[ChicletPrime]

• three days of city wide carousing (what are the Lemurians doing during this, i wonder) for my coming-of-age. sounds like its not just a yearly birthday party for herself. she's... old enough to marry? to be sacrificed? what?
  
• ooh, its a masked ball! I LOVE THOSE
  
• i get the first dance and i get to pick my partner. oh please oh please be there Rafayel looking deadly and stunning because i wanna mush everybody's face in how well you've grown up without a collar around your neck.
  
• although maybe that's a bad idea, if we're supposed to meet at 'dusk'. maybe i won't be making it to this masked ball after all.
  
• oh noes! i must meet the King and Queen and be escorted into the ball. there shall be no dusk tryst for mademoiselle it seems.
  
• we leave a clever note about it, tied to the arrow...aaaaaand turn around and Rafayel is lounging on the bed. NICE!
  
• i so approve
  
• oh... oh wow. that is some fancy knife and flame work. i am coming back here asap to get that on video and then i'm going to post it here somewhere and then i'm going to STARE AT IT A LOT.
  
• oh, okay! what i thought was an arrow with fletching is actually a fishtail beacon. 
  
• "But... what about the ball!?"  "We won't make it."  fan-tastic. it was going to be boring anyways. let's go, fish man!
  
• muahah! i bravely say i am not afraid of heights and Rafayel says he is without an ounce of shame. i love this boy so much.
  
• oh. wow. a giant illusory beast from The Deep leaps from the ground and swims towards us (as we fall). is it.. is it the spectral whale thing that was his friend in Mirrors?  /wooo
  
• "A mount befitting the God of the Sea." hells yes.
  
• oops. bye Natasha! don't hold dinner for me! (as i sail away with a masked stranger holding a strangling chain on a creature made of moonlight and dust). 
  
• as my dying wish, lovely Natasha, don my mask! let them think i am there in spirit. eat a sandwich in my memory. (please don't end up sacrificed in my place, that would be terrible).
  

• hello, Arrakis.
  
• how am i now wearing the same sort of outfit as Rafayel? did he pack me a change of sand clothes? 
  
• i... guess he did. now we get to sit in the sand and kiss through our masks?  /she says hopefully
  
• we snatched his mask off! go the hell us, i guess. its that kind of forward thinking that is going to take us places.
  
• "A Lemurian's life recieves some support through this garb."  eh? 
  
• then he gives me a little squirming bag.  i appreciate the drawstring tie is also decorated with two matching amethyst crystals.
  
• "A gerbil?"  "Feed it or-- "  how rude! just because i enjoyed the little cooked ones on a stick in the high street...
  
• i am apparently against eating my living birthday presents.  fair! 
  
• aaaand he gives me some flatbread in case i change my mind.
  
• ... i have a feeling this is something else than what its being presented as. 
  
• "You once summoned fish and now a sea monster... with a trident, you could be an actual God of the Sea."   "Cumbersome. I dislike it." 
  
• He. Is. So. Very. Handsome.
  
• "I wish you could show me the sea."  if i've commanded it, does he have to follow? I am unclear as to whether we are bound in this lifetime yet.
  
• I regret my words and reach impulsively to his bared face and he startles. eeeee.
  
• oh my god, yas girlfriend. drift your fingers over his lips as if by mistake.
  
• "I-is.. something wrong?"
  
• i am pretty sure the third thing he said to us when he was an adult and i was acting the spoiled twelve year old was "Don't touch me."  and here we are, touching him.
  
• he appears willing to let it slide. didn't even draw the dagger, what restraint.
  
• apparently while i may not have seen the sea, i have seen the tides? mmkay.
  
• "Perhaps in a dream?"   "Indeed."
  
• oh boy! we're dreaming stuff from prior lives now. i can't wait to tell Zayne he's not alon... wait. 
  
• "It so often appears in my dreams. The sky gloomy and the water a gray desert. Waves crash against the island in the center of the ocean. On the island I am in a hut, surrounded by silence and solitude. I know that one day the tides, boundless and cruel, will take me away. It's.. I'm waiting for someone from the sea to rescue me from this prison."
  
• Rafayel listens, and then draws it in the sand. "Its exactly like this! Do you know where it is?" If I could figure out the location, I would know who I am and the heart's origin.
  
• not sure it works like that, but okay, i'll grant the leap of logic.
  
• finally i get around to asking Rafayel what HE wants, as I no longer believe in kindness without reward.
  
• "Is your Highness not my master?" 
  
• ... oh fucking HELL.  Ebb and Flow.  /hides face in hands for a second. DID SHE DO THAT IN SOME OTHER PARALLEL? was there a split there, where she didn't let the boy go, kept him in a cage, beat him with whips for the pearls he'd cry, answering only to master when he begged to eat.
  
• THIS GAME
  
• "Once Lemurians are bound to someone, we can never go against them."  but ... you were a gift, and one I refused. how could we be bound? 
  
• "Taming requires plucking a Lemurian scale. I did nothing of the sort."   "Our bond has existed for years."  So. So many years. He tucks stray hair behind my ear. "Long before the sea dried up."
  
• he does remember! the same Rafayel as then, is now.
  

[Coldsaturn]

- bravely say i am not afraid of heights and Rafayel says he is without an ounce of shame.
I love a fishie who gets sea sick and is afraid of heights <3

- is it.. is it the spectral whale thing that was his friend in Mirrors?
It is <3 And it's also the shark he summons during battles <3 "my shark is hungry"

- hello, Arrakis.
The crossover we deserve

- did he pack me a change of sand clothes?
He did <3 And there's also some very painful design choices behind our MC's outfit in Abysswalker, because in all other instances if you look at the shape that her outfit forms from the back toward the floor, it looks like a fish tail. But the back of MC's outfit in Abysswalker is torn, showing how dire the situation is. Also there are no jewelry or cute princess decorations that are instead present in the other outfits, because Raf here doesn't have the resources for it.

- "A Lemurian's life recieves some support through this garb."
Very important info. Lemurians have problems living in desert places where the air is too dry and hot, so they have to use special clothing that keeps the water in. The Dunes references write themselves.

- "Cumbersome. I dislike it."
If only you knew how extremely fuckable you are with it

- Ebb and Flow.
Yuuuuuup. They're made of love echoes from distant times, those two.

- "Taming requires plucking a Lemurian scale"
put a pin on it! This is what I was referring to in the other post when we were talking about bonding forcefully with a Lemurian. If you take a scale, they're "tamed"
MC says that she never took a scale from him, put a temporary pin on it.

"He does remember!"
Not necessarily. The bond means he can recognize her instantly, no matter the form she takes in any possible incarnation, but it doesn't mean he has all his memories from Forgotten Sea. At least, I'm curious to know your interpretation of a few things he says down the line.

[ChicletPrime]

• meanwhile, back in the palace, i hope Natasha did a good job being me.
  
• we shall lurk suspiciously by 'the back entrance'.
  
• so the palace lake has "eight rivers running in eight different directions, each flowing from the city's centre"
  
• /tries to envision that and realizes that would a logistical nightmare to design and maintain
  
• and THEN each rivers splits into eight streams so 64 rivers flow out of the capital
  
• and we're somehow surrounded by golden sand.
  
• really not a fan of this slavery, fictional or otherwise. this sounds like a very cruel system. although Rafayel does say he can only be captured if he wants to be, which i guess is *something*.  but what about the rest of his people who can't call up moondust sharks?
  
• the girlfriend's suspicious mind immediately thinks the worst. if he deliberately got captured in order to see me, he must want something from me.  is it red, covered in crystal and beating in my chest? 
  
• "Rafayel is quiet, then he bows before me."  "I would be honest."
  
• you usually are and it usually doesn't help because you are VERY good at saying things out loud that only later reveal themselves to be the garotte.
  
• aaaand speaking of, lets get abandoned in the middle of the lake!
  
• "Rafayel stands on the water's surface...."   (we have GOT to kidnap us an artist)
  
• yeah, i am such a spoiled little twelve year old princess. i am not a fan of myself in this timeline.
  
• that was... odd. we demand to walk on water too (because we don't want to row the boat) and Rafayel says "Now I'm satisfied" before reaching out with both hands to help us out onto the water.  was he testing to see if we'd give him orders for petty reasons? EDIT: or maybe he wanted to be sure he was compelled to give us what we wanted, testing the strength of the bond? but we've already ordered him around a bunch, so not sure that holds.. uh. water.
  
• realizing that Rafayel might think it funny to let go now, i clutch the man. good idea! lets not drip our way through the back door if at all possible.
  
• "engaging in tomfoolery is a tactical plan" -- yeah, and you've been using it for thousands of years and it has certainly served you well the entire time
  
• oooh. i ask him again if he'll visit me (so i won't be bored) and he responds with "Is your Highness' most important person one to visit often?"
  
• who IS my first most important person anyways.
  
• "Yes," I reply blithely like the idiot I am, "will you surpass him? You're allowed five weekly visits. Or at least three." and then i give a list of demands on where i want to go. 
  

I am just going to take an aside here and commend the writing for portraying this version of the girlfriend as naive, spoiled, bratty and clueless, all without making her come across as too annoying to live. I mean, she is mean and snotty to Rafayel and to Natasha, but this is really well done for showing all the differences between her/princess and her/present day without resorting to spelling it out like a Jack and Jill book.

• so Rafe has to leave in three days and isn't taking questions about where or for how long he'll be gone, other than to say he wants to take me somewhere before he vanishes.
  
• The girl's silhouette appears in the window on the palace's second floor. Only when the lights are off does Rafayel turn around.  "You're here."
  
• good old Amund. yeah, this is where I let Rafayel go as a child. why does that matter? 
  
• Amund: "Perfect. The Island of Songs (ooo was that my dream of the island i was trapped on?) has been found. You no longer need to play suitor." 
  
• well, that's fucking cryptic.
  
• aaaand there's the dagger. and instructions that it can be used to carve out the heart. "I leave it to your Quintessence to decide." 
  
• "Are the legends to be believed?"
  
• Amund believes. Surely that's enough for everybody, right? 
  
• OOOOOH. "Her method of acquiring the heart wasn't forgotten, was it? If that island sparked the beginning of our demise, then everything should end there. The Lemurians cannot be deceived again!"
  
• "Your words ring true." /stows dagger "Yet what if the legends are incorrect?"
  

[ChicletPrime]

So before the seas dried up, before the Lemurians were used as slaves and playthings, some version of me was trapped on an island in the middle of the ocean. And was it when i was rescued that the The Deep started to diminish, finally to disappear?

Yet Rafayel himself is still here, even if the Sea is not. Then again, dunes are waves of sand and something like The Deep could take many, many forms.

In Land of Secret Flames, when Rafayel took on the aspect of the Sea God again after so long of having it sealed away, he said then "I have no need for traitors!". So is that what the Sea God remembers most upon waking up, the soul memory of being betrayed? Is that part of what happens, over and over? Rafayel keeps letting us go and the Sea God is angry that we keep taking things away? like our heart and Lemurian blood that grants immortality.

[Coldsaturn]

- what about the rest of his people
Yup. The others are hunted and enslaved and treated as pets.
It's important that Raf mentions he only gets captured if he wants. There will be other instances where he'll show how quick he is at freeing himself, and how he wants to be caught by MC and it's the only reason she can actually get to him. A slippery fish, if you will.

- (we have GOT to kidnap us an artist)
We really do. We need to start recruiting

- "Now I'm fully satisfied"
I interpret it as being a direct sequel to MC's "Is this how you avenge yourself? Because I learned of your secret? Petty." because it doesn't make sense otherwise. It is indeed an odd sentence in an odd place.

- MC in this myth
I've always read her more bratty and definitely naive in that sheltered princess way than straight out mean. She's bitter because she knows she's being taken advantage of because of her heart, so nobody actually cares about her (maybe Natasha, to an extent), but she's definitely an entirely different personality compared to the other myths. In GoT she's just as sheltered but way more pragmatic in her survival skills, in Romirro she's raised to be a ruler and is more intentional in her anger toward the people who betrayed her one second and adored her the next. MC in present timeline is more independent, extremely bratty/teasing with Raf, but she's also the most lost we've ever seen her. In all other instances she has a clear role to fill in, whether she likes it or not, whereas in present timeline she's still being swept by the current.
But consider that when MC dreams of Abysswalker during the GoT myth, she describes Raf as a "teen". Unless that's a translation mistake, it means she's just as young. Hence the stupidity.

- "Your words ring true." /stows dagger "Yet what if the legends are incorrect?"
This is why I think Raf doesn't actually remember. He feels the bond with MC, but doesn't have all his memories from GoT, definitely not the Ceremony and what happened after it (nor Romirro), because he's technically working with what the prophecy (and Amund) states, which is that she stole his heart and doomed Lemuria.

- The island
In my opinion it's still coherent with GoT background before that MC met that Raf. She was raised as a sacrifice isolated from everyone else, waiting to die. Whether they're talking about the island of songs or not, I am of the idea they're talking of pre-Philos, which means Earth. It just makes sense if we think of Philos and Earth being the same planet. Otherwise we would have to imagine that in their past, 30k years earlier, before the seas dried up, MC was on that island waiting to die.

- Considering what happens when "divinity" (let's call it that) enters Raf both in GoT (right after the Ceremony) and in Land of Secret Flames, I'd say his godly instincts are entirely tuned toward killing MC because that's what he needs to do as a god in order to properly gain his power. As the sea god he's completely aligned with the Deep Sea, which is why not sacrificing MC angers the Deep Sea and it's mirrored in how angry he is in land of secret flames. She didn't sacrifice herself, which makes her a traitor per Lemurian and ocean's rules.

"but she sacrificed herself in Romirro and returned the heart?" you might say. Yeah, and it's entirely possible that the bond they have ensures this exchange is never properly done. Raf will always choose her over Lemuria and over himself, and while in Romirro she managed to make him a full god, it clearly didn't solve the issue, because if we take the witch of the abyss as the next reincarnation, then Raf dies instead of ascending to godhood.

There are two layers of betrayal:
one is the God and Deep Sea thinking she's a traitor because she refused to give her heart (and that one time she actually did doesn't solve all the other instances where she didn't)
one is Raf taking her sacrificing herself or sealing him away for his safety as a betrayal because he views abandonment as a betrayal. It doesn't matter if he dies, so long as he spends all his time with her. Separation and abandonment is where he feels like his feelings and their bond are being ignored.

Considering how the God of the Sea when he first appears is all power and instinct, he will always clock their bond and thus crave MC's heart, and will always consider her life as a betrayal. She should be dead already. If she's not, it's because she's a traitor, there's no other reason.
It's only with Sea God Raf in Romirro that we can see how that instinct can be tamed as he matures into himself. He never loses control, even after regaining most of his memories.

[ChicletPrime]

I really am quite enjoying The Deep Sea > The Sea God > Rafayel hierarchy.

Because honestly, I am getting the definite sense that Rafayel is the one fucking things up constantly, because he keeps choosing to let the girlfriend escape at the 11.5th hour, denying the Sea God his true place and thwarting the requirements of the Deep Sea.

Rafayel doesn't want to be the pawn of a greater power, obviously, and seems to really resent the fact that he can't just lay down the burden and escape into death, because no matter what, he will return again and again and again. No matter how much or how little he remembers (and there are likely timelines where he doesn't leave himself clues, even as there are timelines when he does), he keeps trying to make the same choice to save her. He does it in GoT (wins), he does it in City of Mirrors (fails) and I guess I'll see how this plays out in Golden Sands.

I think you're right, now that I read back a little as to what Rafayel and Amund are saying. I think he remembers who he is in a general sense, and has the backstory of the legends and myths from Amund, but no really cohesive memories of past live(s). He may remember specific things - that he straight up tells her that their bond existed in the past and exists now at least implies a longer truth he's carrying, but yeah, maybe he's just extrapolating the pull he feels against what he knows it should mean (ie, if he doesn't remember it in this incarnation, then it had to have happened in a previous one and it transcended death. ie: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth).

[Coldsaturn]

Raf is definitely the one who always fucks it up lmao Even as a full blown Sea God he still tries to fuck shit up (i.e. stops Romirro from sinking and becoming Whalefall City TWICE)
His ancestors were right, he really is disrespectful lol

I think you're right in that at its core, the issue is that Raf doesn't want to have his life dictated like that, not at the cost of MC's life. The problem is that on the other side of the conflict isn't his own freedom, but his people. And that makes that choice so much more painful, because one way or another he's always losing, and he's always responsible for an immeasurable loss.

I think no matter what he remembers when he awakens, two things are always known to him: he's the last Sea God of Lemuria, and he has a bond with MC.
The first info is always there for him because Lemurians are a community, and they sure as hell never leave Raf alone. There's always someone around him ensuring he knows of the Tome's prophecies and his responsibilities.
The second is contingent to Raf meeting MC and recognizing that they have a bond. When he wakes up from his deep slumber he might not know he has one, but once he crosses path with MC he 100% knows it's her. And at that point it's a matter of 2+2: he's the Sea God, she's bonded to him = she's the Sea God's bride, his one and only follower.

One thing that I noticed by replaying one of Raf's...text messages? I believe? Is that he says something along the lines of "It's important for Lemurians to have a perfect memory" and I tried to contextualize it with Raf actively NOT remembering the entirety of his life, but I think that's precisely the point. For a species that lives so long, recording and remembering the past becomes paramount, lest you end up trapping yourself in a loop of repeated mistakes where you never remember the experiences and solutions you found.

In Romirro the people had to be "awakened" to their Lemurian memories, because it had been so long that most had forgotten who they were. For Raf it's especially important (possibly why it's part of his official ceremony of ascension) because his memories carry the responsibility as a god toward his people, so it's necessary for him to acquire his lost memories so as to fully be.

[ChicletPrime]

flitting in between things but, consider this as well - Rafayel keeps choosing to be personally selfish.

he has no problem with murder and vengeance. he kills who he wants to for reasons that he deems worthy, and ignores targets he's not interested in.

but he won't kill her; he loves her no matter what she does. and he doesn't love his people enough to override that.

the Deep Sea wants her dead and her heart back in Lemurian hands and control. The Sea God has been tasked to do precisely that, with the weight of the Deep bearing down on his emotions. but Rafayel keeps slipping out from under what ought be an imperative compulsion. how? how does a single Lemurian, no matter how contrary, subvert the will of an elemental force that takes him over like a tsunami?

[Coldsaturn]

I'm still trying to find a proper boundary between the Deep Sea, the Sea God and Raf. Because in a way, they are one and the same, but they also feel at times separate and in conflict with each other.

Post-Ceremony Raf made an ethical choice. Lemuria survives on a moral foundation that he can't accept, hence he wants to find another way to save his people (and himself). I don't know, can you still be selfish when you lose your life along everyone else's? Saving MC always comes at the cost of his own life, after all. So is it a matter of choosing one life over many?

The other Rafs might not know the real implications of Lemuria's flame. In GoT MC dreams of Abysswalker, and in her dream he kills her to take back his heart. Romirro/Lemuria was about to fall into oblivion because he was refusing to kill her. And we don't know what's going on in the present; there are some worrying foreshadowings on one side, and on the other we might be finally in the timeline where MC will intervene and find a solution with him.

"Rafayel keeps slipping out from under what ought be an imperative compulsion. how?"
Dare I say it? With the power of true love <3

[ChicletPrime]

twu wuv!