At the Far Waters of Forever

by Stephanie Schaffer

  “I can understand that concern,” Marley said quietly. They sat there in silence. She hardly realized she was leaning into Xoc’s side until he shifted and cautiously placed an arm around her. He offered her some of his food, which she accepted.

  And so they left the Conclave and swam for the Currituck Sound and the city of Corolla to make use of Jack’s house. Marley had some tasks to complete for her own reasons. She had decided that she wanted to live with her brother and Eddike. She wanted to be near Raci. She wanted to see what was developing between her and Xoc.

  It was a long swim and Marley had plenty of time for plans and thoughts to cross her mind. Marley needed care along the way, which made the swim much longer. She complained frequently to Xoc that while her fins were pretty to look at, that they were not powerful or practical like his.

  They paused near an unknown island in their travels where they rested in a sheltered cove. He handed her some food, some seaweed and some small silver fish.

  “Your fins are quite rare and very beautiful amongst my kind,” Xoc said softly.

  His green eyes met her own and darted away in a manner quite unlike his direct ways. Marley was used to Xoc’s bluntness in their interactions. “Oh?” she said.

  “Yes. Your sea form is seen as being one of the rarest and appealing to all one’s senses,” he nearly whispered before clearing his throat and raising his voice.

  “Even to you?” she asked cautiously.

  “Especially to me.” Xoc looked away again. “It is time to go.”

  “Xoc,” Marley said warningly as he made to swim away. She saw him take a deep breath. He was facing away from her. His shoulders squared and the spine and dorsal ridge, small as it was, straightened. She swam over and touched his shoulder lightly before saying, “I’ve never known you to be shy or indirect in all these months I have stayed within your Conclave. Is there something you are not sharing with me?”

  He nodded once.

  “Please, trust me and tell me,” she requested in a soft voice.

  “Your sea form. Leviathan formed you as I desired.” Xoc sounded miserable. “Spell Singers share a part of themselves with the community and the Seafather, our minds in sleep wander through the community, healing emotional hurts and imbalance of the mind at very low levels. Spell Singers bear the dreams of the community. They have a powerful, wide range.”

  “You’re powerful, right?”

  “I am. When Eddike was hurt, I felt her cry. I started to look for her over a year ago. I saw her attackers and helped her away. Once I made sure she could swim, I went back and asked Leviathan to drown the boat and its occupants and He did it. It was done. I returned to Eddike in time to see a man carry her away. I now know it was Jack. I kept in touch with a light mental contact though Eddike knew it not. Occasionally, I had glimpses of you teaching Eddike on the shoreline. I talked with my deity about the possibilities of our kind interacting with land humans, which, I admit, was not born out of an altruistic duty to my people—I should be ashamed to say that, but I find I cannot be—but rather out of a desire to find some way to meet you, but I hid that desire deep in my heart, hoping Leviathan would not begrudge me my dreams. Leviathan agreed with my proposal, agreed that I had a worthy concern, still it was a surprise when you tumbled into the water in front of me. I did not expect you and there you were dressed in the form that graced my dreams. I found you intriguing, but unattainable in the flashes I knew from Eddike’s mind. Then you were suddenly there in front of me as easy to touch as the taste of salt in the ocean’s waters.”

  Xoc turned to face her. “Your form is not practical because practicality was not something I desired when I thought of you—erotic, alluring, beautiful and inviting. Graceful, intelligence personified, good humor and worthy. These are what came to my mind.”

  “But you’ve never indicated any feelings toward me,” Marley said, delight in her heart, confusion in her voice.

  “I am not Yuri! I knew you would need time to adjust to our culture. There are so many ethical reasons to consider, not the least to me that which is your well being and your care.” He let out a huffing little breath. “As a Spell Singer, I must pay attention to the needs of others, not just the desire of my own.”

  “Xoc, do you have any flaws?” she teased.

  “What?” he asked, now confused.

  Marley leaped toward him, kissing him enthusiastically, arms twined around Xoc’s strong neck. Her hands strayed down the muscled contours of his sleek shoulders. Xoc’s hands came up to support her below her waist. She felt him hesitate, then clutch her in a firm grip. They sank below the waves, embracing eagerly.

  He was incredibly limber, Marley discovered, as he soon twined around her body as a rope wrapped around a post. When she felt him untwine himself, she clutched him closer. Parts of his finned body brushed repeatedly against her tail, which responded by becoming more sensitive. She found her lower body drifting in a manner that sought out those brushing, teasing touches. A glimpse of Xoc’s face behind her showed he wore an expression that was both serious and anticipatory. She felt those light touches were designed to drive her mad and was soon thrashing in his embrace to which his response was to twine around her more tightly. She reached up, lacing her arms around his neck and spreading her fingers over the smooth pate of his head and arching her neck over his shoulder. She turned her partially opened mouth wetly toward his cheekbone and let out a sigh as she stroked his crown and nape and traced the whorl of his ears.

  With a slow circling undulation of his lower body, Xoc interlocked more intimate portions of their anatomy.

  She felt a heated intrusion into her body, like a spiraled rod of flesh blunt, firm and hot. The more he undulated, the further she felt his presence inside her, sleekly sliding past what felt like many bundles of sensitive nerves. It seemed Spell Singers were designed differently than normal merfolk or humans. The more he literally screwed into her body, the more Marley realized he was shaped like a coiling spring. Her whole body grew sensitive and began to tighten. At last, he pressed his front to Marley’s back so tightly together they were as skin and flesh of one entity.

  Maddeningly, Xoc quit moving. She waited impatiently for him to move and he would not. “What are you waiting for?” she griped irritably as he held her body still. She wanted him to move! Instead he constricted his tail around hers and slid his hands down her front to touch her lightly, teasingly. She began to seek harder touches by twisting and wiggling in his embrace, but it seemed as soon as she found a harder pressure, he would shift his body away while subtly tightening their twining again. Marley let out a low sob of frustration as the very waves of the water seemed to brush unbearably against her aroused flesh and Xoc, damn his hide, let out soft chuckles and remained elusive. It seemed as if she danced in his embrace and that he provided the tune.

  Finally, her nerves were over stimulated and the heat grew until she suddenly cried out and arched steeply, thrashing, as her orgasm culminated in pleasure. She sobbed, falling limp. Xoc then moved, tightening fiercely around her, constricting his tail with her own and squeezing her in his arms as his hips undulated in a hard circle once again. Marley let out a strangled cry, this time unable to move. Her flesh, which was unbearably stimulated in a moment that she was supposed to be basking in the aftermath of coitus, seized up hard, locking around him. It was now Xoc who wiggled, wriggled and thrashed for what seemed like hours and Marley was blind to anything but the presence of her lover and the pleasure he gave to her.

  She cried out into Xoc’s mouth, but he constricted that sound with his lips and tongue. Mentally, she flew unconstrained. Physically, her body begged her lover for more. It seemed his stamina was not giving out anytime soon, as if he had gave and gave of himself to his community and stored all his selfish wants and desires and now unleashed his control and gave those to her. She treasured that trust.

  Hours later, they floated in the cove with Xoc supporting her. Occasionally, their tails intertwined, but f
or the most part their bodies remained separate. His face, relaxed with passion now replete, smiled lazily as Marley in irritation fussed over her tail, which seemed to want to drift and twine with Xoc’s.

  “That’s normal, when two have mated, their bodies crave contact.” He chuckled. “You are having trouble stopping the tails because even as you control yours, mine will drift and seek you out. I have no desire not to touch you. You are the epitome of all I have ever wanted.”

  Marley let Xoc pull her close until her head rested on his firm shoulder. He crooned a song in the back of his throat, some song about the balm that was a lover’s care. Their heads were above the water and as he sang, he twined himself around her and just rested as their skin touched. Marley rubbed her cheek and chin on his water-beaded skin and let out a humming purr of a sound, harmonizing with Xoc even though she wasn’t a singer and had never possessed that talent.

  Xoc stopped crooning. “You are well?”

  “Hmm? Very. And you?”

  “It was better than any moment in my life and worth the whole celibacy my soul has felt,” Xoc replied. “When I first knew you were attracted to me, I thought it was the newness of your form.”

  “When?”

  “When you were clutching my arm and your tail started to twine around my own that very first day and I forced myself to set you aside. I tried to remain distant, but you are such a good individual that I could not maintain that detachment. Even had I never desired you, I would have wanted you in my life. Now, the reason your form is so arousing and appealing to merfolk is because when your sea form is aroused, your fins and fronds wrap around your desired lover and enhance the sensations felt by both lovers where your lower body touches. We have songs that keep that knowledge alive even if the form you bear hasn’t been seen in our Conclave for over three centuries.”

  “But you’re twined around me, not the other way around during mating,” Marley said indignantly.

  “Yes, the tighter I twine with you, the more we feel. As our forms have changed, many are not lucky to experience this gift Leviathan gives to his children.” Xoc rubbed her shoulder. “Did you hear my song?”

  “Yes. I can always hear you, even if I cannot project telepathically.”

  “I don’t wish to move,” he confessed.

  “Are we on a time table? Can’t we enjoy this closeness for tonight?”

  “We will stay for a few days. Time won’t begrudge us that. Will we share our bodies again?”

  She chuckled at her lover’s formality. “You may do anything your heart desires, anything you want with my body. I trust you implicitly.”

  “You make me want to sing to the depths of the entire ocean,” Xoc swore.

  “Sing to me instead,” she suggested.

  The days they spent in the cove were blissful and she never wanted to leave. Xoc was not hard to convince to stay and he told her of his culture’s mythos and legends and lore to pass the time.

  “Have I ever told you of the Far Waters of Forever?” he asked one night as they watched the stars and listened to a pod of whales sing in the distance.

  “Unh unh, no.” She snuggled closer to Xoc. They lay on a shallow beach in their cove, drifting on the slow waves breaking and foaming on the shallow curve of the sand.

  “When merfolk and selkie die, their souls swim from their shells into the ocean. Those that wish to be born again, Leviathan catches in his mouth like the baleen whales catch krill and holds them until it is time for them to be born again. Those who do not wish to be reborn swim to the bottom of the ocean and reside there in peace in darkness. Their presence adding to the world that gave them substance. Leviathan takes those he captures from the sea and swims across the fabric of the world and the energies of the soul. He emerges in a holy body of water as akin to the light of a soul and spits out those whom would be called to live again. My people call this water the Far Waters of Forever. It is supposed to be a soothing balm to the soul and a place of peaceful rest and nurturing.”

  “Only the merfolk and the selkie can go there?” she said wistfully.

  “Any that Leviathan has claimed as his Children would be more proper,” Xoc said after a moment of quiet consideration. He tightened his grip around her waist.

  She was silent a moment. “You know, that story reminds me of a song that I used to sing horribly in school chorus. I was awful, but I never stopped singing the song because the crescendo and the music were beautiful and the sentiment is very sad. It’s called Poor Wayfaring Stranger and it’s about the soul of a person who has died and speaks of journeying home to his family and loved ones to meet them at home with home being the equivalent of peace and love.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Xoc replied. “It is a universal desire for many to find peace and acceptance. Will you sing it for me?”

  “You’ll laugh,” Marley said.

  “I won’t. I swear it.”

  So she sang with her less than perfect pitch and tone and in a voice that cracked from long disuse of singing muscles.

  He listened and begged her to sing it again twice. On the third round, his magnificent voice started to sing the song in a low tone and then soared on the night sky.

  Marley fell silent and listened as her lover sang to her sweetly and long through the night. That was their last night at the cove.

  They reached Raccoon Bay within three days and there Xoc told Marley something she didn’t want to hear.

  “I have listened and learned to everything you have told me,” he began.

  “Why does that sound like goodbye?” she asked aggressively as she stood on the shore of Raccoon Bay, nude and unsteady on land legs. Xoc stood next to her in the guise of a normal man from the waist down.

  “Because I must tell you something and it will hurt both of us. Please, can we not go to the dwelling Jack spoke of and talk there? This will be hard on both of us and I would prefer my lover’s support rather than her anger. I am tormented already because I know that which I obligated to my God long before I met you. All of my goals and desires and plans, my very loyalty swerved when I fell in love with you, but I find with bitterness and regret that I cannot abandon my honor and my integrity to my people. You would not want me were I to be that sort of person.”

  “That sounds like an awful lot of hidden emotion,” Marley said quietly, feeling a pang in her heart and fearing the bleakness looming in her near future. “You haven’t told me everything and neither has your Leviathan, isn’t that right? Well come along then, let’s go to the house. If I have to learn something that will make me miserable, I’d rather be warm than cold.” And she grimly walked to the house on the promontory point that Jack had inherited from their parents. She was aware of the biting cold air against her flesh as she was no longer insulated against cold by her sea form, magical in nature. Now she was just plain human Marley.

  Xoc, though he sat awkwardly, copied her actions when she chose to sit on a bar stool at the kitchen counter after she retrieved blankets, one for each of them.

  Marley was achingly aware that Xoc’s arms were bereft of her and felt would be for a long time. “Talk.” Her voice cracked in the hush of the kitchen only illuminated by the setting sun over the water.

  “Very well. When I convinced Leviathan that you would help our people even though I really was seeking a reason to justify your presence in my home where I could touch you and be with you,” he paused and gathered his thoughts before speaking again. “Leviathan set forth a design for the future of our people. This ultimately, after a long time of careful actions, would result in the revealing of our people to the land walkers in such a manner that we retained our identity and our rights. It became clear to me as I listened to you, your insights, your opinions, your knowledge and your perceptions that I was more right than I had realized when justifying my desires to Leviathan.

  “The situations and how you handled them, Marley, how you realized the difficulties and made me see what must be solved in order for humans on land t
o understand us and we, the merfolk to understand them, all were tools to move forward in Leviathan’s design. However, in order for me to bring reality to the merfolk, I must have the knowledge of your world and then travel amongst all the world’s oceans and bring that communion to my people. It is Leviathan’s plan for me that I will be the thread that binds the tapestry of the merfolk nation together. The first thread, leastwise, and this will require me to go places where you cannot follow, for we will need someone to act as a bridge between the land and the sea and you are that bridge.

  “Marley you are the bridge,” he repeated. “Sharing your knowledge with the merfolk, as you have passed it to me, and from the merfolk through you will pass the information that must be introduced to the land dwellers. You will act as a conduit for both nations. Your skills and your experiences lend you to that cause well. We will not be together after the days I spend here learning of your land world and, while you may freely travel the oceans in Leviathan’s gift to you, I cannot stay in one place. I will be going from Conclave to Conclave.”

  Marley felt her throat tighten with misery. She realized as she listened to Xoc that she could hear the sincerity of truth ring through his words. She recalled her own conversation with Leviathan and she knew that Xoc was right and it was something she had agreed to when speaking to the deity herself. Inside, Marley’s inner heart cried, “But I didn’t realize what I would be giving up! I didn’t know this would happen.” Bitterness and resentment grew in her heart because this was no reward for doing as Leviathan had requested. This was deprivation for the advancement of Leviathan’s plans for his Children and she saw clearly that she would be alone, without the happily ever after, that her brother, Jack, and his mate, Eddike, had achieved.