Lehran comes back with wet hair, wet clothes, red eyes, and bits of gravel still stuck in his hair. Dheginsea regards him like a dog coming back to track mud all over the floor again.
"The goddess could not make herself clearer," he tells him. "You will live, as that is her will. Would you defy her?"
Lehran coughs some muddy water onto the carpet and takes his leave.
While he still lived in Altina's new kingdom, he would come back to her face full of hurt and he thought he could not bear it. Now he returned to Dheginsea's disgust, and wanted Altina again, even if he was guilty of breaking her heart every time.
He finds a change of clothes and throws his wet garments off without closing the door or window. He is far beyond modesty anymore. Dragging the bucket out from under his bed, he chokes and gags the last of the seawater out of his lungs.
He can feel a little sand left in there when he breathes. It's an odd feeling, one that no mortal would have ever felt.
Lehran doesn't want to be immortal. He doesn't even want the rest of his heron years.
But with no other path left to him, he takes tender breaths and wonders how in the world to go about living.