• PM To Join • The Taste Of Salt

[Jinyel]

In civilized places, around civilized campfires, when people described the people or stories they liked, one word surfaced again and again.

Bravery.

Sometimes it was treated as an inherent quality which some people simply had and others didn’t, like black hair or brown eyes. If you had bravery, you were a hero, or else the sort of villain audiences loved to hear about.

Other times, bravery was something to be found, like a rock on the ground which could turn the tide of a story if used the right way. The thing that turned farmboys into city-savers and mothers into earth-shakers.

Then, sometimes, bravery was built, like a skill which could be learned. Cowards, if they were good people under all that shivering and mumbling, could become brave if they worked at it. Perhaps save a life. Earn the favor of an immortal. Never stay the same, though, because what use did bravery have for small things like this?

Jinyel stood upon another Scalvoris shore, this one with unnaturally green sand. Unlike the blue sand of Egilrun, this beach seemed to have no distinguishing quality except that it was cold and wet, which he did not enjoy at all on account of being barefoot.

His boots, clothes, and armor sat a small distance from the water, Monya posted to watch over them. The she-wolf barked as Jinyel neared the surf, but remained obediently on guard. He couldn’t have anyone stealing his possessions as he experimented, and he certainly couldn’t bring Monya or Littlespark into the water with him.

It was going to be very, very cold water after all.

Bravery. Jinyel had always thought he was brave. How many times had he run toward danger, stood his ground against unwise odds, even when he knew his side was weakest?

With all that, why was it such a struggle to step into the damn water?

One wave crept close. The next one, closer. Jinyel shuffled forward so the following one brushed his toes, and―

“Fuck.” Cold. Cold. It was cold! He had known it would be cold. But worse than the water was the air after it left, stinging the wet salt from his skin.

He shuffled forward again. The next wave came up to his ankles. For a moment ― more of a heartbeat, really ― his skin adjusted to the water, and was then slapped by mid-Vhalar wind as the tide retreated again.

Monya barked. Jinyel signed Calm and kept going.

The further he went, the easier it became. His feet, once fully submerged, eventually adjusted to the constant temperature of the ocean. It was the initial wading that demanded discipline. Soon the sea reached his knees, then his waist, then his chest, and then finally his neck.

The Saltenrock dug into his palm, smooth and refined. Was that magic coursing up his arm, or his imagination? Was it utter madness to test it when he didn’t know how to swim? What was the difference between madness and bravery, besides whether he succeeded?

But this was what he had stepped into the ocean for. This was why he had labored so long in the Prince’s workshop. He hadn’t come here to learn to swim.

Jinyel took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sank into the water.



Monya had always been loyal. Obedience was something more flexible, to be practiced when it aligned with loyalty and abandoned when it did not.

She did not know what a well was, or regalia, or that Jinyel would survive from the power of a smooth stone. She knew water. She knew depth. She knew the way prey vanished beneath a surface and did not return. Her packmate had walked into the great moving water, and the water had taken him.

She barked until her throat burned, but the waves did not answer. The longer she waited, the tighter something wound in her chest, an instinct screaming that standing guard over dead things was useless when the living were gone. So she did something she had never done before, because there was nothing else she could do.

She went looking for help.

Jinyel’s skins and metal were nothing to her, but the hanging thing, the thing which smelled of smoke and otherworld ― that mattered. She took it in her jaws and ran into the forest which was crossed with two-legged scents.

Monya followed the nearest trail which smelled of upright feet, cloth, and fire. A woman whose hands touched a thousand dried plants which the wolf knew but had no names for, and similar at least to the scents which often coated Jinyel’s own hands.

The wolf approached the woman with a metal censer in her mouth, ears pinned and a submissive whine in her throat. She did not attack, but kept her head lowered. Every muscle was curled in tension, ready to turn around and run as soon as she was sure the woman would follow.

Surely an odd sight for anyone to meet in the woods.

Specifics

Mo is approached by a young black wolf carrying a censer in its mouth. The wolf has a simple necklace made of seashells, clearly made by hands with thumbs. If followed, it will lead Mo to a campsite with folded clothes, armor, and an old firepit.

[Morrígu]

One would typically find a trial of fishing with barely anything to show a waste but, for the woman crouched by a bubbling stream, it barely fazed her. The air was cooling as the season began its descent into the dark and snow to come, but the sun still held on to the dredging warmth of Saun. The birds fluttering around treetops were a lullaby for the world as it readied itself for slumber. The woman wedged her fishing pole into a rocky crevice and stood to stretch out her limbs, breathing in the rich scent of earth and herbs. The bag lying by her feet, at first empty, now brimming with samples. She will be well stocked, and plenty over when she returns to gather more.

Mo felt him before she saw the familiar wisp of feathers. Her bonded companion. Lume, her soul. His lean canine body stalked around a thick trunk and came to sit beside her leg.

“Hello.” she murmured aloud, and brushed her fingers through the feathers across the ridge of his wings.

“Have you been lurking for long? Maybe you have seen a better stream, I have an itch for salmon.”

’Your inability to find a school of loud flapping fish has nothing to do with me, Child.’ His voice has a low, easy tone. It would be comforting if his words were not dripping with annoyance.

’If you want a tracker, buy a bloodhound.

“I could track them easily and you know it. I only mean to relax today. No exhausting hunt, no calculations, just us and the water.” she spoke easily, unfazed by his words, then shot him a smirk.

”If I understand correctly, we were born together. Same time. Same age.”

‘Yet you still act like a clumsy toddler traipsing through life, thinking charisma will cover your utter lack of discipline.’

Mo let out a burst of astonished laughter. His cynical attitude made her wonder what it said about her if they were one in the same. She shook her head, letting go of Lume's lecture. He spoke the words she refused to, the same attitude only hers was hidden. Since childhood being kind, cheerful and unproblematic was her goal, for fear of abandonment from her family. She depended on them to keep her sane most days.

A twig snapped not far off from where the pair had been. She pivoted to find a wolf creeping forward, its beautiful dark coat twitching as it approached. Instinctively she placed a hand over a dagger by her waist, but paused when she realized it was carrying something that shined in the sun. Metal? A censer.

’She is scared. She is worried.’

‘She is not the only one’ Mo thought, a nervous jitter starting over her.

’No, child. You are not her worry.’

Mo scanned the wolf over again. Around its neck, a necklace. Given by its owner she assumed. Its demeanor was subdued and low to the ground, near submissive though she doubted this beast was by any means submissive in nature. Help? Did it need help?

“Hello. Nice- nice puppy.” she groaned inwardly when she stuttered. Mo slowly raised her hands in the air, hoping the wolf did not see this as an act of aggression.

As soon as she raised her hands, the beast turned its head, the metal censer clinking softly against its teeth, and began to trot away. It paused after ten paces, looking back over a dark-furred shoulder with eyes that held a haunting, almost human-like urgency.

​‘It wants us to follow,’ Lume noted, his wings giving a sharp, restless flick. ‘Or it wants you to follow. This could be a trap.’

​“It isn’t a trap, Lume. Look at her tail,” Mo whispered, hitching her heavy bag of herbs high on her shoulder. The wolf’s tail was tucked, her movements stiff with a desperation that didn't seem like bloodlust.

​They followed.

​The trek took them away from the song of the stream and deeper into the thickening brush where the warmth of the sun couldn't quite reach. Here, the shadows were long and smelled of pine needles and old dampness. The wolf moved with a ghostly silence, her dark coat blending into the trunk shadows, save for the rhythmic clink-clink of the censer.

​After several minutes, the wolf slowed, its ears swivelling toward a small clearing that edged a shore of eerie but gorgeous green sand. It stopped at the edge of the light and dropped the censer. The metal hit the dirt with a heavy thud.

​Mo stepped into the clearing, her breath catching.
​It was a campsite, but it was far too quiet. In the center sat a firepit, the stones blackened by many nights of use, though the ash within was gray and wind-blown. Beside it, laid out with unsettling precision, were the remnants of a life.

​A set of travel-worn clothes- a tunic of sturdy wool and heavy trousers -had been folded neatly, as if waiting for a body to return to them. Propped against a nearby log was a suit of gambeson and armor, the buckles undone but the pieces arranged in their proper order. There was no sign of a struggle. No blood, no torn fabric. Just the gear left behind in the dirt.

​“Lume?” Mo whispered, as her fingers reached out toward the folded tunic. “Is someone here?”

​Lume’s eyes scanned the perimeter, his feathered wings half-unfurled to make himself look larger. He stepped toward the armor.
​
Lume’s voice echoed, devoid of its usual sarcasm. ‘The clothes were folded by someone who didn't plan on being gone for long. But the armor... it wasn't stripped off in a fight. It was set down. Carefully.’

​The wolf let out a low, mournful whine and nudged the censer toward Mo’s boots. Now that they were closer, she could see the intricate designs.

​“She’s asking for help,” Mo said, her instincts finally overriding her fear. She knelt by the censer, looking back at the wolf. “Where is your master? Where would they go if they left their clothes in the dirt?”

​Of course wolf didn't answer. She simply looked toward the water on the far side of the camp and let out a sound that was half-howl, half-sob.

’Well, fuck’ she thought.

“Lovely day for a swim.” she murmured sarcastically as she unlaced her boots and sat her bag in the sand next to shore. Standing, she shook off her shawl and stepped tentatively into the water.

’Son of a-‘

Mo let out a groan at the cold assault as she trudged further in searching for what she was certain would be a dead body.

[Jinyel]

The magic was functional. Jinyel could feel it, the way his willpower flowed through the Saltenrock in his hand and made its ether flex. Magic crept along his mouth, just as it was supposed to.

He just… had to breathe.

His feet dug into sand. He screwed his eyes shut against the current. He didn’t swim upward so much as jump: a sudden push, a gulp of air, and then he sank back down.

Breathe. That was all he had to do. Why was this so difficult?

Another jump. Another gulp, but this time he waited until he was half-sunk to inhale. Salty water splashed into his mouth, and he coughed from panic more than any real need to save himself.

The salty water didn’t feel like water. Not in his throat, anyway. It slid down as easily as the air. As if it was supposed to be there.

Another jump. He repeated it, waiting until he was nearly submerged before breathing. More water slipped into him this time, a whole mouthful, and again came that oddly comfortable sensation as it interacted with his lungs.

And then, the fourth jump, he actually waited until the water closed over his head before inhaling. Before breathing. Because that’s what it was: breathing. The ocean passed over his tongue and into his lungs like air, although he knew it was not. It was so much heavier, and so much saltier than even the wind right over its surface.

It was warmer, too, once his body adjusted. The currents didn’t shift temperature like the wind did. They were stronger, almost like a constant physical stroke of hands against his skin.

He breathed. In. Out. Salt. Water. Alive.

He was alive, and the water moved through him.

The Saltenrock pulsed in his hand.

Slowly, carefully, Jinyel opened his eyes. It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. Human tears were salty, after all; perhaps human eyes were accustomed to salt water in general.

Everything was blue. The sand beneath him, the shore behind him, the midday sunlight falling in curtains across the ocean floor. Ahead of him, the world fell downward, where the plain sandbar ended in a jagged shelf beyond which Jinyel could not see.

Jinyel stepped forward. Bounced lightly on his heel. Waved his arms and felt the resistance of water around him. He jumped again, more gently this time, and with some emphatic wiggling was able to stay suspended in the water for a moment. Not quite swimming, but close.

The hunter strode toward the sandbar’s edge, watching in fascination as the sand churned and settled around his feet. The small fish close to shore steered clear of him; even the crabs avoided this strange, upright creature which had invaded their world.

It was an odd sensation, gasping underwater. Jinyel reached the edge of the drop-off, and though he made no sound, the sharp intake of water nearly unbalanced him.

This was… a garden. Wasn’t it? It had to be. Didn’t it?

Protrusions of all colors crowded the edge of the sandbar, shaped like plants, stiff as stone, and brilliant as spring wildflowers. The seafloor was carpeted in red, yellow, and purple structures, attended by thousands of fish with even more vivid patterns. Eels and darters, crabs and shrimp, squishy pink things like slugs as large as his arm ― it was such startling, alien beauty that Jinyel couldn’t think straight.

After too many moments to count, he had to turn around just to gather his thoughts. He looked at the shore and where it tapered to open shore, and there…

… there, he saw something. Two somethings. Pale, moving shapes, bent at the base. It took several blinks to understand them; Jinyel had never seen feet without seeing the person who owned him.

Someone was walking into the water from the same spot he had.

Jinyel frowned. Monya was up there. So was Littlespark, his clothes, his armor, all left at the mercy of a shore he had assumed was empty.

Someone, barefoot, had come to inhabit it.

He loathed to leave this dazzling garden, but Monya and Littlespark mattered more. Jinyel flailed briefly, trying and failing to swim to the surface, and begrudgingly settled for walking instead. At the very least, he needed to be sure his companions were safe.

[Morrígu]

Lovely. A day off, a gentle stream, herbs to gather, and now a very large, very cold body of water to wade into, all because a heartbroken wolf dropped a glorified incense burner at her feet. All because she had the urge to help. The same urge she desperately wished she had not listened to today.

’Son of a bitch,’ she thought again.

The cold was a slap. It wasn’t just the temperature, it was the sheer pressure of the water, a solid, biting wall that instantly stole the warmth from her skin. It was the kind of cold that made her muscles seize and her breath hitch, which, naturally, was what she needed to ignore. Just keep walking. Every step was a conscious act of will, grinding the unsettling green sand beneath her toes, knowing she was trading warmth and dry ground for a fool's errand.

Her luck. She was going to wade out to her waist, her chest, and find nothing. Or she was going to find them, floating face down, already taken by the currents. Standing guard over dead things is useless when the living are gone. What good was she in a situation that would typically need a specialist of the dead.

The wolf's whines were a grim soundtrack, not that she needed the reminder. Every inch deeper was a step closer to failure, to finding a corpse. The water pressure squeezed her ribs; it felt suffocating, like the ocean itself was warning her away.

When a shadow detached itself from the blue, her heart tried to climb out of her throat. Not a body. It was too fast, too deliberate, moving with a horrifying kind of purpose. He wasn’t floating; he was walking up from the deep. An unnatural stride, heavy, like the water was a cloak of lead and he simply decided to press through it. His hair was slicked back, his eyes were locked on the shore, and he was clutching a single, smooth stone like a lifeline. He wasn’t a man who needed to be saved. He was a man who had done something impossible.

“Well.” she spoke aloud. “This is not something seen every day.”

Mo had meant to help pull him from the water but stopped dead when she realized- clothes on the beach, fractures of water shimmering with the same shade of his skin-
Her eyes flew skyward and she turned as quickly on her heels as one could in the waves.

“I will start the fire for you.” Her words rushed out.

She scrambled out of the surf, shaking her heavy, damp hair back from her face, and made a beeline for the camp. The firepit was a mess of cold, gray ash, but she could see the signs of past use- a hunter’s fire, built for necessity, not comfort.

She knelt, her back still resolutely facing the water. Her fingers were numb, but the focused work of preparing the fire was a welcome distraction. She quickly scraped away the damp ash, placed the tinder, and pulled a small, oiled leather pouch from her bag. Tinder from her own dried herbs, perfect for catching a spark. A healer and a tracker, she’d thought. Useless in this situation. A healer, yes. A healer who knew that hypothermia was as good as a death sentence out here.

The scratch of her flint and steel was loud in the sudden quiet. A spark. A tiny, fragile tongue of orange licked the herb fibers. She cupped her hands, coaxing the flame to grow.

[Jinyel]

As Jinyel’s path sloped upward, the stranger's path sloped downward. Bare feet. Pants? Whoever this was, they had decided to go swimming in mid-Vhalar with their clothes on. Pants flowed into a belt, the belt into the bottom of a shirt, and then into a pale, ocean-hued strip of skin at her belly.

Jinyel poked his head over the water. The stranger was a woman, perhaps a few arcs older than himself, with long black hair and simple green clothing. Clothes meant for forest air, he recognized, and not at all for swimming. Behind her, on the shore, Monya began to bark frantically. After a few moments, the she-wolf dropped Littlespark and leaped into the water.

Monya! he would have shouted, if opening his mouth hadn’t expelled a gurgle of water instead.

The strange woman looked at him. For a moment there was intent in her eyes, although he could not guess what for, but then her brows rose and she looked straight up at the sky. Before he could so much as ask her business, she turned around and trudged back toward shore.

Jinyel frowned and tried to call out Declare yourself! But it only expelled another mouthful of water from his lungs. The Saltenrock’s magic was still strong; he could feel it pulsing through his clenched hand. There was some ejection process at work, clearly, but it didn’t hurt to go from breathing water to air any more than it had to go from air to water.

Monya whined as she paddled toward him, surf churning around her. Jinyel coughed, spit, and finally managed to rasp: “Monya.” Back. Go back. All is well. No danger.

For some reason, the wolf did not believe him.

He bent forward in the water, running on all fours to meet her so he could keep as much of his body submerged for as long as possible. Now that his head was above water, the wind struck twice as fiercely as before.

Standing up to the open air was like facing a barrage of knives. No clothes saved him from the weather’s cruel lash, and Monya’s fur, so often warm and soft, was soaked through. He gathered her to him and led the way back to shore, and the two of them leaned into each other as if that would do anything to ease their suffering.

“Y-you―” Jinyel tried to speak. Failed. Not from water, but from the violent chatter of his teeth. Fire. My things. Who are you? What are you doing here? “Who? Wh-what?”

He could not speak the rest aloud. But he could guess her intent, from the tinder in her hands and her focused gaze on the firepit.

“W-wood,” was all he managed to say of his own.

He strode past her toward the forest, toward fuel. He left his clothes as they were; soaking them now would only ensure he was cold for longer. Better to be completely dry before he put them on. Fates only knew why the woman had waded in fully clothed. In short order he had a handful of branches off the nearest tree, and with shivering hands he delivered them to the firepit.

This. Littlespark was too complicated to explain with how poorly his mouth was working, so he simply opened the censer and dumped its coals into the firepit.

The anak took greedily to their shared efforts, making a quick appetizer of the woman’s tinder and then a steadier meal of the branches. Fire took root within moments, bright and hot, and the mere sight of it unclenched something in Jinyel’s chest.

Thank you, he signed, after he confirmed that all of his belongings remained where he’d left them. “Who are you? Why are you swimming? It is Vhalar. You are in clothes. You will catch a cold.”

[Morrígu]

The small fire blazed to life, a small, bright pocket of defiance against the wind. Mo held her numb hands over it, the quick, sharp heat a welcome sensation that was still only beginning to seep past the surface chill of her skin. She was still shivering, the wet fabric of her clothes feeling like a second skin of ice, but the trembling was less violent. Now more of a deep, internal vibration than a full-body seizure. She kept her eyes resolutely on the flames, watching a thin plume of smoke rise straight and true into the pale, cold sky, a necessary focal point to keep her from dwelling on the shock to her system.

It was an odd situation, one that completely defied all logic. A man who walked out of the sea on a mid-Vhalar day, naked and unharmed, yet utterly dependent on her for a simple fire. And an overly dramatic wolf who was clearly his packmate but was just as clearly not his pet, considering how much agency she’d shown. The she-wolf, now shaking off near the heat, looked up at Mo with luminous, anxious eyes, the kind of loyalty Mo had only ever seen in her own bonded companion, Lume. The thought of Lume, who was no doubt watching from the shadows with a deep, silent disapproval of her recklessness, was almost enough to make her blush.

“It’s a long story,” she finally managed, her voice a little rough, having fought off a cough on the last lungful of cold, damp air. The effort of lighting the fire and wading into the water had left her breathless, and the residual cold made any exertion feel heavy. She finally looked up at Jinyel, a picture of stark discomfort; naked, blue-lipped, and flanked by a worried, wet wolf. His skin was already blotched with red and white from the extreme temperature change, and though he projected the solid stillness of a statue, the violent chatter of his jaw was unmistakable. Hypothermia. Her mind immediately supplied a dozen remedies, from a decoction of winterbark to a tightly-made bed of warm hides, none of which she had available.

She quickly averted her gaze back to the metal censer, now sitting empty beside the firepit. The silver metal was old and the craftsmanship was fine, ornate.

“I came here because she asked me to,” Mo explained, nodding to the she-wolf with a slight shift of her chin. “She brought your censer. I thought you were drowning. That was a sign of distress in a world where wolves don’t usually deliver messages. As for the clothes, it was the fastest way to get to you. I wasn’t going to strip down and waste time while you were supposedly fighting the tides. I’m already wet. You’re the one who needs to worry about the cold, not me.”

She stood, retrieving her nearly-empty herb bag from the sand. She pulled out a small, dry piece of cedar bark, rubbing it between her palms to generate friction and warmth. “I am Mo. I’m a healer, though you clearly didn’t need saving. Sit closer to the fire. You’re going to be an icicle soon. That magic stone of yours might let you breathe water, but it won’t save you from Vhalar’s wind.”

The observation about the stone was a shot in the dark, based on the man’s impossible emergence from the depths and the way his hand was still clamped around the rock. It was always magic, which made this less a rescue and more a poorly thought-out experiment.

She reached for a nearby branch, snapped it over her knee with a sharp crack that echoed in the clearing, and fed it to the flames, making the fire bigger, hotter, a more substantial source of refuge. “Now. If you don't mind telling me what in the blazes you were doing- walking into the sea like it was a summer pond and giving your wolf a heart attack -I’d be fascinated to know.” She said this not with anger, but with the weary, pragmatic impatience of someone whose peaceful day had been rudely interrupted by another’s magnificent display of self-endangerment.

”She owes me a fish, by the way.” she mumbled, jutting her chin at the wolf.

[Jinyel]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Littlespark bloomed quickly and fiercely, as it always did. Some salt had found its way into these branches, and pockets of it burned blue and green in the orange flame. Monya threw herself down beside the fire with a mighty sigh, as if she were not the one who had started this trouble and then leaped into the ocean of her own accord.

It was more amusement than irritation that curled Jinyel’s lip. She had been worried about him, clearly, and he couldn’t fault her for that. The only thing to fault her for, if anything, was that she always chose his safety over her own. She never listened when he asked her to protect herself first.

Jinyel sat beside the wolf, crossed his legs, and hauled her into his lap ― partly to share their warmth, and partly to cover that part of himself that this woman worked so carefully not to look at. As Littlespark’s heat washed over him, he at last turned his magic to the sickness his body wanted to catch.

Graft: Adhere: Leech: Inflammation.

He tore up a handful of crab-grass and fused it to himself without ceremony. It was more preventative than restorative; his flesh was still so shocked by the cold that nothing had yet swelled, and the grass assured that it would not do so once he warmed up. A cough, if it came, could be dealt with later. Now he simply waited for Littlespark to grow.

“She asked you to.” Jinyel ran an amused hand over Monya’s head. Foolish thing, I love you. “Then she drew you into a risk that was not needful. For this, Mo, I am sorry. I am glad to know that had I truly been drowning, you would have come to save me.”

He turned the Saltenrock over his hand, surprised that her eye had caught on it. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been. It was shell-shaped, but not a shell; stone-like, but not a stone. Transparent, smooth, like an aquamarine the size of a fist which thrummed with magic, it was an item which demanded to be looked at.

A wiser man would have ensorcelled this Saltenrock into something plain. Something easy to hide. The more accustomed Jinyel grew to it, the more he wanted it to stand out.

“I was doing what you thought,” he answered. “Walking into the sea, so I might see what lies within it. Frightening my wolf was unintentional. I will put her more at ease when next I go. The ocean holds more wonder than I could have ever guessed. I walked until there was yards of water above my head, and where the sand dropped, I found a garden of… things. Not plants. Not stone. Growing, branching things, colorful and numerous as Ashan wildflowers, and attended by creatures more colorful still.”

He glanced back toward the water, a wistful longing in his eyes.

“I have no fish to give you. No line or pole and no way to catch one except to walk back into the water and wait. But I have traps laid in the forest, and I will check them once I am dry. If they hold any catch, it is yours. Thank you for answering Monya. I would never have known how badly my absence troubled her.”

He ran fingers through the wolf’s fur, squeezing and combing it, lifting it up to dry. Littlespark worked fiercely to dry them, but although Jinyel’s skin sloughed off the water quickly enough, Monya’s thick coat of fur would take far longer. He eased her off his lap and set her on the ground so he could gather his clothes.

“Do you wish to wear my shirt?” he asked as he stood. “It is dry, and yours is not. You should not linger in wet clothes.”

[Morrígu]

An ocean garden.

The phrase was a strange blend of magnificent and terrifying, echoing the man’s entire magnificent display of self-endangerment. Mo watched him tear up a handful of crab-grass, her initial shock giving way to a more complex, unsettling curiosity. It wasn't just the sheer cold she was fighting anymore; it was the gnawing realization that she had just witnessed an act of impossible, self-induced transformation. He wasn't a man who had survived drowning; he was a man who had breathed the sea, a feat that defied all natural law and her own understanding of both magic and biology.

She had knelt by the firepit focusing on the comforting, elemental simplicity of flint and steel, but her mind had been a tempest. She had been preparing for an emergency- a cold, gasping body, blue and broken -and instead, she got a man who spoke of gardens under the waves and casually healed his own flesh with weeds.

“A garden,” she murmured, turning the word over in her mind. It was a perfectly rational explanation for the impossible. She gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod when he expressed his regret for the wolf’s terror and accepted his gratitude with a small dip of her chin. “I'm glad to have helped your friend. She is very loyal.” She glanced at the she-wolf, who was now settling down with a deep, relieved sigh. “She’s the reason I’m here, so there is no need for apologies. As for the traps,” she continued, meeting his eye with a direct but playful expression, “I will hold you to that. A debt of fresh fish is far preferable to a debt of life-saving.”

He stood then, finally moving to retrieve his clothes, and the sheer lack of concern he had for his nudity was a sharp, final reminder that they were from vastly different worlds. When he returned and offered the garment Mo quickly averted her gaze to the fire, allowing herself a small, polite smile.

“That is a remarkably kind offer,” she said, keeping her tone light. “But I assure you, it’s quite alright. My clothes are a thick weave but they will dry quicker than you’d think once I’m out of the worst of the wind. Besides,” she added with a pragmatic tilt of her head, already retrieving the small pouch of her tools. “I was fishing just a ways through those trees. I always carry a spare set just in case. Thank you, though. It is very thoughtful of you.”

She knelt by the firepit once more, taking advantage of the growing warmth to begin the methodical process of sorting her damp herbs. The work was a welcome distraction, a familiar routine. She was done with the sea and the impossible things it held for the trial. Her focus was on the smoke, the scent of burning cedar, and the simple logistics of keeping warm enough to get back to her things by the stream. All of it seemed simple enough once she retrieved her shawl from the sand.

Lume was silent in the depths of the forest, but she could practically feel his judgment. A quiet, powerful disapproval that she knew was entirely justified.

’Your inability to conduct a proper risk assessment could surely be studied, child. At length.’

’How sweet of you, Lume.’ Mo thought, bitterly.

[Jinyel]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This was not her first time in the wilderness, nor her first time in unexpectedly wet clothes. She had spares, she said, in the forest where she had been fishing. It was this knowledge that reassured Jinyel enough to turn away, and to know that her suffering on his behalf would last only as long as it took to get warm.

He turned aside and regarded his clothes. The pants, socks, and boots came on, but he left the shirt by his armor and drew the cloak over his bare back. His bandages were still wet, and he did not wish to dirty his shirt until they were replaced.

Today had been a calculated venture. The poultice across his shoulders was old and a bit slimy, which had provided a messy but effective seal against the seawater. Fresh bandages and the makings of a new poultice were amongst his things, to be worked once tonight’s debt was settled.

Jinyel headed into the woods, offering only token Exasperation when Monya rose to join him, never content to stay in safety when he went elsewhere.

His first trap was empty, which did not surprise him. He had only set them this morning, after the sun had already risen. It was a surprise to find his second trap full, although perhaps not in the way he would have wished.

At the edge of the forest, near the shore, his basket trap had caught a truly enormous crab. Lobster? Some crustacean larger than his head, brown with white spots, its claws as big as his fist. Jinyel had no idea how to cook such a thing. Even if he did, he doubted he could manage it with only the pan he’d swiped from the Hollow Prince’s kitchen. Still, Mo seemed more attuned with the Scalvoris land than he was; perhaps she would find some use for it.

Jinyel tied the crab’s claws shut with leather cord, then took the basket-trap in search of a more reasonable meal. Apples and plums did not run away, and he’d passed plenty of both on his way here. He also had honey locust bean flour amongst his things, which would pair well with the sweetness of the fruit.

The hunter returned about half a break after he’d gone into the forest, the crab in one hand and the basket of fruit in the other. The sun had begun its descent, but there were still breaks until dark ― plenty of time to cook something decent and then for each of them to reach shelter.

“This… is not a fish,” Jinyel admitted sheepishly. “But it was in my trap, and you may have it if you wish.”

He placed the crab beside Mo, then sat down cross-legged to prepare the food. From amongst his things he pulled a shallow pan, and then set three tall rocks around Littlespark’s edge to support it.

The bean flour was naturally sweet, so Jinyel only added water and a pinch of salt to make it into dough. He drizzled oil from a vial onto the pan, then flattened down a circle of dough. As it fried, he cored the apples and plums and piled the slices on top, rolling the whole thing up once the downside had browned.

“I cannot cook that thing,” he said of the crab. “And the fruit was quickest to gather. So we will share a meal that is all sweet. How is it called in this place? Des-sert? We will share desert.”

[Morrígu]

She watched him go with the wolf trotting loyally at his heel. He moved with a hunter’s grace, quiet and efficient. A man who could walk into the ocean and emerge as if from a summer pond, but who still needed dry wood and a fire to ward off the chill. The sheer contradiction of it was staggering.

Not an icicle, she thought, rubbing her own hands before the fire, but a marvel. A man of magic who was also a man of meat and bone, susceptible to hypothermia and the common cold. That was the most fascinating thing of all: the sheer, raw vulnerability that accompanied an impossible power. However, what drew her eye was the old bandages she'd seen sticking to his shoulders. That was where the real problem lay, not in the cold, but in the wounds he was currently fighting.

Her hands, warmed now to a pleasant, tingling ache, went back to the familiar, comforting work of picking through her herbs. Her specialty was life, the slow mending of tissue and the subtle alchemy of plants. She was not a rescuer of naked men from the sea, nor a witness to such brazen displays of power. Yet, here she was, already mentally preparing a decoction for him, a simple, potent brew of fever-foe and ginger she had collected in the morning in the moss beds. Just in case he woke up shivering in the night. The price of an impossible adventure was often a simple, mundane fever.

Mo went into a practiced work of preparing the ingredients, crushing them into a paste between a few large rocks. She had no jars or tins at hand, but the gorgeous array of shells that lay around the sand proved just as effective.

When he returned, she was arranging her shawl across a branch to help dry its edge where the tide had seeped into. He walked back into the small, firelit clearing, carrying glossy fruit, and holding the largest crustacean Mo had ever seen outside of a traveling merchant’s fanciful drawings. It was a beast, its claws tied shut with a practical, no-nonsense cord.

“It is certainly not a fish,” Mo said, her smile genuine as she looked at the enormous crab. It was an offering that spoke of effort and she appreciated the sentiment more than any perfectly cooked trout. “That is… a magnificent creature. Thank you.”

She watched him set the beast down and then, with practiced ease, start to assemble a makeshift kitchen around the fire. He slid the question into the quiet moment, the word hanging in the air between them.

“That is incredibly kind of you. After all the trouble I gave you by dragging you from your seaweed garden, I should be the one cooking. Though I will admit, that looks infinitely better than the dried jerky I packed for myself.”

She stood and moved closer to the heat, settling down opposite him. “I will gladly share your dessert,” she confirmed. “Though I will take the crab with me. I have a fair idea of how to prepare it, but it will need more than a hunter’s pan. If we meet again, I will write for you the recipe.”

As he began slicing the fruit, the rich, sweet scent of the cooking dough and the apples began to fill the air, a deep contrast to the salt and wet fur that had dominated the atmosphere earlier. The sheer force of his presence seemed to push the exhaustion from her, replacing it with a keen-edged, professional curiosity.

She waited until he was done rolling the first warm pastry, a perfect, golden brown, before speaking again. She made her tone as casual as a question about the weather, but her eyes were fixed on the line of his shoulders, just visible beneath the collar of the cloak.

“Those bandages on your back,” she asked softly, nodding to the cloak. “From before your swim, it seems. They looked… old. Are they from an injury, or something else?” She held her breath for a moment, not wanting to pry but compelled by her duty. “If you would allow it, I can check them. I don’t know what kind of wounds you are treating, but I have a poultice that should keep them clean and let them heal properly.”