Shenrakari trembled as he made his way into the surf, the alternating waves and steadily decending stairs combining into a strangely irregular pattern of varying depths with every step.

He trembled not because of the two days that had passed travelling gradually through shadow, away from the Eyrie that had been the closest thing to home since his departure from the Rheari. He trembled not because he had been granted a second life, and now carried the memories and warning of a horrid nation of men and demons within him alongside his own questions. He trembled not even because he was watching those ahead of him disappear into the waters of the open sea without coming up for air or floating off of the stony ocean floor.

He trembled because of Salome. Her presence was suddenly before him, unconcealed and real, and even if she merely only knew of his mother, he would soon have to face the first physical evidence of her existence other than himself. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what her role was in his conception, or what it might be in all of the struggles the humans seemed to surround themselves with. He wasn't sure he was ready to believe differently than he had in his life to date: that he was begotten simply out of love.

The first wave to wash over his head came, and he fought his instinct to leave the stairs below him and float his head above the surface. He opened his submerged eyes, and thought on tea. The vision he'd had during his first vikankaren with Fletcher filled his mind. His deepest memories swirled briefly in his field of view like the sand disturbed by his footsteps: being cradled in warm arms framed by dark hair, breathing the scent of a thousand kinds of water held in soft skin, pressing lips to drink from a supple and pale breast. When pushed forward in time, the sands always settled blurrily into more concrete images: the strong but gentle motherings of Kaliakeri, with her darker striped body and hair the color of the plains. But in the vision time was not the metric, and the impressionistic shapes had transformed into this other figure, the strangely dressed woman now before him beneath the salt water into which the others seemed to walk effortlessly.

Like a rough woven cloth held billowing in a slow wind, the ceiling of sky rolled in and promised Shen one last chance to breathe the air of the world from which he had just come. His mind flooded for a moment with more practical questions. How did this work, exactly? What if his race couldn't breathe in this place? He shivvered with the terrifying thought that maybe all humans could breathe water, and perhaps they didn't know that he couldn't. He almost let his feet leave the ground as the last trough of air presented itself, but he thought for a moment. He recalled Stark's lithe human form sliding along in ocean waters; she had given every impression that, like him, she needed to come up for air every now and then.

He settled a bit, calmer, and watched Ilie and Leiko, the two Eyriens that had joined them in their quest. He knew from Leiko's memory that Eyriens had no ability to breathe water, and, while they now seemed uneasy, they appeared to be experimenting with it with some success.

The humans before him seemed to be moving steadily along as the frothing glass blanket above them grew increasingly away, and the path before them began to feel more and more like a trail upon the earth and less like the sea. The water here felt unnaturally light, and didn't seem to push him upward or fight his limbs quite as much as the waters to which he was used. His clothing and belongings were definitely moving through it without any visible signs of isolation, but they didn't feel as saturated and laden as it might be expected they should.

Breathe, thought Shen, just breathe. Let go of the last of the world behind you, let it rise back to its place, and take in this new one. Let it flow into and through you as do all these changing worlds...

He almost stopped for a moment as he looked aside and above the path before him at the waters stretching infinitely onward about him, a heavier kind of wind that moved and carried thoughts just like the winds above. And through both of these winds, via a sort of innate similarity that was certainly vague but nonetheless undeniable, there was drawn a larger one, the massive and forceful ocean of air with which his mind's eye had now become familiar. Across all walls of light, shadow or fluid surface passed this, the slowly pushing unstoppable wind of the Ni.

"Trust is the default," he had told Fletcher. Shen's thoughts echoed themselves now toward the scarred man warily making way before him, leaving footprints that slowly shifted shape and vanished on the ocean floor: let go of the world behind you, let it rise to its own peace, that you might settle to yours.

Take your own advice, said the voices of two young lifetimes' worth of teachers in Shen's mind. He cleared his mind and heard the trailing whispers of their words fade on the wind that passed briefly into this threatening place from everywhere beyond it and left again.

He considered the waters. Take what is brought you. He thought on the kingdom that lay hidden somewhere before him. Take what is brought you. He looked ahead to Salome, a quiet whirlpool of secrets wrapped in shining black hides and shady demeanor. Take what is brought you. He let himself forget how long he knew he could go on the chestful of air he carried within him.

He slowly sighed out the air within him, and watched it rush upward in bubbles, each a tiny creature falling homeward, knowing to its core to which shadow it belonged.

How unlike them was he.

He slowly inhaled the electric fluid around him. He felt it trickle down his throat, salty and dense, and he halted the convulsion in his abdomen. He held his legs tense, constraining them from flailing or kicking him to the silvery weavings of sky now far above him. He kept taking it slowly in, soaking spongy lungs in the brine. He knew he wouldn't have to fight yet, so long as the motion was inward.

In a short time, however, his lungs were full, and his head was darkening with the instinctual suggestion that his body was devoid of air, his blood seeking oxygen that wasn't there. But it was, somehow. Somewhere in the slippery channels running within him, wind came forth from water, element from element, and kept the slow combustion of life alight. He exhaled, light headed, and took another breath. He head cleared, and he felt his insides quickly acclimate to the chill of pushing the very sea about within his chest.

Shen barely noticed any transition as his vision gradually aligned to clarity, and his mind began to wander back to matters at hand. As the group approached the lights and guards at the gate to the kindom of Allemain, the last pockets of Shen's breath broke the surface of open sea, dutifully expiring themselves in tiny ripples that played in perfect precision their part in a million square miles of eternal chaos.