(15)
Yami and his benevolent sea-god play games on the boundary between beach and water. They invent rules, and set pebble and shell on 'boards' drawn in the sand.
With an ease that feels like magic, they create their own argot (unvoiced, their secret neography), sketching entire conversations on the beach. As shells contain the ocean's vast voice, their exchanges convey entire tomes' meaning.
One rebus in particular is special: Yami's friend draws it again and again.
Yami ponders the puzzle for days, before realizing it's a name.
"Yugi?"
Yami smiles as he scribes his own name beside it.
o0o
The pearl puzzles him. Sea-gifted, it rests above the board he drew in a moment more of whimsy than boredom (and perhaps more hope than both) - a board that, despite water and wind, endures past all reason. A mystery, like the pearl. Large as the tip of his thumb, and softly irridescent in the light, as if embued with captured moonglow, the pearl is perfect. It rests on a band just long enough to embrace his throat. When he sets it against his skin, he shivers, waves of blue heat curling through his veins. His ears echo with the beat of muffled drums, the frail trill of ghostly pipes, the whisper of wild voices murmuring in a strange tongue like the ebb and flow of the sea. The earthly beauties of the shore pale beside this wonder of the deep, this pearl, glowing with all the mysteries of the ocean in its heart.
Yami thinks of half-seen shadows beneath the waves, of fins or flukes, of myth and mystery, and the silver notes that dance like the ghost of moonlight over the water at night to ease his dreams. And he dreams of gentle eyes and strong hands pulling him from certain death... and wakes with the taste of salt and longing on his lips.