19
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The last time I had been in Saoghal, I waded into this very water and was met with the blackest depths, a thick, opaque fluid thoroughly contaminated by oil. My legs had burned and my lungs had screamed, but I had kept pushing through the water with all of my might.
This was nothing like that.
This was worse.
It was a storm of water. The sea sloshed around us, as if we had been placed into a small container of liquid and some great being was shaking us with all of their might until we mixed in with the ocean. Over and over we were tossed around, from one side of the world to the next.
The water wanted to devour me. I was sure of it.
It wrapped and tightened, swirled and smashed, hugged and dragged, over and over and over.
At some point, I was sure I was screaming as my arms flailed wildly, unable to find any sort of balance as the whirlpool continued to rip me apart.
My legs kicked furiously, trying to find the riverbed beneath me or the air high above me, sometimes the other way around as my whole being was tilted and thrown.
I fought with all of my might. Until I had no energy pumping through my body, until my muscles themselves turned into mush within my skin. Continuously and without an end in sight, I writhed against the rapids around me.
It was only normal to. Because I was a human, and being submerged beneath the depths as some water god decided to try and blend us into pulp, meant that I was fighting for my right to breathe. I was fighting to get back up to the surface, to feel my face breach and oxygen to fill my lungs.
It was only when my body finally gave in, and I stopped fighting, that I realized I didn’t need to do that. I could breathe. Even as the violence that was the waves crashed against me, I could breathe!
“Olivia!”
That was Killian. Somewhere, someplace close, that was his voice. It tore through the water around me, creating a tunnel of air that his rugged tone travelled across in order to meet me.
At last, what felt like an eternity later, the water settled around us. And there he was.
His hair was trying with all of its might to separate out of the bun he had it tied so tightly in, and his eyes were wide and already raw from the salty water that irritated them, but he was there. And he had his signature grin on his face, just as he threw two thumbs up at me.
“Are you alright?” he called, except his mouth didn’t move.
My mouth, on the other hand, fell open.
“Olivia, are you alright?” he called again as he started to paddle, kicking furiously with his feet until he was right in front of me, shaking my shoulders as if to jolt me back to life.
“You’re talking but – oh!”
I told my mouth to say the words, just like I did normally, except my mouth didn’t. I heard the words, as if I had spoken them, yet they did not take form on my lips with the eager push of my tongue.
“Yes,” he chuckled, even his laugh appearing without his mouth making the shape necessary. “The rings.”
I glanced down at the sapphire on my right ring-finger, the light of it sharper and stronger beneath the water as it shimmered and emitted a soft sort of hum.
“The Mar’Rugadh cannot speak underwater,” Killian continued as I stared at the strange piece of jewellery. “So they found other ways to communicate.”
I needed to stop letting my mouth fall open, because every time that it did, I was met with a mouthful of salty water. “It’s magic! Oh my, I’m talking to you with magic!”
I loved his laugh. “Sure!”
“How… how does it work?”
“Who knows,” he said. “Magic, like you said!”
I shook my head several times, allowing the whimsy that was Killian to settle into my bones for good. My smile matched his, something that I would forever be thankful for, before he nodded at me and motioned for us to go.
I forgot that we were here for a reason, which meant that I certainly forgot we would need to swim.
“How are the two of you faring?” Bryn’s voice appeared, her body not quite visible with all of the bubbles around us.
The evidence of quick movement in the water started to settle, a second at a time, until we could see her in front of us once more. Except she had changed.
Another mouthful of salt-water dominated my mouth as I gawked.
The pixies, and Saoghal, had always been beautiful, magnificent, and impressive beyond comprehension. But the pixies of Uisge? The Mar’Rugadh?
They were muses.
There was no better way to explain them, to describe the rush of awe that flooded me as I looked at this creature in front of me.
Her legs were no more. Instead of the long, slender legs of blueish hue that she had only moments prior, Bryn’s skin continued from her waist as a long, muscular tail.
The scales along it were continuous with an even pattern, each one glistening against the light that penetrated the water.
That, and the light that emanated from Bryn.
It was as if fireflies had been placed beneath her skin, casting her entire body in an ethereal glow that was a similar colour to that of her skin.
Her hair, which was wet and would make sense to flow behind her, instead worked against every law of physics known to man. It settled against her shoulders as if we were on land, curling itself into graceful waves that matched that of the movements above us.
She twisted her body side to side, shaking as if to rid herself of a tremor.
Except what she was doing was ridding herself of all evidence of the human world and the need to walk on land.
Her tail whipped aggressively in the water, sharpening the dual fins on the end of it to lethal points, just as the shirt that had been around her torso melted away from her and left the soft, leathery-like texture of her true skin which looked to be more like that of a shark’s than a human’s.
“Wow,” I gasped, unable to contain my sudden staring. Killian poked me, but I couldn’t help it. And I wasn’t sure I’d be able to apologize for it, not genuinely, as I continued to stare at her.
It made me wonder how many old tales of Sirens had actually been Mar’Rugadh pixies across the world. Because if she started singing, I might have followed her to my own death. Especially as she continued to pulse light like an underwater glow-stick.
From her mouth, which didn’t open, came a tune. It was high-pitched, sonic-like, and nearly split my eardrums. With a groan, I fought the desire to cover my ears, and instead turned my attention to what she was doing. Or, who she was summoning.
I had only seen these creatures on TV, while curled up on my couch, scrolling channels until the doom of it drove me into a sleep. Never in person, never so closely.
As they burrowed through the water, their movements swift and elegant, I understood exactly where they got their alternate names from. Because as beautiful and regal as they were, they were terrifying.
“You have miniature Orcas?” I accidentally asked, forgetting myself if only for a minute.
Three of them floated towards us, a somewhat sad yet beautiful noise coming from them as Bryn swam closer. She did not answer my question, but Killian did.
“Remember what I told you before?”
“Not to gawk?”
“No,” he laughed.
That was Raegan, right.
“That the animals of this world understand us, and some choose to take to our size in order to coexist with us.”
“Mini chickens and mini cows,” I mumbled, remembering all too clearly the day I had seen them for the first time. “And now… Mini fish?”
“Mini fish.”
“Come, land-walkers,” Bryn called over her shoulder to us as she ran a hand along the curved snout of the black-and-white beast in front of her. “I could make the swim myself, but I fear your legs will give out on you before we are even halfway to the palace.”
Reassuring.
Now this part, I knew. And I wasn’t so proud that I couldn’t admit I loved it. I loved the premise of it, the sanctity of it, the purity and the innocence in asking the animals to be caraid.
Bryn started us off, whispering her soft question and earning her a bump of the orca’s snout to her chest. She laughed, running a hand along the skin beneath his eye, before she lay herself down on his back, having no legs to cling to him with and instead grabbing his fins.
“Ever partnered with an orca?” I asked Killian as he paddled closer.
“This would be a first,” he admitted, his smile slowly slipping off as he approached the magnificent creature. It let out another melodic, sorrowful whale-song for him as he drew nearer.
“Caraid?”
We both waited in the suspense of it as the orca regarded him, until he eventually released a happier, shriller noise before bumping into Killian. My pixie of the woodlands grinned, ear-to-ear, looking back at me to see if I was watching.
With a swiftness that only made Killian far more impressive, he moved to its side and found a seat upon it.
I looked at the last of them and gulped.
My hand was only bubbles away from touching the flattened side of his face, when the water around us violently shifted. Everything moved downwards and sideways simultaneously, as if something heavy and angry had descended over top of us.
Which was exactly what had happened.
There was a blur of colour, so fast and so indistinguishable that I could do nothing but squeal and shoot sideways awkwardly. Then the colour blurred again, this time somewhat grey against the blueness of the ocean and the blackness of the depths beyond.
And at last it settled, a dolphin of a grey so rich that it would have been easier to call it silver. Two large, molten eyes blinked from the creature as it once again made a vicious circle around us, causing the three orcas to grow more unsteady with every pass it made.
I needed to develop caraid quickly if we were to get away. So I swam closer to the orca in front of me, his eyes wide and panicked, and hoped I wouldn’t become fish food with my quick movements.
“C–”
“Do not!”
Now that was a voice I would never not know. That was a voice that I was sure I would never be rid of.
“Urram?” I squeaked, swimming away just in time to avoid another pass of the silver dolphin.
“You are mine,” he growled, his voice still ancient and ragged like that of his dragon form. But his body, that shimmering silver and molten appearance, I had only just realized why the colour of the dolphin was so familiar.
“You are joking!” Killian roared out, his laughter following quickly after.
“What is it? What is happening?” Bryn asked as she prepared herself for some sort of fight.
“He is a friend.” Killian pointed at last to the dolphin who finally stopped having a hissy fit, coming to a quiet stop just ahead of the orcas. “He means us no harm.”
He meant the orca I was about to approach harm, but I didn’t want to offer that.
“Seriously, Urram?” I scoffed. “You’re jealous?”
Just like how he could in his avian form, Urram looked insulted at such a label being placed on him. “You are my caraid.”
“I’m allowed to have more than one,” I shot back, wondering how this conversation sounded on the one-sided end that Bryn and Killian were listening to. It was a strange sort of mercy when Raegan was around, at least he didn’t think I was completely insane.
“No, you are not.” Urram barked. “You need no other but me.”
“You are jealous!”
“Urram is jealous?” Killian chimed in, which was wholly not needed as Urram looked prepared to kill everything in sight.
“Look, are you going to offer me transport on your slimy back or should I go back to this one–”
Urram’s growl was undeniably that of a dragon’s.
I turned to Bryn with apologies in my eyes. “I think my dragon might set the entire sea on fire if I don’t bring him with me.”
“That’s a dragon?” Bryn, more experienced than me, managed to keep her mouth closed as her face revealed her shock.
“Yes. And he is a very jealous–”
“I am not.”
“–very jealous animal. He can come?”
She looked nervously to Urram, who looked more reptilian than fish as he glared at her. “I don’t plan on denying him.”
“Great,” I huffed, swimming my way towards Urram who had intentionally chosen to take the size of a dolphin bigger than the orcas.
Grinning to myself at my strange companion, I slipped over his back and squeezed at his sides with my legs.
“That hurts.”
“Ah, quit your whining you big softie,” I hummed, stroking at his silky-skin. “I don’t know how else to hold on.”
“I won’t let you fall, Little.”
A sweeter, more knowing smile took to my face as I tried my best to lay flat. “I know you won’t, Urram.”