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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?

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[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)."