Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lithian stretched his wings, shutting his eyes and tilting his snout up, towards the heavens. The sun beamed down, warm on his scales and pleasant, making the shadow under his wings — half the size of a house — dark and sharp against the white-yellow sand. He and Casseth had returned some two days prior from the Celestial Plane and begun planning their trip immediately upon arriving home. Packing began, and — in a desire to keep baggage as light and manageable as possible — the entire process had not taken terribly long. Casseth was out now in the town, presumably to tie off last minute errands, though what precisely he was up to, Lithian wasn’t entirely clear on. Not that it mattered much.

Soon, they would be leaving. Flying out over the great oceans with just the two of them and stretching their wings properly. Aside from packing and planning, accustoming themselves to their new optional forms had played a large role in the days prior, and Lithian, for one, felt immeasurably more comfortable in his dragon skin. Despite embarrassing first attempts, settling in to the rhythm and pace of a larger, four-legged figure had not taken quite so long as he might have feared, and after a while, it had begun to feel wholly natural. Quite literally, a second skin.

Humming to himself — a sound that came out as a soft rumble in his gut — Lithian turned towards the sea, appreciating the lively glint of midday over the still water before giving one great beat of his wings and starting out over it. Flying was, truly, an experience unmatched by any other. The wind rippled warm beneath his wings, the day heating his scales on the opposite side, and he was as close to weightless as he would ever get: free of all boundaries and restrictions. Once far enough out, he tucked his wings in, and dove, submerging himself in the ocean and zipping along the seafloor — a single, great, glimmering blur of turquoise color from a bird’s eye view.

The vibration of a voice above water and the minor disturbance of a ripple at the shoreline were both that: minor. In many cases, Lithian may well never have noticed unless he were one with the water itself at that time. Today, though, he was eager to begin their journey out, and thus, his attention was on alert, waiting for the first sign of Casseth’s return. The familiar pitch of his mate’s voice — as well as the unmistakable, rich scent that followed him everywhere, even in water — was that tip off point, and Lithian rumbled happily, swerving beneath the water and skimming up, up the beachline ocean floor.

Moments later, he was before Casseth, still in full dragon form as he raised his snout above the water and purred his greeting, paired with a lick. «There you are, runaway man,» he murmured, nosing at Casseth’s shoulder. «I wondered where you’d—» He stilled, pausing immediately upon noticing something off. The hint of a wound, and the definite, metallic whiff of blood. A half second later, Lithian was shifting, soaked in his humanoid form and reaching out almost before the transformation finished to brush the very tips of his fingers to Casseth’s bandaged bicep. “Casseth…what’s this? What happened? Are you alright?”

It clearly wasn’t a major point of damage — he could tell that much even without sending his magic probing — but not having expected it, the sight threw him off guard and spurned an instinctive spike of concern.

Lithian blinked, puzzled by Casseth’s reaction, but relieved at least that his mate did not seem the least bit concerned. While not dispositive proof that he wasn’t hurt, it was a good starting point. Thus, humming to himself, he reached carefully for the gauze binding Casseth’s arm, letting a small ripple of magic seep out as he worked to ascertain that nothing was damaged in the process, just in case. As the ‘wound’ came into view, however — an artistic, rolling turquoise wave that circled the whole of Casseth’s bicep so far as he could see — heat crawled up his neck, blooming in his face and taking over as a small, giddy stutter built up in his throat.

“Casseth…you—it’s…” Unable to fully — or even partly, for that matter — express his sentiments in words, Lithian ended up making little more than a small, happy whine of a sound before catching behind his mate’s neck and pulling him into a clinging kiss — wet not merely due to the fact that he himself was soaked as he initiated it. When he pulled back, his face was still warm, his smile bright and dancing. “It’s beautiful…is it—it won’t be damaged by travel and us leaving now? Will we need to stay longer so that you can return to the artist, or…?”

Lithian chuckled, relaxing as Casseth went on and giving another tiny pulse of healing magic to the tattoo — though at this point, it didn’t need it — his fingers mostly just skimming the surface of Casseth’s skin and savoring the familiar feel. “A healer, hmm? Oh goodness, where ever will you find one of those…” He kissed Casseth’s cheek and shut his eyes, smiling and relaxing in the moment for a pause before leaning back. “Come, then, if the artist says you are free to go, you owe your mate a world trip and I fully intend to cash in on it…”

Grinning as he said it, Lithian let his fingers slip down, catching in Casseth’s and dragging him towards the shore and their house. Gathering their things — being that they were already packed — was a brief endeavor, and soon after, they were off. ‘Planning’ their trip had involved a good deal of speculation, fantasizing, teasing, and idea weaving, but very little concrete decisions. That fact, though, did little to dampen the process. If anything, it left them all the freer, open to flying out over the ocean and leaving it largely to their whims where exactly and how far they went on any given day.

So it was that, two days out, after having explored mostly along the coast in the days prior and — in this instance — having filled themselves with a hearty breakfast of fish, Lithian and Casseth were out on their first long trip over the body of the ocean between Eowyn and Serenia. The midday sun beat down on them, the ocean endless beneath them, and the skies above bright and clear. Lithian, wings spread wide in an open glide, gave a loud, draconic trill as he skimmed the surface and then took a sharp dive up.

«Casseth,» he called. «How far up do you think one could dive from, safely?» He did not, of course, wait for an answer, instead choosing to continue his path up, up, up until the ocean was a great blue blur beneath him. There, he tucked in his wings, angled himself downward, and began his fall. Once his dragon body had gained momentum, however, he relinquished it, shifting mid-air into his humanoid self and relishing in the rushing thrill of speed as he neared the water.

Closer, closer, closer—

There.

The instant it came within full range of his magic’s pull, he yanked at it, drawing upwards something that might well have — to the passerby, had there been any — looked like a waterspout that swallowed his body on the way down, softening his plummet into the familiar surge of his element. He let himself tunnel deep, sweeping through the boundless ocean before, in want of not making his mate worry too much, returning in an upwards sweep towards the surface and grinning as he broke to it.

“Casssetthhhh…” he called, paddling lazily and pushing his hair back from his face. “Come swim with me?”

When Casseth’s dragon form hit, sending a massive splash outwards in his wake, Lithian laughed, redirecting the splash in specific regards to himself as though creating an invisible bubble shield against the spray. Then, his eyebrows rose, startled by Casseth’s choice of approach, but amused a moment later as he settled himself atop Cas and chuckled.

“Very graceful,” he murmured, leaning in with pleased smile to kiss the back of Casseth’s head, fingers stroking the brown scales of his neck. Then, a thought occurring to him, his expression pinched briefly. “You’re…comfortable with this, aren’t you? I didn’t think when I offered, but…I know it used to unsettle you. This is amazing progress from once upon a time…”

“Mmm…you are right. I would never let the ocean hurt you…” Lithian lingered a moment, leaving his weight and warmth pressed to Casseth for a time in reassurance. After, he pressed another fleeing kiss to a horn and then slipped off the body of his mate and into the ocean proper. He shifted into his own dragon form, nuzzling Casseth with his snout and diving around and beneath him, engaging in a brief further session of what amounted to little more than ‘play’ in the water before they were off again.

To Lithian, the entire process was an exercise in dancing with the sky and ocean in tandem: flying beside and around Casseth and slipping down to swim distances just as often, chasing Casseth’s shadow on the ocean’s surface as he swam before bursting out again. He could imagine nothing more freeing aside from those moments he melded with the water himself, and even then, there were some limits that the ability to shift between his forms did not impose. Possibilities were truly endless.

It was edging into evening, the sun sinking into the lower half of the hemisphere and just beginning to tint the sky in stranger swaths of color when Lithian hummed, dipping from his glide to fly a notch closer to his mate. «We ought to keep an eye out for the next island or at least shallow sandspit…you could pull up enough earth for us to have a night’s sleep if need be, but I should think an actual place to set camp would be preferable if we can manage it.»

Lithian watched Casseth as he flew, struck for a moment by a feeling that something — though he couldn’t pin down what, precisely — was ‘off’. A touch of strain to his movements or an odd ripple in his magic, he couldn’t be sure. But when Casseth responded, the rumble of his draconic voice even and neutral, Lithian pushed the concern away, dismissing it as a fluke. Surely he was just—

Casseth’s outcry snapped Lithian from his calm and immediately back into high alert. His heart threw itself against the inner wall of his chest in panic, and in moments, he was lunging forward, sweeping down and in to intercept with Casseth’s body as gently as he could. He snapped out a spellword, too, as he moved, aiming to — if not stop — then at least slow Casseth’s descent with a levitation spell before he impacted with his back, a small lump of body heat crumpled between his wings.

«Casseth—CASSETH,» Lithian barked, half panicked, half pleading. «What happened? Where do you hurt? If you were tired, Cas, you should have told me—gods—are you alright? Do you need healing?»

All the while that he spoke, Lithian’s eyes darted about, his wings stretching and pulsing to raise them up higher on a far more intense lookout for anything that might serve as a land base. He saw nothing but an ominous dark smear on the far horizon to their left, a growing stain on the previously perfectly free sky. Of course, if the fates intended to throw anything at them, it would naturally be in bulk, would it not?

All but before Casseth finished talking, Lithian was shaking his head, a quick, sharp motion of dismissal. «No. You’re already hurt and until I know how and why we’re not risking you draining your energy, too. You could just as easily make it worse as anything else, and besides…» Lithian frowned as he beat his wings, pushing his dragon body forward hard through the rising winds as he continued to scour the horizon, intent on finding someplace they could safely settle, at least for the night. «If you’re hurt I need a place to tend to you, and shelter.»

The process that followed took far too long. With each passing minute Lithian’s anxiety ramped up. The horizon steadily darkened, and the gathering storm, though at first avoidable-looking, seemed only to stretch and grow. When the shower hit, it was perhaps the first time Lithian was not pleased to feel the first, fat wet drops of cool rain falling onto him. He began a process of dipping down to skim his talons in the ocean, sending a pulse of seeking magic out in an attempt to sense anything more solid than endless rolling blue.

Eventually, long after the sky had gone fully dark and sheets of rain drenched them at every pass, Lithian finally caught sight of the outline of something on the horizon in the highlight of a distant lightning strike. It was almost luck, as much as anything, that allowed him to spot it, but with Casseth already shivering and unconscious on his back, seeming to fall into and out of fits of lucidity, Lithian was not of a mood to be picky. After sending up a brief, fleeting prayer of thanks to his god for the hope of shelter, he angled himself towards it.

By the time he came in range of it, the storm had only increased in ferocity, the waves beneath him swelling upwards like angry giants and white lightning cracking through the sky as though trying to split the heavens in two. The shoreline looked fairly predictable — a long stretch of clean beach upon which the tempestuous sea threw itself roughly in turns — but beyond that, Lithian found his attention darting from detail to detail. The wildlife was unlike anything he had ever seen before: ‘trees’ with long, narrow, bending and flexible trunks that looked almost more like stems than anything else with no branches but for a great canopy of fat fronds at the top sprouting out of the trunk’s tip. Thick, winding vines, and strange, overly-large looking flowers that seemed to happily scoop up the water of the storm.

Shaking his head to usher away his misgivings, Lithian moved in. He had no luxury to be picky, and it didn’t look precisely dangerous, just alien and exotic. After coming to a landing well in off the shore and out of range of the tidal swells, he settled carefully and bent his wings up as best he could to create a temporary umbrella over his mate.

«Casseth,» he called. «Casseth, we’ve found land — I am going to shift, but I don’t want you falling. Are you conscious?» As he said it, he shook himself a fraction, just enough to hopefully stir his rider, if Cas were not already awake. «I’ll fix shelter for us, but I need to set you down…»