It was a bright hot day in late July and Princess Gabrielle, a descendant of the royal house of Harmen, was standing naked on the sea shore.
This, to be sure, will make the reader suspicious. The noble Kingdom of Harmen, the gods' beloved country, is as landlocked as it is puritanical. It is no business of any well-born lady of that land to be naked, and certainly not by the seaside, and most certainly not while being embraced from behind by an equally naked young man.
Did I mention the equally naked young man? His name was Aerin, and he was mostly an ordinary Kontarian boy. This in turn shouldn't make the reader too suspicious. The free land of Kontaria being famously very much neither landlocked nor puritanical, you'd quite expect their ilk to spend their July days on a beach with naked people in their arms. Still, when said naked people belong to a princely line of a hostile kingdom, the reader may nonetheless insist on an explanation.
It is kind of a long story. At its heart though, it's just a classic girl meets boy tale: there's a girl of noble birth with a rebellious streak and a dislike for her marriage prospects; there's a boy from that mysterious woodland by the sea with a head full of sagas and a talent for ending up in trouble; girl meets boy, girl fucks boy, girl elopes with boy. There are some complications to the whole thing, such as a two-day horseback chase and also that part where they almost burn down a castle tower, but that's the gist of it.
The rest is straightforward: boy realises girl has never seen the sea, boy borrows two horses to ride down to the coast, boy takes girl to a secluded beach. Boy suggests they dip in, girl points out that their clothes will get wet, before she even finishes speaking boy is already wearing nothing but a leather wristband and a coaxing, toothy grin. Girl rolls her eyes and grabs at her shirt.
So, here we are.
A wave crashed, slid over the sand, and lapped at Gabrielle's ankles. She felt the water wash the grains from under her feet, unbalancing her a little, drawing her in. The sea was a picture of natural beauty unlike any she'd seen; the sheer vastness of the open water stirred some unknown, gleeful thrill inside of her. To her left and right, the wooded hilly shores of Kontaria spread wide. Facing an infinite horizon, a salty breeze on her skin, she felt strangely close to everywhere in the world at once.
"What do you think?" he asked by her ear.
"Aerin, this..." Livid sunlight danced on the waves, leaving in her eyes opalescent afterimages. "This is fucking awesome," she said.
He laughed, kissed her neck, and hugged her tighter. He'd always really liked her way with words.
"I can't get over that colour," she continued. "Have you ever seen anything so fucking blue?"
"Your eyes," he offered. They both cringed, the sensation rather like that toothache you get when you bite into something way too sweet. She reached up behind her and wrapped her hands around his head.
"That was awful," she said. "Thanks."
The two of them were also, to be honest, a picture of natural beauty, although this picture was exciting in a slightly different way. She'd recently turned nineteen; he was a few months younger. Her body was graceful, long-limbed, and toned. Her blond hair only reached halfway down her neck nowadays, as she had to cut it on their escape from Harmen (long story), but that diminished neither her charm nor the way her expression, never lacking the self-confidence of a princely bloodline, made people slightly weak in the knees. Her breasts, now exposed so freely before the endlessness of the world, used to attract many longing looks even when covered by layers of modest cloth back in the Kingdom; still now in the capital, long after she'd left, their full and gratifying shape was sometimes the object of fond night-time recollections. He was nothing to look past, either. He was tall and slim, and a life outdoors had imbued his muscles with a subtle strength, lithe and gentle under the skin. His auburn hair fell over his face and neck in strands which he'd long ago lost hope of ever controlling. And he had that wide smile, one that was at once pure and innocent and also strangely liable to arouse impure and uninnocent thoughts in whoever it was directed at.
Another wave broke. The sea here was free of currents, but even on calm days it could be pretty choppy. The surf was strong, and supplied much crashing and spraying and foaming. This would make for a really fun swim -- if you knew how.
"So how do you feel, Gabrielle? If these waves are too large, there's a cove just over there..." Gabrielle scoffed.
"I can handle these! No big deal." The wave receded, and stole more ground from underneath her. Aerin smiled, let her go, and sped toward the water. The next wave hit him in the shins, and she watched him stumble; he waited for it to turn and flow back, and used its force to drag himself into the sea.
There was an easy grace in his movements, a confidence engendered by a whole boyhood spent on a lakeside. He turned and beckoned to her from the waves, his chest and stomach coated with water's shiny glaze.
It was time for her to admit to herself that she was kind of a shit swimmer.
In Harmen it is unseemly for a lady to swim, and whenever you do, you're supposed to wear this sort of a canvas gown that balloons all around you, making you feel like a very well-bred buoy. Of course she'd sometimes sneak to the springs with her friends, and of course a late-night bet to undress and swim across the capital city's river and back was once famously made and won, but on a whole she was a creature of the land.
She was, however, a bold creature of the land.
He watched her walk forward. The waves would give most first-timers a pause. But not Gabrielle, of course. His girl wasn't one to flinch at the unknown. She walked on until the water reached her knees, got tumbled down by a wave, screamed with glee, and pushed on. As the next wave came she met it head on -- hands outstretched, back straight, chest forward -- and let it break over her body. She was swept back a few steps but she never fell, and stood dripping and laughing and ready for more.
He dove down, where the kind sea would hide his blush.
For a while they stayed in the surf and let it toss their bodies cheerfully about in the shallow water. She was enjoying this more and more, the strange thrill of being exposed to an overwhelming power. Gradually she followed him deeper, where the waves wouldn't break but just toy with her, lift her up and put her back down on the seafloor. He circled around her on his back, his arms drawing wide, neat arcs. Another wave came, lumbering and dark, and picked her up, and subsided. This time, though, her foot found no ground underneath.
"Um." That playful force had displaced her, removed her with ease into its realm. She faced the empty horizon and at once felt very aware that it was in fact a great force, an ancient cosmic force of water unimaginably wide and unfathomably deep, a force absurdly more powerful than any human being.
Then Aerin swam to her side, and she wrapped her arm around him with some relief. She wasn't sure if he did something or was it the sea, but when the next wave came and went, her feet found firm ground again.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Okay. I just felt a little out of my element."
"Let's head back then." He brushed the wet hair away from his eyes. "This gets really fun once you have more control."
"Yeah, I can see you frolic around like a happy little otter!" She clung onto him, and the water swelled around them, lifted them off the ground again. "Aerin, I need you to teach me how to swim!"
He grinned, and found his footing. "Sure. Not here, though. To the cove!"
They scrambled out of the sea. Crossing a sandbank on the beach, after some two minutes they reached the cove, a sizeable round inlet sheltered at its entrance by limestone outcroppings fifteen feet high. The beach was wide around it, with more rocky formations and almost no plants. Among the rocks on the sand, some fishing boats stood moored.
The water here was calm, and warmer than out in the sea. They walked in waist-deep, and Aerin turned to her.
