Chapter 4

I was maudlin in the days following my return from Iarveiros. I found myself missing Tara more than I thought possible and wondered if she missed me as well. If she thought of me when she bathed in her pool, or when the sheets kissed her sleeping form. If she saw my face, felt my touch, deep into the night when she was alone with her thoughts.

"Turn my page please?" Zhahllaia asked. The djinn stood close by me, a book open on the table in front of her. She shifted her weight from one bare leg to the other, the minute chains of her costume jingling softly. I reached over and turned the page. She regarded me, amused annoyance in her gold-flecked eyes. "You're pining for your she-elf."

I sat in the chair by the table, my book on my lap, going unread. I'd been staring out the narrow window at the Gray Ocean, sparkling under a blue sky. Gulls soared on the winds, their mad cries a regular punctuation of the crashing waves. "And if I am?"

"It is unbecoming. She is a noble, and if the size of her holdings is any indication, a significant one. The alliance you created with her will serve us well in the future. But staring out that window isn't any closer to making me tangible."

"You're right," I sighed. No amount of staring at the water would make Tara appear in this place.

"Clear your mind," Zhahllaia said. "Go down to the water as is your wont and think upon your elf. Put her in your mind until your thoughts are exhausted. Do this every day until you are once again ready to work."

I closed the tome and set it aside, standing. "And you?"

"Return me to my lamp." She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips over my cheek. The trill of sensation shivered down my spine. "I will be awaiting when your heart and mind return from Iarveiros."

I returned her to her lamp and made my way outside, following the path down the cliff to the rocky shore below. The sky was free of clouds that day, the weather warming with the commencement of summer. The waves battered the rocks at low tide and Oddrin spread his wings to ride the gusts pushing in from off the coast. I stripped to my breeches at the cliffs, securing my things on a high rock. The sun was warm, the wind was cool, and Zhahllaia was right. I instantly felt more present than I had since the sojourn to the elves had ended. Standing at the edge of that gargantuan body of water, I could accept that Tara was far away and that we had countless years to reunite. Even then, our time together would always be fleeting.

I wandered over the rocks, past pools of darting fish. A short way down the coast, a pyramidal rock rose from the shallows. At high tide, it was an island. Now, as the tide was at its ebb, an avenue of irregularly-sized stones stretched to its base. The urge to climb to the top was overwhelming and I decided to listen, reasoning that this was part of my true returning.

As I arrived at the base of the pyramid, my resolve fled and I felt like a fool. Climb to the top, and then what? I wouldn't be facing Tara for one thing. For another, if I wanted a view of the ocean, a higher one was in my room. Risking injury or even death hardly seemed the rational thing to do.

I nearly returned to my room, but then thought of what Zhahllaia would say to me. She would remind me that she had served as counselor for the rulers of a mighty empire. She was known as "the Enlightened" for a reason. This impulse gave form to desire and therefore I would do it. With renewed intent, I walked around the side, looking for a way up. What I saw brought me to a stunned stop.

A woman struggled on the rocks just out of the water. A fishing net had trapped her as surely as an enormous spider's web.

She was nude, her skin striped aqua and yellow, and obviously not human. Her color paled and her stripes vanished over her chest and belly. Her hands and feet were webbed, and she sported fins on her forearms and calves. What I initially took for hair was a pinkish mass of tentacles. She attacked the net with the curved black claws that tipped her fingers, but her efforts were in vain. The more she struggled, the more entangled she became.

My shock pinioned me in place. I took in more details of her as I wondered what to do. She was beautiful, despite, or perhaps because of her inhumanity. Her body was shapely, sleek muscles moving beneath her striped skin. Her face was a pleasing oval, the stripes reaching up her cheeks, around her lips, and haloing her huge eyes. These settled on me, and were it not for their size, they would almost be human. The color, blue flecked with pink, was like nothing I had ever beheld. She opened her wide mouth, baring teeth that looked human. Then those retracted into her gums and shards of serrated bone popped free as she uttered a terrifying hiss.

She was a nereid, an elemental child of water. I had learned of them in my studies, but they frequented deep water, rarely coming to the surface in the daylight. They were powerful in their element, but vulnerable on land.

I held my hands up. "Don't be afraid," I soothed. "I will not harm you."

She hissed again, her struggles growing more desperate. The net wrapped her more tightly. Her gill slits were flared, the filaments within looking pink and wan. I couldn't tell if she was drowning in the air, or if something perhaps more metaphysical was taking place. Perhaps the net had bound her to the land. Regardless, I could not leave her.

I took a step, and her thrashing constricted the net further. One of her arms was now trapped and her chest heaved futilely. I knelt by her and she swiped at me with a claw, but she didn't have a proper angle or range of motion to touch me. "I know you can't understand my words and I know you don't trust me," I said, "but I'm going to get you out of this." I kept my tone soft and even, my hands out and empty.

I gripped the net over her belly, drawing it away from her skin. She smelled of the sea on a clear spring day, strong but pleasing. I spoke a word, bringing my will to bear. The net between my hands ignited and snapped, the flame quickly guttering without my will sustaining it. She hissed more loudly and swiped at me, closer but still unable to touch me.

Oddrin flapped down to alight on a nearby rock and he returned her hisses. The night eft momentarily captured her attention, giving me a bit of space to break more of the net. I worked on the rope weave, burning it apart bit by bit, steadily freeing the nereid from its deadly embrace. As the process continued, her struggles only grew more violent and her attacks on me closer. With the final piece broken, she landed a swipe, opening four parallel slices over my chest. I fell back with a yelp, and she dove into the waves and was gone.

Cursing, I limped back to my clothes and returned to Thunderhead, cleaning and bandaging my wounds. They stung for days afterwards, though thankfully they were shallow. Zhahllaia asked about them that night and I told her the story while we lay in bed together.

***

I returned to the shore the next day. Now the stinging cuts in my chest reminded me of Tara. Wounds in the heart reflected on the flesh, and so on. Such foolish symbolism is easily mistaken for profundity by the young.

I walked along the shore, Oddrin scavenging in the pools for fish. Out near the rock formation, a pink and white shape glimmered against the gray rocks of the shore. Upon approach, I found that it was a shell of exquisite shape. The outside was ivory, the inside a delicate pink. I turned it over and over in my hands. I'd never seen any shell like it.

When I looked up, the nereid was watching me, her head poking from the waves. We stared at one another in silence. She blinked two pairs of eyelids, an inner one, clear and vertical, and the outer one, horizontal and colored like her skin. I lifted my hand in greeting.

She was still for a time, bobbing up and down in the swells. Finally, she lifted her hand from the water. I held up the shell and called to her. "Is this for me?"

After a moment of consideration, she opened her mouth and uttered a high-pitched shriek at the edge of my hearing.

"Thank you!" I shouted.

She vanished under the water. I assumed that was the end of it, taking the shell back to my room. Zhahllaia asked about it when I took her from her lamp that evening. I told her the story.

"Perhaps an apology for harming you," the djinn said, tracing her fingers over the healing cuts. Her touch felt like soft breath, tracing its delicate pleasures up my spine. That night when she initiated our loveplay, she was aggressive, kneeling over me as she touched herself, drawing me into her ghostly body.

The next day when I went down to the rock, I found a small pile of coins, hopelessly tarnished beyond recognition. Quite worthless, but I appreciated the gesture. The nereid floated in the water again, this time a little closer to shore. The week went like this, every day a new gift, every day a bit closer. By the end of the week, she was at the edge of the waves, crouching on all fours as she watched me inspect her gift.

That day it was a silver cup, the outside dotted with barnacles and other sea creatures. The inside was unnaturally clean, the bowl perfect and untarnished. Elvish script looped about the lip, some hidden by a copse of barnacles. A magical aura tripped my senses, making me taste sweet water and smell the wind through xilquinal trees. It was a memory that placed me in the pool at Tara's estate, where we lay together so many times. I would learn later that the cup would transform any liquid poured inside into the rejuvenating water of the elves. It would save my life more than once.

"Thank you!" I said excitedly. Then I touched my chest. "Belromanazar."

She got to her feet, her body unfolding before my eyes. Modest breasts, shapely and high on her chest, her nipples the same pink of her hair, drew my attention. Her sex was bare, her slit initially difficult to see among the stripes. She approached a few steps, gestured to my chest, and made a high-pitched noise that I couldn't quite hear but hurt the inside of my head.

I shook my head. "I'm sorry."

She tried again and again, each time lowering her voice. She crept into my range of hearing first, and understanding came next. "Belazar," she said, then bowed her head in contrition.

"Good, yes." Then I realized what she thought my name meant. "Not the wound. That's my name." I repeated my name, touching other parts of my body.

She responded, repeating "Belazar," as she pointed to my shoulder, my head, my leg.

"Right. And you are?" I pointed to her.

"Thalalei."

"Thalalei. That's lovely." She stood a few paces distant, still not quite trusting me. Her posture was loose and she wasn't baring her teeth or swiping with her claws.

Oddrin landed on my shoulder and Thalalei let out a squeak, jumping back.

"It's all right," I said, petting Oddrin, showing her that he was nothing to be frightened of. "My familiar."

"Belazar," she said, then made another series of noises.

"I would so much like to know what you're saying," I said to her.

She cocked her head and I could swear I saw understanding bloom in her eyes. But instead, she merely repeated my name to me.

"Where do you get these treasures?" I mused. I wondered if they were just on the bottom of the ocean somewhere, or if there was some elven treasure ship spilling enchanted objects over the seafloor. I held up the goblet, pointed to the ocean and shrugged. After a few times, she got it, her huge eyes widening.

She made her high-pitched noises, but her gestures made some sense. She mimed swimming down, hunkering down, and picked up a rock, pointing from the rock to the goblet. Then she reached out to me. "Belazar?" she asked. She mimed a few actions and I finally understood.

"No, I'm not a fisherman. I'm..." I spoke a few words and an explosion of color spilled glittering lights between us.

She squeaked happily and clapped her hands. Then she mimed holding the net together, furrowing her brows, and muttering nonsense.

"That is supposed to be me. Belazar."

"Belazar," she said, nodding.

I stayed with her for a time and we did our best to communicate. Soon, we were sitting on a rock next to one another, watching the waves. Her body radiated a distant cool like a shaded pond. Though I was curious about her body, I didn't want to stare. We stayed there together for many hours. Finally, I rose.

"Belazar?" she asked.

I pointed to Thunderhead at the top of the cliff, gestured to myself, and then to Thunderhead. I had already lingered too long at the shore and Rhadoviel would not be pleased.

She nodded. "Thalalei," and pointed to the sea. She pointed to the sun, now sinking into the water before us. Then pointed to the sky beyond the cliff, her clawed finger tracing the path of the sun. Then she pointed to the rock. "Belazar."

I smiled, pointing at the rock. "Thalalei."

She returned the smile and dove into the water with sudden grace and was gone. I made my way back to Thunderhead.

***

In the morning, I couldn't wait to get down to see Thalalei. My sleep was restless, and I spent the time in the early morning staring at my window and willing the deep blue to lighten. I hurried down onto the beach as soon as the sun was in the sky, once again stripping to my breeches by the cliffs, and making haste to the formation. I expected to sit there for the span of the morning, watching the water for her to emerge, yet I found her waiting there for me on what I'd begun to think of as our rock, apparently as eager as I. When she saw me, she smiled, the red filaments momentarily extended from the gill slits on her neck. She called my name, beckoning me eagerly.

I joined her at the water's edge. She took my hand, and it was the first time we had truly touched, save for a bit of inadvertent contact during her rescue--and of course the rake of her talons over my chest. Her flesh was pleasantly slick, soft, and cool. Then, without warning, she pressed her body to me, her mouth finding mine. Her breath was the breeze off the water at night, her lips salty, and her tongue, serpentine and agilely insistent. I responded heartily, pushing my hands into the nest of sluggishly writhing tentacles at her crown.

We parted, her smile stretching wider. She blinked her secondary eyelids, gesturing to the water. "Belazar." She mimed jumping in.

"I am not a strong swimmer," I said. I could mostly keep myself afloat, but that was the limit of my ability.

"Belazar," she said sternly, pulling me into the water. My resolve wavered. I couldn't resist her striped body shining in the sun, this otherworldly beauty, but I would make a fool of myself in the water.

However, when I stepped into the waves, I felt more stable than I ever had on my own two feet before. The push and pull of the tide were present, yet had no power to move me. Magic trilled through her palm, but it was a different source than mine, deep and mysterious as the sea.

She drew me out into the ocean, the surface rising from my knees, to my waist, to my chest. The water was cold, but I noted this in my mind as a simple fact. I wasn't uncomfortable at all. In fact, the cold of the water, its heavy embrace was pleasant, like I was returning home.

When I was neck-deep, I realized what was happening. Panic seized me and my blood ran as icy as the ocean.

She was a nereid. Drawing a fool to his death in the deep. I tried to let go of her hand, to make it back to the shore before the tide inevitably dragged me under.

"Belazar!" she exclaimed in shock, then saw me flailing, and repeated my name tenderly. She stepped to me and once again pressed her body to mine. She never let go of my hand, and with her other, she mimed my breaking of the net. Then she pointed to her mouth. Her claw, curved and black, touched my lip so lightly I barely felt it. She repeated my name again, her eyes soft.

The fear still gripped me, but I wanted to trust her. I understood her meaning, but if she were truly a monster, it wouldn't matter. She could deceive with a gesture as easily as a word. I made my decision in an instant. "Thalalei," I said to her, nodding.

She smiled again, ducking her head below the water, then surfacing. She nodded to me, then mimed doing it again. "In for a penny," I murmured.

She cocked her head in confusion, but not for long. I went below the water with her. I opened my eyes, expecting a blurry nightmare. Instead, the water was as clear as elven crystal. Thalalei floated in front of me. She mimed breathing, her chest inflating. Her gill slits opened, the filaments bright red beneath.

There exist spells to breathe underwater, but I knew none of them then. My breath grew sour in my chest, and I made a motion to break the surface. Thalalei held me in place, shaking her head. When she spoke, it was the high-pitched sound, but this time I heard it clearly. She was saying my name, over and over, soothing me here as I had soothed her in the net.

I pointed to the surface, then to my throat. I'm drowning, I thought to her. The pressure enclosed me. Was this how I would die?

She broke into happy laughter, drawing me close. I fought her then, trying to get to the surface, but she held me fast. My breath choked me, strangled me, suffocated me. Black enveloped the edges of my vision, my chest threatened to burst. I cursed her in my mind, and I cursed myself for being a fool. I thought of Tara, and Zhahllaia, and even Mira. Would they have given themselves to such a fool?

Thalalei squeezed me. My mouth opened, and I sucked in water.

My vision brightened instantly. The pain vanished. I was breathing. 

I was breathing.

I stared at the nereid in wonder and she broke into happy laughter again. She kissed my cheek and brow. She said something that I didn't understand but guessed was along the lines of You see?

I nodded, embarrassed by my mistrust of her. Keeping her hand on mine, she began to swim--I merely had to hold on. She slipped through the water with preternatural grace, scarcely needing to kick her legs or move her arms. She was a daughter of the sea and I was grateful to her for sharing this wonder with me.

She showed me the coastline first, places that I had lived within sight of for the breadth of my memory. We went as far south as Burley Shoal, and I looked up at the bottoms of fishing boats as the locals made their living.

She took me out to sea, to a vast underwater forest. Sharks prowled through the gently waving stalks, hunting porpin. Schools of fish brighter than jewels swam to and fro. A massive creature with a shell like a castle slithered among the stones. No animal reacted to our presence. We belonged in a way that was at once powerful and humbling. This was how she navigated the seas, a gift to me for my kindness with the net.

She brought me down to the seafloor. The water was nearly black, but I could see. Here she showed me the wreckage of an elven ship, its silvery hide in the process of being reclaimed by the sea. We passed the tear in the hull, and an octopus far larger than I watched us pass with a baleful eye.

She took me to the edge of the world, where the seafloor plunged into the abyss, out of sight even for the magic she had enchanted me with. I stared, and I thought I glimpsed the seafloor. But then it moved.

She grinned and returned to the coast. As I broke the surface, I inhaled air and it felt so light, so thin after the water that had been running through my veins. As I let go of Thalalei's hand, the cold gripped me. My breeches were soaked, clinging to my skin. I staggered to the rock and hugged myself, shivering.

Thalalei pulled herself up next to me. "Belazar," she said. Then she pointed to my breeches and cocked her head. She pointed at herself, then mimed taking off the breeches.

She was right.

I pulled them off my body and threw them up the shore where they landed on another rock with a wet plop. The sun warmed my skin, banishing the remnants of the cold. I stretched out without thinking, and only then did I notice her interested attention.

Her gaze crawled up my body, lingering between my legs. With warmth had returned some of my size. She looked up into my eyes and cocked her head. I felt like she was asking for permission. I nodded.

She lay on her belly on the rock, inspecting my staff without touching. I needed her touch. She was an alluring creature, and her proximity started to have an effect. I began to grow, to harden. She made a surprised sound and broke into a grin. She reached out tentatively, then looked to me. When I nodded again, she took me in hand.

I groaned happily. She didn't stroke, but rather moved me about to inspect me from all angles. There was something more intoxicating about her refusal to do the natural thing and milk me. A teasing that was as frustrating as it was enjoyable.

I was just as curious about her body as she was about mine. In my limited experience, she was by far the most inhuman creature I had seen up close, but her alien features only fascinated me more. I touched her shoulder. "Thalalei." I gestured, indicating how to move. She understood, and turned about. Now the two of us were on our sides, propped up on one elbow, head to foot.

With her sex now in front of me I could inspect it closely. The patterning of her body created the effect of a sunburst, drawing the eye to the bare slit. I felt her grasp me, and took that as an invitation. I gently spread her lips, exploring layered folds that looked like an exotic mollusk. The colors ranged from blue to yellow then to pink, each one a delicate curtain of soft flesh. She spread her legs, making a musical note at the edge of my hearing.

As I caressed her smooth skin, my fingers came away coated in a thin layer of savory film. It was as though her entire body was slicked like the orchid of an aroused lover. Curious to see if she had some of the same responses, I ran a finger up the inside of her thigh. She made the musical trilling, and I found that I craved that sound.

She began to stroke, her palm gliding up and down my silky length. She held me with care, her claws away from hurt, yet I knew that she could open me up if she so wished. Those claws were like razors. If she wanted my life, it was hers. But she did not.

She wanted to understand me. Wanted to please me. Wanted me. This was sweet curiosity and I shared it.

I ran my tongue up and down her lips, delighting in the juices there, thicker and saltier than I'd ever tasted. Each layer of folds carried a slightly different flavor, reminding me of the layers of the sea--the shore taste, the shallow water, and the deep. I opened her up and found the pearl at her apex. It shone in pink iridescence, demanding attention. I ran my tongue around it and she made her call again, the sweet music of pelagic desire. Each further exploration brought more of her juices until she was spilling over me, and for the second time that day I feared drowning. Though this time it would be a blessing.

Her tongue ran up and down my length, making my stomach grow cold in anticipation. Now I spread my legs. Her mouth closed over me, the sensation of a cool cavern swallowing me. I thought of those terrible teeth she had bared at our first meeting. The serrated triangles could unman me with a single close of her jaw. Every moment that she didn't, further stoked my desire. I cavorted on a cliff's edge.

She took me to my hilt without problem or even hesitation. Deep inside her throat, my head touched something petal-like and soft, squeezing me briefly before letting me go. Her tongue was restless as well, its agile length running along with her swallowing strokes. Her mouth was as wet as her sex, her saliva washing over me, providing delicious counterpoint to her lips and tongue.

The waves crashed against the rocks. Inside me was an echo of the sea, battering against my resistance. I knew I would not last long. I could only ensure that she wouldn't either. I wanted to please her as much as she pleased me. I slid my tongue inside her, then moved to her pearl, back and forth and back and forth. Sensing my impending explosion, she swallowed me to the hilt, her long, deep strokes drawing the sea out of me.

Suddenly, a wash of liquid splashed over me, coating my face and the rock below us. I felt her teeth extend, just barely touching my flesh. Then they retracted, and she took me once again to my root, her throat gripping, massaging. That was all I needed, and the sea roiled from me. The first wave went down her throat, the second alighted on her tongue. She moved her head by the third and made a musical sound as she watched the rest of my seed pulse from my staff to splatter on the rock between us.

She smiled at me and said something in her language.

"I wish we could understand each other," I said. I wondered if that's what she had just said to me.

She looked down at my sex, cocking her head as she watched me soften. Another decision made, she straddled me, taking me in both hands and stroking. "Thalalei..." I protested, but quickly my trepidation vanished as she nurtured me once again to readiness. Then, without ceremony, she lifted herself up on her knees and guided me to her, sighing my name happily as she eased me inside of her lovely body.

She made that high musical noise as she began to move. I ran my hands up her slick belly, caressing the muscles that coiled and uncoiled with every roll of her hips. She gripped my chest, where she had first wounded me. Her claws dug into my flesh, my blood welling over their obsidian points. The pain crystallized inside of me, sharpening my vision, honing into pleasure, made me need her all the more. The wounds caused by her fear vanished over time, but the ones she inflicted in her desire remain on my chest as cherished relics of our love.

Her wetness was everywhere, crashing and surging against me with the inexorable power of the tides. Her undulating hips rolled onto me over and over as I held her, my hands struggling for purchase on her slippery body. I was awash inside her, massaged not by the velvety folds of her insides but of liquid itself. I was not making love to her, I was laying with the Gray Ocean, inside this exquisite avatar.

With a burst of strength, I rolled her over. Now her hips were high, and I could take her with powerful, downward strokes. A dominant position, but I was not her lord. She looked up at me, her inner eyelid blinking, smiling up at me innocently. I kissed her once, and I felt her teeth retract, to be replaced with the sharp ones, dimpling my lips. I tasted copper.

"Belazar, Thalaleeeeei," she trilled, shivering, her hips rolling into me. I turned her over again, guiding her onto all fours. She arched her back, and lifted her haunches, pressing the side of her face into the stone. Her hips never once stopped moving. At times, it seemed as though she lacked a spine. Her entire body quivered in bliss, but she kept her motion constant, kept stirring the sea inside her body.

I knew what I was then. A voyager. My staff was my vessel and I was plying the Sea of Thalalei. Lashed by sweet waters, tossed by waves, but I was resolute. I gripped her by the hips, driving myself into her that I might find the distant shores that we both longed to reach. Her seas were rougher now, savaging my vessel. We were both tempests inside, pregnant thunderheads arcing lightning into stormy waves.

I felt myself deeper inside her than ever before. A trick of the mind perhaps, but she was a magical being, an elemental of the water. The storms took us, and I was tossed. For moments, I thought I was lost, but then my vessel bumped the far shore.

At that moment, Thalalei opened her mouth and though I could hear nothing, I felt the scream of her bliss. It took me as well, the lightning inside me shedding in pulses. I held onto her, as I would to a ship in a storm-wracked sea, my body emptying itself to her.

We finally collapsed onto the rocks together, holding one another close. We kissed from time to time, her tongue finding the blood on my lips.

She touched the wounds she'd dug into me, brushing my lips. "Belazar," she said apologetically.

"Thalalei," I answered, kissing her and easing myself inside of her again.

We parted at sunset. I lost track of how many times we lay together. I know only that I was beyond exhaustion as I trudged back up to Thunderhead. And though I knew that was our last time together, I still went down the very next day in hopes of seeing her. She did not show herself to me, and I saw her absence for what it was: the Gray Ocean bidding me goodbye. I was finished with my apprenticeship and the shore that had been my constant companion was telling me so.

Allow me a little foolishness. She was a daughter of the ocean, but Thalalei had her own goals. I would know them eventually. Until then, I kept the treasures she had fetched. The shell, the coins, a barnacle-encrusted skull, a rusted dagger, and of course the goblet.

I left Thunderhead shortly thereafter, a full-fledged wizard ready to make my way in the world.