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Jester was sprawled across her bed in the girls’ room at the inn, fanning herself with one of her Traveler pamphlets. Beau stood with her forehead pressed to the window, trying to use the cool glass to relieve the oppressive heat of the day. Kiri was perched at the foot of Jester’s bed, ruffling her thick feathers and looking miserable. Yasha had disappeared down to the tavern to try and find something cool to drink.
“Of course the first day in weeks we don’t have any missions to complete is the hottest day of Unndilar,” Beau grumbled, lifting her head from the window and settling it on a cooler patch. “‘S way too hot to go out and do things in town.”
“‘S way too hot,” Kiri repeated in Beau’s voice.
“When it was hot in Nicodranas, I would go swimming in the ocean,” Jester mumbled, then sat up suddenly. “Oh my gosh, Beau, we should go to the beach!” she squealed. “There’s a lake a mile or so out of town, right?”
Beau was looking at Jester with interest. “Jester, that sounds fuckin’ incredible right now.”
“That’s two votes for swimming! Kiri, what do you think?” Jester asked the little Kenku.
“Oh my gosh, Beau, we should go to the beach!” Kiri warbled in Jester’s voice.
“That’s three!” Jester scrambled off the bed and ran for the door. “I’m gonna ask the others!” she called.
Jester ran down the hall to Fjord and Molly’s room and knocked on the door. “You guys! We’re going to the beach, do you want to come?”
Molly opened the door a second later with Fjord a few feet behind. “The beach? Now that’s an idea I could get behind. Fjord?”
“Don’t see why not,” Fjord agreed.
“Okay! I’m going to go ask Caleb and Nott!” Jester raced off down the hall once more, skidding to a halt outside the wizard’s door.
“Caleb! Nott! The rest of us are going to the beach, would you guys like to come?”
The door swung open to reveal a hot and uncomfortable-looking Caleb. He’d shed most of his usual layers but his face still was shiny with sweat. “Ja, that actually does not sound like a bad idea today. Nott, what do you say?”
“I mean I still don’t like swimming but I would like to come with!” was Nott’s reply from inside the room.
“Well, you do not have to swim, you can stay on the beach and make a sand castle or see what shiny things you can find in the sand,” Caleb offered.
“Mighty Nein beach day!” Jester cheered as she ran back down the hall.
Everyone mobilized surprisingly quickly, spurred by the idea of cool water waiting for them. Yasha was retrieved from the tavern, the cart was loaded with supplies (the list provided by Jester, the only one out of them who had any experience with what to bring), the horses hitched, and soon the Nein were rolling down the road that led out of the city.
In spite of the heat, the day was beautiful. The sky was the purest blue and thick white clouds scudded gently across it in the light breeze that blew.
In no time at all they reached the lake. It seemed that beach days were an idea that hadn’t quite yet migrated out of the Menagerie Coast as they were the only ones there. They unloaded the cart, laying out blankets on the soft white sand and setting up shady canopies with poles and cloth. Molly wasted no time in stripping down to the bare minimum, all tattoos on display before striding into the clear blue water and diving beneath the surface.
His face broke the surface a moment later. “Jester, darling, this was a superb idea,” he called back to the shore where everyone was in the process of shedding layers.
Beau had tugged on a pair of trousers with most of the length hacked off and shed her tunic and sash, leaving just her blue cropped shirt on. She wiggled her toes into the warm sand. “Agreed.”
Fjord was also wading slowly into the water. “Definitely,” he rumbled. He waded forward until he water came up to his chest and then kicked off from the silty bottom, diving in and propelling himself forward with a pull of his thick arms.
Caleb and Nott were, predictably, not getting ready to go in the water. They’d set up underneath one of the makeshift canopies and were already in the process of plotting out a sand castle. Yasha was also lounging under a canopy, which surprised no one- the woman didn’t exactly look like someone who thrived in the sunlight. Kiri was splashing in the shallow water near the shore, ruffling her feathers in the water and chirping happily.
Beau and Jester joined Fjord and Molly in the water. For a while they were content with lazily swimming around, until Molly swam behind Beau and used his tail to grab her ankle and jerk her under the water. After that, things quickly devolved into an all-out splash-and-dunk fight between the four of them with the shore-dwellers calling out encouragement. They eventually merged into teams after Beau and Molly tag-teamed an attack on Jester, and she pulled Fjord away from them to plot her revenge.
“Okay, so what I’m going to do,” she said quietly as they tread water, “Is do a frontal assault towards Molly to distract him. While I do that you’re going to duck down and sneak up from underwater and pull him down, okay?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Fjord agreed. Jester began swimming towards Molly and Beau, who were watching her them suspiciously. As she swan, she summoned her giant lollipop. It materialized almost directly over Molly and Beau’s heads. They noticed too late, and it fell into the water right in front of them with a huge splash. They both yelped and shielded their faces as a wave crashed into them, and in that moment, Fjord ducked underwater and began his stealthy progress toward them. Jester stopped swimming and waited, biting her lip to hide her grin.
She waited...and waited…. Molly and Beau began to recover from the lollipop assault and wiped the lake water from their faces.
“No fair using Spiritual Weapon!” Beau yelled. Jester kept waiting- any second now, they’d disappear under the water and Fjord would pop up laughing his deep belly laugh.
But nothing happened. Jester’s grin slowly melted as over half a minute passed without Fjord making an appearance.
Something was wrong.
Jester took a huge breath and plunged her head under water, kicking down into the blue depths. She kept her eyes open, even though the lake water stung them. She turned her head left and right, frantically searching until she saw a blurry green shape suspended in the water. Jester let out a screech muffled by the water and kicked frantically towards Fjord’s downward-drifting form.
Jester stretched out an arm and latched onto Fjord’s wrist, the first part of him she could reach. She dragged him up towards the light, her lungs screaming for air. She broke the surface with a gasp and hauled Fjord up with her, pulling him so that his back was against her chest and his head fell back onto her shoulder. She wrapped an arm securely around him and started stroking one-armed backwards towards the shore. Molly and Beau had noticed her frantic reappearance and hurried to catch up, helping support Fjord and pull him along. Yasha was waiting on shore and helped drag Fjord up onto the beach.
Fjord’s head dropped limply to the side as they settled him on the sand and a little bit of water dribbled out of his mouth. Jester shook him by the shoulders. “Fjord!” The warlock didn’t respond.
Molly knelt down and placed his ear next to Fjord’s mouth and laid a hand on his chest. “He’s not breathing but his heart is still beating. He’s fighting. He probably took in a lot of water and we need to get it out of his lungs.”
“How?” Beau asked. “Does one of you have a spell? Would Cure Wounds work?”
“I don’t think so!” Jester whimpered. “Um… we could…I don’t know!”
“Jester, you grew up by the sea,” Molly said, his voice maintaining a level of calm in contrast to the panci creeping into the others’ voices, grounding everyone. “Did you see this happen before? Someone fall into the water?”
Jester worried her lip with a pointed tooth as she thought. “I saw something once. But I’m not sure I remember how to- what if I make it worse?”
“Jester, quite frankly, Fjord cannot get much worse,” Molly said softly. “If there is any chance of something working, try it.”
“Okay,” Jester whispered. She laced her fingers together on Fjord’s sternum and pressed down sharply. Everyone winced at the dull crack and Jester almost stopped.
“You can heal him after, Jester,” Molly said. Jester continued her compressions for four or five more presses before she leaned down and pinched Fjord’s nose. She sealed her lips over his and forced several deep breaths into his lungs before resuming the compressions on his chest.
No effect for several heart-wrenching moments. Then-
Fjord jerked upward, choked, and pulled in one breath before the lake water made its way back up his windpipe. He gagged as water rushed out of his mouth and onto the sand before he collapsed back onto the ground.
Jester shimmied around to his head and gently eased his head into her lap. Fjord was taking in ragged breaths and they came out as hacking coughs, but he was breathing again.
“Fjord, you with us again?” Molly asked, leaning over the prone warlock.
“Y-yeah,” Fjord managed to choke out, the coughing becoming less ragged as he tried to steady his breathing.
“Fjord, what happened?” Jester asked, looking down at his upside-down face. “You went under to go get Molly and Beau and then you never came up and I went down after you and you were just drifting down in the water!”
“I don’t know…” Fjord mumbled. “I dove down, like we planned, and then I just…”
“Does this have anything to do with you waking up in the middle of a field choking on seawater?” Molly asked.
“Or when you stuck that orb into your chest?” Nott piped up from behind Caleb. “Which was really weird, and you never explained it, by the way.”
“I… yeah,” Fjord said, struggling to sit up. Jester placed a hand on his back as he pushed himself to a sitting position. “Yeah, it does. I have these weird dreams… I’m underwater and there’s this huge eye...It tells me things. I dove down and I heard it...even though I wasn’t asleep. I feel like... I lose my will when it tells me to do things. It told me to release my breath and I did. The dream I had in that field...I was able to breathe underwater and for some reason this voice convinced me I could again. So I tried.”
Jester wrapped her arms around him from behind. “You scared me so much! You should tell us this stuff!”
Fjord patted her arm. “I’m a’right, Jes.”
“I’m with Jester,” Beau agreed. “We’re all kind of a bunch of disasters here but we can be less of a disaster if we share our shit with each other.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Fjord agreed. “I’m fine, guys, really. Think I’ll stay on the beach for a while, though.”