Braving the Elements

3: Things to Do

Rajke awoke gradually, floating between dreams and conscious thoughts. He dreamt of his first love, Calia. He thought of blue-eyed nymphs. He dreamt of a griffin's talons raking deep furrows across his back. He thought of the young couple in Clarion, who had pleaded with him for help.

Sensing his burgeoning awareness, he opened his eyes. He had to blink several times to reassure himself they were indeed open, so pitch black were his surroundings.

He sat up and heard a sloshing of water - felt the warmth of it flow down his chest, chilling him as it evaporated.

There was a second susurrus of the pool and a ripple. Something else was in the water with him.

Before his realization could mount into full-blown alarm, Naia said, "I'm here. You are here. We are in my grotto, and you have nothing to fear."

Slowly, the water illuminated. Rajke could not see any light source. It seemed the water itself was glowing gently, a deep and vibrant hue. He was reclining in a large pool, a hot spring to judge by its warmth. Naia floated lazily in the deeper part of the pool, seemingly without the need to paddle or tread water. She still wore her dress, which, if it was diaphanous when dry, was practically invisible now that it was wet. Her small, pink-brown nipples shone through the damp fabric that clung to her ample breasts.

She had golden skin, unlike he had ever seen. It was darker than the ruddy hide of northerners but lighter than the medium olive brown of the nomads in the semifertile deserts of the west. She had long, straight, black hair that flowed like the water she bathed in.

"I'm glad you're awake," she said, her wide almond eyes fixated on him.

Rajke was suddenly aware that he was naked. He felt bashful momentarily before remembering his incredible introduction to the nymphs. Just thinking about it made him swell.

Naia's eyes flashed hungrily, and she glided to him without stroke or kick.

Rajke could see where this was going, and as excited as that made him feel, his dreams had reminded him of his mission. Reluctantly, Rajke said, "Wait."

Naia stopped. She had reached the shallows and stood, revealing herself fully in the hip-deep water. "What is wrong, mortal?"

"I..." Rajke hesitated. He couldn't believe what he was about to say. Why was this happening now? Why not when that dim-witted Barron had hired him to find his wife, who had been "kidnapped" by the beautiful mummer woman from the local theater?

"I have to go," he said resolutely. "I have a job, and while it normally wouldn't be an issue if I stopped to ... rest ... for a few days,"

or weeks,

he thought,

or lifetimes.

"But this time, I have cause to hurry."

"Tell me more," said Naia. She had lost her minxishness. All hint of seduction was gone, replaced with genuine interest — no, not interest, concern.

"There is a family - they live a few days south. Their son is missing. They asked me to find him."

"And you are looking here? Why?"

"It's hard to explain. They sent him away. He wasn't well..." Rajke struggled to find the words. He wasn't sure what to tell this alien beauty. She wasn't human, no matter how much she looked it, and she lived on a secluded mountain far from people, let alone scholars and schools.

"There was a man who said he could help. The boy went to stay with him. Everything was fine, but after a few months, the letters stopped coming. I need to get to the school where he was taken. I need to find out if he is okay." Rajke deflated, emotionally and physically, worry for the boy and his family overtaking his curiosity and excitement.

"What is his affliction?" asked Naia, her head tilting slightly to the left.

"What?" The question had taken Rajke aback.

"You said the boy was not well. What is his trouble that his loving parents would send him so far away?"

"He had convulsions," said Rajke. "It's when..."

Naia smiled gently but a little patronizingly. "I know what convulsions are. What are his other symptoms?"

Rajke nodded, "I'm no surgeon, but from what his parents said, he was born too early, and he was small. He's been small for his age ever since. And he has fits."

Naia's eyes narrowed. "Fits? Please be more specific. Some people understand

fits

to mean convulsions."

How did this reclusive spirit from another plane of existence know so much about rare afflictions of the human body? "He gets agitated." Rajke knew that wasn't a good word for it. "He rages unpredictably, sometimes at the smallest provocation."

Naia bowed her head sadly. "I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like fetal exposure to toxins - likely a heavy metal, like plebium."

She used the old empirical word for lead - she could diagnose illnesses that most people still thought of as curses or possessions by evil entities. There was something more to this nymph than Rajke had imagined. Granted, Rajke had never believed nymphs to be real before one of them bathed his groin in saliva like the world champion of oral sex.

Still, most elementals were mindless. Even the sentient ones had simple motives and spoke little. How could she know all this? Sensing she could be more help than hindrance, Rajke stood and began pacing. "Can you help me? You and your sisters. It would be a tremendous help to have five powerful elementals."

Naia held up her hand and shook her head. "First, please don't call us sisters. We fuck each other far too much to be comfortable to be called that, even figuratively. Second, We can help you through the pass, but if where you are going has people, particularly people with troubled emotions, I'm afraid we can't help you."

"Perhaps if I find the boy," pleaded Rajke. "I could bring him back here and..."

"No, Rajke," she said gently but firmly. "It would not help. There is nothing I can do."

"Gods damnit!" He shouted. He could hardly see, but he found the cave wall barely restrained himself from punching it. He knew the outburst was uncalled for. His flashes of anger had always made people uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, Naia. I'm not..."

Naia cut him off. "You don't need to explain. I know how you feel. I know you are not angry at me. I'm angry, too. I wish there were something I could do. Truly, Rajke. But I just can't."

Rajke gritted his teeth, feeling another surge of rage. He breathed in through his nose, held out through his mouth, just as his mother had taught him.

"Your fury is justified. It gives you power. It drives you to do good things. I imagine you are quite the hero when people are in need." She smiled at him, her eyes kind and sorrowful.

Rajke shook his head. "I learned a long time ago that you can't help people by hurting people."

"Yes, you can," said Naia flatly. She wasn't arguing. She was reminding.

Rajke took a long time just looking at her beautiful body, practically naked beneath her transparent dress. "Somehow, I expected a water spirit to be more... I don't know. Serine?"

She smiled. "Maybe I've spent too much time with Averna and Melia, but I know a little about life. The world is a violent place. Water is violent, plants are violent, animals are violent, and people are most certainly violent. I'm not saying it's not wrong to be cruel or malicious. But even rabbits have claws, and you don't carry a sword, javelins, and an axe for nothing."

Rajke took her meaning. "Okay, so you can't go, and I can't bring him here. Can you at least tell me why not? If I could understand, then maybe I can come up with another solution."

Naia laughed gently and said, "You wouldn't understand."

"I didn't think you would understand

convulsions

," he said. "Let me surprise you. Most of my job is about understanding nonhumans, sapient or otherwise."

Naia walked to the edge of the spring and sat in the warm water. "Come here, sit. I will do my best."

Rajke lowered himself into the pool next to her, and she explained.

"You called us nymphs. I don't know if that is what we are. I don't know if there are any others like us out there, or if there are, if they have the same..." she glanced meaningfully at his exposed body, "proclivities as us. But I can tell you that we are not natural creatures."

"I know of the planes," said Rajke, unsure exactly what she meant. "Not much, and I've never been to any but this one. But I know they exist if that is what you mean.

Naia shook her head. "I mean that we were

made

- not born. An elven sorceress brought us here a long time ago, before your kind, I think. She gave us these." Naia held up her hand, adorned with an electrum ring."

"I noticed them," Rajke said. "Before, with..." he trailed off, still feeling some need to avoid what his mother would call "inappropriate speech," even though these nymphs were the source of the supposed "inappropriateness."

Naia didn't comment on his bashfulness, which he was grateful for, and continued her explanation. "These rings do many things. We were once elementals like any other - chaotic and nebulous. These rings bind us here to this plane, which isn't a bad thing - we prefer it here.

"They also act as a sort of conductor. I don't know magic or how it works, but these rings connect us to the life around us. All elementals communicate emotionally, but these sharpen our sense of connection.

"Our maker, I think she was some kind of scholar, I don't really remember, she was learning from us, but we also learned from her. Her mind shaped us - gave us form. You sapient creatures, your minds are so orderly - you can define, and categorize, and explain. We couldn't do any of that. But we learned.

"She would leave sometimes. And then, one day, she went, and she never came back. We don't know what happened to her. A long time after that, more people came. They worshiped us. They had a right of passage. They would come here at the onset of adulthood, and they would spend a year with us. Learning. They didn't know we were learning too.

"When people are near, their feelings give us form. We feel those feelings always."

Rajke nodded his head in understanding. "So a boy like Natan - the sick boy - his illness would..." Rajke tried to imagine but came up short.

Naia only nodded. "It's not just that. When you are in a crowded city, it's noisy and it's busy. But you can focus - tune it out. For us, it would be like every person within five miles was having an intimate conversation with us all at once. And we can't control it."

"I see," said Rajke. "So you can't help. Not in that way, at least. But you know so much about medicine. Could you tell me what to do?"

Naia thought for a long time, searching for the right words. "Did you know that your body is mostly water?"

Rajke furrowed his brow.

"I know it seems strange, but you are made of parts, and those parts are made of smaller parts, and they are made from tiny parts. And the smallest little parts of you are like little sacks filled with water and bits of other things. It's the bits of other things that make you move, and grow, and live, but it's the water that gives it all structure.

"Water? Giving structure?"

"The phenomenon is not entirely unknown to you. It is how your penis works, after all. It doesn't have any structure until it fills with hot blood." She winked at him playfully but not seductively. Since he expressed his intention to leave, she had not pursued the matter in the slightest.

"Okay," admitted Rajke. "I believe you. So my body is mostly water."

Naia nodded, accepting his willingness to believe. "As a spirit of water, I can feel it, sense how it moves and flows, even inside of you. I spent a long time learning how you fleshlings work. And while I have some ability to control the water that is in you, it is limited. You have to be willing. I cannot force my will on your water any more than you can force your reasoning on another person's mind. And there is only so much water can do.

"Some afflictions I can heal - contaminants in the blood, for example. Others I can treat - broken take broken bones. I can't heal them, but your body can, and I can provide ideal conditions for your body to do its work swiftly. I can alleviate suffering from some ailments. Inflammation and fluid buildup are easily aided but will return if their cause is not addressed. And there are some afflictions that I simply can do nothing for."

"Didn't you say it was lead that did this? Isn't that a contaminant of the blood?" Rajke asked. He was more wishful than Hopeful. She had declared that she could not help, and Rajke believed her.

"At one time, maybe I could have helped him purge the metal safely. But That was years ago, and now the damage is done. The little bits that makeup who he is were changed. Now, he is something different than he would have been. I imagine it is distressing to his parents, but all they can do now is love the son they have and not pine for the son they could have had."

Rajke understood. Now, he could move on, knowing what Naia knew - that there was no curing him. Still, Rajke had not been hired to cure him. He had been hired to find him. "Very well," said Rajke. He stood, resolved to leave this magical place before temptation could change his mind. "Where are my things?"

Naia pointed into the darkness. Before Rajke could ask for light, the cavern brightened. Fungi began to glow all over the ceiling and walls in a dazzling array of blues, greens, violets, and yellows. It was not a bright light, but he could see now his pack, belt, and clothes in a tidy heap against the wall.

He pulled on his trousers and his shirt. They seemed cleaner. They had not been laundered with water or soap, but they smelled fresh and had no sign of the dirt, dust, and sweat that had been steadily accumulating on him over the last few days.

"When all this is over," he said, continuing to dress and ready himself for his journey. "Can I come back to you? Here?"

Naia nodded gracefully, retreating into the spring. "I look forward to it."

It was then that Rajke hefted his pack, and he suddenly remembered. Quickly, he set down the bag and pulled it open. He dug through clothes and tools, rations, and trinkets.

"Naia," he called urgently.

Naia reemerged from the dark waters. "What is it?"

Rajke stood, holding three bands of copper etched with arcane glyphs he did not understand.

"I think you may be interested in these."

***

Seventeen thousand years before Aura first spotted Rajke scaling the face of her mountain home in the red light of morning, another young man climbed the same mountain. Unlike Rajke, however, this young man had some idea of what awaited him in the volcanic peaks.

Temcotwyl was his name, but everybody called him Wyl. He was eighteen years old and on his third pilgrimage to visit the Bossom of Life, as his people called it.

Wyl recalled fondly his first visit to the holy site, the first rite of the Marrotal people, the right of wisdom. He went when he was six, a bit younger than most. Children were permitted their first rite in the spring after the first winter in which they ate only food produced by their own labor - their own crops, prey, garden, and forage. He spent a year in the mountains with the Life Givers, learning to live wisely.

The second right, the rite of control, came at the onset of puberty. Then, the Marrotal youths spent a moon with the Life Givers, learning to respect life and the power they now possessed to create it.

The third rite would only last a handful of days, starting the morning after the Life Givers greeted him. It would be his last journey to the sacred peaks for a long time if he were lucky.

He would take his fourth rite only when he lost a precious one - a spouse, a child, or his last living parent. He had been fortunate that, like so many others in the wake of the gray fever, he had not taken the fourth before the third. Or second. Or first. The rite of joy, they called it. The elders told him he would understand why they called it that when the time came.

Only a few took the fifth right, as it was the last, and was only taken by those who were dying and had no one to care for them.

Wyl's parents had prepared him for the third rite, the rite of passion. After the plague, which took more elderly than young, he only had three fathers and one mother left. It had been a sad three years. Still, as was tradition, they had each taken turns joyfully sharing advice, encouragement, and some gentle teasing with Wyl. It was a profoundly embarrassing tradition but one that persisted nonetheless.

So, armed with more sexual guidance than he had ever wanted from his parents, he scaled the rumbling mountain, his eagerness building with every passing step.

He was greeted first by the Wind, who told him how happy she was that he had come; then by the Fire, who gave him meat and bread, cooked by the younglings on their rite of wisdom; then by the Earth, who showed him to the lover's grove, where Wyl would be sleeping along with two other youths on their third pilgrimage; then by the Wode, who explained how he would spend the next five days, and what the Life Givers expected of him; last by the Water, who fucked him until he gasped and sputtered with elation and exhaustion - it was only a taste of the days to come.