moonsea by kimaracretak

Chapter 1

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For all that Erendis did not love well the Sea - and indeed as the years went by her hatred of it grew until her heart was as hard as stone - there was part of her that could not bear the Sea to stay forever out of her sight. It was, after all, impossible to defend against an enemy never seen, a threat perpetually at her back.

So Erendis sometimes found herself alone at the shore, on days when clouds on the horizon gave the Sea the appearance of an end, on days when her husband was not there to urge her further in, at nights in dreams that left her with soundless pleas trapped behind salt-encrusted lips.

She did not watch for her husband, in the grey waters that mirrored her eyes. If he returned, it would not be to her, and they had both understood that for many years. Rather she waited for a woman who had not yet shown her face, for a creature who perhaps did not have any face at all.

The Lady Uinen had stolen much from her. Erendis meant to remain on her guard.

The sea-songs whispered to her anyway, her wards far more effective around Ancalimë. Erendis woke too often gasping for breath, mouth overflowing with unfamiliar salt, breath suffocating under the weight of the entire sea pressed against her throat.

She was not so naive as to be unaware of what that meant, that the Lady Uinen had heard her cries - those made in sadness and those in anger - and was uncaring, or, perhaps and worse, mocking. For years she lived with this knowledge, these waking dreams and slumbering paralyses, and not even the move inland could rid her of the crying of the gulls, the way that even water drawn fresh from the well bubbled and laughed and made her her purse her lips with the salt of it.

Erendis carried this with her all her married life, and kept secret even from herself that the nights she woke breathless from Lady Uinen's grasp were also the nights that she woke wet between her thighs, and that the relief she found on her fingers those nights was deeper and more pleasurable than any her husband had ever give her.

She would not admit even to herself that she yearned for the chance to leave the Lady breathless in turn.

It was on a day well into the waning of her years when that yearning drove her to the Sea itself, rather than simply to Rómenna, and Erendis struggled to breathe she profoundly that she wondered, for the first time, if her life was to be amongst the that the Lady Uinen demanded of her.

The thought was a thrill that spurred her forward yet faster, and when she reached a secluded spot along the shores, her hair was tangled from the wind and her nipples were hardened from the cold. She raised her skirts just enough that they would not trail in the water, kicked off her shoes, and stepped forward, again and again until the initial chill of the waters faded. And there, feet firm in the shifting sands, closed eyes fixed on the horizon, Erendis slept.

When she awoke she was still standing in the waves, and her feet were numb in the moonlit cold, and the Lady Uinen was standing in front of her. Her dark skin was bare but for the sea-life that clung to her, and her eyes were very bright, and her teeth were very sharp.

And Erendis, to her surprise, was not afraid. "Is this to be the end?" She asked, for her breath had returned enough for her to speak.

"Not entirely, but there is one thing for you to know. So you would curse me, so I would lay this bond on you," Lady Uinen said, "That you will spend the rest of your days with the sea-water in your veins instead of blood, and that you will never again draw breath without my lips against yours to grant it."

The waters reached hardly to Erendis' knees, hardly enough to brush the hem of her kilted-up skirts, and certainly not high enough to splash against her lips, but she felt the damp against them anyway. Cold and invisible the waves pressed against Erendis' mouth, insistent and sticky with salt, until her lungs failed and she had no choice but to part her lips in trepidation and welcome.

When the sea entered her mouth it was still and calm and shaped like fingers. It pressed down on her tongue until she choked with it, throat constricting against the water. I cannot, she thought, wild for a moment as her breath was reduced to short, sharp gasps.

Lady Uinen smiled, and the thick strands of kelp adorning her body slipped aside to reveal the barnacles clinging to her skin as she reached out to Erendis. "Yes," she said. "You can. I forbid aught else."

When she sealed their lips together breath came rushing back into Erendis' lungs, so quickly and so forcefully that she found herself falling forward into the Lady's arms. She caught Erendis with deceptove gentleness, their lips never parting even as they stumbled backwards, until the Lady Uinen was sat on the sea-floor and Erendis was trapped in her lap and in her kiss.

"So?" Lady Uinen whispered against her lips, and Erendis opened her mouth to chase the wisps of breath even as it was robbed of her again as the Lady's fingers - or perhaps the sea itself - slipped easily past her sodden underthings and let her wetness mingle with the water. "Will you come?"

The Lady's fingers pressed so sharply against the hollow of her throat that Erendis choked once more despite herself, and with that answer she shivered in pleasure around the fingers inside her and slipped beneath the Sea.