"... You sure this is a rhinoceros?"
"Yeah! Yeah of course! The horn on their nose is what they're named for!"
"Yeah... but this just looks like a sea serpent that grew a horn on its nose."
"... But it's got the horn on its nose! That's what the name says!"
-Some very confused local apprentices

One of the prompts this year I was a bit dissatisfied with, so here's what i did with it :3 Forewarning the later days are gonna have a bit of a... quality drop off :P Mostly cause of the time crunch against the end of the month and less time to rubber band prompts (big member of the "random bursts of motivation and energy" gang).

But I did want to take another look at the aquatic cousins of the aerial guys, so here's an older example of those juvenile ones that farmers recruit. At this size, they're less effective at their jobs in the fields and so they're often returned to the sea or other nearby body of water. This fortunately often coincides with the strengthening of their mating and nesting instinct so, apart from rare exceptions, they go willingly if not happily. But even after being released from their owners, their now engrained sense of loyalty often keeps them within the area for the rest of their life. Many farmers will continue to visit them regularly, daily if they live near the coast or monthly and yearly if a further trek is needed.

Farmers put great effort into maintaining these relationships because even free, a befriended serpent remains a great boon. The serpent will always haul a gift back for their former masters, often various sea debris they take a liking to or extra bounties of fish but some farmers have received more valuable cargo such as vast collections of pearls or pieces of salvage from old shipwrecks. Even more importantly, sea serpents will take their young back their masters at least once within their lifetime. It is unclear if it was born from their brutal extermination of the past kingdoms or simply a quirk of their evolution, but sea serpents lack almost all sense of parental instinct. They won't kill or attack their offspring (if they realize it) but rarely go beyond that bare minimum for most of their offspring. On the other hand, newly hatched sea serpents will often shadow and follow their sires for many years at first, sleeping near them for peace of mind and scavenging left overs from their hunts.

This means when their parent returns to the beach to meet their master, they bring with them a large clutch of potential new helpers along with them that are both young enough to befriend and impressionable enough to convince to come with. Simply taking a couple extra of these hatchlings back to their area and selling them to other farmers is often lucrative enough by itself. The parent often cares not how many of the annoying shadows are taken off of them, but doing so in a harmful manner will threaten their reproductive instincts and it will no longer return with its clutches, assuming it does return... and that it doesn't tear its master to pieces beforehand. They still are creatures of cautious hesitating trust, and take quite poorly to that fragile allowance being betrayed.