Rayman shut his eyes tightly as Ly fell backward with him in her arms, bracing himself for the cold waters below as they broke through the surface in a large splash. The immediate shock of the chilling waters swept over them as air bubbles raced past their sinking bodies and a feeling of weightlessness took over. Apart from Ly's warm body holding him snug from behind, the waters grew colder and darker as they made their slow, steady descent from the surface. Not wanting to risk the sting of the salty sea water, he didn't want to open his eyes at first, until the dim light of the dark sea suddenly flashed into a brighter illumination, and warmer water overtook them just as instantaneously. The sudden change made his eyes fly open in surprise, now opening to a bright, morning sky obscured by clear, fresh rippling waters above.
The transition now complete, Ly gently removed her arms from Rayman, floating above him and pointing to the surface before hastily swimming upward, signaling for him to follow. Rayman kicked his feet and waded his hands through the clear body of water, his mind racing with thoughts of what he would see when he reached the surface. The fairy's head breached the water with a large gasp of air, followed shortly by Rayman.
The two breathed in and out, audibly catching their breaths as they looked around to get their bearings. A stormy sky of off white and greyish clouds loomed over them, partial partings of the condensed overcast sky allowing filtered rays of white sunlight to peek through. The waters they trod were clear as crystal and, unlike the waters they had initially entered, weren't briny at all. In fact, they were almost spiritual in purity. Enclosing the waters were distant mountains, appearing a hazy blue on the horizon. Rayman's eyes widened as he realized quickly where they were.
"….the Land of the Livid Dead…." he spoke in awe.
Turning her attention to him, Ly nodded.
"Due to the nature of Polokus' place of respite being separate from the Glade of Dreams, I assumed there wouldn't be a direct reflection of his clearing, and that we would reappear somewhere else… but how interesting is it that we entered here of all places….", the fairy noted inquisitively.
Their attention quickly turned to the sky as the sound of distant thunder muffled by the clouds swayed Ly from ponderings.
"Let's swim to shore, Rayman. A storm seems to be brewing…" she suggested, making her way to the grassy coast up ahead.
"Right….", Rayman replied.
The shore was close enough that the pair didn't have to swim far, but all the same the weight of the water they were both now soaked head-to-toe in made them slump onto the shore like two clumps of seaweed with two unceremoniously thuds.
Lifting herself into an upright sitting position, Ly couldn't help but giggle when she saw Rayman's usual gravity-defying bangs now drenched and downcast over his eyes like some angsty, teenage teensie as he crawled ashore. She playfully moved her hand between his face and his hair, lifting the bangs with the top of her hand to see his eyes staring up at her.
"It looks like we won't have to worry about getting you a bath for now. All of that dirt from your fight with Reflux seems to have magically disappeared!", she grinned.
Rayman was feeling quite down after the disheartening news from Polokus, but despite himself he couldn't help but crack a little smile at the fairy's quip.
"It would be a feat to stay dirty after being magically transported between two entirely separate bodies of water…", the hero chuckled as he wrung what water he could out of his thoroughly-abused hoodie.
She could sense in Rayman's aura that what Polokus had told him had shaken the hero greatly, so it was a relief for her to hear him laugh. Content with herself after making him smile at least a tiny bit, Ly stood up and started scanning the area, eyeing out any potential forms of shelter for the impending storm.
Noticing her focused gaze as she looked around, Rayman stood next to her.
"What's our next move, Ly…?" the being asked curiously.
"First and foremost, we need to find shelter before the storm starts…", she spoke pensively.
"There were some walkways and underground crypts dug out from the sides of the hills when Globox and I were here to find Doctor Roméo…do you think the Mirror Realm has them too?", Rayman asked as he looked to Ly curiously.
"That's what I'm not quite certain of….Mirror Realms perfectly reflect the original world, but buildings created by the inhabitants of the world itself might not be in said reflection." Her index finger hooked her bottom lip in thought. "Regardless, it's no use if we just stand here pondering. I think we should explore and see for ourselves, okay?" She tapped the top of his torso encouragingly as she made her way into new, uncharted territory.
Hesitantly, the limbless accompanied the fairy as she walked. He wanted to walk alongside her, but his brooding thoughts pulled him into a slow gate, leaving him to follow a little further behind. He was usually the first to jump into new experiences, always gung-ho and ready for the next adventure, given that that's what he was created for, but this new journey lying ahead of them felt quite different in Rayman's eyes.
'What kind of hero…'
For the first time he wasn't protecting the Glade against evil, but instead protecting the Glade from himself as the one harbouring it. He looked down at his hands as he walked, face twisting into a grimace as he remembered what Polokus told him they had done.
'...What kind of hero am I if I'm the one who caused all of this….?'
His nose pointed downward to the ground, fists clenched in anger, squeezing droplets of water from his drenched gloves from the force. His footfalls were growing louder and his breathing more frustrated until a sudden smack on his nose brought him back to reality. He stumbled backward a step and held a hand to where he bumped himself. So lost in his vexation he hadn't realized the scene he was making, or the fact that Ly stopped walking and he had bumped right into her. Looking up, Rayman was met with a face of worry.
"Is everything alright, Rayman…?" she asked, her brows knitted together in concern as she looked down at him.
Unaware that he was letting his thoughts show in his body language, Rayman quickly straightened up and put on the best smile he could muster, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. He had to be constantly brave and unbothered, otherwise how else would he be able to show her that he could be depended on? He never wanted to make anyone worry, especially his friends, and especially not her. That was always his line of thinking, anyway, and if he had to feign that everything was okay for Ly's sake, then he would do it.
"O-of course! Everything is fine, Ly, I promise…I was just distracted by how similar everything here looks…sorry for bumping into you, heh…A-anyway, let's try to find a place to wait out this storm! We're already soaked but it would be nice to get dry…"
She could see right through his facade, and the last thing she wanted was for him to hide his emotions. Her lips parted to say something, but almost on queue, lightning flashed in the distance, followed by a much closer, much louder roll of thunder. Although the fairy wanted to talk with him about his feelings, she knew that it was best to save it for a less pressing time.
"It's alright. Let's keep going, okay…?" Ly said with slight hesitation.
The two wandered deeper into fields of wet, windswept grass, taking in the new, yet eerily familiar sights as they sought out shelter from the impending rain. It had finally set in just what Polokus meant by the Mirror Realm being a perfect reflection of the Glade of Dreams, as Rayman could have sworn that if someone said this was all an elaborate prank and he really was back home in the Land of the Livid Dead, he would have believed them. The only thing that set it apart was just how quiet this place was. There were no sounds of blackbirds calling, nor the distant, haunting singing of Griskins, just the sound of the stirring sea and the crunch of grass under their feet.
"This is so surreal…everything looks exactly like the Glade…" the Limbless' mouth stood agape as he looked around.
"Mm…even I wasn't prepared for it to be quite so similar…" she agreed "I have to admit that the silence of this place even…makes me feel a little wary…", she laughed.
Rayman chuckled under his breath. "You too, huh…?" Turning his attention back ahead, his expression pulled into one of excitement "…Wait a minute! Ly, look over there!"
His gloved hand pointed to a very familiar sight of Teensie carvings etched into the stone of one of the hills. "If those stone murals are around even in the Mirror Realm, then that must mean that some of the crypts are nearby!"
Ly smiled brightly, "Good eye, Rayman! Hurry, we don't want to get caught in the rain!", she ran ahead, turning around to wave him over, "C'mon!"
"H-hey! Wait up! It's not a race, you know!", he laughed as he ran after her.
"Why can't it be? The last time we had a race you were still wearing a handkerchief!", Ly giggled. She skipped and hopped happily in front of him before flashing him a knowing smirk, then taking off at full speed around the hill.
"Oohoho, so that's how it's going to be, huh?!" Rayman shouted lightheartedly. He ran after her at full speed, quickly gaining on her.
The two sped through the spitting image of the Land of the Livid Dead, kicking up grass with their heels as they raced competitively. Running just behind her on the left, Rayman reached out his hand to tap her right shoulder, earning a gasp in surprise from Ly as she looked to her right. Noticing she was tricked, she whipped her head the opposite way to find a snickering Rayman. Rolling her eyes playfully, she quickly hopped ahead of him, but Rayman was far from finished. He sped up once again and was now neck and neck with Ly. They laughed and fired each other up with the spark of competition as they were now evenly matched, weaving in front of and behind each other without showing a single sign of slowing down.
They were so swept up in the fun of it all that they had forgotten why they were running in the first place until lightning cracked in the distance, accompanied by the feeling of a few scattered raindrops hitting their faces as they ran.
"Rayman! I think the storm is here, how close are we to shelter?!" Ly yelled over the sound of rumbling thunder.
"I think I see one in the distance! Let's keep running and we can beat it!" he shouted through quickened breaths.
With the entrance to one of the tunnels in his sight and no time to think, Rayman grabbed Ly's hand and ran as fast as he could, a slight tint of pink gracing the fairy's face at the sudden contact as they sped into a full sprint. The limbless led the way through the growing haze of the air as the heavy rainfall tailed them in hot pursuit. The crack of another strike of lightning hit their ears sharply as they ran for shelter. In the nick of time, they sprung into the mouth of the crypt, any dry land they ran on to get here now fully engulfed in a curtain of rain before their very eyes.
Ly slumped to her knees as Rayman flopped onto his back, exhausted from their race against the storm. Their breathing was laboured and intense, but at the very least they wouldn't get anymore soaked than they already were. After taking a few more moments to catch his breath, Rayman spoke.
"We…made it…", he huffed, looking upward to the ceiling of the stone as he lied on his back.
"We did…you're much faster than the last time I raced you!" the fairy praised with a proud grin.
"Well I've trained a lot since wearing that handkerchief, you know." the gravity-defying hero laughed.
Looking down, Rayman gasped when he noticed Ly's hand still in his own.
"O-oh! Sorry, Ly…" the limbless blushed before removing his hand from hers. "...You probably don't want my wet glove on your hand…", he laughed meekly.
He was convinced his eyes deceived him, but he could have sworn he saw a faint frown tug at her mouth when he pulled his hand away.
"That's alright. I'm so wet from the water that I can barely tell.", Ly gestured to the soaked tail that laid limp beside her with a smirk.
Rayman chortled, "That's crazy talk, Ly! Look how dry we are."
Wringing the front of his hoodie, a steady flow of water poured from the fabric as a lake of water formed on the stone floor where he sat. This earned a hearty laugh from the fairy. She grabbed her tail and wrung it out the same way and an even larger puddle formed, spiralling the two into a laughing fit.
It never ceased to amaze the limbless just how Ly's immediate presence always managed to pull him from his hardest moments, always reminding him to be happy and carefree in any situation, just like she was. Here they were in an entirely new world to the both of them with a huge journey ahead, and yet they were having fun as if all of this was second nature, which he doubted he would be able to do if she wasn't here. Laughing with her at this moment washed all of that anger and frustration away, and he felt as though, even if only for a little while, he could focus on something other than why they were there in the first place.
She shifted into a cross legged position, continuing their derailed conversation. "...You've grown in a lot of ways since then. Not only in your skill…", she reached out a hand, tussling his damp, spiky hair lovingly, "but with your fashion sense too."
"Hey, cut it out!" Rayman snorted as he lightheartedly attempted to shoo Ly's hand away, "What, is the spiky hair too much?" he asked with a sly smirk.
Assuming he would get a joke reply, he was actually surprised to see Ly shift closer to him on the floor. She was actually staring at him, her eyes shifting from his face to his hair and her hand cupping her chin in thought. Rayman blinked slowly, wondering what she was going to say.
"I think it suits you, actually… It's quite handsome.", she spoke as she tilted her head at him, lips pursed as she remarked. She stood from her spot on the floor and turned on her heel to start investigating the stone passageway, as if what she just said was no big deal.
By the power of one sentence, Rayman's mind went blank.
'H-handsome?!'
Rayman's entire face grew red as his gloved hand cupped his mouth in surprise, his eyelids raising as the words she said echoed in his mind on repeat.
'Ly called me…handsome?!'
A single word had never so completely left the limbless undone before now. His hand supporting him on the floor shifted in shock, causing him to stumble slightly. Never had Rayman been more thankful for Ly to have her back to him because if she saw how red his face probably was at this very moment, he'd flatten into a puddle of embarrassment. He wanted to say something, anything, but the flustered stuttering that escaped his lips was the only noise he could emit.
Nothing, however, could have compared to how Rayman would feel after what she said next.
Ly looked over her shoulder to the limbless man sat on the floor. "Rayman…"
He snapped back to reality at the sound of her voice, looking up at her. "...Y-yeah…?"
"Pardon me for the suggestion, but I believe we should get out of these wet clothes."