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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | The Shattering destroyed more than just some of Fallon land: it caught a shrine to the Tidemother in its crushing wave, and at last it has been restored to its new form. The Fallons pay their respects and reveal their intentions to hold fast to the Kul Tiran faith. Romantic & personal character arc RP. 6300~ words. |
| Rating: | A for Adults Only 18+ |
Chain: Siarenne
In the weeks since the great wave smashed the Fallon coast, in the aftermath of the Hillsbrad atrocities and House hearings and specially-convened meetings and speeches delivered, Siamus Fallon's days have gotten, if it is possible, even longer.
He continues to rise at or before dawn, but now instead of a swim, he takes a ride down the coast to Fallon Harbor to see to the progress of repairs and recovery there, and to oversee the nascent construction of the three new ships he's ordered built. (The state of these does not alter markedly from day to day at this point, but McCall and his crews are patient with the Vice Admiral.) Some mornings he is home in time to breakfast with Avrenne, though he attends the meal still windblown and in working clothes, not yet having had time to change or shave. Some mornings he does not return in time.
Then there is the usual midmorning business of — well, business, and then he's gone again in the afternoon, though not as far this time: he is walking the grounds with Larabie discussing the rebuilding of gardens, terraces, and greenhouse, talking with Thredd on the state of the stables and stock, visiting (cordially!) with Casker John regarding the progress of the family burial ground at the foot of the northern hills where Sophie and Sir Somer have already been laid to rest, and overseeing — and, as often as not, pitching in with — the work of clearing the landscape of silt and stone, securing the newly eroded cliff-edge, rebuilding the House dock and the breakwaters at the beach.
He is usually absent for tea in the afternoon, but he is always home for a family dinner.
This evening, though, he has cut the time narrowly; he arrives in haste just in time to escort Avrenne downstairs, still in his rough outdoor clothing. As they descend the stairs, he asks low-voiced, for her ears alone, "Will ye come wi'me after sunset? The White Lady's high tonight and I've something to show ye."
"Yes, of course," Avrenne answers, in a quieter voice and leaning towards him, that bend of her like a sunflower seeking the sunlight, her eyes flicking from their path to him, trusting in his lead for the stairs.
She is a familiar vision in her spring finery, a dress she's worn before updated to suit her altered shape, a dark pink gentle mermaid silhouette dress with bright flashes of both gold colored beads and actual gold pieces that cover it, with sleeves of flowing sheer fabric layered over and over until it becomes opaque enough to hide her arms. It isn't suitable for much more than sitting down for dinner and simple walks, but that's all it's really meant to do.
It's only after the agreement is given that she asks, "Where will we be going?"
"To the beach," he tells her. "The shrine." There is a hesitation, and then he says, "The new shrine."
When the wave shattered the stony breakwater at the beach, it had destroyed with it the little shrine in the niche that the breakwater had formed against the cliff's foot.
"I would be very glad to," Avrenne says, curling her hand around his arm a little more, her eyes still on him rather than the stairs before her. "Should I bring anything specific?"
He is silent again for a moment, and then says, "I… don't know. Pearls, I suppose. Silver coins. It will only be the pair of us, as Lord and Lady of the House. It didn't seem quite right to have a… public sort of dedication, considering."
Considering the recent tragedies, or considering the fact that the tides themselves demolished the prior shrine, or considering the fact that Lord Fallon is no longer a tidesage who can conduct public ceremonies? Unclear. He does not clarify. Maybe all three.
Avrenne deliberately slows, almost to a full stop, giving them a few moments longer of just the two of them before they will enter the dining room. "I will admit I prefer it. Public displays can be…useful, and important, for others to see. This though…this has always felt more personal, and private, from the start. I would like it to be only us for this, in the dark with the moons and the water, like the first time."
Siamus smiles down at her, and the grateful relief in his gaze floods out the shadow of anxiety from moments ago. He nods. "Aye. The pair of us, then. Like the first time."
SOME TIME LATER
Outside, the blue dusk and mild evening air settled across the grounds are reminiscent of an evening not quite a year ago; the air is washed by the sound of the waves below, a slow and tranquil rhythm.
Absent this time are the faint perfume of night-blooming flowers and the drowsy glint of the fireflies. The air smells bitterly of salt and sea-silt, a pungent, low-tide smell, and there is neither sight nor sound of any of the nighttime creatures that might ordinarily have congregated here.
The stars still glimmer in the sky, though, and the White Mother's full face gazes down benevolently from the eastern sky, the Blue Child clinging beneath her shoulder.
Siamus has been silent since they left the house, but as they descend the stairs to the path, he wordlessly takes his arm back from his customary, gentlemanly escort of Avrenne, and instead takes her hand directly.
Avrenne is a pale figure beside him, the white of her linen nightdress picking up the glow of the moon, her hair bright and loose around her shoulders, her feet bare flashes of skin since they left the threshold of the house in anticipation of the beach. Her hand is small in his, but she clasps his back with a light squeeze, leaning into him. She has been equally silent, a warm quiet of companionship, the steady light of a candle in the dark.
In her other hand she holds a tiny dark blue drawstring bag, presumably her sacrifice to offer.
Siamus is dressed — also unlike the courtly formality of that first occasion — in his sailing clothes: a loose, open-necked shirt and soft, salt-worn trousers. The moon picks out the glint of the silver anchor pendant and the Tidemother's medallion at the base of his throat. He is also barefoot.
In his other hand, he carries a weedy, wild bouquet of early summer's bright compass flower and calendula mingled with bluebells and fragrant stalks of rosemary. There is no artistry to the arrangement, and it is already slightly wilted; he clearly assembled it himself earlier in the day and then left it waiting for nightfall without regard for such technical niceties as vases or water.
The path down to the beach is not the gentle, well-trodden slope of before, but a steep switchback dug into the new cliff-face, warded at the edge with a crude, temporary fence of rope strung between posts. At its foot, the beach is an expanse of churned sand, darker and coarser than before where it has washed together with the soil and rock of the collapsed cliff-face, although already the waves have begun to gentle its far edge into a smooth seaward plain. The waters tonight are dark; the only gleam that shows in them is that of the moons' pale light reflected in their indifferent mirror.
Avrenne descends the path with that regal air of hers, the attitude that suggests she is on her way to visit with royalty, and her manner of dress is immaterial. The only jewelry adornment to her is her wedding ring on her finger, and her hand is as cool as it should be in Siamus' own.
Though she walks by his side, it is obvious in her body language that she follows his pace, and his lead, moving only when he does, stopping when he pauses. As they arrive at the beach, there's the sense that she is observing the changes, taking notes of What's Different by long habit, and she tips her head up a little more, gazing up at the brighter moon.
Ahead of them to the right is what will be the little dock, under construction; as they pass the planks and posts stacked on the sand near the incomplete structure, the new-hewn cedar is faintly fragrant above the smell of the sea.
Where the beach once ended in the stacked-boulder wall of the breakwater, it is now an uneven tumble of scattered stones and slabs, strewn outward from the slumping cliff like a tower of blocks shoved over by a giant toddler. No effort has been made to dig them out and move them, to rebuild the wall, and the footing among them is a mazy scramble from stone to sand to stone again. Tide pools have collected abundantly in the shallows and crevices they form.
Here Siamus pauses to offer Avrenne his arm again, for support. "It's not so bad as it looks," he assures her quietly. "I know the path through."
Avrenne's hold on him is steady and full, a willingness to have her own balance be dependent on his, and she smiles up at him. "I'll trust in your navigation to see us there, Vice Admiral," she says, and there's an echo of another time a year before of another rocky scramble, her voice lower and softer in reflection of his own. "Your expertise in guiding us along rocks has never failed, and while they might not care about purpose or possession, I know you have me well regardless."
Siamus is briefly drawn from solemnity to smile down at her, a glimmer of warmth. "I've a steady, fair star to navigate by," he tells her, and leads her into the maze.
He guides them on an obscure and winding route among the rocks: mostly on narrow paths of sand, twice across broad, unevenly-jutting shelves of stone, and once where he stops to — again, an echo — take her by the waist and lift her lightly over a tide pool and onto the next rock before stepping after her.
Avrenne is a silent companion through the route, but not an inattentive one; there is a sense of someone mapping the route, memorizing the precise angles, the exact places to step.
At the ease of the lifting, there's an exhale, not quite a laugh, a humming caught in her chest, and a lingering look before she pays more attention to the route once again.
At last, though, he draws her to a halt. "We're here," he says.
They are standing at what is approximately the center of the jumble of stones; ahead of them is a great, flat-topped boulder that stands a little higher than its surroundings. It is tipped at a very slight slope downward toward the sea, higher on the cliff-side than the water-side, and from where they stand now, Avrenne can see the kraken-carved stela from the old shrine jutting upright. It has somehow been found and dredged and dragged here to be placed almost defiantly atop this other rock, not in the shelter of a niche now but on a broad and concave slab of stone under the open sky. The tide pool that stands at its foot now reflects the moons in full, unveiled by walls or darkness.
The stela is not undamaged. The upper right side of it has shattered away, so that in the moonlight the kraken now seems to cling desperately to the left, half its arms unaccounted for. This, too, seems a sort of defiance: that precarious but stubborn hold.
When the shrine comes into view, her gaze goes up and around, a noting of the open sky, the position, and settles at last on the stela with a soft oh. There's a tension in her hand in his, a forward step towards the stone that seems reflexive, and a reaching out with her other hand still holding the drawstring bag, the way she might reach for someone injured or hurting.
Siamus takes Avrenne's hand again and leads her to a place where the slab's edge is an easy step up from the rock below it.
He steps away from her, toward the stone and the tide pool before it.
"Not hidden away," he says quietly. He might be addressing Avrenne; he might be addressing the stela. "In the open, now, under the sky. I don't know if that's… why I lost favor, before, but —"
Avrenne lets him pull away, her hand dropping to her side, still some steps behind him, and so it is when he speaks of what might have caused him to lose the Tidemother's favor, there is nothing at all to suggest her own thoughts in either her expression or hand, and she does not voice them.
He doesn't finish, but stands still for a moment, still gazing. At last he goes forward, kneels down by the shallow pool on the rock, and lays his bouquet in the water. A few shed petals float outward from it on the ripples.
By the time she steps forward to his side, her left hand curling over his tattooed right shoulder, her skin is as cool as it should be, and her touch a steady light pressure. She doesn't yet kneel, her face turned to Siamus, addressing him. Her voice hushed, but strong.
"Sometimes, the greatest favor of an elemental force comes with a cost when that power is needed most," she says. "Elemental forces are without mercy, even if they are without cruelty. It is in loving them after that shows them who we are."
"Aye," he agrees, still looking at the flowers in the water. He lifts his hand to cover hers on his shoulder. "No mercy and no justice in her. It's how we stand in the face of her that matters."
Using his shoulder as balance, Avrenne kneels next to him. She withdraws her hand to open the bag she's carried with her, fishing out the contents out into her left palm.
It's sort of an odd selection, at first glance: a scrap of fabric and a silver coin.
As with Siamus' bouquet choice, it's in the details that the significance lies: the fabric has been cut from a dress, a swirl of unusual embroidery that suggests Sophie's work, surrounding a little cluster of blue pearls, very specific blue pearls from Siamus' engagement gift, possibly the last of them not made into something else. The silver coin is old, battered, and of a time before the Alliance; this is a coin of Lordaeron, possibly even before the Dark Portal itself.
Avrenne cups her left hand with her right, looking at the water with an unflinching gaze, and reaches forward to place her hands in it, speaking to the stela this time, down to a whisper.
"I have only ever asked of you one thing. Spare him from your great wrath, leave him his life, and let him come back to me. That is all I want. You have granted it time and again, and I will continue to ask for it. You have my gratitude beyond measure for it."
With that, she lets both items go gently into the water.
Siamus turns his head to study Avrenne with black-eyed intensity, even darker than usual in the moonlight. "My Lady Blanche," he says. "My own star."
Avrenne removes her hands from the water, tipping her head to look back at him. She reaches out her hand — no colder from the water than it was a moment ago — to touch him lightly on the cheek. "My Vice Admiral." The brush of her hand drifts down, to touch just above his medallions. "My sailor."
He takes her hand and lifts it to kiss her fingertips, still gazing intently at her. "I am grateful," he says — and despite the way he is looking at Avrenne, it seems he is addressing the water — "for my homeward star, my own White Lady. For the blessing of our marriage. And for coming home time and again to find her waiting on the shore."
(That is presumably metaphorical. Avrenne does not spend a lot of time literally waiting on the shore.)
There's a twitch of her hand in his, but rather than pulling away, it's a tightening squeeze around his hand, as if there had been any danger at all of him letting it go. Her brows turn inwards in maybe pain or some intense emotion, before she smiles at him, looking at him in that way that seems like the rest of the world has fallen away. It is only him there that she sees.
"I always will be," she promises, hushed but clearly audible, and it's unclear if she's addressing it only to him, or to the world.
Siamus kisses her fingertips again gravely. "If I were a superstitious man^, I'd say it was Her tides that brought ye to me, dressed in that gown at Morgauna's ball."
^He is.
He looks down at the water again without releasing Avrenne's hand. "And grateful for my firstborn, named for —" He pauses, and when he continues there is the slightest rasp to his voice. "Named for the old ways and her heritage. I vow she'll be raised to cherish them, and to love the wild tides as her people always have." He touches the water's surface with his free hand. Nothing in particular happens save the usual, expected spreading ripples. He watches them for a moment and withdraws his hand. "She'll be presented to the tides wi' due ceremony in time."
Avrenne's hand holds his with unusual tightness, a grip of her limited strength more appropriate for someone who might fall down into some abyss if not for this tether. Her attention is divided in equal parts between Siamus and the water, her eyes flicking from one to the other, her head held tipped up into the light of the moon.
"So," says Siamus, still rustily. "Here is the shrine — the new shrine — of the Stormwind Fallons for the Lady Below, to pay Her honor. Our faith deep and unbroken as the waters, until the world is swallowed again." He moves his hand, the slightest twitch, as if to touch the tide pool's surface again, but then he curls his fingers and does not, simply staring down.
This silence does not sit so easily for Lady Fallon, and there is the visible rise and fall of her chest, her other hand crossing her body to cover their linked hands in a light touch. Whatever feeling it is that grips her results in a quiet sound, a low humming, the harbinger of an intent to sing, to fill the silence with something.
Siamus turns his head slowly and watches her as she begins to hum. He waits for the offering of song, intent on his wife once more, still holding her hand.
Avrenne seems for a moment longer on the verge of something — some culmination of an emotion — but is caught at Siamus' movement, and she looks up at him in a quick turn of her head. There are no strange lights in her eyes, and no fire in her hand, but there is something in her face, a fighting of her features caught in discomposed lines like she might cry or shout or do something.
Her breaths go into two sharp inhales, a shaky exhale of the humming. Another. It steadies, her face goes calmer, more still like the water, her eyes fixed on him, and when she starts to sing, although one could interpret it as a general hymn to the sea and the shrine, it is entirely likely that she is actually singing to Siamus, and the rest is only an audience allowed to witness it, as she starts the Amhrán Na Farraige.
Siamus's expression softens into reverent tenderness as he watches her.
He waits and listens through the first and second verses, but that is as far as he lasts; when she reaches the first mo ghrá, he releases her hand to capture her jaw instead, and leans over to kiss her.
Avrenne turns into him with the sound of a start of a sob caught in place by his lips, singing the rest silently and soundlessly in only action of deep feeling, as she drops the drawstring bag to the ground, forgotten.
(That's probably okay. Maybe the ocean wants that, too.)
He takes her shoulder in his free hand now and pulls her closer against him without breaking the kiss; he releases her shoulder to wrap his arm around her waist. They are on a literal rock in the open air so the setting may not be ideal, but it seems like he has some pent-up feelings of his own to express.
Well, she's listening, Vice Admiral.
She is also attempting — admittedly not with any particular athleticism or ability of note — to climb him like a topgallant mast. It is likely she has either forgotten where they are, or has ceased to concern herself with the details.
Siamus shifts from his knees to sit on the rock and pulls Avrenne into his lap. He breaks away from the kiss and with his hand still at her jaw, tilts her head to one side. His lips are warm on the side of her throat.
She makes a low sound at the kiss to her throat, her head falling more to the side, as she arches her body encouragingly into him, hands grasping at his shirt.
He takes his arm from around her waist, now that he has her situated where he wants her, and begins attempting to hoist up her nightgown.
The freedom of her legs from her nightgown increases her athletic abilities, enough to better kneel at either side of him. If the stone under her knee bothers her at all, there's no sign of it, and it's likelier she takes little notice of it at all, her world narrowed down to other sensations and other priorities.
One of which is that she needs to find the buttons to the front of his shirt, an obstacle that would be made easier if she would look at what she is doing, which she is not. Her eyes are half closed, and her hands are frantic, hurried pulls at the front of his shirt. Either she'll figure it out or rip it off; it remains to be seen.
Siamus is less concerned by the matter of his shirt than he is by his trousers. He seizes one of her hands and guides it down to the buttons there instead, shifting urgently under her even as his mouth finds the side of her throat again. "Blanche," he breathes against her skin. "My lady."
She's bare beneath the nightgown, and as he shifts under her, she moves with him, seeking friction and pressure.
"Siamus." Her breaths are louder in the night's quiet, soft rises and falls of waves that rock her body rhythmically, as she holds her head in place in his hand, and seeks out the buttons of his trousers. At least one makes its way to the sacrifice offerings to the ocean, but the rest hold on beneath her hasty unbuttoning to free him.
"Siamus, please."
What nice manners she has.
Sufficiently free of his trousers, Siamus puts his hands beneath her to lift her up and then position her carefully — okay, not that carefully, maybe more hastily than carefully — over his straining cock. He eases her down onto him slowly, splaying a hand now at the small of her back, his head still bent for her throat.
She whimpers, gasping harder at the first contact. It's a tight fit, and she rocks her hips in small movements to ease herself down, as her left hand reaches to grab at his right arm, at an exact point of his tattoo, wrapping around his bicep, and she squeezes with all the strength she has — admittedly, not much — as she fits him inside her with a soft cry, her face to the moonlight, eyes open.
He lifts his head to watch her face, his expression fierce and focused as his hand at the base of her spine encourages her to movement. "Look at ye," he tells her breathlessly. "Look at ye, precious, greedy girl."
Her eyes flick from their point to his in a precise line, glittering with the moonlight caught in their dark reflection. She braces a hand on his shoulder to give enough leverage to move without breaking his hold on her.
"Yes, I am. Greedy." The words are loud whispers, spoken to him, her voice husky smoke. "Give me everything I want." It sounds like an order, but her eyes flutter closed for a moment, as she hits just the right angle she needs. Her eyes open again, on his. "I want it all. You know what it is."
"Me," he says roughly, and then there is a heartbeat's pause, a flicker of uncertainty. "This," he clarifies, and moves beneath her, pushing insistently deeper. He wraps a hand around the back of her neck.
There's a languor to her that follows, a submission as she exposes the line of her throat to him, but her eyes don't leave his. "Yes." It could be ambiguous, which part she's agreeing to, but she doesn't leave it there.
"You. Everything." Her hand tightens on his arm, the pressure on his shoulder growing. "All of it. You … " Her eyes close briefly. "Reading at breakfast. You. Charting in your office." The heat of her grows hotter in that particular memory, a rising inner scorching. "You. Singing to our daughter. You, on the cliffs. You, here. You, always you."
The breaths of her are growing sharper, her movements growing more intense. "Siamus." Every part of her tightening, as his name becomes a litany, a repeated breath in and out, staring at him like she's trying to say something in her eyes, something in his name.
And she waits there, on the edge of her climax, breathing his name, trembling.
"Avrenne," he answers her, and it almost sounds like a question. "Ye have me, Avrenne. Come to me, anamchara, I need ye." His hand tightens on the nape of her neck; his gaze is plaintive and a little wild. "Come to me. Stay wi'me."
It's a wonder that her smile does not literally illuminate her, even if she only holds it for a soft moment, before her right hand grips him in return, fingers in his hair, bringing them together for a kiss of near bruising force, crashing down on him in hard strokes, a word formed by her lips that is lost in the wave of her climax, a gripping inferno, a cry that sings out into the night air.
Siamus shudders briefly beneath her, his hand on her back clutching her close as he finds his own release in the throes of hers. He is silent, but his hands and mouth are eloquent and forceful against her, and when the moment has passed he wraps his arms around her in an iron hold, resting his face in her hair.
Her hair has the strongest scent of her, but even this blends with the ocean air around them rather than overpowering it. Her own hold on him is unrelenting, arms and legs both, a half-kraken of only four limbs but as unwilling to let go, as she rests against him, warm breaths in the night air the only sound she makes for a long moment.
She turns a little more into him, and he can feel the movement of her cheek, and the sound of the smile in her voice. "Anamchara," she repeats, heartfelt, even if it is a little off perfect pronunciation in her Lordaeron accent. She's whispering still, like they might be overheard, and she's only speaking to him. "Will you sing the rest with me? Together."
His answer is a moment's soft humming into her hair, the last notes of the refrain he had cut short, and then he lifts his head and begins, also softly, to sing from there.
There is something more plaintive in the song this time: less the soothing, lullaby way he has sung it before, but a yearning reflective of the song's actual words.
When Avrenne joins him, it's in the way of someone who has trained in harmonizing in a duet, weaving her voice into his rather than singing either under or over him, her voice resonating and building with his in support. She keeps her own voice softer, although she's not capable of singing especially quietly, the vibrations of the way she sings palpable this close to him.
It is evident when the pair of them sing in harmony like this that his voice is not formally trained; hers is the silken thread weaving together the rougher cloth of his. His voice is clear and soulful, though, and the notes true. When the last one dies, he sits with the quiet that follows.
When it is over, Avrenne sighs against him, letting her head rest on his shoulder. "It's beautiful," she tells him, a soft whisper of sound and a wealth of feeling in the words, holding onto him like the connection of their bodies will keep a spell from breaking, or perhaps a call sent out undisrupted. "All of it. All of you." She lifts her head to pull back only as far to be able to look at his face, seeking his eyes.
He is gazing back at her with that same childlike perplexity he wore in the immediate aftermath of his sacrifice, trying to come to terms with his new alienation from the world. What he says is, "I love you, Avrenne."
It is not a passionate declaration but a strange and urgent assertion, as if he is trying to make clear to her something she does not understand, repeating something in a foreign language in hopes that the emphasis will somehow translate it this time.
There's no surprise in her expression, but it brightens into a wide smile that softens into a pleased glow as she runs a hand through his hair, gently stroking it back from his face, studying his features like she's memorizing him in that moment to describe later. "I love you. My Siamus Fallon. The most incredible, wonderful of men." Her smile grows again for a moment, a reflex, before she meets his eyes with an intensity of her own, as she sets her fingers against his cheekbone, leaning in so close he can feel the rise and fall of her chest against his, her voice low but not a whisper. "She will see it, too, what I see. Your devotion, your loyalty, your faith, your love. She will see it, and know what She has lost in this silence. I cannot believe that anyone who has truly known you as She has, as I do, could ever turn from you, and yet if She has in rage, when it cools, I believe She will find you again. I will wait with you, as long as it takes, and for all time after. I am here with you, no matter what comes."
Even if that is the literal tide coming in from low tide, who knows. Not Avrenne.
His gaze is despondent as he looks at the tide pool of the shrine beside them. His bouquet lies sodden and inelegantly in the shallow water, wilted petals now drifting out around it like strange constellations in a spreading sky. "I don't know what I did to make Her rage. I don't. I don't know why She'd leave me."
Oh no, someone's baggage is showing.
He looks back to Avrenne again. "I can't — I come here, and I sit, and I sing, and I can't… feel any of it. None of it speaks. I'm… drowning in a silence, Avrenne." He bends to hide his face against her hair again. "But you won't leave me, anamchara. Ye won't."
Avrenne holds him against her, and if there is something a little inherently motherly in the embrace, she's also still half naked in his lap in a very not-motherly way, so maybe it balances out.
"No," she agrees fiercely. "No, I won't. There is no power on this world or any other that could make me leave you." It's almost a threat more than a statement, a warning to the Powers That Be, perhaps. But her voice gentles again, her hand moving in his hair soothingly. "But I don't think this was something you did, Siamus. You said even before the wave, there was something wrong, a rage in Her. Someone, or something, did this to Her. We could find out, try to help Her, find a way to calm Her. When She does calm, if She can be calmed, then I know what She will see. That you have been here, all along, never stopping trying to reach Her, never abandoning Her, because that is who you are. I will stand with you before those Tides, my voice with yours, and I will hold my faith in you."
Siamus takes a deep, unsteady breath, and then lifts his head again. "Aye," he says. "Yes. We will — yes. I would never turn away from Her, no more than I would from my own homeward star, my heart, my Lady Fallon." He takes Avrenne's face between his hands and stares down at her. His eyes are shining with almost feverish intensity.
She smiles up at him, her own eyes brighter with unshed tears making them glitter with reflections of the moonlight, as she stretches yearningly towards him. "That is who you are," she repeats as solemn as a prayer. "My Siamus Fallon."
He bends his head to meet her lips with his own, tenderly.
When he draws back, he rests his forehead against hers for a moment and is silent, simply breathing, his arms still wrapped around her.
At length he says, with a faint, dry humor, "Should we move, perhaps? I confess it's not the most comfortable place I've sat."
He can tell she comes down from somewhere else, a recalling of her place in the world, because she draws back a little as her eyes flick to the shrine and the beach — oh, yes, they are on a rock, look at that — but also she is once removed from the rock, sitting on his lap, her legs wrapped around him comfortably.
So her expression grows impish with a veneer of affected seriousness, a teasing bright in her voice. "Oh, that's unfortunate. I confess that I am rather fond of this particular seat of mine, very comfortable. Perhaps we might just find you another?" She can't hold the seriousness though long enough to keep it up, and she tips her head back as a warm, deep laugh rises up from within her, spinning up and out into the night.
After a moment Siamus laughs with her, a softer, drier sound, and leans to rest his forehead against hers again. When he shifts, it is to capture her mouth with his, as if to drink in the rest of her laughter, to taste that delight for himself.
Eventually he draws back, smiling now. "I expect a bed would be the most comfortable seat of all, but once we've reached one, you're welcome to take your present seat back again if ye like it."
He moves as if to lift her from his lap, and then his gaze is caught by something past her and he freezes. "Avrenne," he says, still staring.
The black waters beyond the rocks have begun to glimmer with a soft, blue light of their own, gathering together in strands beneath the waves: the jellyfish are collecting once more.
She tenses initially at her name, her hand going to his shoulder to grip it tightly as she turns sharply to follow his line of sight. She relaxes with a soft oh at the jellyfish. There's a humming of the start of another laugh in her chest, as she looks back to Siamus with a bright smile lighting up her face, and she uses her hand to push up into an elegant stand. She reaches it out to him in offer, a perfect gentlemanly gesture. "Our jellyfish. Shall we say good evening to them before we find you a more comfortable seat?"
He reaches absently for her hand — though he does not actually use it to hoist himself up, but rises under his own power because he is also a gentleman. And then he releases her hand to button his trousers, like a gentleman.
He steps forward, toward the rock's edge, to watch the jellyfish gather in slow-drifting ribbons of luminescence. "I wasn't sure," he admits to the night air. "I wasn't sure they'd come back." He clears his throat.
Avrenne steps up to his side and curls herself around his right tattooed arm, not in true escort as much as an arm hug, leaning her head against his shoulder, her hair moving gently in the sea air. "Do you think they were waiting for us to come back first, perhaps?" Of the two of them, Avrenne is not the sea life creature expert.
"Aye," he says softly, seeming a little dazed. "It may be. For the shrine, and for —"
He stops. After a moment he clears his throat again and says in a more Sciencey voice, "The storms and the wave must have disrupted the bloom. It's a new hatch, perhaps."
"Mm. A new start, then, finding their safe harbor once more." She turns her head to kiss the kraken under the shirt, looking up at Siamus rather than out at the jellyfish. "Shall we go back to ours?" There's a touch of a playful tease to her voice as she points, with an exactness without looking, in a direct line up towards the house. "Our shoes are just there."