces close up to the shop window as these particular people pass. Their soft hands leave white marks on the windows, their eyes become so large that a caretaker might feel as if he or she is falling into them, like they’re in space. The toddlers make cauterized noises when the cart dragging, candy eared strangers pass out of sight. Some of them have been known to fall into fits of fevered morosity, and Bill would be quick to tell you that these children will grow up to make the best dog owners, wives, and work-slaves. Calcifer Stoaks does not attract their attention, though he walks much closer to the shop than most others dare, smart black shoes clicking against the pavement as he passes. By the time the children have looked up all they can catch of him are the strips of black plastic trailing from his orange galoshes. He walks with his head raised high, his older brother’s strong arm resting heavy around his shoulders in a way that with all other brothers would be sweet. It is soured by its familiarity, the furled up knowledge that he has been doing this since early childhood, that Koyla holds him in a way more possessive than it is comforting- You will be saved because you belong to me- more constrictive than it is protective.
He wouldn’t be here without the restraining order, Cal reminds himself, lifting his face to meet the force of the wind that blows cheap paper in their direction, Koyla is here to hold his secondary support system, Koyla is here to keep him on track, to make sure he walks all the way to the library and then all the way back to the hotel. His brother’s shirt is unbuttoned all along his breastbone, the skin there as white as the young of a blind amphibian. A neon sign casts itself lovingly over his downcast eyes, embeds itself in the crevasses of age around his cheeks. He moves his arm to scratch at the hollow of his neck, blue eyes flicking back at the oily darkness of a storefront window pane, the bright splotches of color on his cheeks drawing sweet little gasps from the children behind it. 

In Calcifer's ears, the sugar-toad's song begins its first reverberations.