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Do you know why you die when you drown?
It’s because the oxygen in the air we breathe is the final electron acceptor for your main energetic battery-like processes. Without it, your individual cells cannot function, which means they also cannot work in aggregate—the muscles of your heart cannot contract and the nerves in your brain cannot fire.
And it felt like I could feel each and every one of my cells was screaming for air now.
I thrashed, trying to get free, and was completely unable to. My eyes were closed, so I opened them, but I was surrounded by water, cold and pressing. My lungs were burning, using all of their oxygen up; the kraken must have pulled me into the sea. I needed to reach the surface before my air ran out—why wasn’t I dead yet?—I was dying—everything was agony?—
“Elle of the Air—relax. Breathe.” It was a sonorous command, coming from all around, a masculine voice in a tone I couldn’t ignore.
“I can’t,” I whispered, in my mind, with my lips clamped shut.
“You can. Inhale for me.”
I didn’t have a choice—my lungs were on fire—I was going to die with or without water in my body.
I gasped—and found myself breathing air.
The panic I’d been suffused with began to die down, and I realized I was still inside my body, and not the sea. The tentacles at my wrists and ankles were pulsing different colors in a mesmerizing array—and I realized I hadn’t been near death, just sensing what it was like to be him—and I was sure it was a him—on the other side of the water-wall.
It was so strange. And—peaceful.
Quiet.
And—his tentacles cinched tighter for a moment, distracting me as I stared down at them with an open jaw, taking deep breaths of air.
My mind felt disconnected from my body, like I was hovering outside myself.
“I feel the same,” he told me. “Are you here of your own volition?”
I blinked, and realized how curious I must look to him, lashed to a chair like an erstwhile Odysseus.
“I am,” I said, then asked, “You?”
“Yes. And I am pleased I do not need to summon my people to rescue you.”
“Me too.” Although the thought of being rescued by a kraken army had a slight appeal.
What if Andromeda had been pissed when Perseus showed up?
“Your kind’s myths about my people are so interesting,” he said—and I realized he’d been able to hear my thoughts.
Oh, fuck!
English tea sets, small white dogs, English tea sets?—
“Calm yourself, Elle of the Air,” he said, and I heard him inside my mind, clear as a bell. Normalcy was slowly being slowly restored. The suckers on the bottoms of his tentacles were pulsing against my skin, and it was like they were pulling me back into my body. “You have my word, as both your bodyguard and a kraken, that I will not pry into your mind without permission. It is just that both of our minds are very close to the surface right now, because of the bonding.”
I blinked and nodded. “What is your name?” I asked, with my mouth and with my mind.
“Cepharius.”
“Of the sea?”
“If you like.”
The safest thing for me to do now was to pepper him with questions, rather than give myself any extra time to think. “How long does this take? How long will it last? What does it feel like for you?”
The last question I blurted out on our connection and then wished I could take it back, feeling myself grow flush, because it felt invasive.
