[Flashback] Drowning is a strange way to meet people (Sable)

[Wrenmae]

Fervor of connection, the rich-deep hues of her bottomless eyes. Moments coalesced into moments like ripples or waves, nothing ever really ending, but rising and falling, rising and falling, apex and plummet. Scars, wounds, yes...the book had mentioned the ritual injuries of those who accepted the strange magic into their body. Horror and revulsion, pain and agony, nothing was ever learned in quiet earnest pursuit. There was danger here, there was uncertainty. He stood, like Kit, on the sea-blue edge of the world itself, staring into an abyss. Possibility, transience, transcendence. He breathed through his mouth, personal wind catching a curled lock of her hair and sending it spinning aside her bronzed skin. They were close together now, but he had no means to speak. Solemnity. He spoke in the tongue of silence with gazes and motions, the secret universal language of self. He looked down at his arms, imagined them running red with blood. It would not be the first time, or the last. She reached towards him, and he felt everything. The dust motes on her skin, clinging to the soft hair. Her skin, the edges of drying cloth and the errant locks of curling hair that drifted so close to his face. The smell of her breath, the wind of her scent, overwhelming heat and energy between them. His heart beat, it strained, it shook the frame of his skeleton and threatened to crush the barriers that held it back. She spoke and their faces looked out at him from her eyes. His sister, his brother, his father, his mother, they all stared into his soul, scoured its depths for reason. He refused to die there, alone in the mountains, refused and now he was paying for his mistake again and again. He changed his name to hide his shame, and yet she could see it. It burned on his flesh, branded his thoughts. He opened his mouth, closed it. "How?"

[Sable Baggywrinkle]

“I will show you. It will take time.” Stroking with a painter’s care, reflective hues brushed over flawless golden skin, a shell he could turn into anything, a mold to show whatever he wanted. If he changed often enough, maybe no one would ever see what she had inside him. A name sputtered like a dying candle in comparison. His candle flared, sparked by one word and fostering safety from the shadows; she reached forth to cup it in tender nursing, protecting its hope from swirling wind and water. She’d take it within herself to protect him, if need be. “Laviku is the All Father, the Sea is the Ever Mother. You honor him before and above everything, you protect her first. From her we coalesce, and to her we return. She is the Ever Mother. On her we rest and within her we live, to harm another’s means of doing this, their ship, is to sever them from her. Do not take that lightly. From her depths, Laviku summons one of his Pardisa to bestow upon new Pods. There is no Pod if there is no Pardisa, seek and honor it. There is no Pod if there is no Lia. She is the matriarch, the eldest female, and her word is law. If you do not abide by her rules, you will be dismissed. If we do not respect one another, we have nothing. We are one, stretched thin from one horizon to the next. When one of us is in need, we will respond en masse. Answer the call for Nal’lyeo, and descend upon the land that threatens a Svefra. Avikki birds bear the call, they bear the burden of uniting a disparate nation. They are our children, and as all adults shoulder responsibility for the safety and rearing of children, so we do for Avikki.” Tendrils of splayed gold lifted in the breeze, reaching for him. These words were his, to be claimed and conquered. Taking a deep breath, his savior straightened over her knees, drawing her lanky torso up to its formidable length, and closed her eyes. One last glance told him it was time. His arms must run red. Hopeful words fell from solemn lips, a cadence of truth and healing spiraling through the laws as she repeated them for him. “Laviku is the All Father, the Sea is the Ever Mother. You honor him before and above everything, you protect her first. From her we coalesce, and to her we return. She is the Ever Mother. On her we rest and within her we live, to harm another’s means of doing this, their ship, is to sever them from her. Do not take that lightly. From her depths, Laviku summons one of his Pardisa to bestow upon new Pods. There is no Pod if there is no Pardisa, seek and honor it. There is no Pod if there is no Lia. She is the matriarch, the eldest female, and her word is law.…” With each patient exhale, breath rolling the world around, res clear and strong spiraled around them. With each word, the spiral solidified. With each concept, the spiral thickened to a wall. Water churned within the walls of the cocoon, rendering the world outside of them nothing but a smear. Ever Mother still lapped at their legs, undulating sand still drew them deeper, but they were the only occupants of this world. She drew one scholarly hand over her heart, the beat fluttering as a hummingbird, and placed her other one over his. Even through the wall of his chest, that heart beat a double cadence and her hand knew what it felt like to hold within a palm, muscles contracting and fingers succumbing to pulse with it. “Laviku is the All Father, the Sea is the Ever Mother. You honor him before and above everything, you protect her first. From her we coalesce, and to her we return. She is the Ever Mother. On her we rest and within her we live, to harm another’s means of doing this, their ship, is to sever them from her. Do not take that lightly.…” Maintaining the shell around them, tricky at first, quickly became methodical and res soon licked at his golden flesh, tasting the new tang of it. Her touch crashed into his skin, breaking, but slid inside with the delicate inevitability of the thin spread of liquid at the water line. It’s entrance though his wounds ebbed and flowed with the tide, with the chant, washing over and circulating through. Her induction had been violent, and so unnecessarily painful, but she wished him no hurt beyond what was natural to the experience. Her fears for his pain were much greater than what it would really be. Agony for him would come as her essence opened him up, what had started back on the dock, not as she brought him to that point. “Laviku is the All Father, the Sea is the Ever Mother. You honor him before and above everything, you protect her first. From her we coalesce, and to her we return. She is the Ever Mother. On her we rest, and within her we live….”

[Wrenmae]

Her words, they were a solemn sort of mantra, a spoken gospel whispered of seaweeds and seagulls. Sky, wind, water, the element of wood between the chosen and the depths around them. Laviku, Mother Sea, Zulrav. Wrenmae laid back, let her shimmering fingers play over his flesh, tattoo their imprint on hi skin, teach his being to remember hers. Language was not universal, it was garbled speech and letters, phrases and syllables that held no meaning. But there was A universal language. It spoke in touch and sound, but never with words. Only the implied meaning held itself together. Humans and all sentience could communicate with these uncertain and yet resolute terms. Unyielding as the mountains of Kalea. Shifting as the sea lapping at his legs. She lay him down and he chanted with her, finding the edges of her words and murmuring the acceptance of them, a law that he was growing within his own body...a new being taking shape. There was pain, only for a moment, the tentative brush of power not his own that seeped into his cuts, hushed into his blood. Like on the docks, the experience was jarring. The words caught in his throat, contending with breath. Worry and panic overcame him, but his limbs would not respond. They shook beneath the water, vibrated of their own accord...unable to pull away from the Res. It was not like the docks, that shocking agony that nearly brought his heart to arrest. It was a gentler and subtler pain, smoothing out the ragged holes her Res had left before. It taught him rather than surprised him, boring the meaning of reimancy into his skin and being, changing his soul in subtle and dramatic ways. He shook in her grasp, so cold, so unbearably cold, then hot, then cold again. Laviku is the All Father, the Sea is the Ever Mother. Laviku is the All Father. Laviku is the Laviku is Laviku. For a moment he lost himself, was no longer there. Washed on tides of shadows and muted words, mantras and prayers, he was lost for a moment. His mind did not conceive pain, did not bear understanding. For a moment it simply ceased. And then he opened his eyes. They felt like his eyes. And yet they were still blue. "Laviku is the All Father, the Sea is the Ever Mother..." he coughed, the agony leaving him...and he felt drawn out, tired, and different. "You honor ihm before and above everything, you protect her first." Arms reached up, glowing with the same golden sun-kissed hue as her own, pulling her down into the surf with him, bodies pressed against each other and heartbeats sharing quiet communion. Crash. Pump. Crash. Pump. They beat with the sea. "From her we coalesce, and to her we return." He smiled at her, his lips pale, "She is the Ever Mother. On her we rest, and within her we live." Res pooled in his hands seeping from his skin, cupping one hand and pushing outward, the same motion Kit had shown him before...go, become wind. A breeze rustled over the sea, parting water in ripples for a moment. For a moment he was content to simply hold her close to him, against him, as him. It felt natural. They were connected now, brought together in practice of magic...the sea as their witness. He spoke more into her skin, into the sea, and both stole the meaning of what he spoke, but not the emotional importance. "We do so for Avikki." He finished, and although his lips yearned to touch hers in that moment, he angled his face up, catching the center of her forehead, bestowing a single kiss. It was nearly lost in the surf, the feeling of his lips on her skin, but all he knew was that he wanted to infuse it with all the meaning he could not put into word. It was a story of motion. The rarest of any story told...and the hardest to understand.

[Bedlam]

Thread Completed!

Sable

Experience:
1 Sewing
3 Swimming
3 Reimancy
1 Sailing
1 Observation
1 Medicine

Lores:
Wrenmae’s Two Names
Magic and Medicine as One
Skin Thieves and Morphing

Wrenmae

Experience:
2 Observation
3 Swimming
1 Seduction
1 Morphing
1 Reimancy


Lores:
A Dummy’s Guide to Drowning
Svefra Families
Laviku the Father
Sable the Reimancer

Notes:

You stole Kit’s book. You awful person!

But seriously, I’m okay with that. So don’t worry about it—except make sure it gets back to her. She uses it in future threads.

This was a pretty intimate thread, and that surprised me in many ways. There was a kind of lyrical beauty to it that was really appealing. Grading this thread has been a pleasure. If there are any problems or things I’ve missed, please point them out to me! Don’t play nice.