07.08.02 - 1:12 p.m.

(azra'il solo no. 2 from the linkage 2 back, copied once more in case damon deletes it. er, well, i guess this is the guy's v-name, whatever it was. hee.)

The time is night, the place some small hamlet by the calm and boundless ocean. It is quiet, the only sound being that of the rhythmic sea outside. He awakens, though he knows not why, and even before his eyes open he knows she is not there.

He finds her outside, a slender and fragile shape in a shifting white shift at the edge of the shifting sea. The night is starless and cold, the ocean a sprawl of briny darkness. A few scraggling patches of grass stirs and whispers in a fresh gust of the salty wind. Beneath, all about, the presence of the sea pervades, slidingly subtle, a slow unintrusive, gentle rhythm that nonetheless stirs the blood and rocks the soul. No wonder she comes here to calm herself after--after those dreams (for that is all they are, all they must be...not visions...not prophecies...). No wonder she stands at the edge of the ocean and listens to its haunting soft melody. No wonder...

No wonder he sometimes thinks her a creature from another world, an angel, a faerie queen lost. Wreathed in seamist, her unbound hair and her trailing hem blowing softly in the wind, she is an ethereal thing, something his unworthy touch might debase. So it is that he waits long moments at the door, hesitant, indecisive, unsure that his presence would be welcome when she seemed to have her own holy convenant with the salt sea. So it is that he only stands and watches her, a strange burning springing to his eyes, a strange ache to his heart as though she were something as unattainable as the stars, or the sea itself. Sometimes, he wondered if this was not all a dream; if he would not awake one morning and simply find her gone, disappeared with the night; if he might not blink now, and find that she has dissolved into a dream, and a wisp of curling cold mist.

It is not until she shivers, just so barely, and wraps her arms closer about herself that the spell is for the moment dispelled. He dares come to her then and slides an arm about her waist, lending her his warmth. In silence they stand for many moments, man and woman, lover and beloved, bearing witness to this body of water so ancient that it dwarfed even their long lives, this body of water that was once womb to life itself.