Many Journeys by Elleth

Breath for Breaking

For the prompts:

NSFW/Kink: Breathplay
Emotions: Lust 
Formats/Genres: Drabble Series
Four Words: ocean, thousand, ceramic, fever

Tar-Míriel after the Fall of Númenor. Dubiously NSFW. I think?

I
Fever crawls along Míriel’s veins with every pulse and throb of her lungs as the water pulls her under, the ocean merciless and violent with a thousand hands of water over her mouth, her nose, pushing inside her, and in desperation she opens herself, her lips, her legs. If she surrenders herself yet again, as with her first plunge as a fear-filled offering to the hungry waves then perhaps, perhaps there will be mercy, perhaps there will be life. Perhaps she’ll be lifted, like Elwing, as a seabird to fly and find her beloved, not shatter like precious, fragile ceramic.

II 
If only she could find the Faithful ships riding landward before the ocean wave that swallowed Númenor - but she isn’t lifted, isn’t saved. Instead her fever goes into a panic as she is whirled through muddy waters the thousandth time and delirium builds shapes from the blur that threatens to overwhelm her vision. She only wants - she wants to - fly until she no longer can, and find Nénumë on her way to safety, wake in her arms, have breath. Then - an abrupt tipping, or maybe rising, and a figure prominent on Númenorean ceramic winds around her. Watery lips meet hers.

III
Míriel can breathe. A thousand needles sting at her when she does, but she can breathe, impossibly, underwater, and the ocean stills and clears around her, closer to surface and above the ruin of her island. Uinen’s hands are on her, holding her safe, and something uncoils in her, near to breaking, as her head pushes past the waterline into sunrise and emptiness, and a sky the colour of blue ceramic. Feverish, she casts around for her saviour, even as the ecstasy of being saved sweeps over her and she drifts, eastward, over unmeasured miles of sea.

IV
Uinen comes to her again every now and then, in a pod of dolphins, sometimes bearing a ceramic vessel of sweet water to let Míriel drink, sometimes as the ocean’s hand around her ankle, pulling her under until the breathless fever returns, and a voice whispers “Remember who saved you,” and the same gratitude seizes Míriel a thousand times over, the bliss of air in her lungs. Uinen never touches her despite the offer, content to toy, but never grants her wings, either - perhaps it is not her province to do so. Míriel does not jeopardize her survival by asking.

V 
A thousand days or none may have passed when Míriel reaches land - a beach swept with debris, ceramic, monumental blocks of white rock, perhaps even from her own palace, jewelry and pearls that glitter like the songs say of the Blessed Realm’s shore. She has barely any eyes for it as, weak with fever, she presses her lips into the sand, and turns her back on the ocean to go stumbling to the black-sailed ship on an inland hillside, the dots of fires, and there is Nénumë. And Míriel, remembering her saviour, begs as they kiss, “Please make me breathless.”