3
Vivi.
Psi liked the way her name sounded in his mouth. His two front teeth pressed into the center of his lower lip to start the V sound. Then they had to bounce and catch quickly to let the sound burst forth, much like she’d just burst through the waters.
Vivi.
The vibrations that came from making the sound fluttered over his tongue. They shivered down his throat exciting his vocal chords. They ignited a path in his chest, landing in his heart like a pulsar that burned out the cobwebs that had collected there over centuries, over millennia.
“Vivi.”
He said it out loud this time. After his teeth made the double bounce on his lower lip, he flashed them at the nymph. She recoiled from him, turning her body from him as though preparing for a blow.
Psi couldn’t fathom why she’d do that sitting beside him. He would never hurt her. He wanted to pull her to him. He wanted to taste her skin. To run his tongue and teeth over the moisture that had collected on her knee at the spot where he’d healed her. And then he remembered what she’d said.
Are you going to eat me?
She thought he was actually going to eat her. It made sense if she came from the waters. That’s how amphibian predators advanced on their prey; flashing their teeth was a sign of aggression.
Psi smiled again, flashing his teeth bright and wide. Oh, he wanted to eat her, all right. But not in the way she thought.
“You have my word, Vivi, that nothing will harm you while you’re in my care.” And Psi intended to keep her in his care.
“You’re Poseidon, you say?”
“Greek God of the Sea, at your service.”
The moment the words left his lips he regretted it. Psi scrubbed his hand over his face, which turned the huge grin he’d been wearing into a wary frown. His throat constricted and his heartbeat dulled. The blanket of moroseness resettled over his shoulders as he waited.
He watched Vivi as she rolled the information around in that oddly shaped little head of hers.
It wasn’t quite a circle. But it wasn’t overly long either.
It was shaped like a heart. She had a broad expanse of forehead that would take long moments to lay down kisses from one ear to the other.
Her face narrowed after the sharp lines of her cheekbones, ending at a pointed little chin that he was certain would fit perfectly between his two top and two bottom front teeth.
It no longer mattered now that he’d revealed himself. He wouldn’t want to kiss or bite this woman after she began making her requests of him and his power. Very soon, she’d treat him like all the other illicit idolaters, the deceptive devoted, and the fake friends.
He’d had a fleeting moment of anonymity with a creature who had seemed so out of the ordinary that it had warmed his cold-blooded heart. And he’d blown it in the worst way possible. By telling her the truth.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vivi weighing his name and title. Belatedly, he wondered what value she’d put to it? What would she ask of him? And then he realized, that whatever she asked, he was going to give it to her.
Interestingly enough, her eyes didn’t look entirely calculating. No, they didn’t look at all like she was scheming or concocting a plan of entrapment. She was frowning at him. Now she was shaking that pretty little head of hers from left to right. And wait? Did she just tsk him?
“I’m sorry to tell you, God of the Sea, but this particular sea is in an awful state,” she said. “It’s filled with human refuse from the trash on the sea bed to the chemicals in the water, to the crowding of the vessels on the surface. And your sea creatures are quite uncivilized.”
Psi’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t flash his teeth. His lips parted, but he didn’t smile. His chest, which had gone from burning to dull, now deflated as he turned from Vivi to look out at the state of his waters.
There were magical creatures in the Mediterranean.
However, there were no such things as mermaids, half human-half fish.
Most of the creatures living in the depths were gruesome looking vertebrates with sharp teeth and tentacled monsters from the deep.
He shuddered to think that Vivi had come in contact with those beasts.
Then he looked back to her and realized. “You swam all the way here from Britain?”
“Most of the way,” she nodded. “I took a ley line.”
Ley lines were pockets of energy that witches and knights used to travel around the world. So, she was a witch. A water witch? He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Well,” said the water witch. “It was a pleasure to meet you, God of the Sea.”
She bowed her head in deference. She said the words matter-of-factly. Psi didn’t believe they were truthful.
“But I must be off,” she continued. “I have a very important quest to complete.”
Vivi came to her knees. She gingerly put one foot under herself. It was as though she were new to walking, like a toddler who was still negotiating the mechanics of the task after months of crawling. Perhaps she was new to the skill if she’d spent most of her life in the waters.
She made it to standing without any assistance and then she began to teeter in her heels. It was slow going as she headed up the pier. Psi rose and came to her side in just a couple of strides. One of his steps easily ate up three of hers.
Vivi gave him a sidelong glance. Psi got the feeling that his company was unwelcome. It was a new feeling for him and it amused him.
“We’re going the same way,” he insisted earnestly. Because he was serious, he was not about to let this extraordinary creature go anytime soon.
“You’re going to the Nicotera store for the unveiling of this season’s shoe collection?”
The name of the store sounded familiar, but Psi never paid much attention to shopping. He left that to his sister Demeter who treated spending money and acquiring goods like a contact sport. Psi had no clue where the store was, but that wasn’t going to stop him from getting closer to Vivi.
“Of course,” he said. “I love shoes.”
Vivi’s eyes lit up. Then her mouth opened and she chattered on for a quarter hour about the history of Nicotera and his innovative designs in footwear. And that’s how Lord Poseidon of Olympia, second son of Cronus, God of the Sea, found himself having a conversation about shoes with a woman.