Bound With The Water Dragon

Swimming for It

Panic creeped up his neck as he followed the five of them out while many others loaded the glacier. Many heads turned but the others joked about how many people they’d be able to scare and loot they’d make away with. Gwyn was raring to go along with Grant. Bryson simply smoothed his hair over his ear once more as they made it out into the ice covered ocean. For somewhere so vacant, it was certainly loud. The ocean was loud striking the side of the glacier as if it should move on the wave’s behalf. 

Morgan couldn’t help but think it was metaphorical for how Ejder was trapped inside him. While the six of them stood there, still contemplating their decisions and just what they would do once they got closer to land, Morgan forced himself to jump. 

If he was going to prove himself to Ejder, that this was the way that they’d do it.

“Wait!”

He heard Liia call behind him but it was too late. Morgan’s feet had already left the icey ledge they stood on. It would be seconds before his dry clothes would hit the water and weigh him down, but at least he could use Ejder’s presence to keep himself from freezing to death as he plunged in. No matter how the dragon hid from him, Morgan knew the moment he broke the surface that this was what he was made for. 

As he plunged into the water he hit frozen chunks but no burn came thereafter. No human took a hit like that and didn’t have a physical response to it. Hypothermia came to mind but he didn’t shiver. All that was there was the taste of the salt water prominently reminding him of where he was and the slight sting it caused as it tempered his eyes. As Morgan settled into a comfortable pace, he came up for air only to naturally dive back down, far beyond the ice shelves. 

He knew from diving in general that the pressure would crush him at a certain depth so he made his way around the ice to the best of his ability, breathing in small gaps along the way. Morgan pressed on through the great blue water hoping he didn’t just make an absolute fool out of himself. He wondered if he was out there alone now. Just a boy, a dragon within his soul, and a mission to stop the travelers from corrupting the earth. 

Morgan frowned at that. 

“This is pretty much how we started isn’t it?” Morgan asked Ejder, who refused to talk to him then.

With the tone of their journey set, Morgan did his best to stay quiet and just enjoy the swim. Sea life out there seemed to leave him alone. Seals, sharks, even dolphins swam beside him at any given time. Schools of fish would follow for a time, then scatter to avoid other shadows but not his. Then all at once, every single one of them shot off in different directions, turning him around entirely.

His heart pounded wildly in his chest as the current below him changed enough to notice. Only, nothing seemed to be there. Morgan did his best to ease his concern as he floated just below the surface, still searching for anything to emerge out of the dark water. 

However, the scene around him settled once more. Fish filtered in, forming their school once more. It didn’t make sense. Morgan frowned once more, then shrugged it off. He continued through the clear water. 

“You’d tell me if I was about to die, right?” Morgan asked Ejder. 

Still, he didn’t expect to hear anything back from the dragon within but he had to try. There had to be a way to reconnect with the beast. 

“I’m not sure I would,” a familiar voice rang out beside him, echoing through the water as if it was heading towards him. 

Morgan whipped his head to the side to find Grant in his kelpie form galloping beside him. It was a sight to see. His powerful legs seemed to find a plain within the water that he could continue on as his tail pushed water back behind him. It looked as if it shouldn’t work at first but his grace matched his brother’s that raced alongside Grant. Their movements made more sense as he watched, entranced by such wonder. 

“Careful brother,” Bryson nodded at Morgan, making him feel unwelcome on his own mission. “You may be in the running for taking Liia’s place.”

Grant, even in his aquatic form, was easy to spot how furious it made him to be teased. He shouldered into his brother, countering Bryson’s tone with his own. 

“Careful brother,” he retorted, with nothing more than his tidal force to throw his brother out of the water. 

Morgan grimaced at the way that they continued and did his best to move on. If they were the ones that scared the fish, they could continue on elsewhere. It felt strange to speak up about what was happening to him but the longer he spent in the ocean, the more he felt connected to his lineage. Alien or not, something was trying to contact him and the more it did, the more compelled he was to open up that line of communication. 

If it was family trying to connect with him, shouldn’t he try to open that line?

“Morgan?” he heard a voice whisper to him.

It wasn’t one of the kelpies, nor anyone he knew. All the while Albion passed just underneath him with Liia attached to one of his tentacles. She wasn’t calling for him. She didn’t even look up to see him, which stung. He did his best to not let it affect him. The water in his eyes replaced the pressure building in his temples, and that which burned in his chest too. 

For a moment, he contemplated stopping. The four of them continued on without him just as he left them. There was no way to catch up with their speed. It reminded him that he didn’t really belong there with them. They were real and true, not just a boy and the trapped soul, but a human boy with no connections to this world. 

“Come on, slowpoke!” Gwyn hollered from just beneath him. 

“Woah!” Morgan shouted under the surface. 

“Grab on!” she hollered as he choked on the water he feared he swallowed. 

Morgan could hear Gwyn chuckle at him then. 

“What’s?” he gasped, “so fun...ny?” 

The salt water still burned down his throat as he tried to regain the air prominently in his lungs versus the water that he gagged on.

“You? I thought that was obvious…”

Morgan could only grunt at her then. 

“Why?” he choked out. 

“Really? That’s the question you’re going with? The one you want answered?” Gwyn pushed. “Not, ‘Why can’t I use my gills?’ or “How do I push my magic to behave?’”

It wasn’t his magic in the first place. If it wasn’t his, how would he push it to work?

“Listen, don’t ask. That’s fine,” Gwyn continued. “But if we lose as we get close to the islands, and I don’t eat, I swear I will suck that tiny little dragon out of your body like an oyster.” 

“You can’t do that…” Morgan shuddered at the thought. 

“I can and will. So get your s**t together, use your magic and let’s freaking go already!”