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There is a land far away that is first to see the sun rise each day, held within the arms of the sea. Verdant mountains rise into the clouds, and golden coasts fall in and out of the waves with the hours of the days. The ocean bubbles up between the cracks in the land in streams of hot and cold, never the same in any two places.
It is said by those who live there that it is only a matter of time before the waves crest and flood the hills and fields, sweeping all who live there away with the tide. They hope it will be years away, but they have no way of being certain. For that purpose, they spend the dark months of the year crafting gifts for the spirit of the sun and the sea, a god who walks the earth and grants favor to those talented and generous-hearted enough to win his attention.
It is a fickle way to live a life, in his opinion, but in his eyes, they are a young people and they know no differently. They know nothing outside the lands upon which they live; they know nothing beyond the horizons that bleed red at the start of each morning and the end of each eve. They know only the horrors of summer storms and winter winds. Their worries are limited to having enough food to feed their children, and weather fair enough that they shall not freeze. They know nothing of the cruelties of capricious solar winds, or starving stars, or the empty expanses of the universe.
They know nothing of being alone.
The Katsuki clan is one of ancient and noble lineage, residing in a large house high above the coast that never runs risk of flooding, and is able to serve as many tenants as the lord within might deign to host at once. It is said their clan has been blessed by good fortune, for they are loyal to the Emperor, divine heir to the gods.
The family lives surrounded by water, by hot pools and flowing streams and crystalline salted waves. As such, they have never been far outside the edge of his awareness, but none of them are ever the sole subject of his thoughts.
In truth, Victor has never taken any special notice of them before the boy is given to him.
In all his eons of existence, Victor has oft taken possession of wayward souls—that is unavoidable. Some are given through the misfortune of carelessness; some bequeathed knowingly by those who wander into his waiting arms for the promise of peace beneath the waves.
This is different.
One moment, he is minding his own business in the freshwater stream, a quiet place to rest away from the roar of the sea. The next, he finds a little life within his grasp, with no idea how it has come to be here.
The babe is young—months, if even that. These are the earliest days of spring, and the infant a winterling, but the water’s chill is still dangerous to even the hardiest of men. Beside the shining banks lies a woman fallen ill, shallow breaths passing her lips and a fever upon her brow. Victor can nearly hear the flutter of her heart, delicate as a betta’s fins.
This has to be her son, tiny thing as he is. Fragile, as all humans are, but perhaps even more breakable. The mortal infant’s bones emulate the most delicate of ancient corals; he is shielded only by a tawny, furless pelt. He is smaller still than the pups of newly whelped southern seals.
For a moment, from his stillness, Victor thinks the boy may have already departed from the world. He spares only a thought for the mourning of the mother whenever she wakes; wonders if she would not rather be stricken dead by the illness than what she will discover if she finds her infant tragically, accidentally drowned.
If only for the span of a heartbeat, Victor feels sorry for the loss of a creature so helpless.
And then the child opens his eyes, the same deep maroon of a summer’s eve. The babe’s arms begin to move and his little legs begin to kick—a marvel. A miracle. Unsettling. Wondrous. Victor knows not how it has come to be, but only that he has never seen magic within the eyes of a mortal until this moment.
The boy reaches out and touches his cheek with such tiny fingers, dainty as green reeds. When his mouth splits on a toothless smile, Victor knows with sudden certainty a strange and powerful thing—
—he is being seen.
More miraculous still, the infant does not sink. Without any assistance at all, the child rises to the surface until his button nose breaks the veneer of the current, and Victor decides.
This life will not go to waste. This life will carry his interest, his attention, and never need know the horrors that Victor is capable of. A mortal soul, victorious as he, with the courage to touch the face of a god without blinking. Innocent. Shining. Small.
But he will grow, and Victor will be sure to see him through safely to adulthood.
Victor has not had cause to think about his physical form for many years. But he gathers himself now, forms hair from seamist and eyes from tide pools and flesh from pale sands, smooths himself like polished stones and becomes a man. He scoops the child into his arms and holds him to his chest, inhales the lingering scent of powder and woodsmoke to chase the tang of salt from his lungs.
It is with a great and aching sadness that Victor lets the child go; sets him on the shore and pulls the water from his skin, leaving him clean and dry. He is unbothered by his nudity or the ignominies of dirt as he lies on his belly in the spring mud. It will wash away when he submerges again. He reaches out to place the infant securely under the mother’s arm. He wonders if, in all his years of granting gifts, he has ever once given back a life; if he has ever once felt responsible for a creature’s safety the way he does in this moment.
Then he uses the water to cool her brow, allows it to sink through her skin and cure her maladies, to break the fever that has such a strong and dangerous hold over her. Her eyes flutter open behind dainty spectacles, and the auburn wave of her hair follows her as she sits up. For one moment, she is pale and terrified. Her eyes are upon Victor, and then search frantically for her baby.
She does not ask Victor who he is. He suspects that she knows.
“Thank you,” she says instead, and her voice shakes as she clutches the infant close. She is young—a mother only in her second decade, and from what Victor remembers, upon her second child. “You saved him, didn’t you?”
“And you,” Victor replies. He watches her—Hiroko, if he remembers correctly. “What is his name?”
She looks panicked. Wise people do not give their names to olden creatures, whether they be gods or fae. But she knows she is in his debt, and fears she may incite his wrath if she denies him. With dread in her voice, she whispers, “Yuuri.”
Yuuri. Victor smiles. A victor like himself, indeed. “You needn’t worry; I’ll not keep track of any debts. It is enough to see him alive and well.”
Hiroko hesitates, though she looks relieved. “Truly?”
Victor nods once. “The oceans live inside your son. Whenever he is near the water, he shall be safe. You have my promise.”
Faltering disbelief wars with happiness. However, the doubt melts as she looks into the face of her child, and sees him reaching for Victor. “He has the Sight.”
“And so do you.”
She says nothing. She does not want to give herself the chance to confirm nor deny; but a fact is a fact, and Victor is not a capricious god. He bears her no ill will for what she was born with, however dangerous it may be. Instead, he lets the matter slide. His eyes are fixed on the child.
Victor reaches back, and the infant’s fingers curl around his own. The baby’s smile warms the pools within his chest, teeming with life like those along the coast, lit golden by the sun. He allows that warmth to travel up the length of his arm, to traverse the distance between his own flesh and the babe’s. Victor is aware of it even as it leaves his body and finds a new home, settling around one tan, chubby wrist like a delicate silver bracelet—glimmering in the light in three lines of waves, thin as sea silk.
Hiroko’s eyes fall upon it. They linger.
Victor does not. He slides back into the water and feels its call around him. But he has one last thing to say. “The gifts your people leave—their generous efforts are noted. Appreciated. I cannot always stop the storms, since the lands need rain to thrive. But if ever you find yourself uncertain of the winds to come, listen to Yuuri. He will keep you safe.”
“Thank you,” she says.
Victor nods in acquiescence. With one final look upon the boy and the silver spirals Victor has left around his wrist, he sinks beneath the waves and departs.
The years pass. Victor visits whenever the tides carry him toward the isle, toward Yuuri. Would more often if he could, though it doesn’t take long to realize that the mark upon Yuuri’s skin is a tether between them, a warmth that glows in Victor’s heart when footsteps near the coast.
He visits, time and time again. Sometimes often, sometimes years between.
When Yuuri is sixteen, shy and stuttering, Victor sits with him on the shore and watches the sun go down. They are an arm’s length apart, but the silence is comfortable. He has never known companionship, but Yuuri is smart. Yuuri is lovely. Yuuri has built shrines for him, left offerings for him, and Victor does not fully realize how young adolescence is for humans. He only knows that for the first time in his existence, he has a companion.
“Will you come with me?” Victor asks. “I’ll teach you about the ocean, the currents, the waves. There are so many places to see. We can sail the world together.”
Yuuri stares at him in shock. Wide eyes and chubby cheeks, still tinged with youth. Still a child, Victor realizes all at once. Asked to leave his mother, his family, his home.
It’s too soon. Too cruel to ask of a child desperate for a friend.
Victor turns his eyes back to the water as the sun dips below the horizon, paints the sky in shades of violet and blue. He answers his own question. “Never mind,” he says. “I shouldn’t have asked you that. It’s too soon.”
Yuuri swallows audibly. He is still so young, so eager. Disappointed and relieved. “Oh,” he whispers. Wraps his arms around his legs, but doesn’t shiver at the cold ocean wind. The silver swirls on his wrist glow in the sunset. “Then… will you ask again?”
“Do you want me to?”
Yuuri is quiet. He rests his cheek against his knee and pulls his eyes from the distance. Pins them on Victor instead, and slowly nods. “Keep asking,” he says softly. “When you come back, keep asking.”
Slowly, with strange and terrible affection, Victor smiles. Reaches over, touches his wrist, the mark laid upon it. “Of course, Yuuri.”
The ocean always drags him away with the force of the current, but so too does Victor always return. He asks, and Yuuri answers. Push and pull, with the rise and fall of the tide.
But he always leaves alone.
Time passes, and as another summer crests and crashes onto the island, so does he.
Victor pulls himself from the water and solidifies sea mist into pale linen garments that ruffle with the breeze. He passes the altar Yuuri built at the crook of his favored estuary, the place where freshwater meets and mingles with salt. He passes shining coins, fresh-cut flowers, steaming plates of food. Many of the gifts come from the islanders, but there are some that speak of Yuuri’s influence. Opalescent shells. Bits of ocean glass, bored into beads. A woven, patterned basket, as tall as his knee is high, and wide enough for Victor’s arms to wrap around and his fingertips fall shy of touching.
Inside it swims the darling creature Yuuri had given to him upon the eve of that sixteenth year. She is a magnificent bronze koi, intelligent and affectionate. Yuuri always brings her to the shore when he knows Victor is coming. Victor reaches his hand into the watertight basket, and she swims up and settles in the cradle of his palm. He laughs—it is like being welcomed home.
He takes the basket to the estuary and submerges it; she emerges at his side and darts around his ankles. Victor knows that creatures such as she should not be able to abide the ocean’s salt, but she has never struggled with it. Perhaps it is the blessing of his favor. Perhaps it is the strength of Yuuri’s raising. In any case, when Victor follows the path of the water upstream, she follows.
Yuuri’s ancestral home is one that has survived the ages, weathered floods. It is high upon the hill, surrounded by heated springs from the volcanic activity that churns beneath the island. But, too, the water that runs freely down the side of the land is cold and clear, and pools into a clever bit of human ingenuity. Yuuri has dug chasms into the land, branched off from the source of the river. They connect with a small and shallow channel that allows the water to flow freely through fine nets of woven grass, blocking the escape of his subjects: for within the pools live the brothers and sisters of the bronze koi.
It is there that Victor finds him, lingering at the edge of a pond with a satisfied smile as he watches his beloved creatures flit around without a care in the world. His hair is wet, pushed back from his face like Victor himself had trailed a hand through it; Yuuri has yet again grown broader in the shoulders, taller. He has inherited his mother’s need for spectacles, but the shape of them compliments his face, brighten his eyes. The clinging softness of childhood and adolescence has melted from him and left a young man behind, two and a half decades into a life that is beautiful in its simplicity.
Yuuri looks up, and for the barest second in time, the ocean is still as Victor holds his breath. He smiles, and the sun shines.
“Are you going to ask me again?” Yuuri says.
“Every time,” Victor replies fondly.
Yuuri steps out of the pool, balancing carefully on one foot as he raises the other so as not to hurt any of his charges. The koi teem around his ankles, but none so excitedly as the bronze koi as she swims to the riverbank to meet him. Yuuri crouches, delighted, and sinks his fingers into the current first; strokes his hand down her spine along her dorsal fin, and she wiggles with happiness. Victor can taste it in the water as easily as his senses expand with joy when Yuuri steps into the river properly to meet him. Yuuri reaches out, and Victor reaches back. The silver swirls on his wrist catch the sun, and when their hands touch, somewhere far away, the rain stops pouring.
He doesn’t want to ask the question sitting heavily on his tongue. When he does, and when Yuuri again says no, it will be hard to enjoy what he has right now. He wants to enjoy this time. And so he must wait. Deflect, and he does.
“It’s good to see you, Yuuri,” Victor murmurs. “How have you been?”
Yuuri pushes his hair back with his other hand. The damp blue linen stretches attractively across his chest, clings to his arms. He really is beautiful, and the faint, bashful flush in his cheeks is even more so. “Good,” he says. “Busy.”
“Not too much destruction in the last season, I hope.”
Yuuri shakes his head. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”
Victor hums in acknowledgement; smiles at the koi as it darts around their submerged feet. “She’s energetic.”
“Happy to see you.” Yuuri looks up. Bites his lip, huffs a self-deprecating laugh before he admits, “I am, too.”
Their hands are still linked between them. Victor gently squeezes Yuuri’s fingers and is heartened when Yuuri squeezes back. He has grown since the last time Victor was here—more confident in himself, more accepting of Victor’s attention than the bashful child who had stuttered his way through answering well-meaning questions.
There is something new here. Promising. Victor doesn’t dare to hope. “May I pull you from your work?”
“Please, by all means,” Yuuri replies with an eager grin. “My mother will thank you. She says I work too hard.”
“You do.” Victor gives him a gentle tug and they wade through the stream, the current and the koi running rapid around their feet. “But the ocean never sleeps and never ceases. I’m afraid I may have given that to you.”
However slippery the rocks, they never fall; wherever they step, they never sink into the deep silt of the banks. The water grows deeper but their path is always clear and free. Where the sun cuts through the trees, it paints Yuuri in shades of copper and gold. When it catches his eyes at the right angle, they are red as the salt that forms on the volcanic islands across the sea. His hair, loose around his ears and brushing the nape of his neck, is dark and rich, looks warm and soft to the touch.
All of Yuuri is jewel tones and metal ore, not bleached by the unforgiving salinity of the ocean. They contrast—they are compliments. Earth and sea, sun and moon.
“I don’t know whether you gave it to me, or whether this is how I was born,” Yuuri says as they emerge from the trees and onto the beach. “I guess it doesn’t matter. It just is.” Bold and bright, the bronze koi darks into the ocean waves. She cares not for what should or shouldn’t be; she does as she wants. Yuuri shakes his head, smiling indulgently. “She loves the open water. She has the spirit of a much bigger fish.”
Victor glances over, takes in the sight of Yuuri framed by the ocean. He is bright. Shining. “So do you.”
Yuuri does not answer. He stands there and looks out to sea—to the horizon, beyond the shoals that mark the edge of the island’s reef. None have ventured beyond it before, though Yuuri’s second decade brought tutelage of skimming rafts made from branches and reeds, mud and bark. Small fishing vessels made for short travel, though none large or sturdy enough to break through the natural current of the island.
And then Yuuri says, “I want to show you something.”
Around the bend in the bay, they stop, and Victor holds his breath. For the second time, for only a moment, the ocean stands still. The ship is small but sturdy, with soaring sails and a towering mast. A monument to Yuuri’s clever nature. Victor is speechless.
Yuuri hops onto the bow with a grin. “I’ve been building it since the last time you visited. It took a few tries, but I think it’s ready to sail, and—” He turns and looks back. Looks for approval and finds only silence. His smile fades when he sees Victor’s shock.
Yuuri’s feet hit the sand. Slowly, with cautious steps and reaching hands, he approaches. Links their fingers, and waits.
Victor processes slowly. Perhaps he is not as changing as he believed, because it takes time for him to catch up. It’s a strange feeling, joy. All-encompassing. Terrifying. “Your family?”
Yuuri nods, resolute. “When you return, I’ll return.”
“And you’re sure, being so far away from your home—”
Yuuri touches a finger to his mouth, gently affectionate, and Victor’s eyes go wide.
“Victor,” Yuuri says softly. “The ocean lives inside me. You gave it to me. I want to give this to you, so ask me again. One more time.”
Victor turns his hands face-up, pale as the coastal sands. With a smile, Yuuri rests his atop them, palm-to-palm.
“Will you come with me?” Victor whispers.
Though his voice should very well be lost to the crash of the rising tide, Yuuri hears him. Leans in. Touches their lips together for the length of time that a wave kisses the shore, and just as swiftly recedes.
“Wherever you go, for all my life,” Yuuri says, and places his hand over Victor’s heart. “And with all my love.”