[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.