Songs of the Sea by Raiyana

The Passing of Years

Part 5

Uinen does not truly notice the passing of days; even the measure of years mean little to beings like her, but she knows that her help has worked; the time between her singer’s desperate dives increases steadily. The Oath, its stickiness almost washed away, except for that stubborn root she knows she can’t sever until the singer himself wills it, has lost some power. It slumbers, still there, in the back of his mind, but she continues to wash away its attempts at forging new footholds each time her singer touches the water – he does not dive in, as often, but she needs no more than a small touch to feed another tendril into the tangle of Oath and fëa and Music that is her singer.

His laments are done, six of them, though he refines the melodies endlessly, adding flourishes to the basic theme as is his whim; she thinks he tries to match the rhythm of her Sea, sometimes, wonders if part of him is aware of the power that flows across his soul, a tide of music and love.

Yes, love.

It has been a long time since hatred became unwilling pity, and what began as mercy has grown deeper, stronger, until Uinen thinks that love is the only way she can describe what she feels for her singer.

It is not love as she feels it for Ulmo, who is her closest friend, her kin, nor is it love as she feels it for Olwë and his kin, her favourite of all the Children, but love it is, and it helps her heal him, pouring her love into his soul like water; washing away the darkness that traps him. She does not touch the guilt, the remorse, even the self-loathing that still shows up in ugly bruised colours when she looks at her singer; he has earned those scars, and she has not forgiven the blood he has spilled. Part of her thinks she never will, but it does not seem to matter.

She still has not appeared to him by the time Arien has completed her long journey through the skies more than two hundred times since the first time he threw the leather pouch with its glittering treasure into her hands. The promise she gave his mother still binds her, a light guilt that she has not done as she said she would – no one but Uinen will know, of course, but it still feels cowardly to stay silent.

It is a bright spring day, though the water is cool around them when she appears before him, her form that of one of the Children, though her hands are webbed, the skin greenish where it stretches taut between her slender fingers, and her legs have been replaced with a long tail, the fins that same translucent green that her hair takes on in shadow. The rows of gills along her neck flutter with each breath; this form needs to breathe, and the gills allow her to feel the strong heartbeat of the Sea – it is always with her, but she loves the feel of the water filling her body, one way or another, too much to give it up. For once, she is clad – her singer never dives naked, it is an odd sense of modesty, but she doesn’t mind – wearing a short dress made from a sail once lost from a ship; woven by one of the Teleri, and the deep blue of the Sea, decorated with pretty shells from the deep. Her head is adorned simply, her crown made of conch shells – the work of one of her crabs, which is clinging to its creation, filling her with a sense of amusement. Once, the crab was a Child, a singer who loved her, composing odes to her savage beauty, and when he died – in Alqualondë – he chose to stay with her, rather than following the call to Mandos. Glaring at her singer, whose full attention is still on his target, the crab clacks its claws menacingly, making Uinen chuckle and pat his head lightly.

“Makalaurë,” she calls softly, her words appearing in his mind without needing to go through his ears. Silently, she watches him clutch the leather pouch to his chest, surprise and sudden fear making the air escape his lungs in large bubbles. “I am Uinen.” Introducing herself might be slightly superfluous – she could hardly be mistaken for anyone else, but she sees his eyes widen, the way his legs begin kicking frantically, trying to escape. “I mean you no harm,” she says, reaching one hand towards him, trying to calm him with her presence. He need not be afraid of her, after all, the days where she might have killed him have long passed.

He is too far down – he throws the pouch as far as he can, these days, off a steep drop underwater – to reach the surface even though he struggles towards the air above. Panic clear in his eyes, he tries to stop himself gasping for air, cringing away from her when she swims closer, fear turns his face into a mask – fear of her, of death, Uinen doesn’t know, but the sight of it hurts more than she had thought it would.

A few strong flicks of her tail brings her close enough to touch, as her singer begins to choke on salt water. Cupping his face with her hands, she leans in, covering his mouth with her own, and though he fights against her hold, he seems to realise that she is saving him, breathing air into his struggling lungs. This time, he does not lose consciousness, but clings to her as she swims towards shore, keeping her lips sealed – his are surprisingly soft – and using the gills she usually grows, even when she takes Elven-esque shapes, to breathe for him.

Breaking the surface, she stares at him for a moment of infinite length, and then it seems to dawn on him that he is wrapped around her like an octopus, his lips still pressed against hers even though he could breathe the air on his own.

“La-lady Uinen!” he stammers, kicking away from her, fear still clearly visible. Sadness fills her, giving him a small smile as he puts as much distance between them as possible, never turning his back on her as he flees her domain. “P-please!” She does not know what he begs for – neither does he, but her heart cannot bear that abject terror on his face.

He makes it to the shoreline, but no further before she catches him, using no more than a word to call the power that still wraps itself lovingly around his soul. “Sleep,” she says, picking him up when he goes limp. “Dream – do not remember,” is her next command, soft as a cradle-song as she carries him onto the beach, the tide following her up to the place he has made his camp, little more than a fire circle and a small shelter. Placing him onto the fur-covered pallet of grass he uses for a bed, she presses a gentle kiss between his brows before turning away, her legs returning to her preferred tailfin as soon as she dives back into the Sea. The pouch – she had forgotten to pick it up, and her singer had dropped it in his terror – is silently returned to where he last left it; he will want it when he wakes, she knows, feeling a pang of sadness at the thought.

She leaves a couple of meaty lobsters in the traps he has constructed, and swims slowly towards one of her favourite places in the Deep; a volcanic shaft that supports a massive coral structure and creatures found nowhere else. Nautili dance around her, but she pays their finely striped shells and amusing puffs of air propulsion no attention, her mind entirely occupied with one thought, the image of her singer’s terrified face clear in her mind.

He fears me. I don’t want him to fear me.