The Love of the Sea

In the quiet of a seaside cove Tara of the Twilight finds love—and a struggle for survival!

For two days and one night the frail craft had borne the girl Tara across the waters of the Inner Sea in the very teeth of the great storm. And for two days and one night the yelling winds and the hungry waves had barely given her a moment’s respite. By now she was shaking with exhaustion, as if all the vigor of her young body had been drained to the dregs by the ordeal.

When the little craft hit the reef and upended, hurling her into the wind-whipped waters, Tara had sunk like a stone. Still new to this world of Twilight, she had never mastered the skill of swimming. The pure instinct for survival took over, however: limbs flailed, kicked; lips clamped shut against the salt water. She rose to the surface, where heavy surf lugged her upon the shore and left her limp and weary to the bone.

But the receding surf sucked greedily about her legs and would draw her back down into the wet maw of the thundering waves. With the last bit of her strength, the War Maid dragged herself up the slope of wet sand until she was beyond the reach of the tides. Here a small stream of fresh water fed into the Inner Sea and from it she drank, rested briefly, then staggered to her feet and went lurching up into the trees and bushes to seek a haven from the whips of the wind and the lash of the rain.

She found an opening in the rocky hills and sought entry, discovering a high-roofed grotto where a pool of fresh cold water rose from the bowels of the world to feed, doubtless, the very stream from whose bountiful breast she had sated her thirst. And therein she found a stranger, a young naked boy, half in and half out of the pool, gasping like one halfdrowned. Her Starhoenne vows drove her to the poolside, to drag the weak boy to dry earth. And then she stopped and stared with widening eyes.

He could only be a Merling, the boy in the pool. Tara had heard of them, the warm-blooded, amphibian semihumans who dwelt beneath the waves, but had never seen one before. He was both like and unlike the men and boys she had seen here in Twilight: perhaps her own age, but huskier and taller than she, his wet hide slick and cold to the touch, pale and sleeker than human skin, and tougher, perhaps to hold in body warmth against the cold embraces of deep waters.

As she dragged the gasping, halfconscious sea-boy out of the pool, other differences came to her notice. His breast was smooth, devoid of nipples, and his lean belly had no navel indented therein. Evidently, the Merlings bore their offspring live and did not breast-feed them. Also, his genitals seemed withdrawn into the abdominal cavity, for only a fatty slit was to be seen between his strong thighs.

His lips were thick and rubbery, and his mouth was wide, disclosing sharp white pointed teeth. His hair was long and sleek, almost like fur, and darkly green. There were gillslits in his throat. He had a body odor that was distinctly, but not unpleasantly, fishy.

He opened deep green eyes and regarded her blearily, and with puzzlement. “I thought you were drowning,” she explained. He grinned weakly.

“No, it is the water here; it is fresh, and will be the death of me, for I am bred to the salt sea, and this tasteless land-water will kill me in time. . . .” he panted.

He fell into a waking doze; Tara, exhausted, wrapped herself about him, tried to warm him with her own warmth, and fell into a doze herself. And woke therefrom, some time later, to find him suckling at her firm young breasts.

The grip of those full, wide lips was strong . . . and thrilling. As he suckled, he explored her warm rondures of breast with cold hands. The women of his race were breastless, and this difference between them fascinated him. She relaxed in his embrace, and let him suckle, while her shy hand explored his loins, and found his male organ now extruded. It was both longer and slimmer than those she had heretofore seen, and since it seemed to relieve his torment to be fondled, she fisted it with her strong little hand and brought him release and rest.

And that was the first day.

While the boy Merling—his name was Aille—was too weak to go down the slope to rejoin the salt sea from which the storm had slung him hither, he was also too heavy for the slender girl to drag or carry. When Lambence came, thin and weak and watery through thick, damp mists, she foraged from the cave, finding ripe fruits and nuts and berries for herself, and fresh fish flung high on shore, with which Aille assuaged his own hunger.

It was unpleasant to see him tear and gnaw at the raw fish with those strong, pointed teeth, but it was the way of Merlings and therefore natural. When he had devoured the fish she had fetched hither, he fell into a doze and seemed stronger than before. Tara knew the lad could not live long out of salt water, and cudgelled her wits to think of a means of getting him down the long, tree-clad slope and into the embrace of the mothering sea.

When he awoke, he reached for her again and, since it seemed to soothe him in his torment, she gave herself willingly into his embrace and. let him kiss and suck and nuzzle at her breasts. Then she guided his mouth down between her succulent thighs: his tongue was long and rough as a cat’s and she derived much pleasure therefrom.

But when he strove feebly to mount her, Tara resisted, mindful of her virgin’s vow. This time she comforted him with her own mouth and drew the salty seed from him.

This strange half-love between the War Maid and the dying sea-boy would not last long, she knew, for soon death would claim him. But while he lived, she served his needs and he served hers. Fruits and nuts and berries could not sustain his strength, so thrice daily she went down to the tidal pools in the shallows to see what fish had been stranded by the tides for him to feed upon.

“You are the only land-woman I have ever seen,” he confessed shyly. “Your hair is of a hue unknown to us, who dwell in our coral grottoes in the deeps, and your luscious breasts are a delight to me. How strange, to live high on the dry land, never knowing the love of the sea, that cradles you and rocks you, cool and sweet and comforting!”

She fed him her perfect breast again, and pleasured him with her moist hand until he tensed, gasped, cried out, and bathed his belly with his salty seed.

“Soon I must die,” he said sleepily into the warm curve of her shoulder, “never again to see the seagirls lifted above the wave, combing their long hair with combs of ivory, singing their mournful song . . . never to mount the sportive dolphins, to race among the coral crags, where the sea-bottom lies encumbered with the spars of ships, the bones of drowned sailors, and the great heaps of inestimable gems. ...”

She felt sad for him, but could think of no way to succor Aille, save with the comforts of the flesh.

The next Lambence, however, when Tara descended to the shore to find the fish to feed him, she discovered her own little boat. The waves had tossed it high upon the shore, where tree-roots had snagged and held it fast against the suck of the receding surf. The sharp-fanged reefs had not injured it.

Tara dragged it high up the slope, using the little stream as her road. There at the mouth of the cave, where the stream began, flowing from the pool in the grotto, she beached her craft and told the Merling of her plan. Whether it might work or fail, it was at least worth the trying.

It took the combined strength of both of them to get the sea-boy into the bottom of the craft. Then Tara guided the little boat into the bed of the stream, and let the flowing current float both boat and boy towards the salt sea he craved.

At times the prow or keel became wedged in the shallows, caught between rocks. Then Tara must push and shove and lever the boat free. At length they reached the beach, and the War Maid guided the little boat onto the breast of the heaving waters.

The great storm had long since subsided, its wrath somehow appeased. When she had guided the boat deep enough onto the bosom of the sea, Tara overturned it, letting Aille sink like a stone and return to his element.

Then she swam back to shore as best as she might, and found a place to sit on shore rocks slimed with seaweed. She rested, panting for breath, waiting to see if the salt water would revive her young sealover, or whether he was too far gone for that.

A time later, he broke water, whipping back slick wet mane with a toss of his head, eyes sparkling, laughing with renewed vigor.

“Land-woman, you have saved a son of the sea!” he called to her, shouldering through the soapy foam. She smiled and waved.

“And the bountiful mother of my kind, the sea, repays all favors!” he cried, tossing her a rounded thing which she caught in one fist and cradled.

It was a pearl the size of a cat’s skull, round and moony, glimmering and shimmering with cold fires. She stared at it entranced: there were princes here in Twilight that had lesser a treasure than this.

With a joyous shout and one last wave of his hand, the Merling sank into the surging foam and was gone forever from view. Leaving Tara with a treasure beyond price, and the memory of a brief love that would not soon be forgotten.

She rose and made her way through the shallows to the slope of the beach. Where the wild wind and wilder waves had carried her, the Starhoenne could not say. But all the wide world of Twilight lay before her, and she was young and strong.

She set forth through the woods into another day.