Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Yeah..." Alayah said, though she wasn't really listening at all. She had stopped again, this time at a clear river. It was fairly wide; about the length of two human bodies. It looked pretty deep too, for she could barely make out the stones that lined the bottom. On one side, the ground seemed to vanish completely. The river went along as far as she could see, although they were on a slight hill in the forest.
"This is it!" she said, somewhat excitedly/

"The passage.. it's in here.. Now there's only one thing left to do..." She gave a playful grin back at Clyth. "Hope you don't mind getting a little wet. Don't worry, it'll only be for a little while." And with that, she jumped in the river. The cool, but not too cold water enveloped her skin as she swam down toward the cave under her.

Alayah swam downward, toward a cave underneath, which was visible now. She swam into the depths, where a strange sense of light began to cover everything. They could now see where they were swimming. There was sea grass underneath them. Tiny fishes swam around them, and minnows swarmed around like gnats. She realized that she would soon need air, but didn't panic, for that would only slow her down. Instead, she swam deeper into the cave, which seemed to be sloping downward.

Alayah broke from the surface, gasping for breath. After what seemed like several minutes of panting and treading water, she spoke.
"I, I almost had it... I was almost there..." she said. She barely even knew what she was talking about, but instinct told her that there would be no need for breath if they had made it past a certain point. She glanced around, and back down at the cave. The light that seemed to be emitting from nowhere in particular had vanished, and she could barely see the faint outline of the cave.
I could have made it... We could have made it... It was just a few meters away... or at least it felt that way...

Alayah wrinkled her nose ever so slightly. Then she looked dully out into the water somewhere. The cool liquid was billowing softly against her skin as she treaded water. Reluctantly, she replied. "... Kay... maybe you're right..." she said slowly. Still, something inside her was telling her to dive into the water again, and make it this time.
She swam, very slowly and reluctantly, to the edge of the river. She stopped where the water was shallow enough for her feel to touch the stones mixed with mud on the bottom. There, she sat down, still in the water. The water was almost up to her shoulders. She just sat there for a while, looking out onto the river and beyond it.

After a moment's thought, Alayah answered. "I don't exactly know... using spells is just extracting human energies from the air and forming them in the way you'd like... I've never tried a spell like that before..." she said softly. Just to see what it would do, she concentrated a small amount of energy in the air to her index finger. A small glow emitted from directly in front of it. then, she flicked down into the water. The energy from her finger dove into the water, then slowed, and eventually dispersed to where the threads of energy were invisible again. She looked down at it for a while, after it had disappeared. "Yeah..." she said very slowly and quietly. "I might be able to do something like that..."

"Sure, you can try... but you're human... you may not know what to do if you get to that point... I felt like it was just ahead of where we turned back..." she said with a worried smile. "I don't want to put you in any more danger..." she said, looking back into the water.