Shouto took a deep breath. He smelled the salt and the harshness of the sea; if he focused hard enough, could feel her gentle spray in the wind that whipped across his body.

Beautiful, and terrible. Dangerous.

Deadly.

He couldn't open his eyes; there was no guarantee that, if he saw her beauty in that mindset, he would not walk forward, let her terrible beauty swallow him whole.

And yet, he looked out anyway.

Somewhere, under all the waves, the churning of the sea, he pretended he could still picture Poseidon, dancing his trident into the water, tides rising and falling as he did.

But he could scarcely believe in the gods anymore.

They did not answer. They did not reward the worthy.

After all, his father was clearly so worthy; why, then, was Shouto so broken, so failed a child as all the rest?

Shouto closed his eyes again.

Because there were no gods. There was nobody to protect good people from bad happenings, nobody to reward the most glorious of battlers with the strength they so clearly earned, there was nobody to send their beauty to a girl worthy enough of Shouto's interest to appease his father's evereager hunger for more offspring. He knew how his parents tarried, he knew that how often they presented him with promising candidates was only a portion of the rejected ones. He knew they worried he took no bedmates.

He knew.

Anyway, if the gods really did send someone, any girl so perfect was too perfect for Shouto, face scarred and heart cold.

Even then, Shouto doubted a girl so perfect could awaken whatever it was inside of him that seemed to never have been lit at all, the burning passion so many of his comrades boasted.

Shouto took in another breath of the sea; light from the setting sun glanced off her intermittently through the clouds, blinding pinpricks into his sight. But he forced himself to keep watching.

If there were gods, they long since would have given him a reward, for how hard he worked to appease them. A strength far larger than what his current body could give. A sword sharp enough to split strands of thread. A speed that could bring him ever closer to being worthy of his father's title. Anything to prove that the gods were watching the prince of their most beautiful domain.

The sea was lapping at his ankles, now, his sandals soaked and unable to care. Each wave crashing to the shore seemed to pull him further towards where they receded to, tempting him, begging him, to dance farther out.

If he stayed in one place, would the tide take his feet anyway? If he moved forward, would there ever be any trace that he had been there?

The sharp, warbling cry of the evening guard change startled him from his stupor.

Shamefully, Shouto turned away from the temptress before him, turning about to gaze upon the sand giving way to settlement behind him.

No guards bothered with the ocean; if there was an invasion, it would not come from here, the southern side of the island.

Shouto turned his body to the left, to return home with his eyes away from the setting sun, when, in the shallows of the ocean, he noticed something.

A body had washed up on the shore, clothed only in sea foam.

Shouto froze for only a moment before horrible curiosity kept him from crying out, forcing his feet forward instead.

He approached in abject terror, unsure of what he was meant to do as the ocean continued to lap across the body, a lithe, youthful body curled up on its front and slightly to one side, though as the waves continued to persuade the limp form, twisted it onto its back.

It was a young man, pale under hair that seemed black, but with an impossibly green highlight where the sun struck.

And he was still breathing.

Shouto didn't think much after that; immediately, he was crouched over the young man, grabbing him under the arms and hoisting him further up onto the beach. He didn't seem immediately wounded, though Shouto was captivated by the silvery scars that crossed his arms and legs, so many and so dense that they were like stretch marks.

Well, to say he was naked wouldn't have been entirely accurate; a few strands of thick kelp were wrapped around his legs and arms, a particularly long one wrapped from his hips to his right ankle, and he had a ring on his right hand, a simple gold band with an imprint of something Shouto couldn't quite make out in his shock.

"Hey, hey! Can you hear me? Who are you?" Shouto tried, having eased the young man's head against his thigh, not seeing any immediate signs of drowning. Freckles scattered across his skin like constellations, dense and varied in age, most concentrated across his cheekbones and shoulders, his hips and collarbone if Shouto looked close enough. The young man himself looked no older than Shouto, yet, with such a thin waist on a body that was clearly muscled, Shouto could not be certain if the body's trim belied a different truth than his face, with gently closed eyes and dark, thick eyelashes, lips that curved attractively, and were plush and almost pouty. "Please, are you alright?" Shouto tried again, beginning to size up the young man as he considered how hard he would have to work to carry him on his own.

Yet when he curled his arms around his shoulders, his knees, found that he lifted him far too easily, the young man far lighter than he should have been.

Shouto felt a stirring of something deep in his chest as the young man forced out a feeble sound, his eyes fluttering open, glimmering and emerald-green like the deepest depths of the beautiful, terrible sea, meeting with Shouto's for only a moment before closing again, the young man drifting out of consciousness as easily as he had drifted into it.