The heat in Djinni’s veins feels radiant he runs his teeth down her spine; her hips quake beneath his mouth. Something has spurred him farther than before. Djiini is not sure what it is, but she feels it in the way his touch turns from passionate to desperate, sees it in his eyes when his gaze locks to hers.

He no longer holds her still, but she doesn’t move.

Her eyes remain on his, warm brown streaked here and there with softer gold. She prefers the green – thinks it more striking – but when she lets her guise fall she is as she was originally made. Those eyes had never opened as she was held in her mother’s embrace; the little grullo filly had been born dead.

She is alive now. That is all that matters.

The cool press of the stone wall against her side is a startling sensation. It feels so cool, and she backs away, backs toward Stillwater. She refuses to think (some part of her has begun to sound the alarms). Instead she feels the slide of Stillwater’s muzzle along her smooth and supple hide, the dig of his teeth as her rounds her rump. His forelegs grip her as the fire in her blood overtakes her entirely.

She does not know how much time has passed. Her grey hide is streaked with sweat she does not remember. Stillwater is behind her and she turns to face him. The shadowy light of the cave casts his handsome face into stark relief, and Djinni wonders why she has not seen him like this before. He is handsome, but the world was full of handsome men (and devastatingly beautiful women). Something has changed, but she’s not exactly sure what it is.

Night has deepened around their cave, and the cool autumn air has crept into the cave. Djinni watches the heat rise as steam from Stillwater’s back, blending into the shadows of the cave.

She had thought him a creature of the earth until now. Why wouldn’t she? He was always hiding in darkness, lurking in his seaside cave. There had been nothing to suggest otherwise, but she sees it now. He is not something Djinni has ever seen before. Nearly everything is a repeat to her anymore. Her life was extraordinarily long, and her powers extraordinarily immense. The mare has done everything she has ever wanted, gone anywhere she ever dreamed, seen everything that has ever existed, known each fact that ever was.

She’s not sure about the black stallion.

Still defined by fearlessness, Djinni reaches toward him, steps farther into the darkness and is no longer sure where shadow begins and he ends. “I…” she begins, but the words fade into quiet. The space beneath his neck looks empty, like she should tuck herself there to fill it. She does not. “You…” Words fail her again.

“So you like… the cave?” Incredible.

Djinni’s other nature had never truly called her before the Reckoning. She had stayed safely in the sky or tethered firmly in the ground; the water had never sung to her the way it should have.

Something had changed in Nerine – or perhaps even before that, when Beqanna itself had rearranged the world around her. Djinni had only ever done what she wanted, and then she had suddenly been forced to endure everything, regardless of how she felt. She had eaten, she had drank, and she had swum in the ocean. The beady eyes of the Nerinian dolphins had beckoned to her from beneath the waves, but she had done little more than whicker a greeting, nudge them gently with a friendly hoof if they swam too close to her in the shallows.

Yet they had continued to call to her, chattering as they crested the foamy waves, flashing sleek grey fins as they danced above the water. It was almost as if they had known.

Djinni had dived into the water the instant she left Lagertha, and the dolphins had been there to greet her. They taught her the waves and the shore and the dark press of tons of water overhead. She had learned the water and yet had remained utterly oblivious to its presence in Stillwater.

When she had left Nerine, she had left behind the sea. She had brought Stillwater with her, but it had never occurred to her that he might be anything more than what he appeared to be on the surface. She still swam, from time to time, but there was no pod here in the freshwater of Sylva. There was no companionable comfort as she bumped against the others. She has missed their touch, and as she blinks – almost blindly – at Stillwater, she thinks she might have found it again.

He crushes that rising hope in a single sentence.

Djinni is proud, and in this moment she is terribly vulnerable. He tells her to get out and she does, vanishing in an instant rather than let him see her crumble in front of him.

He is alone in the darkness.

* * *

And then he is not, because she has wished him into the water in front of her.

Djinni stands at the edge of the pond beside Stillwater’s cave (she had not gotten very far at all). The mare looks into the still water where she has just placed Stillwater without a single ripple. It seems fitting, but there is no pleasure at the accidental wordplay on her face. Instead she is scowling, her eyes darker than brown, darker than black.

“I didn’t do anything.” She says, and her voice would be a hiss if it weren’t already a whisper, as though the woods and water could hear them.

A djinn does not have control of the world.

Djinni does not shape the world to her whims; the world shapes itself to please her. She wants him to sink and he does, the water and the earth pulling away to make space for him as she wades in beside him until only their heads and necks are above the water and the shore is yards away. She considers drowning him, decides against it. It might not work. She’d rather not find out what happens when the world does not submit to her whims. (If there are other reasons to not drown him, she’d rather not consider them.)

Instead she tries what had not failed her before, and reaches toward him. Her muzzle is smooth again, sleek in the way that had elicited a growl from him that she knows had not meant Get out Djinni but rather ‘Come closer Djinni’. Her sides are still grey, but they are as sleek as they are when she swam with the dolphins. Her eyes are still dark, but their lack of color belongs with her smooth sides. Pupiless and dark, her predatory cetacean eyes lack any emotion.

Her shoulder slides against his beneath the water, startlingly warm in the cool water. She turns her head to keep her muzzle along his neck, dripping water down his still-sweaty hide as she does, following the line of muscle until she reaches the water and pulls away.

The anger in his eyes she had seen in the cave is gone in an instant, and for a moment doubt flickers across her still face. She’s granted a reprieve as he looks down at the water, time to collect herself. His rage had become shock, and when he meets her gaze again it is something else entirely. She’d struggled to hide the doubt, but the amusement that bubbles up is completely unbidden. She’d been raging a moment ago, yet as he reaches for her with a stifled laugh she all but giggles aloud. Always quicksilver with her emotions, this is something else entirely. Stillwater seems happy, and so Djinni is happy with no logical reason as to why she should be.

Her efforts succeed, and the emotional elation she feels is muted only by the physical sensations. Djinni presses herself to him, feels the heat pass from his warm skin to hers with not even cool water between them.

The mare floats easily, far lighter than a creature her size ought to be. Bouyant is the right words, perhaps, and she only bobs down a little as he hooks a leg over the point of her hip, dragging her closer – under. Djinni doesn’t resist. She had backed herself into him before in the cave, had done her part in whatever it is they’ve done. Brazen. That is what she has been.

She is more cautious this time, lets him take the initiative but puts up no resistance. There is tension in her muscles, but it is from holding herself back and not from pulling herself away. That is clarified in the way she croons beneath his touches, quiet little sighs and breathy whispers that sound rather like his name on a running loop. Despite the chilled water around them she feels the same heat from before, a blistering flood that shimmers in her veins.

Reassurance. She had wanted reassurance that she had not imagined what had happened before, that she was not the only one that had lost herself. Of course, the passion in his touch does little to truly prove that, but she tells herself that it does. The water makes everything simpler, faster, and she raises her head above the water on a neck that is longer than usual. She doesn’t want to think again, so she moves, feels his warmth above her in the water, and presses back.