Chapter -19: Dance of Tears
"T-Torren...?" Brine rubbed his eyes and blinked twice until her beauty was too clear in focus for him to deny this as a dream.
He steadily approached the edge of the sea and waved out to her, words weighted with concern for her stiff, unnatural posture, "Are you ok...? Why...why have ya suddenly decided to come back?"
"Ok...?" She whispered dully, a smile cracking her face as she giggled a few times in a painful, unhinged manner, "No, I'm NOT ok...!"
She then crossed her hands over her chest and started shivering, "None of this...is ok!"
Brine stopped and with his heart twisted in a knot he reached out and whispered, "Come out of the water, Torren. Let's talk. Ya know I'm here for ya."
"And that's the problem...!" She shrieked in anguish, tears flying out the sides of her eyes as she lunged out and shouted, "I told you to forget about me...! But you still come here every night!"
"Y-You...knew?" Brine stuttered, pulling his hand back slowly.
"Why?!" Torren pressed her hands inward and looked incapable of stopping the tears from coming out of her eyes, "I'm NOT worth anything...!"
"I'm just a worthless piece of seaweed drifting through the tides...No! I'm fish excrement!"
Brine put his best foot forward and yelled in disbelief, "Who put these horrible thoughts in yer head?!"
"N-No one...!" She strained to get out, hanging her head to see her sorrowful reflection in the night sea, "I've always thought this way about myself..."
Brine murmured in pain, "That's a darn lie and you know it...!"
"Is it...?" She raised her head slowly and began to laugh, "I had you believing I wasn't an Aurian...How can you trust anything I say?"
Brine bit his teeth down hard and stuttered, "T-That..."
"Don't you see...?" Torren wept, her demeanor drowning in misery, "There's never been a 'real' Torren, you fell in love with a mannequin filled to overflowing with lies...!"
"And I..." She gasped and struggled to breath, tenderly revealing just how far her sorrows were pushing her feelings down, further and further into the depths, "And I'm sick of not getting to be 'me'...!"
"Life...is too hard and miserable to endure! There's nothing that can bring me happiness, and the worst feeling of all...Has been knowing that I've dragged you into my whirlpool to drown!"
Brine snapped out of his funk to whisper, "What? No..."
He then dipped his toes into the edge of the sea, causing his body to briefly freeze up. But nevertheless, he held his ground and looked deep into her eyes to shout, "That ain't ever been how I've felt about ya, Torren!"
"Dragged me down...? Nah..." He shook his head and pounded his hand against his chest, "That time we spent together was the happiest I've ever felt! Every time I was around ya...it was like a sea of bubbles, foaming in my chest!"
"The way ya danced, how ya smiled...How could I ever forgive myself if I cursed any of that?!"
Torren recoiled, biting her lower lip and shaking her head, "S-Stop it...That's not how you feel...!"
"It is!" Brine bit his teeth and crunched his fist against his chest, "My heart ain't ever felt clearer..."
"It's yours that's been warped...Someone's made you think this way, and I ain't gonna let it stand," Brine budged an inch forward, his whole body shivering with the cold water splashing against his toes, "T-The Torren I know and love...Could take her pain and turn it into something beautiful. She struggled...she was shy, but she still knew how to shine with the brightest of smiles."
"Please just..." Brine reached his hand out and begged to her, "Come back to me. Ya don't have to suffer under duty any longer..."
Torren slowly shook her head and craned her head back, her hollow eyes leaking tears off the sides of her cheeks.
She then drew her hand out and placed the other on her chest, "There's only one way for us to be free, Brine..."
Small trails of water began to bend out around her legs and branch off towards him. As they got nearer, he jumped back onto the sand and started panicking.
"W-What do ya think yer doing, Torren?!" He shouted with a horrifying realization towards what she was after.
That water...for all his fear of the sea, he'd never felt outright deathly intent coming from it.
He stared at Torren's eyes one more time and saw oblivion staring him back. With a painful, elongated smile, she asked him, "Why...why would you resist? This way...at least we can be together."
"In death?!" Brine swung his arm out and shouted, "No way! Ya can't be serious!"
Torren became utterly silent.
Brine clenched his fist before his chest and took one step forward onto the water's surface. His body rebelled against his actions, but his heart held him together.
"I've been a simple-minded man...Too enamored with fairy tales and dreams. But what you and I had...was REAL..." His other foot was dragged atop the water, every nerve kicking and screaming internally.
He bit his teeth down and kept walking, each step becoming increasingly more fluid until it was as natural to him as breathing.
"I want nothing for ya but to live with the happiness ya damn well deserve! And I'm gonna give it to ya...Even if I hafta drag ya outta the depths myself!"
When Brine was within a few feet of her, Torren slid many feet back atop the water and brushed her hands out, her body basking in a light seawater aura.
"S-Stop caring about me...! I'm nothing...!" She wailed.
"Never...!" Brine continued to walk forward at a faster pace, "Cause to me...yer my greatest catch, Torren!"
Torren floated over the water's surface and raised her hands up, lifting herself slightly higher into the air. Her face was fraught with despair, her skin glistening under the moonlight.
Brine ran along the sea with his heart racing as she thrust a discus of water his way.
He flipped over it and fumbled around in the air, making a hard landing that pushed the water down, but refusing to sink himself into the depths.
He pushed onward when the water leveled out and Torren continued to retreat, gliding gently further away and making the water dance to beguile his advance.
Geysers leaped in an arch to bar the path, and he had to turn and run around them, dealing with the variety of formations she could conduct with but a gesture of her hand.
She waved her hand out and the water rose into a massive tidal wave approaching from his right.
His skin went pale and he braced himself for impact. The water dragged him down against the surface but couldn't send him under. He tumbled against the whirling currents and coughed up water.
Eventually he stumbled his way free and rolled along the surface, breaking into a run after taking a few more coughs to catch his breath.
Torren's lower lip trembled against her teeth and she thrust her hand forward, propelling herself further away as two geysers rose out of the sea to directly tackle him.
Brine crossed his arms and was pushed a far distance back.
He then raised his head and saw her aura bathing in the moon's light, sparkling, shimmering like sapphires.
Her tears drowned her face, illuminating her sadness and hesitation.
Higher still did she rise, and further back did she float atop her curved pillar of water.
Brine clicked his tongue and knew he'd have to try harder than this if he was to reach her.
Courageously traveling deeper away from the safety net of the shore, he gathered up water by his side and launched them at her platform like wavy torpedos.
The pillar bent but could not break so easily, so he fired more and more, meeting retaliation in the form of geysers exploding out of the sea.
His attacks were very amateurish, lacking the polish that her works of art used to bar his path.
Despair could not bury the artistic mind for good. Every act Torren made was laced with her brilliance, a performance in their own rights.
Brine had only ever been able to walk alongside her before. He had naught the courage to dance toe-to-toe with her before.
This would be his compensation for all his failures to brave the sea with her. For however discordant her rhythm became, he would keep pace and dance to it.
When he showed no signs of backing down or succumbing to her wish of a beautiful end, she wailed out in desperation, "Just give up already, Brine...! It doesn't matter what you do...You're not strong enough to pull me out...!"
"I wasn't...maybe I still ain't...!" Brine grit his teeth and his heart skipped a beat as a geyser nearly launched him into the air. He then ran around it and dragged his fingertips along the side to gather an extra dosage of water for an attack.
"But how can I ever go down if I ain't even tried?!" He thrust his hand out and pierced Torren's platform with his water blast, causing her to drop towards the surface.
She landed gracefully and began retreating with a series of acrobatic flips, kicking highly pressurized streams of water to fend him off.
Brine whipped around the attacks, for a single mistake would cut him down...Perhaps.
She was a Sage after all, the difference in strength between them was as vast as it was the sea to the moon.
Yet he sensed so, so much hesitation in every strike. She was in great pain, enough to cripple her ability to put up her best efforts against him despite her wishes for an end for them both.
He had hope. Enough to swim through the depths of despair.
He squeezed his fists against his hip and continued to dashing like a valiant prince across the water's surface.
She stopped, captured under the moon's reflection, and started to pant wildly.
She then began to twirl, bringing the water around her to spiral higher and higher, before pushing it out to whip him against the gut and face.
He recoiled through the air and crashed down upon his shoulder. Through incredible pain throbbing in his muscles he shoved himself back up and flung through the air, rolling through a few more whips of water.
He landed a few feet away from her and her dance ended on a pained gasp as he lunged towards her...and wrapped his arms around her back.
She became paralyzed as his skin's warmth melted into her cold body. His heart beat against her chest, causing her to hiccup and shiver, thoroughly forcing herself to reject this gesture of kindness...
She shoved him off and hunched over, stumbling on her footing to reach out before her chest and shout, "Stop it stop it...!"
Her face was overrun with tears, "I-I don't deserve any of this...!"
Brine laid his hand over his bruised chest and took deep, laborous breaths, "Everyone deserves the right to be happy...!"
"Not...me," Torren whispered, "I've...never done anything right."
"That ain't true..."
"Stop living in a fairy tale, Brine! Sometimes...you have to just let it go..."
"I told ya once and I'll tell ya as many times as I can still breathe...It WAS real, to both of us."
"You're just saying that! It's all empty words!"
"No. No it ain't..." Brine shook his head and flattened his hand against his chest, his voice cracking as even he started to cry, "Ya want proof, ya hafta look no further than our daughter...!"
"O-Our...daughter...?" Torren slowly began to raise her head, a flicker of white returning to her irises.
"That's right..." Brine was torn up on the inside hearing her struggle to come to terms with that memory, "Don't tell me ya forgot about her..."
"Her name's Tina. She's 15 years old now. Just the most bubbly, kind-hearted girl ya'll ever meet...She's as good as fisherman as her old man...and as beautiful of a dancer as her mother."
Torren sniffled and gasped, planting her hands flat against the center of her chest.
"She spreads smiles to whoever she meets, always helping out where she can..."
"She ain't ever shed a tear, nor frowned in the face of adversity...!"
Brine could barely hold his voice together having to explain this all to Torren, "You made that perfect little girl, Torren...! WE...our love...made her."
"Haaa...haaa...!" Her shivering turned into trembling as she clutched her beating heart and stumbled a few feet back.
Brine stepped in closer and held his hands up ready to lift her up, "Ya brought something good into the world. Yer life hasn't been a mistake..."
Torren clutched her hands into fists and the water around her began to rumble.
She violently screamed as geysers erupted from the sea, flinging sealife into the air and making Brine get sent tumbling back far, far away.
Then she froze up and lashed her arms around, making the water splash out in all directions, causing a briefly and cold rain to fall upon them.
She lifted her soaked head and stared at him, a glimmer of light shining in her pupils.
Brine rose with a gasp, feeling the sheer melancholy of her aura reaching out to him, like it was giving a farewell hug...
Torren closed her eyes and sniffled, "I didn't make her that way...You did."
"You've always been so persistent in your kindness, Brine...A-And..." For a brief moment, she speared him through the chest with her smile that was painted upon a broken canvas, "I did...feel happy, loving you..."
"But I...really can't escape..." Her tears rolled into her smile as she clutched her hands together over her chest, "No matter how hard you hold onto me...she'll be there to pull me back."
"I...I can't risk endangering your home...or your life. At least...if I'm gone, then she'll have no reason to come after you or our daughter."
"Torren...wait...!" Brine reached out only to trip and fall flat on his face. He became disorient and struggled to stand back up, but when he did he found she had already turned his back on him and faced the moonlit horizon.
She glanced over her shoulder and moved her lips.
His heart strung a melancholic chord and he didn't want to register what it was she said.
"TORREN!" He shouted in desperation and rose to his feet to run after her.
Her smile faded as she faced the sea and dove into it, swimming through it faster than any sealife could hope to match.
And in her wake, just to be safe, she left geysers to erupt and slow him down.
Yet he kept running after her, tiring his legs out to the point that he might not even make it back to shore at this rate.
He was getting dizzy as the scent of sea water wafted around him. He wanted to throw up, believing in brief intervals that he was not going to be able to save her.
Was this worth throwing his life away? Absolutely not. His conscience called him a fool for every further step he ran after her.
He should have given up on this love a long, long time ago. It was a relationship that tore their hearts to shreds and scattered them to the open sea.
But that sea held as many good memories for them as it did painful ones.
The further he ran, the more of her dances he saw pass him by. The dancing beauty of the sapphire sea twirled towards him, her spirit taking hold of his hand and making him run faster.
He envisioned many moons passing through the night sky, and her dances only grew more vivid and radiant under it's light.
He abandoned the sound of the rushing waves beneath his feet and the fish leaping out all around and obeyed only the rhythm of his heart, which ran in sync with her dances.
And as he somehow propelled himself ever closer, Torren continued onward, never once considering to look back.
Because what she saw before her was painful enough.
She swam through hundreds of joyful memories, from timid beginnings to passionate endings...
Her pained heart was going to take her down before she made it to her destination.
Her hesitation...weighed her down with more pressure than the deepest, watery abyss.
She surfaced to gasp for air and in this moment of vulnerability she looked back, seeing him keeping pace with her.
She flipped around and thrust her hands out, making one last attempt to slow him down...
Two massive tidal waves rose from the sea, taking the shape of gentle hands as they closed in on him.
He ran between the small gap in the palms and kept going, only to be struck by her true final attack, a simple ball of water right in the chest.
She felt her own chest hurt when he was struck, and quickly turned around to avoid confronting what she had done.
"This is for the best..." She kept telling herself, feeding into the black voice inside of her head.
"That's right. Disappear. Let someone useful have a chance to take your place."
Her travels brought her to the edge of the sea, divided by a coral reef painted with blood. As she breached the water the purified sea was far behind her, and what lay beyond the barrier was a rotting mess of liquid where the most impure and dangerous sea life festered...
She held her arms out and jutted her chest forward, arching her back to silently take in the fresh night air one last time.
Her eyes couldn't stop crying, in the tears' reflection bled many happy memories...
The rotting sea bubbled over and a large mass approached from below.
She closed her eyes and put on one last smile as she reached out towards the moon one last time, her pose striking under the many rays of sapphire light it cast.
And it was brought to a stop as she was wrapped in a tight embrace from behind.
Panting and weary, Brine had managed to hug her again, and this time, would be physically incapable of letting go.
Her face turned to panic and she looked over her shoulder to see him shivering and grinning like a jolly fool, but the warmth of his beating heart resonated throughout her aura...
She began to melt in his embrace, desperately pleading with him, "Let go..."
"I won't." He appealed to her.
The world around them was silent save for their two heart beats, coming together as one.
A heavy shadow rose over them, belonging to a rotting whale shark unhinging it's jaw to consume Torren, the source of negativity that attracted it.
Torren trembled and turned right around, hugging Brine tightly as the beast swallowed them whole and dove into their sea.
Brine started suffocating on a mix of seawater and the rotting flesh around him.
It was difficult to remain in focus...but he was no longer afraid.
The Rot Walker dragged them further and further into the depths of the sea to try and crush them into a digestible paste.
But they had each other.
His only regret now...was that he was leaving their daughter behind.
"Sorry Tina...Guess I wasn't cut out to be yer father after all..."
He lost track of the light, and then his thoughts...
Emptiness filled his being.
But for one last moment...he felt a powerful warmth expanding around him.
"Take me...oh beautiful sea..."
He drifted and drifted for what felt like an eternity...
Eventually it felt like he was lying on his back. He could hear his heartbeat.
Warmth centered itself onto his face, swirling together with a flurry of emotions that could only be described as positive.
With a heavy groan he opened his eyes and had a blurry vision of something hovering dangerously close to his face.
It rose with a gasp and beyond that, he saw many stars blurring together into one glistening sea.
Then the figure bent back down and pressed against his lips.
His body sputtered and he began choking up water, which helped clear up his vision to reveal that the source of the warmth...was Torren.
She was hung over him and drip-feeding him her tears, her expression a mix of sheer relief and elation.
"Oh thank the lord...!" She gasped quietly.
"T-Torren...?" He slowly lifted himself off the ground, coughing up the last bit of water in his lungs as he took notice of the fact that they were back on the shore.
His mind wasn't playing tricks on him, the last few moments were vivid, too real to write off as a nightmare and yet...
"H-How...?" He turned to see her kneeling on the ground with her fingers curled above her knees.
She hung her head and muttered, "I...I used my Drive to expand the water's pressure and scatter the Rot Walker's parts."
"I...wouldn't have been able to escape it though if your Titan didn't come to our aid."
Brine wasn't upset, but definitely confused, "But...why...?"
Torren held her head further down and murmured, "I don't know..."
They went silent for a while as the tide gently brushed against their bodies.
Once Brine's breathing had steadied he looked her in the face and muttered, "Torren I...meant every word of what I said."
She grinned nervously and whispered, "I-I know...you're always so unfairly honest, Brine..."
"So why...?"
She lifted her head and crossed her hands over her chest, "What else am I supposed to do...? It doesn't matter...how strong our love is...You've never...had to suffocate in Lilith's presence."
"She won't kill you...She'll slowly wear you down, until you believe you're nothing...N-Not that she had to try very hard with me..."
Brine reached out to hold her hands, "Torren..."
Torren looked back into his eyes and shook her head, "I have to be a Sage...Not only is it my duty, but it'll keep you safe..."
Brine gripped her hands tighter and bit his teeth, "Yer just sayin' the same stuff ya did years ago...But it ain't like that anymore."
"Sarajin's...made great strides to make this world a better place. We don't hafta cower in the sand, fearing war marching onto our shores. This place is here for me AND you...to be happy...to be safe. If this...Lilith wants to cause trouble for ya anymore, then she'll hafta go through me, and the entirety of Aquamoria!"
"Life's hard, I ain't sayin' this is gonna make it easy...But I beg of ya, Torren, please...No more running away, for either of us. We'll draw our line in the sand, here and now, and show that nasty woman that our love can prevail over any obstacle."
His stern brows and unscrupulous grit brandished a blade that cut through the darkness burying her heart.
At long last, the black voices in her head were silent, replaced with something kinder, more courageous...A voice that she loved and cherished more than anything else.
She held her head upon both their hands and sobbed, but these were no longer tears of sorrow...but that of indescribable joy.
"I...give up," She raised her head and her teary smile radiated like two rows of pearls, "I'll give happiness a chance...As long as it's with you, maybe it won't be...scary."
A slow clapping was heard overhead, causing them to jolt and look up to see Nimus hovering over them.
"Heh heh, I always love a happy ending." He said, tucking his hands into his pockets.
"N-Nimus...!" Torren gasped.
"Easy there, water lily," Nimus smiled and tucked his helmet down to shadow his eyes, "I didn't see you, and you didn't see me. That'll be our story, alright?"
Brine lowered his brows to wonder, "Why'd ya help me anyways?"
Nimus raised his head and remarked coyly, "Sorry, couldn't hear you, the sea's pretty loud this time of night."
He then waved a hand up and gave a perky smile, "Well have fun now kids! Don't stay up too late!"
And just like that, he was off.
Upon his departure, Brine fell onto his back with a mighty huff, "Whew...that took the last breath out of me...I'm tired..."
There was rustling in the sand, as Torren laid down next to him, cuddling dangerously close to his body. Her soft, slender fingers rubbed along his chest and laid upon it in a easy embrace.
She looked at him with her watery, silvery eyes, a flash of pink flourishing her cheeks.
"L-Lets be like this...for a little bit, ok?"
"Yeah, and tomorrow...I'll finally introduce ya to the others."
Torren shook, "I-I don't know if I'm ready to meet...my daughter..."
It was still a struggle for her to comprehend that was true.
Brine nodded, "I won't force it. But ya hafta let her know at some point. She's a curious one, that girl of ours."
Torren nodded back before drifting off into a comfortable rest with a whisper, "Alright..."
Blanketed by the ebb and flow of the tide, the two cuddled against each other as the moon watched on.
Perhaps their struggles would never end but for now, at the very least, they could return to simpler times...Just the two of them, enjoying each other's company at the place they cherished most.
Next Time: A Stranger in a Familiar Land