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[npc-excolo.livejournal.com]

Dream.

There is a great sea. The sky is grey, the water green, and the seafoam is the flecked white of milk on the turn. The shore is stone and shingle, and the cliffs are bone-shades. Will you wake on the little fishing boat that rides the waves, wary of great beasts that lurk beneath the surface, or on the cold and stony shore? Or perhaps as some watery thing yourself, breathing in water as cold as ice and with a salt-iron taste like blood?

[OPEN TO ALL]

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[jaeresteade.livejournal.com]

I know how to swim, and I’m usually pretty good at not panicking, but ice water pushing at my nose and mouth and turning me this way and that has me scrabbling for any kind of purchase. Something smooth and slick and a hundred times larger than my body brushes against me, shoving me out of the way as it slides past. I can’t see what it is, and I can’t go still in hopes that it won’t notice me. Can’t even make a sound.

The thing that could swallow me whole, that I can’t even open my eyes to see, moves on. I fight my way towards what feels like up, and my head breaks the surface at last. I raise one hand to clear my eyes, trying to get a look around me as they sting. There are cliffs in the distance. This is not the open sea, thank God. And I do know how to swim.

When my arms feel like they cannot possibly keep moving for one more stroke, the beach is there, all small, sharp stones. I lie gasping on them, the wind around me pulling at my clothes. It’s cold, but it’s not water. I push myself up to my knees, then my feet, which are bare, of course, my boots kicked off in the water long ago.

There are people in the distance, I can see. Here, someone must be better than no one. I push my hair out of my eyes and begin picking my way toward them.

[sapphira-ststep.livejournal.com]

He is picking himself up ragged and dripping, and he gets to his feet as I approach, closing the distance between us. So he is on his feet, which cannot be pleasant.

"Good day," I say politely. I wonder for a moment if he is a fish, but a fish could swim better, I think. Although he is walking across the beach as if it were knives under his feet... I hope he can talk.

"Have you come far? Here," and I take off my jacket and hold it out to him. It will not quite fit him, I think, but he should at least shield him a little from the wind, and perhaps he can shed some of his dripping clothes.

[marbasthefallen.livejournal.com]

"Is that a prophecy, or an observation on the weather?" It is tempting, to switch into my demon form and tell her prophecy, but I need to find Lilith and CeeCee, and then Lucien.

"Merely a feeling deep in my bones." I shrug, and keep listening as the woman and the china doll speak of fishing and serpents. Something at thye edge of the surf catches out eyes, and it looks like a ragged man is dragging himself from the depths of the ocean. China doll goes down to check on him, and I turn to the woman. "Wonder if he's the sort that grants wishes?" I ask, smiling slightly.

[jaeresteade.livejournal.com]

Walking isn’t working so well, because my legs won’t stop shaking and the cold, gray rocks prickle at my feet, an insistent pain that does not help. But I am here, and not in the sea, which I still cannot bring myself to turn and look at.

There is someone coming toward me, a woman, I think, though her face is a blank in every sense of the word. There’s still salt in my eyes, making it hard to see clearly. She wishes me a good day, and I nod. My throat feels too raw to talk just now.

She asks have I come far, and then surprises me by shrugging out of her coat and offering it to me. I blink at it for a moment and then reach out to take it. I clear my throat, because if she’s helping me, the least I can do is say something. “Thank you.”

It’s a well-made jacket, dry and still warm from her. I shuck off the remains of my shirt and pull it on. “Have to know where I am to know how far I’ve come.”

[sapphira-ststep.livejournal.com]

"Thank you," he says, and he sounds absolutely terrible, but at least he can speak. It cannot be easy to speak through a throat crusted raw with salt, and I nod as he gets rid of his shirt. "Have to know where I am to know how far I've come."

"Fair," I say lightly. "This is the beach where the woman mends her nets, and where if you catch a fish it might grant you a wish. She and I," and I wave up towards the woman, still with the sharp-toothed man standing there, "shall be casting her nets later." I look down at the beach, such as it is, making note of where there are larger stones that are easier to step on. Crossing the beach would still be meandering and slow, but it might hurt less.

"I myself have come a long way to get here, though I do not know if this place has a name. I have only followed directions, east of the sun and west of the moon." I pick up his shirt, the wet and threaded tatters of it, and turn it over in my fingers. "She thinks, as well, that there may be serpents in the water," I add. "Did you see anything as you came here?"

[jaeresteade.livejournal.com]

What she tells me of where I am helps not at all, but maybe it’s all she knows of this place. “I came from the sea,” I tell her, which is true enough. Before then, I can’t say. “There are serpents in the water, or something like them.” Dag gadol. And why that name is in my head I don’t know. “Bigger than your nets, and not likely to grant any wishes, I think.”

[sapphira-ststep.livejournal.com]

"I came from the sea," he says, and I nod. And then he tells me of the things moving inside it, great and old, and my heart sinks a little.

"Well then," I say thoughtfully. "I shall have to be careful. But fishes or serpents, I must have my wish; I must have my face back, and I know no other way to get it, now." The shirt is beginning to dry, and the long strips of it glitter with salt. I twine them together in my fingers, fold up the pieces of the yoke and sleeves into soles--thin ones, but better than nothing--and knot the twined strips around them into a rough lace.

"Perhaps there is some other way to catch them," I say, handing him the sandals. "Will you come with me to tell her of the serpents you saw?" I gesture up the beach towards the woman.

[jaeresteade.livejournal.com]

She sounds determined, and as she tells me of her search for her…face, she’s working at my shirt, tearing and twisting and knotting the remains of the fabric until she’s made a rough pair of shoes. She holds them out to me, and I take them, slip them on. “Thank you.” The thin layers do offer some protection.

“I’ll come with you. Haven’t exactly seen them, though.” Felt, maybe, and then there’s a memory of a gaping mouth and sickening warmth swallowing me down. My stomach turns, and I double over, retching. Nothing comes up but sea water and bile. After a moment, I can stand and wipe my mouth and try to clear my burning throat.

[pollyladon.livejournal.com]

The young woman comes back up the beach with a young man, half drowned. Wind is whipping up the beach now, and we should get inside, but I realise I do not know if there is anywhere for us to go.

"Hail," I say to the young man. "Did you plan to drown yourself, or was it an accident?" I look at the woman. "Finished mending I have now. We can fish, if you wish it."

[jaeresteade.livejournal.com]

We make it back up the beach to the two others, a fellow I don’t like the look of and an older woman with nets gathered around her. She gives me an owlish look. “It was a plan, but none of mine,” I answer her. “And if you catch anything in these waters, you may wish you could throw it back.” It hurts to talk, and I’m terribly thirsty, but there’s no fresh water in sight.

[sapphira-ststep.livejournal.com]

"Hail. Did you plan to drown yourself, or was it an accident?" and he answers back "It was a plan, but none of mine." And the man who was here has gone running down to the water's edge, to a flume that spins out a child that he catches up and spins around himself.

"Finished mending I have now. We can fish, if you wish it," she says, and I am about to agree when the man from the sea speaks up.

"And if you catch anything in these waters, you may wish you could throw it back."

"That is the story I have been told," I say in agreement. "Of the man who caught the fish, and the fish who bargained wishes for his freedom..." I look at him, suddenly uneasy. "But that fisherman was not said to have any trouble, throwing the fish back," I admit. And fish are not serpents, either, though they are close one to the other. Still...

"I must have my face back," I say again to him, and I turn back to the woman with the nets. "Yes, I do wish it. Let us go down to the water (http://community.livejournal.com/estdeus_innobis/405311.html#t10242879)."