Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lithian stretched. Cool morning air gusted over his toes and through his hair. Before him, dawn’s light was still a soft gray ripple over the ocean, and the water would be chilled with the lateness of the season. But, while Lithian was not immune to temperature shifts in the general weather, the water always welcomed him, and his body tended to acclimate itself to it, even in the cold seasons. On this morning, he wanted a swim.

So, he dove, pushing off from the porch with his toes and angling into the water. It was too shallow to dive normally, of course, given it being a shoreline, but with his magic, Lithian accommodated himself easily, meshing with the water at first and then shifting again once he had made it well out into the makeshift ‘harbor’ that was their protected stretch of water. He twisted and spun, angling himself this way and that, pulling at the water as he went to make rushing breezeways of current to sweep through.

Then, after having dove to the seafloor in one of the deeper sections, he braced his feet against the sand, crouched, and leapt. He shot upwards, funneling his magic to speed the process and breaking from the surface like any other leaping creature of the sea, but higher, higher, until he reached his pinnacle. At that point, arms outstretched so that water rained down from them like sheets of liquid wings, he let go of all his magic at once, and after a fraction of an instant suspended, he fell back loosely towards the sea. One pluck of guidance, and it rose at the last moment, cradling his return and softening the fall into a slow, sinking embrace as he went beneath the surface.

There, he let his eyes shut, humming as he caught his ‘breath’ from the surrounding ocean without ever breaking again to the air. Here, he thought, he could always find peace.

When a pulse of magic rippled through it, Lithian stilled in the water. Akara. He recognized her signature immediately, not simply because hers was the only one that made sense — there were no other peisios in the immediate vicinity — but also because her unique magic imprint had characteristics to it that could be mistaken for no one else’s. Such as it was for everyone. Without thinking about it, Lithian twisted through the water, turning towards shore and heading to greet her. It was only after he arrived, standing where the water came to his waist, that he realized that his typical swimming ‘attire’ — or, most accurately, complete lack thereof — was not appropriate for greeting his niece.

His cheeks flushed brightly, and he cleared his throat, shifting into his dragon form to mask his nudity. ‘Good morning, Akara,’ he ‘said,’ pushing the words upon her in the form of a mental speech-form which came with the magic in the final transformation ritual in order to communicate with those not versed in draconic. ‘I…do not tend to swim dressed in the mornings, as I’m not used to company. Forgive me. If you could nudge my clothes to the edge of the deck? And shut your eyes a moment, I’ll make myself presentable.’

Lithian shook his head. Then, realizing she couldn’t see it, set explanation aside for the moment and went for his clothes. After shifting to his humanoid form and dressing quickly, he padded over the deck — still barefoot — and laid a hand gently on her shoulder.

“There, mm? I am sorry. I’m very used to having the house entirely to myself and Casseth, and even he does not usually rise this early unless I encourage it out of him. What brings you out here, hm? Or were you just looking to take a swim with me.” He settled to a loose crouch beside her at the words, smiling encouragingly in the hopes that he hadn’t embarrassed her overly much.

Lithian blinked, listening with puzzlement at first at the vagary of her words. It didn’t take long, though, for the pieces to fall into place. After the previous evening, it had been made clear that something more than a light friendship was budding between his niece and the boy, Nesrinn, so he could only guess that her uncertainties lay somewhere along those lines.

He settled to a proper sit at her side. “Your words are safe with me, Akara, so long as I do not feel as though it would endanger you not to inform your parents of what you relate to me,” he said. “If I were to venture a wild guess, though…I would suspect that these concerns of yours have something to do with that kiss last night?”

“Oh, shhh-shhhh, shhhh, Kara…” Lithian murmured, reaching out to brush fingers over her cheek. “I know it must seem like so much to take in at once…but you must start by trying — though it’s hard, I know — not to concern yourself so much over things that could happen but have not yet. You have well enough to think about in the present, things that are happening that you must work yourself through…by upsetting yourself about futures that may never occur, you will wear yourself out before you have time to tackle what is before you. Now.”

He sat back a fraction, eyeing her.

“That said…” He smiled, “…whether or not and how much you ‘like’ him is solely something for you to figure out in your own time, and nothing to worry yourself over. Regardless of what your brother or anyone else says, your feelings are your own, and they may shift from day to day, grow or shrink, or change in strange ways, and it is entirely your business and no one else’s. Nor is it a race. You need not have it all figured out today or tomorrow or even in the next year or decade, mm? And, so far as distances are concerned…”

Lithian hesitated, thoughtful.

“You and he are already moving faster than Casseth and I, though there are certainly parallels. When Casseth and I began our relationship, it was purely a friendship for many, many years…we managed to maintain it because it was that important to us, but in the meantime, each of us had separate romances of our own as we grew and came to know ourselves. All I can say with certainty on that front is that things happen as they will. You can make efforts to see each other more often, or meet as you may and see where things go from there, but if the fates intend for you to be, you will be. If they have other futures in store for each of you, then so too will that come to pass. You are both very young now, so there is no telling how things might go…but follow your instincts. Enjoy the time you have with him, and if your heart is telling you to chase this to wherever it might lead, then do so. But try to have patience, and an open mind. Anything and everything can happen in a lifetime.”

Lithian smiled. “Of course it means something…a first kiss always means something. And any kiss is one of the gentlest forms of intimacy. I am sure your mother will not allow Detraeus to keep you up there for a decade…though I would not put it past him to keep you the winter. But yes, if you left a note with me, I could pass it to him if he came by. I do not know how to seek him out, but he does know the location of this house. If he wants to see you again, I would suspect it is likely he would come looking here…and if he does, I would deliver any note to him that you left for me and find no problem in bringing another up to you. I am sure Casseth and I will visit over the winter, in any case.”

Lithian chuckled, hugging back warmly and nodding. “A swim sounds magnificent,” he said.

So they did. Both peisio, they happily spent the warming morning in the water, whittling away the earliest hours as the sun rose and painted the open sea orange and gold with the coming day. Detraeus and Araceli would likely leave with the children come the afternoon, but in the meantime, Lithian savored the opportunity with his niece, happy to give her a chance to stretch her body and her magic and relax in the in between. By the time he arrived back at the porch, soaked and pleased as he walked up the steps, his eyes immediately landed on Casseth — who had apparently joined them somewhere in the meantime — and he beamed, walking over to catch his mate in a, quite literally, wet kiss.

“Good morning.”

Ataya stirred on his mattress. Or, rather — his brow furrowed groggily — his uncles’ guest bedroom mattress. Nominally, Ataya took great pains to rise each morning, forcing his uncooperative body into action when all it wanted was more hours of slothlike inactivity. Today, though, despite a familiar haze of weariness lingering in his limbs, his schedule had been so disturbed by odd phases of sleeping and waking over the days of late, that he was more alert than usual.

In that state of alertness, voices came to him from the lower floor. Lithian. Casseth. His sister. He lay still for some time, rolling onto his back, stretched out in a lazy flop atop his hair, and simply listening while his mind shuffled through the events of the preceding evenings. The trip down, the dancing, Nesrinn and his sister’s kiss, and the various discussion topics of the previous night. His brow furrowed faintly.

Though it had occurred to him vaguely in passing, he had never seriously evaluated his interest in the same sex before. Now, however, the more he thought on it, the more he realized how little he really knew. The basics, of course, yes, very well: insert A into slot C since there was not slot B. But other than that, it seemed…

Surely that wouldn’t just work?

At least, not without a great deal of pain and…

As his uncles’ voices drifted back up to him, Ataya hummed and pushed upwards. His parents would almost certainly be seeing he and his sister back up into the mountains for an extensive period, soon, but in the meantime, he had perhaps the greatest source of reliable insight for this particular line of questioning right at his fingertips. Or, more literally, directly below him on the first floor. This in mind, he slipped his legs off the bed, stripped from his nightclothes, and dressed. After the necessary requisite hundred-strokes of the brush through his hair and an irritable consultation with the room’s mirror, he pushed himself into the shadows and slipped downstairs, re-forming in the archway between the back door and ocean porch.

There, he propped his weight against the doorframe and folded his arms.