by Dessa Lux
Land-dwellers liked things, Lir knew that well enough. That was where all the plastic came from.
“Well,” George was giving him an interested look when Lir met his eyes. “That’s one way of doing as Father asked you, isn’t it?”
Lir shrugged stiffly. “I didn’t... I didn’t steal him. He gave himself to me. And he said he meant it! He’s going to stay. But he didn’t tell me what he needed, he—” Lir glanced back northeastward, toward his own domain, where he had left Devon curled up alone, so small on the sand. “What if he’s sick? Or hurt?”
George squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll ask Caroline to pack up some things and come calling, all right? You’ve made him a... plastic island, have you?”
“It’s got sand,” Lir muttered, knowing full well that it was more complicated than that to make proper land. George’s domain skimmed the coastline for hundreds of miles, and he was married to Caroline, who... Lir had never quite been certain what Caroline was, only that she and George had been married a long time, and she lived just on the edge of his domain. On land, somewhere.
Lir sometimes forgot all about Caroline for long periods of time—years, or more—and he never knew why when he did remember her. She was George’s wife, and George was always kind to him.
“Sand is a start,” George said. “Go on back to Devon and keep him company, then, and Caroline will be along soon. With food. And things.”
Lir nodded, and forced out more words instead of dissolving right into the sea to hurry back. “Thanks, George. For—for all of this. I know I owe—”
“Hey.” George’s hand tightened on his shoulder, making him only more aware of being in just one place, just one form, and far from Devon and the rest of his own domain. “Lir, come on. Where else should anything I have go, but to you? You’re my brother, my downstream. You don’t owe me anything. I want you to prove Father wrong, you know.”
Lir’s head jerked up at that, meeting George’s kind eyes.
“I’m your brother,” George repeated. “I’m on your side. I’m glad to help. It’s been so long since you asked; I’m glad it’s something I can do this time.”
Lir frowned, trying to remember when he’d ever asked George for help before last night. But George let go of him, making a little shooing motion, and Lir was glad to give up on chasing the memory and melt back into the sea, letting George’s current, and then Rann’s, hurry him home.
*
When Lir returned, Devon was sitting up again, arms clasped around his knees. Lir checked the sun and moon, the rhythm of the waves, and found he hadn’t been gone even an hour. He didn’t think that was very long, for humans.
“I had to talk to my brother,” Lir explained, lifting himself up and walking gingerly over the surface of the little floating island to where Devon was sitting. He sat down by Devon and said, “His wife—she’s a land-dweller too—she’s going to bring some things for you, but if you’re hungry now, I could get you some fish.”
Devon looked at him for a moment, and then looked around the island, and finally said, “I’ve never been that big on sushi.”
Lir blinked at him until Devon elaborated, “Raw fish.”
“Oh.” Lir frowned. “Even... your other form?”
Devon shrugged, a definite up-and-down of his thin shoulders. They were sprinkled with the same freckles as his face, and he could see pink rising in Devon’s fair skin again. “I like rabbits better, I guess. I don’t care, I’ll eat whatever. I just...”
Lir waited, resisting the urge to go check on the rest of his domain. He didn’t want to leave before Caroline arrived, and Devon looked so small and soft, curled up alone on his little island.
“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back, or if I was just gonna be...” Devon finally muttered, tucking his head down to hide his face against his knees.
Lir winced and scooted a little closer, letting his knee rest against Devon’s, so that Devon would know he wasn’t alone without having to look.
*
Caroline arrived after another hour or so, perched in the prow of a sailboat that appeared to be piloting itself across the waves in defiance of all actual currents and winds. She was wearing boots, breeches, and a shirt and coat, only her golden hair flying free. Lir became aware as he stood to face her that his own land-dweller form was quite naked, and so was Devon’s.
Devon looked up, saw her, and shifted at once into his four-legged form, hiding behind Lir’s legs and peeking out past him at the ship and the lady.
“Don’t be afraid,” Lir said, though in truth he was a little afraid himself. He didn’t know if he’d ever been alone with his sister-in-law before. He didn’t know why he kept forgetting her. Usually he didn’t even remember that he forgot. “She’s just here to bring some things for you, so you can be comfortable here.”
Judging by the way the sailboat was riding in the water, Lir was going to need to make Devon’s island bigger, and more buoyant, to hold everything Caroline had brought. He itched to go below the surface at once and guide things into place, but then who would Devon hide behind? If Lir didn’t know how to handle being alone with Caroline, he surely couldn’t abandon Devon to that fate.
“Oh, goodness!” Caroline called out. “You didn’t tell George you’d gotten yourself a werewolf. Don’t worry, pup, I won’t take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”
“You won’t take him anywhere!” Lir snapped, glaring up at Caroline and her boat full of... things.
“Well, not as long as he’s hiding behind you, no,” Caroline agreed. “Shall I just stay here and toss things to you?”
Lir looked back at Devon, a little sandy-colored wolf trying to hide behind him, and then at Caroline.
He let himself shift halfway, his land-dweller legs stretching and multiplying into long, flexible limbs. These slipped into the water and caught hold of Caroline’s boat, some holding it steady while others reached up toward her.
“Very well, have it your way,” Caroline said, still smiling. She got down from the prow and went under the deck for a moment, coming back up with a crate, and then another and another. Lir took each with a tentacle and delivered them carefully onto the island, setting them down at distances from one another so that they kept in balance.
Devon whined, curling up into a little ball. Lir bent to wrap one land-dweller arm around him, sheltering him, while he put everything in place.
“I’ll come to call some other time, when you’re more ready for visitors,” Caroline said, when she perched on the prow again and the boat circled around the island to turn back west again. “Or you could bring your little wolf to visit our place, of course!”
Lir winced, belatedly aware that he had been rude, though he also couldn’t wait for her to leave so he could reassure Devon properly. He called after her, “Thank you! Good-sister, thank you!”
She laughed and waved, and was gone, leaving Lir alone with his human—werewolf—again.
Lir shifted back into an ordinary land-dweller form so he wouldn’t take up so much space on the little island and curled his whole body around the tense form of Devon as a wolf, petting his soft, pale fur. “There, Devon. It’s just me now. I just needed some things for you, that’s all. She’s gone now.”
Devon moved enough to nose at Lir’s land-dweller legs, and then Lir had to loosen his grip as Devon shifted back to the matching human form. He pressed his face against Lir’s thigh, and Lir felt his body stir a little, noticing the way they matched now, the way they might complement each other, but he pushed that thought away. Devon was obviously still distressed.
“You... had... tentacles,” Devon said quietly, not looking at him. “You were... half you, but half...”
Lir frowned, petting gently down the line of Devon’s smooth, bare back. Freckles were starting to appear there, too. “I can take many forms. Most of them are more suited to the sea than this. Did you...”
It felt like a strange thing to have to ask, or to care about, but he reali
zed that he very much disliked the idea of scaring Devon, or Devon disliking him, or any part of him.
“Did you... dislike that shape so much?” His own voice came out small, and he knew that dislike was not the word he meant, really. Were you frightened, repelled, disgusted?
Are you going to take it back now, and not belong to me after all?
Devon let out a gusty rush of air against his skin, relaxing in Lir’s hold. “I suppose that’s how it is, when you’re a god. Of course you’re lots of things at once, aren’t you? You have a whole... sea to take care of, not just me. You should probably get back to it, shouldn’t you? Now that you’ve got... things, for me.”
“Oh.” Lir glanced around at the boxes. He was curious about what was in them, wanted to know whether Devon liked them and be sure that they were adequate for his needs, but... Caroline knew what land-dwellers needed, being one herself. And Lir still felt the itchy restlessness of being away from his domain, even now that he was technically back in it—ever since he first heard Devon’s words, he’d been almost entirely focused on his land-dweller, neglecting everything else.
He looked back at Devon, who was lying very still in Lir’s hold, his cheek resting on Lir’s thigh. Despite everything, Lir felt a little uneasy at the thought of leaving him. Devon wasn’t... happy.
“Go on,” Devon said, squirming away from Lir’s hold. “You’ve got more things to worry about than just me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Lir agreed, and he was suddenly eager to tell Devon all about his domain, the length and breadth of it and all the things that lived here, from the darkest depths to the sunlit surface. “Yes, I want to check on the—”
“Go on, then,” Devon said, wriggling away entirely, curling up to lie with his back to Lir, not touching him anywhere at all. “Go check on your sea.”
Lir blinked, staring at Devon. He looked so small, so single and separate a thing, like that. He was not reaching out now in prayer, and obviously not inviting any touch which would give Lir more insight. Lir couldn’t just flow into him and know his mind, the way he could flow along the edges of his brothers, the way he could be one with the plants and animals and waters of his domain.
But surely that meant he could only go by what Devon told him he wanted. It was clear enough that Devon wanted him to go and look after his domain. Maybe that was important—to show his land-dweller that he was responsible, that he looked after the things that belonged to him. Devon wouldn’t want to belong to someone who was careless of his domain, after all.
“All right,” Lir said, glancing around at the boxes again. “You should eat, though—I think the food is in that blue chest, there.”
Devon nodded but didn’t move, and Lir decided to stop bothering him and do as he was told.
He released his land-dweller form as soon as he had slipped down under the surface, letting himself stretch out through the currents. He was no shape at all, then, or he took the shape of his own domain, the water and everything that lived in them. The extra-warm current George had sent was still coming in from the southwest. He curled it more firmly around the island at the same time that he was one with the waves and the sharks and the whales and the tiny things floating in the water, clinging to the sea floor from the top of the ridge to the lowest, darkest depth.
Everything was different from yesterday. Things changed every day—the water kept on moving, flowing in at his southwestern borders and out along the north and east, and what had been George’s and Rann’s became his while what was his became Imer’s and Luth’s, and he and Mar jostled along each other and exchanged this and that. All the living things that moved kept moving, some entering his domain, some leaving, some born and some dying.
Land-dweller boats bobbed along his surface here and there. Most of them, as always, traveled purposefully along familiar straight lines.
One, however, was behaving strangely, tacking here and there to no obvious purpose. It was emitting more radio and sonar waves than was normal, making a nuisance of itself.
Lir felt some curiosity about it. Land-dwellers making themselves felt again, so soon after Devon...
Just like that he withdrew his awareness from the strange boat, rejecting the idea of trying to find out what they were doing before it had fully formed. He had his own land-dweller to look after now, and clearly one was already the very most he could manage. The rest of the land-dwellers were on their own, unless they were actually inclined to speak to him as Devon had.
Devon had given himself to Lir, after all. It was Lir’s right to keep him, and any other land-dwellers he might have belonged to before couldn’t say a thing about it.
Lir found himself coalescing back at the island, gathering himself into a denser concentration if not an entirely fixed form. He directed currents and living things to grow the island further, larger and denser, the anchoring understructure stretching wider and deeper to settle it more firmly in place on the surface. There was still no end to the supply of plastic, and with Lir’s encouragement all kinds of anchoring algae and plants were spreading across that substrate, knitting it together. Small things were taking refuge in the calm waters of the island’s underside, anchoring themselves to the slowly-waving tentacles that steadied it.
Would Devon be unhappy to know that the island he lived on had tentacles underneath?
At that thought, Lir was unable to hold back any longer from checking in on his werewolf. If he wasn’t unhappy about being on a tentacle-island, he might be unhappy about something else, and Lir had to know. He took his land-dweller shape again and pulled himself up at the new outer edge of the island—there was a wide new margin of green that squished gently underfoot before he reached the black sand of the central area.
There were no new footprints in the sand at all, no sign that any of the boxes had been touched. Lir glanced toward the sky to confirm his instinct. It had been hours, and the sun was heading toward the western horizon, but Devon was sitting with his arms curled around his knees, exactly where Lir had left him.
***
Chapter 6
Devon heard Lir’s footsteps crunching toward him and felt his face go hot with shame. He knew he should have moved before now. Lir had told him to eat. He had meant to, he just... hadn’t.
At first he’d just been trying to get his head around what he’d seen, Lir half-transforming into an enormous, tentacled thing. Lir had told him he was a sea god, Devon shouldn’t really have been surprised—that he could take such a form, that he could control such an incredible shift—but the knowledge that Lir was so powerful, and so... so alien... had thrown him for a loop. And then Devon had been wishing Lir would come back, and realized he had sent Lir away, that Lir probably thought Devon hated him or was scared of him. He probably should have been, if he had any sense. What was wrong with him? How could he be so stupid and fucked up in so many different ways?
After a while his mind had turned to a gray blank, and now Lir was back and Devon realized he hadn’t moved in hours—he was sick with hunger and his back was on fire. And he hadn’t done the simplest fucking things to take care of himself. He could have just eaten something, or shifted to protect his skin from the sun, or anything, but he’d gotten no further in hours and hours than just sitting up. And now Lir would scold, and fuss, or maybe be angry or just not notice at all...
He felt a cool shadow fall across him and looked up to see that Lir had made him another cloud. He was kneeling beside Devon, frowning a little.
“I think I...” Lir shook his head. “I’m not sure what to say. I know when—when land-dwellers want to be... gentle. They don’t say the other’s name, they say a different word. But I don’t know what word to say to you. Caroline said pup, but I don’t like that one. You’re not a child.”
Devon’s mouth opened and closed and he realized how dry it was. He coughed, sniffed, trying to make his brain produce words and his mouth produce spit. Finally he pointed past Lir to the water—Lir was in his way.
; “Oh!” Lir turned away and came back with his hands cupped full of fresh water, instead of just getting out of Devon’s way. “Tip your head back a little—”
Lir poured the water into Devon’s dry mouth, and he drank and drank until it was gone—more than he thought Lir’s hands should have been able to hold, but he wouldn’t complain about that.
“Thank you,” Devon said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, only to wince at the sting. Lir still looked worried, and Devon shook his head, showing him the reddened skin. “Just me being stupid. Sunburn.”
Lir looked up, aghast, and the cloud over Devon’s head darkened. “Clothes! But you can’t wear clothes with your skin burned. Here, let me—” Lir reached for Devon’s hand with both of his, then stopped short. “I mean... if that’s... if you want me to?”
Devon nodded quickly, pressing his hand into Lir’s, and Lir moved his hands so that he didn’t brush up against the sunburn. He bowed his head and blew gently over Devon’s burned skin.
Lir’s breath felt like a cool, misty breeze, like the air off a foggy lake in the morning, so thick and wet that it was almost raining, but not quite. The burn faded to nothing, and Lir followed the redness up Devon’s arm and moved behind him to heal his shoulder, settling his hand there as he went on to every inch of Devon’s back.
He didn’t have to do it. Devon could have shifted, or just gotten out of the sun for a few hours, and he would have healed on his own. But he couldn’t say no to Lir’s quiet, gentle tending. When Lir had worked all the way around and was kneeling in front of him again, Devon didn’t want it to be over.
“Now will you tell me what I should call you?” Lir asked softly. “When I want to be gentle? I could say your name, but a name is power, and I don’t want to be always holding that over you.”
