The Speechless Sea

Chapter 3

The next morning broke with the storm. Violent waves gave way to calm waves. The sun burned white in the sky, bleaching it white and cloduless. Birds lazed int he sky that carried them and the fish cut dashing pathways through the ocean. Merlin sat, beached on the shore, eyes glued to the blonde's mouth and the gentle rise and full of his muscled chest. The other man's soaked clothes had dried in the night and clung to him, crusted and rumpled as his messy hair. The merman could not bear to look away.

He pressed his hand to the prince's chest - as he wa so attuned to the sea, he could feel the small droplet lingering still within his lungs asking to be free. He closed his eyes and felt the warming furmuration of his powers begin to simmer under his skin and the sea water trapped inside Athurs lungs began to respond. With a sound like rushing water and also a bubbling broke, he spoke the words of his magical language:

Alu ese mai iina, vai.

He ran his hand up his muscular chest and to his throut, the salt water following his path. Suddenly, the prince awoke, spluttering and coughing salt water onto the golden white sand of the Camelot shore-line. His eyes wide and as blue as the spargling ocean as they met Merlin's. The merman froze in panic.

"Sh-" he startered.

"Who are you?" Arthur groaked harshly from his salt dried voice box squinting at Merlin in dazed confusion. Merlin stared back at him, eyes as wide as the world as he drank in the sight of the other man looking at him intoxicatinngly, the seconds stretched apart as Merlin felt warm in his gaze from his position on the sand. Merlin inhaled - hoe could, could he? The upper world was forbidden, his father....the humans shouldn't know merpeople existed. But something about this one seemed different, his golden hair, his eyes like the ocean, now swimming and unfocussed as the prince stair at him in innocent bemusedment.

"I-" Merlin stammered once, he took one last long lingering look, then turned on his tail and glid gracefully back into the glittering ocena, leaping into the sea, without turning to look back.

***

From the shore, the blond prince blinked his eyes heavily, light headed from his ordeal, he sunk to his knees and emptied the contence of his stomach behind a large grey rock, his hand holding onto it for support as his entire body shook. He groaned thinly as he slumped into a dizzy seated position, and buried his head in his strong hands, blunt fingers curling into his hair as he held himself conscious, his eyes glittering, like the ocean, with unshed tears as he sat and watched the spot where the mystery figure had disappeared. He breathed deeply and stole himself intood a stand before turning from the lapping sea shore and trudging his way back towards his father's castle, shoes squishing wetly with every stpe.

***

"Sire! Your alive!" Came the elated call of Sir Leon, Arthur's closest knight, as he approached the castle doors. The other man, through open the heavy wooden door, which groaned mangnaimously under its own weight, an imposing sign of King Uther's wealth and power and manifest destiny. The curly haired knight ran up to the prince, smilling wide on his face, and stopped himself short of hugging the prince, coaching himself in time and remembering their respecting stations, he attached his hands to the princes shoulders.

"Leon, alert the coast guard" called Gaius, the pyshiscan, who followed Leon from the castle doors and did engulf the young prince in a fatherly hug. The blond man smiled; happy to be home safe; and to see his friends had survived their ordeel.

"I was saved Gaius" he grinned dazed.

"By good fortune sir" Replied the psychician as he appraised the prince's soggy state with a wise and experienced psychicians eye, checking him over for inguries.