44. The Beach

The crashing of waves could be heard within the tent. Onyx and Imoen awoke simultaneously, their breathing fast and ragged and at once revealing each other's waking. Imoen's hands were frozen outthrust above herself, wrists together, in mimicry of the Fireball spell she had cast at the last moment of her dream. The image of the destroyed airship was fresh in their minds as they looked at each other, blue eyes moving frantically for some signal from the other. He looked at her hands, understood she'd had the dream, and she saw this in his eyes.

"Strange," he whispered.

"Special," she whispered back, voice like her eyes bright and curious.

"The night we met J and K, I dreamt..."

"...you fell and I caught you."

"It really was you."

"In my dream I chose to."

"Of course you did," Onyx smiled, and reached up to brush an auburn bang out of Imoen's face.

"What happened to your hand?" she asked.

The hand was fine, but he looked at it and understood. "The one who killed our father...no, it wasn't him, it was...something like him, but older and eviler and set in its ways. Maybe it was what he was trying to be or becoming..."

"Maybe it's what we're supposed to stop him from becoming." Imoen thought for a moment, and added, "I was talkin' to Dyna about divination on the march."

"I recall," Onyx smiled. "Curious Immy."

"Of course!" she beamed. "I know what she'd say if we told her."

"To heed them?"

"She said most dreams were meaningless, but some weren't. Some are about things that have happened..."

"...I've dreamt about Gorion's death, and Jade was there again. Really there..."

"...those tell you more about the events. If things are differnet or strange, it's a symbol. Some are about things that are happening. Those are things you wouldn't see but need to know. Some are about things that will be or may be.Those are the ones you're supposed to achieve or prevent."

Onyx blinked. "I see."

"Maybe yours are omens from Lathander."

"There are parts that feel like him. Like the glowing sword. I had it in the first dream too, in the severed hand. There are parts that feel antithetical."

"It could be him warning you about evil."

"It could be evil."

Imoen's face paled, and she remained silent for a minute. "Do you remember the wand we found in the ankheg nest the next day?"

"With the body of the farmer's son?"

"Yeah. A wand of fire. I was curious and asked Garrick about it. Just curious, y'know, didn't get far. In the dream, it was like that, even though I didn't have the wand. And now, laying here, it all fits together now. The somatics, the verbals, the pressure and angle and grip and everything. I know I know how to use it."

"Like how you figured out the magic missiles wand," Onyx grinned.

"Yep!" Imoen beamed again. "I think sometimes dream are just your mind working through stuff itself, figuring out stuff. Maybe sometimes you can kinda think better asleep than awake."

"Maybe," Onyx beamed with pride for his friend, "But I'm gonna go pray now. Haven't managed to do that asleep yet."

"K," Imoen rolled her head facing up again and shut her eyes, "'s not even light yet. I guess I'm just the sleepyhead, but I'm gonna be here."

Onyx curled up, grabbing two pendants and hanging them around his neck, tucked under his cotton tunic. He untied open the door-flap and crawled out of the tent, and tied it again. It was indeed predawn, though the sky was lightening, and the air was humid and slightly foggy from the previous day and night's rain. He started at the sight of Viconia sitting on the driftwood log, eyes wide open, before realizing she was in reverie, in that strange elfkind state, resting yet on watch. Trying not to disturb her, despite the eerie feeling that she must be aware of him all the same, he walked barefoot away from the camp, and the ground became increasingly sandy rather than dirty, until he was on the actual beach, which like any on the mostly-rocky Sword Coast was at the current tide only about fourty feet of sand before the water.

He was just pulling the holy symbol on its neckchain over his collar and sinking to one knee when he heard soft footsteps on the sand behind himself. Viconia he assumed, but turned to find Safana instead, free of the conforming leather suit she had worn all of the day previous day. Now draped on her was a crimson silk pareo and sarong, the one tied around her chest between the collar and midriff, and the other tied around her hips and hanging more over her right leg than the left. Her hair was now done up in a pair of girllike ponytail that flopped over a bronzed shoulder, and she too was barefoot. She was smiling brightly in the predawn, also girllike on her thirtyish face.

"Restless?" she asked in a low voice than rolled with the waves, but like her eyes was now more bright and curious than purring and assured.

His eyes flicked up from caught staring at her body and he swallowed audibly. "I pray at dawn," he answered while nodding in greeting.

Safana smiled back. "Ah yes, the Morninglord." Her hand was on the sunrise-emblazoned gold disk before it was noticed by him, and she lifted it off with a brush of her knuckles against his chest, and admired it for a moment before casting her eyes to the eastern, inland horizon. "Seems you left time to kill."

He scratched the back of his head. "You were right Safana, I was restless."

She smirked. "She chatter in her sleep, too?"

He made a point of not looking amused. "Only dreams."

She raised an eyebrow. "Care to indulge me?" she chirped.

"So vivid, what happens, and the emotions. As real as a true battle."

Safana cocked her eyerows knowingly. "When we found the sirens, one could say you were in a dream."

He intook his breath sharply, and found his nostrils abuzz with a cinnamon fragrance on her as he answered, "I hesitate to remember that travesty. But yes, it felt like a dream."

Safana nodded expectantly, leaning in and angling her gaze up to meet his. "Then it's fair to say it was a dream come true."

"It was more like a nightmare."

"Mmm," Safana cocked her head in flippant thought before looking at and grinning at him again, teasing her lower lip between her teeth. "You're new on the road. Natural as breathing."

He nodded, and looked alternatively into her eyes and north along the coast. "I wanted so much to be out of Candlekeep, for years. My twin sister even more so. Treated like children until twenty. Practically life expectancy for a paladin." He hesitated, feeling like he'd stepped over his own grave, for a fleeting moment that revelation made him wonder many things.

"Better learn to appreciate life quick then," she winked and grinned. "Nah, most tin-heads just don't know when to pick their battles. Your mothering druid was right, it's good you hugged the coast and not the bandit-run roads."

"And besides, that's how we met you, right?" he smirked playfully, then his face fell again and he continued. "Eager to fight, eager to quest, eager to make something of ourselves and see the world. Immy too. Likes books better, but I think she just might have gone through them all."

Safana nodded patiently. "But now that it's here, you wish nothing more than the safety and comfort?"

"Exactly."

She inhaled, and looked out to sea. "It was like that for me. Spoiled daughter of a pasha, one could scarcely wall without tripping over a servant laying rare comforts at my feet. I could have had anything my heart desired. Except, of course, freedom. I traded that for everything else, only to realize the moment I was stranded on a floating stack of scalywags that they were all just using their freedom in pursuit of the luxuries I had cast off, without a hope of ever attaining a small fraction."

"But have you not enjoyed the Life?"

"Oh, you've no idea," she purred. "Freedom takes more savvy and it takes some getting used to. I know you were cast into it by another's hand, and a rather evil-sounding one at that, but it gives you something I've never really had. Purpose." She bumped his hip with hers. "You'll get your sea legs. Charge ahead, not back. Learn to take the good with the bad. Between two evils, I'll choose the one I haven't tried."

Onyx closed his eyes while he chuckled under his breath, and his smile broadened. He nodded slightly, and inhaled expressly for the taste of her cinnamon perfume.

"Luminescence…" Safana murmured with interest, and Onyx opened his eyes to find her pointing into the water, where beneath the surface a moonglow wavered. She flipped her ponytail up in its direction, then looked back at him. "Better up close. Water's great this time of year. C'mon."

With a last grin and wink she strode down the beach, hands making no noise as they reached between her shoulderblades, and the pareo's knot seemed undone the moment she touched it. It slipped down her back and fell off her thighs to prove the unbroken copper hue of her smoothly muscled back. Onyx inhaled involuntarily as at the touch of one hand to the knot at her left hip the sarong fell away to reveal the right leg as well as she had been the left. Her thighs matched the development her shoulders, which swayed left and right to reveal crescent curves beyond.

Onyx closed his eyes for a moment, cocked his head left and right, and then opened them, throwing his tunic over his head and onto the sand, and reaching for the two pendants. He hesitated as he studied each – one, the gold sunrise disc, the other, the looped lock of golden hair. He jerked his gaze away, not looking at each again as he pulled the chains over his head, and dropped them by his wayside over the tunic. He shed his lower body as he closed the distance to the waterline, and found the water agreeable as it first lapped his feet. His eyes followed Safana's strokes as she swam out, and he rushed and dove in.

He didn't catch up until she had dove clear under the water, pushing her way near the bottom to the rocky twists of indigo coral where the multicolored glow shimmered, now with a green-blueish hue that grew brighter and brighter as the sky lightened. The undercurrent rocked her back and forth as she butterflied her arms up and out to maintain her depth, looking around through the water shoreward as she felt the submerged ripples from Onyx swimming up to meet her. His eyes were straining wide as they took in the luminescence, and then looked toward her. They paddled into each other, each grabbing the other about the waist and treading with the other arm to steady as their faces moved in, to merge lips, and open them with a perfect seal, exchaniging slight inhales and exhales as his mouth pressured further around hers.

Feet hit the sand of the shallows, and the lapping surface of the sea broke to the top of his head, then hers, locked in the same kiss while her hair fell back to the surface or her shoulders, the ponytail tie forgotten and gone. He reached a hand around to hold her head and pressed the kiss; she grasped an arm around his collar, pulling herself up and in until the tops of her breasts broke the waterline and pressed into him. She let her head fall back away from his, throwing her hair off her shoulders and arcing her back. Her knees popped above the water flanking his armpits and moved back aside his shoulderblades, and he folded his upper arms down to brace the lower thighs against his ribs. His other hand disappeared below the water, the arm drawing alongside her body, and a moment his body pushed up against hers and he slid his lips up past hers and gasped, just before she kicked her head back to release a moan over the water. He pulled her head back toward his, and the locked gazes and lips while their hands tightened and loosened against each other. They rocked with the waves, while dawn broke and passed.