StormWrynndKeep

Lothar will never know what it is that wakes him, on that cold and stormy night. The wind is howling around the beach house, screaming past the cliffs with an eerie whistle, and the surf is an uneven roar pounding on the shore. But the house is secure, warm and safe, and those things do not truly bother him.

 But something does wake him. Something makes him restless enough to rise, an uncertain anxiety building in his chest.

 The storm feels less like a natural phenomenon and more like a portent, and Lothar would have never called himself superstitious, but he’s had enough dealings with magic to – sometimes – be wary.

 Lothar gets up and shivers, feet bare on cold wooden floors. The house is dark, empty and silent as he pads through it, checking the locks on the doors and windows out of habit.

 The back door is unlocked. Rain soaks the floor, as though it has been recently opened.

 Lothar swallows, something cold settling in his chest. He spins on a heel and dashes for Callan’s room, grabbing the doorframe to stop instead of slowing down.

 Callan’s room is empty.

 Lothar flicks the light on, almost desperately. The harsh, sudden light makes him blink and squint, but it doesn’t make his son materialise out of nowhere.

 The bedcovers are thrown on the floor.

 Messy, but normal. Nothing is broken. There’s no sign of fighting.

 Maybe he just snuck out.

 Callan is a good kid, but even good kids do dumb things sometimes. If this is just- If this is just teenage rebellion then Lothar swears he’s not going to be mad.

 But lightning crackles outside, painting the window blue-white for a brief second, and thunder rolls in the distance. Rain strikes the window like sleet. It’s not the kind of weather to be outside in.

 It’s madness to be outside in.

 Lothar strides back towards the back door, flicking the house lights on as he goes, making the house a small beacon in the darkness.

 “Callan?” He calls, voice yanked away as he steps outside. He shivers, regretting it immediately as icy wind cuts through the bare protection of his night clothes, the ground wet and cold beneath his feet. Rain soaks him, almost immediately and he can feel the chill in his bones. “Callan?”

 The house is set high on the hills above the beach, overlooking a small cove. It’s a dangerous beach, water drawn in a channel between sheer cliff, with an ocean floor that drops away quickly and even more so on a night like this where the water is stirred and rough.

 There’s a shape, down by the water. Lothar squints at it, thinks it’s shaped like a man. Thinks, maybe, it’s shaped like Callan.

 He runs, not really sure what prompts the desperation, but knows he is desperate. Knows, somewhere in his heart that he’s going to be too late. Rocks skid underfoot, turning to soft and unstable sand, slowing him down and dragging at his footsteps.

 It is Callan. Callan, standing in the pounding surf and staring out at the water with blank, wide eyes, as if there is not a storm raging around him. As if the water doesn’t tug at his legs, as if he isn’t soaked with it.

 Or maybe, exactly as if he is.

 In his arms is a folded brown cloak. It’s a little old, a little worn, a little musty from living in a drawer for so long but still feels warm to the touch, some lingering magic in the fabric even after all these years. Lothar knows – can imagine the feeling beneath his fingers right now.

 It’s Cally’s cloak. Cally’s pelt, her seal skin, the thing that had held her selkie magic and let her walk on land. Had let her marry him and bare a son and die.

 And, as Lothar watches, Callan wraps that cloak around and dives beneath the waves.

 “Callan!” he screams, racing even faster for the water. He dives into it, uncaring of the cold. It steals the breath from his lungs, tips and tumbles and disorientates him until he cannot tell up from down. It is cold, he is cold and it is so dark.

 The lights of the house are so far away. The current of the sea drags him out, ungrounding him and uprooting him, a single foolish human against nature itself.

 “Callan,” he rasps, head barely above the water, fingers striking out numbly for something, anything, that will draw his son back to him, away from the magic of the ocean. As if Callan can be called back, as if he is not already beyond reach.

 They catch nothing but cold and empty water.

 Lothar sinks below the surface, and lightning flashes in the sky, cold and remote.

 -

 He doesn’t expect to wake again.

 Feels, maybe, in those few last and bitter moments, as though that is right. Someone will come to the house and find it empty and bare, bereft, doors swinging open and interior lonely and Lothar and his son vanished without a trace.

 But he does wake.

 He wakes and it is morning and he is laid out on the beach, like flotsam washed ashore. He rolls his head in the sand and stares out over the ocean that will take everything from him except his life.

 A thing stares back at him.

 Human, but not. The face could pass, if you do not look too closely at the eyes, at the shape and colour and strange membrane across them, at the teeth, too sharp and pointed. The torso, slim and muscled like a boy but striped with blue and white until it joins down into a fused tail. It lies in the water, tail fins ruffling as the gentle waves wash over them and stares at him with utter curiosity.

 Mermaid. Or merman, whatever the masculine form of the name was.  

 No question, then, how he survived a long and cold night under the waves. If he hadn’t drowned then the cold should still have killed him, but those saved by mermaids lived.

 And those drowned by them die, he thinks, cynically. Mermaids are as fickle as humans, as likely to be kind as to be cruel, with their own motives and reasons.  What reasons this one has, he doesn’t know.

 And frankly, doesn’t care.

 Lothar pushes himself up onto his elbows. “There was a selkie,” he says, desperately. “Did you see it? Please!”

 The mermaid slides backwards into the water, face gone wary. “You can’t hold a selkie,” it says, and it sounds like a boy, too. “Not even if you catch one. The ocean always claims that which belongs to it.”

 “He’s my son,” Lothar says, desperately, as if that gives him a claim. He can fight the whole ocean if only he has a way.

 “Not anymore,” the mermaid says, though the wariness turns to something more akin to sadness. It slides even further backwards into the water, vanishing without even a splash or a flick of a tail. Almost as if it were never there at all.

 And Lothar is left alone, on an empty beach, with an empty house behind him.

 -

 “Your human was here,” Garona says, washing clean the bones of a small bird in her river.

 Khadgar wonders if she drowned it, or if it died some other unlucky way and merely come to her. He can never really tell with Garona. He hauls himself out of the water, sitting on the bank and letting the salt-free freshwater dry from his skin. If he stayed here, tried to live in a river instead of the ocean, he would sicken, but he likes to visit Garona.

 She hasn’t tried to drown him yet, so he assumes she likes his visits too. It must be lonely, to be stuck in such a small river, to be bound to it.

 “My human?” he asks, curiously.

 Garona starts to weave the bones into her hair. When she is in the water, it streams around her like seaweed, floating and tangled. On land, it hangs in clumps, knotty and dead.

 “The one you saved,” she says. “He wanted me to drown him.”

 She bares her teeth at him, sharp and gaping maw showing him how easily she could have done it.

 “Really?” Khadgar asks doubtfully. Men do come to her, he knows, and her green algae-like skin is very fetching, but the human surely wasn’t silly enough to nearly drown twice.

 “He wanted me to,” she repeats, with a graceful shrug. “So I didn’t.”

 It might have been kindness, it might not. It’s hard to tell with Garona. It’s not her fault that they drowned her here, turned her into a creature of the water, to whom vengeance comes easier than breathing. She can be fierce and deadly, but sometimes she swims with him, sings with him, and it’s like being with the school again, like the closeness of family when the ocean stretches to infinity all around you.

 “I did save him,” Khadgar says, contemplatively. He flicks his tail fin in the water, splattering Garona with tiny splashes. “I have the right to visit again. To make sure he still lives.”

 She glares at him, annoyed. “Do as you like,” she says, “but if he disturbs me again, I will drown him.”

 Khadgar grins at her and slips back into the water, knowing her declaration only means the opposite. He follows the curve of the river back out to sea, rolls with the disorientating currents as fresh and salt water mingle, and skims around the coast until he reaches the cove where he left the drowned human.

 It’s calmer today, but the undertow is still surprisingly strong, dragging water out the channel to open water. It’s tempting to play in it, but curiosity wins out and Khadgar darts closer to shore.

 The human is there. Just… sitting. He has a bottle with him, something to drink because humans cannot tolerate the salt of the ocean.

 He’s not doing anything, just… watching. Eyes roaming over the water, again and again. As if waiting.

 Khadgar pulls himself ashore.

 There is the briefest flare of hope in the man’s face, before it fades and falls. “Oh,” he says. “It’s just you.” He drinks from the bottle, a thoughtless gesture.

 Khadgar tilts his head. “Who are you waiting for?” he asks. There are no ships out to sea, not this way.

 The man shrugs, shoulders uneven and almost boneless. “My son,” he says. “The selkie.” He stares dully out at the ocean. “The stories say they come back, sometimes.”

 Khadgar turns to look out at the water too. He doesn’t think the selkie-son is there. Not nearby, at any rate. These waters are as empty as they have always been - empty save for Khadgar. “Did she?” he asks, neutrally. “Your selkie-wife?”

 The man snorts, contemptuously. “She didn’t leave,” he says. “She died. I wasn’t keeping her. Her cloak was always hers.”

 And Khadgar looks again at this human man, looks closely and truly. He seems unremarkable, scraggly hair and beard, and his colours pale and soft. But his eyes are blue as the ocean and there is something…

 “She must have loved you,” he murmurs quietly. It leaves a mark, something like that. Maybe it was not just luck, after all, that had called Khadgar to this quiet cove on the night of the storm. Maybe something more than his own curiosity that had called him to save this stranger.

 “What does it matter?” the human says in turn. He stares restlessly out over the sea, thoughts turned inwards.

 Khadgar, ignored and unnoticed, slips away.

 The next time he visits, he brings pearls from the ocean floor. The gift is received with a confused thanks, but discarded onto the soft sands almost thoughtlessly and forgotten.

 The time after that he brings fish eggs wrapped in seaweed, oysters and small fish - Lothar rarely leaves the shore, seems to wane and fade as the hours pass.

 “What is this?” Lothar says, dubiously, as Khadgar shoves it in his hand. He looks like he’s never seen food before.

 “Food,” Khadgar replies, obviously. “Eat it.”

 Part of it might be pity. Part of it might be curiosity. But there’s something else that keeps drawing him back to this small beach and sad man, too.

 Anyway, it’s not like he has anything better to do.

 “Humans usually cook it,” Lothar says dryly, but shoves the parcel of fish eggs into his mouth anyway. He washes it down with whatever it is he drinks while he waits – he pushes Khadgar away any time the mermaid tries to see what’s in the bottle.

 Khadgar rolls in the low surf, keeping wet. He flicks water with his tail, just to see the man scowl at him.

 “What’s it like out there?” Lothar asks, abruptly.

 Khadgar thinks about the school of mermaids, flittering past each other with shimmering scales. Things about songs that echo for miles and miles. Thinks about the wide open sky and deep, impossible depths of the ocean. About the sheer vastness of it all.

 “Empty,” he says.

 Lothar stills. He wears his grief heavily, this man. “He won’t come home, will he?”

 “The ocean keeps that which belongs to it,” Khadgar says and knows that it’s no comfort. But it is what it is. How do you describe the way that the sea calls to those water-born? The way a selkie longs to swim? How do you describe the rightness of being free?

 But humans must be beings of salt water too, because Khadgar watches rivulets start to run their way down Lothar’s face. He weeps quietly but without shame, the soul deep grief of a man that has lost the thing that means the most to him, without even a token to say it was ever there at all.

 He aches to help. But what can he do?

 -

 Lothar grieves, and watches as his mermaid sinks back into the waves.

 He thinks that that will be the last he sees of him, for in all stories there is a moment of realisation, a moment where the magic breaks and the wondrous creature vanishes to be never seen again. It is a harsh blow, to be delivered as he grieves for Callan and it tears his heart anew.

 It shouldn’t. He’s a grown and weary man, who should know better to hand out his heart to any passing creature of the sea.

 He’s done it once before and it had ended in pain. He’d fooled himself into thinking that that meant he would never do it again.

 How little it had taken, to prove himself a liar.

 He grieves as the sun goes down and grieves as the moon rises, and feels nothing but empty. Empty of tears and of joy, but not of pain. It goes on and on.

 And then a dark head rises from the water. No matter how many times he sees it, his heart still hopes -for a single instant!- that it might be Callan. It is not. It never is.

 It is Khadgar, though, and Lothar cannot be surprised by how much that lightens his heart. Not so lost and gone then, after all.

 The mermaid awkwardly drags a shallow silver dish ashore, something that should be rusted and tarnished from the water but gleams with an unnatural shine instead.

 “What is that?” Lothar asks, voice rasping and brow furrowed.

 “A starlight mirror,” Khadgar says, a little distracted as he wiggles on the sand. “Made from mermaid tears. It’s a magic token.”

 Lothar does frown now. It’s hard to picture what Khadgar’s life under the water is like, but he’s never been given the impression that it involved much treasure. Everything that Khadgar has brought to show him is of the scavenged sort – seashells and pearls and coral, pretty but natural.

 “It’s yours?” He asks.

 Khadgar hesitates. “Well, no,” he says, a tad sheepishly. “I stole it. So you should take it up to your house, away from the water’s edge. I don’t think he’ll be able to find it, then. His power doesn’t extend to the land.”

 That… doesn’t sound good. But Lothar is willing to humour him for a little while longer before he tells him to return it. “What does it do? I assume it’s something more than just a mirror.”

 Khadgar grins. “Look,” he says, and drags his hand over top of the mirror, not touching.

 And yet, beneath his hand, the image ripples. Lothar leans closer, entranced. There is a dark shape, barely visible, twisting and skimming – like a swimmer through water.

 His breath catches.

 “It shows your heart’s desire,” Khadgar says. He bites his lip. “I thought- well. You should take it.”

 Callan.

 “You … won’t get in trouble for this?” Lothar asks, reluctantly. His hands clamp around the edges of it, as if to protect the image within it.

 Khadgar shrugs, and flashes a smile. “He’d have to catch me first,” he says, joyfully, and slips back into the water.

 Lothar is left alone on the shore once more, but this time with a priceless gift.

 -

 Khadgar had been… not entirely truthful about the ease with which he had stolen the mirror, nor his own certainty of safety after the fact.

 It had been many, many years since he had been anywhere other sea creatures roamed but everyone knew how to find Gul’dan. You looked for the oil slicks, the places where sea birds drowned and fish suffocated and there, in the midst of the death, you would find him.

 And if you bargained just right – if you had something he wanted or needed – then perhaps you might convince him to trade magic with you, to cast a spell for your desires. And if you were very, very lucky, it might turn out in your favour.

 Well, Khadgar had never been one for bargaining. And he’d figured that Gul’dan wouldn’t miss one measly magic mirror.

 He’d figured wrongly.

 The ocean was a massive place – seemingly infinite and without barriers or walls. It meant that you could swim forever, if you needed to. It meant that there were no places to hide, if you needed them.

 “Did you think you would get away with it?” Gul’dan rasps, glowing an eerie green as he sinks them both down deeper and deeper into the ocean’s hold.

 Khadgar fights back, but the warlock steals the air from his lungs, drains the life from his body. He weakens and tires, as though he is very old and very alone and then, there, in the deep dark of the ocean, alone but for his killer, Khadgar dies, body falling apart to become sea foam flung on the breeze.

 -

 When he wakes, it is to a form not his own. There is a face leaning over him, green skinned and malicious, teeth sharp and curving and dangerous.

 “Ow,” Khadgar says.

 “If you complain, I will turn you back,” Garona says, impassively. She shakes her head and the bones in her hair click together.

 “Not complaining,” Khadgar says immediately. “Just ow.”

 She draws back, away from him and submerges into the river.

 He sits, awkwardly. He has legs now, is human. His skin is dry but strangely soft, fingers missing webs between them. He would make for a poor swimmer, slow and clumsy like this.

 “Don’t get wet,” Garona says. “I don’t have the power to bring you back, properly. You’ll dissolve.”

 “How did you do it?” Khadgar asks, curious and admiring. That’s deep magic, to steal life from death. To take sea foam and shape it back into the being that it was. He’s honoured that she did it for him. And, frankly, glad to still be alive.

 “There are plenty of bones here,” Garona says. It’s an answer and it’s not – but magic is like that.

 “I think Gul’dan will come for the mirror,” he says, quietly. His hair drifts across his face.

 “Probably,” Garona agrees and dives deep into her river. Below the waves, she seems unreal, like a mirage conjured by the mind and not a real creature at all. When she surfaces, she holds a ribcage in her hand, stark white bone. He tries not to wonder where it came from. “But all things can be trapped.”

 A cage of bone. It might work. But more preciously, it’s an offer of help. “Thank you,” he says, sincerely.

 Garona looks away, and shrugs with liquid grace. “I have suffered him once,” she says. “I’ll not do it again. And besides, it will be very quiet here without you.”

 Khadgar beams at her. “It will,” he says, and wobbles to stand on his new feet. “I will be back,” he promises. “But I have to go and get Lothar.”

 Over land, the distance isn’t far from Garona’s river to Lothar’s house, but it’s new territory to him, a new way to travel and new things to see. The world is so bright above sea – the light has so many colours in it. But it’s heavy too, up here, and walking takes so much effort.

 It’s growing dark by the time he finds Lothar’s house and it’s –

 There’s a feeling in the air. A charge, like brewing lightning, like a storm is coming. It’s not a natural feeling.

 It’s laced heavily with magic. Khadgar had been wrong to think that Gul’dan had no power on land – or perhaps it was true, but that did not mean he couldn’t bring his power to the land. Gul’dan was darkness, and he smothered the light.

 Khadgar hurries, actually worried now. When he reaches the house there are dead things outside it, twisted crab like monstrosities with bone spikes protruding from their shells, things warped in the image of Gul’dan.

 “Lothar?” He calls, hoping upon hope that he isn’t too late.

 The door swings open and he is hauled inside. The house is warm and bright, holds a different atmosphere to the dread brewing outside. It feels almost safe, but he knows that it’s an illusion. Or not an illusion – but not a magic strong enough to resist a warlock.

 “Khadgar?” Lothar says, one hand gripping his shoulder tightly. The other holds a small device – a human weapon. “But you- I thought you were dead. I saw, in the mirror-”

 “Oh!” Khadgar says, genuinely startled. It shows your heart’s desire. He’d only thought that Lothar would look for his son with it. It hadn’t occurred to him that Lothar might ever see him. He grins, foolishly.

 “How are you here? How are you human?”

 “It doesn’t matter, really,” Khadgar says, still smiling. “But we have to go. He’s going to come for you, for the mirror.”

 Lothar looks more resigned than afraid. “So we fight,” he says.

 “We fight,” Khadgar agrees. “But not here. I’ve got a plan.”

 -

 Lothar follows his mermaid – human now, of all things, and how had that happened? Surely there was a cost to it. But there’d been a cost to the mirror too, and he’d foolishly still accepted it. Had known, even when accepting it, that there would be a time to pay. It had seemed worth it, to see Callan, even if only glimpses of him.

 He takes the mirror and follows Khadgar into the night. The boy stumbles, seems weak and uncertain on land in a way he’d never been on the water, but it doesn’t change his unwavering determination.

 A plan. Lothar can only hope so. The strange lobster like creatures that had surrounded the house had been bad enough, but he’d been able to shoot them.

 Some things didn’t die by bullets.

 “Where are we going?” He demands. It’s cold outside, and starting to rain. It reminds him of the night they’d met, of the night that Callan had left. “This isn’t the way to the beach.”

“It’s not,” Khadgar agrees, vaguely. “We don’t want the ocean. It’s not on our side anymore.”

 And if that wasn’t chilling.

 “You’re a mermaid!” Lothar protests, more startled than argumentative. “You belong to the ocean.”

 “Not anymore,” Khadgar says, waving a hand over himself. “But we’ve got the land and Garona’s got the rivers, so between us-“

 He stops, suddenly. Lothar nearly runs into his back.

 Clouds have covered what light the moon was giving off, but the silver mirror in his hands still reflects light that isn’t reaching it. It’s like a beacon in the night, shining endlessly, illuminating a pillar into the sky.  

 It would be beautiful, but outside the circle of its glow… the shadows are moving. They circle the light, as though the circle is an impassable barrier that they cannot cross. It might be.

 “I hope this is part of your plan,” Lothar says quietly.

 He can hear Khadgar swallow. “Get to the water,” he says, voice quiet. “Find Garona.” Then he steps forward, out of the light and into the darkness, before Lothar can stop him. “Gul’dan! You have no power here!”

 Lothar curses, but races for the river. He stumbles over uneven ground, trips as though there are things grabbing his ankles. Grass gives way to dirt and he crashes into the water, sending gusts of it spewing into the air around him. The cold is shocking in its intensity, bites into his flesh immediately and leeches all the heat from his skin.

 A green, inhuman figure rises from the water, standing where there is no ground to stand upon. He has seen her before – this woman like wraith – but only ever from the corner of his eye, like a ghost or moving shadow. She seems solid now, less of a nightmare and mystery when revealed in the light, though he very desperately hopes that this is ‘Garona’ and not some other enemy.

 “Quickly,” she says, and her voice is like bubbling water, inviting him to throw himself into the river. “Leave the mirror. Take this.”

 It’s bone – bones wound together like a cage, like a box, bones woven and bent in ways that aren’t natural, that look as though they are grown into shape. Lothar’s hands take it, fingers numb, unhook that latch that holds the lid down. It’s small enough to sit in the palm of his hand – surely too small to hold a monster that threatens their lives.

 “You have to trap him in it – any part will do,” Garona says. “A thing caged is smaller than it is when free.”

 “I have to do it?” Lothar asks, testily, but staggers back out of the water, dropping the silver mirror onto the sand. It continues to shine, but fainter now, like the magic is wearing out. “Great, of course I do.”

 He wonders how he’s even meant to find this monster – he doesn’t even know what it is! – but that question is answered for him. A great, hulking thing draws itself out of the night, dragging Khadgar in its grip. It’s hunched and wizened looking, with great spikes sticking from its back and it seems to rattle with every step.

 Lothar raises his gun and shoots it.

 It roars, the sound carrying force that sound shouldn’t carry. It sounds like a tidal wave, like the rending of metal as a boat rips itself apart, like the grinding of tectonic plates against each other.

 Lothar staggers backwards, as if struck. Something oily winds its way over his foot, starts to climb up the leg of his trousers. He glances down, sees that the water of the river has become covered in oil – a black viscous thing that seems to have a life of its own.

 “Drown him,” Gul’dan orders, eyes glowing a twisted green.

 Lothar staggers backwards again. Then hands come up to hold him, to brace him, and for a second he thinks he is safe. That it is Garona and she has caught him.

 It is Garona.

 But her hands are black and covered in oil.

 “No,” she breathes quietly in his ear, but it is a sound of despair and not defiance. Her hands are impossibly strong.

 She draws him backwards, under the water, and he drowns.

 -

 “No!” Khadgar screams.

 He stumbles on his stupid, weak human legs, but he can’t help. If he dives into the water then he is lost, he becomes sea foam again and cannot help them anyway.

 But if he does not – then Lothar dies.

 Lothar dies.

 Gul’dan is reaching for him, to draw the life from him one last time, when Khadgar spies the silver mirror. It barely even gleams now, a faint and fading star amidst the darkness.

 But where there is light, there is hope.

 Khadgar grabs for it, holds it tightly to himself, as a flimsy shield. Gul’dan halts, hand pausing in the air.

 “It will not save you,” Gul’dan says, voice an echoing rasp in the night. “Its power fades. You are helpless and I grow ever stronger. From its light comes darkness.”

 Around them, the night grows heavier and heavier, a living and breathing thing, just waiting for an opening.

 Behind him, Lothar drowns.

 Khadgar was wrong – his form might be human but his heart is not. He is, always, a creature of the sea. The ocean claims that which belongs to it.

 “But,” he says, and opens his eyes. Tears pool in them, as silver as the stars above. “From darkness… light.”

 His tears fall, each one a star, each one filled with the magic of the ocean, each one striking the starlight mirror like a hammer strikes an anvil, like the ringing of a bell, like a perfect and pure note reverberating through the world.

 Light blazes.

 The mirror crumbles in his hands, unmade with the same magic that had formed it. A mermaid’s tears, given and given again. But the darkness is forced back, the oil stripped off of the water and cleansed until it is as pure as a mountain spring without a touch of pollution.

 Gul’dan cringes back but is not defeated. He lashes out, curved and clawed hand catching Khadgar around the throat and drawing him into the air. Khadgar struggles, gurgles and chokes as his throat is crushed.

 And then Garona leaps from the water, bone box in her hand, and traps him in it.

 Khadgar sinks to the ground, gasping for breath. “Lothar?” he asks, pleads.

 There are tears in her eyes. “I am sorry,” Garona says. The things that she drowns die. Even if she does not wish them to.

 Khadgar shakes his head and stumbles to the river’s edge. She doesn’t try to stop him, understands his heart even though it is a foolish choice.

 He dives into the water, sinking down and down. Salt streams from his skin, crackling and pulling apart as his body, held together with her magic, reverts back into sea foam.

 Garona dives down next to him, singing low and mournful, the bone box clutched in her hands.

 Lothar is resting on the floor of the river, still even in the current, unlike how a human body should float. He seems frozen, static, out of time. His skin is blue and cool to the touch.

 Khadgar cradles his cheek and kisses him and thinks that they never got to do this for real, never with purpose and meaning.

 If he cries, who can tell, underwater.

 And then.

 Lothar breathes.

 He draws air from Khadgar’s fading human shell, and opens his eyes. They are as blue as the ocean and Khadgar thinks, deliriously, oh, she must have loved you so much, your selkie-wife-

 Because it leaves a mark, love like that. It’s a type of magic, so powerful, formless and shapeless but capable of shaping-

 Lothar twists, underneath his hands, body reshaping itself, and his legs fuse together to form a tail – oh, and oh, he’s beautiful.

 He’s a mermaid.

 Khadgar trails hands over it, bewildered by overwhelmed with joy. He’s fading now, though, is more sea foam than human, can feel himself growing distant and faint.

 It’s… not a bad way to end. To see this and know that the people he loves are okay.

 And then Lothar kisses him back.

 Every nerve in his body sings, as though he has finally found the right melody. As though he is part of a song that travels the entire ocean, onwards forever.

 Khadgar laughs, the sound bubbling out of him as his tail reforms. “The ocean claims what belongs to it,” he says amused. “We both belong to it, you and I. We belong to each other.”

 Garona circles them, like an exasperated shark. “You’re both ridiculous,” she says, but it’s with relief and not irritation. “You’re not both supposed to be able to cheat death like that.”

 Khadgar grins, because he can. Because the world is bright and pure and wonderful.

 “I have no idea what happened,” Lothar says, slightly dazed. “Also I have a tail now.”

 -

Epilogue

-

 “The box will be opened one day,” Garona warns, even as she buries it deep beneath the bones in her river bed. “If there is a box, it will always be opened.”

 Khadgar knows that it’s true. It is and has always been the case. But ‘someday’ can be a long day from now, and when it happens, they will be more prepared to fight back.

 “Then it will be opened,” he says, with a shrug. “But not now and not by us.”

 She nods, drifting lazily around them as they swim. Lothar hates it, still hasn’t quite accustomed himself to the way he can move in the water – she does it just to annoy him, some days. So does Khadgar, some days.

 “I will guard it,” she says. “No one will touch it while I live.”

 It is no secret that Khadgar and Lothar will head out to the open sea – they are both creatures of salt and water. And Callan is out there, too, somewhere.

 It will, most likely, be a very long time before they return.

 “You should come with us,” Khadgar says, reaching out and trailing a hand along her side as she passes him.

 “I am bound to this river,” Garona says, frowning.

 “To your bones,” Khadgar corrects, looping down lower to the river bed. “Come with us,” he repeats. “We will carry you with us, wherever we go.”

 “There is safety in numbers,” Lothar mentions, as if he doesn’t want her to come too. “And if you don’t, I’m pretty sure Khadgar will get us lost in a crevice somewhere.”

 “You just want someone else around that has no idea what’s going on,” Khadgar scoffs.

 “If I wanted that, I have you,” Lothar says, dryly, slapping Khadgar with his fins as he shoots past.