Chapter 41

Iwanted to get to know Sorcha better, but there wasn't much I could give her other than my personality that Sono and Oris couldn't do better. The Theran and Farkhi had older, unattached women teach the men to mate before they got married so their women didn't have a traumatic first Senso. The Tarks didn't do that. They thought we should figure that out together with our partners.

We didn't do extravagant sweets like cake or cookies either. I tried those when I was with Oris and Sono. I much preferred desserts made with aduki bean paste that had been sweetened with honey or something simple made with coconuts. I couldn't cook for her like Sono could and I wasn't sure if she'd like our food that didn't have fish either.

We were finally at the coast and I only had one idea to get her away from everyone. It wasn't a very good one because we wouldn't be able to talk.

"I thought I could take you swimming now that we are finally at the ocean," I said.

Her entire face lit up like I just offered her something amazing. She grew up on Idric and the rocks there didn't affect her. The Tarks had nearly entire oceans to ourselves, but we couldn't swim anywhere near Idric or we'd shift back and drown. She'd probably seen all the reefs around Idric I'd never get to experience.

"I've never swum in the sea before. Belisarus only let me swim as a small fish in the pond in our yard when he was teaching me how to be Tark. When it froze over during winter or it didn't rain for a while, I couldn't swim at all. He told me I had to take the boats to Nestran. What's it like?"

I tried not to show her how pissed off that made me. Everything she'd told us so far just made it seem like the worse thing he did to her was keeping secrets and lying to her. But forcing a Tark to swim like that when you lived on an island surrounded by ocean was abuse. We didn't even do that to our young.

I'd be thrilled to take her for her first swim in the ocean. Maybe there was something I could give her that wasn't just me.

"If you'll come with me after we eat, I'll take you. The ocean is unlike anything and it's beautiful down there."

"I want to see. Belisarus used to tell me stories about beautiful women who were half fish that had beautiful singing voices. I'm a terrible singer, but I've always wondered if they were real, and I could change like that. What do you swim as?"

They weren't. Those were mostly stories humans made up because they didn't understand what they heard and saw in the sea at night. Some of their sea monster stories were just them seeing a regular whale flopping his cock in the water waiting to mate. If something attacked their ships, it was usually us or their boats and nets were threatening something that lived in the ocean full time.

I didn't have the heart to tell her and honestly, just because they weren't real now didn't mean they wouldn't be now that Sorcha was here. She made one human story real by kissing a Frog and Sorcha didn't even use an ounce of magic when she wanted another story to play out to get Esylle and Leodos together.

"A shark. If you try to swim with me as half human, I'll be much larger than you."

Sorcha just shrugged.

"If I can't keep up or I can't do it, I'll turn into a shark, too."

I smiled to myself as I watched her try to finish her meal in a hurry. She set her bowl down and seemed excited to leave with me. Oris stopped us. He was one of my best friends, but I really needed him to lay off me. I didn't want to see him married to Pulvi either, but he couldn't be feeling what I was feeling.

"It's not safe for her out there. You can't risk her."

Oh, if Oris wanted this to be a competition, he really needed to learn not to tell her what to do. Sorcha hated it but went along with it when Belisarus did that to her because she trusted he had been telling her the truth about everyone wanting to hurt her and keeping secrets to protect her. Sorcha wasn't going to let anyone do that again. She was going along with these lessons because she wanted to learn.

"Don't speak for me. If the humans come, they can't get to me if I'm swimming."

"And the rest of us? Who is supposed to protect us if you're playing in the water with him?"

"You just don't want me to leave with him," she snapped. "Use your nose. The only humans nearby are the ones that are with us. None of the Farkhi have flown back saying they are close! I never got to swim in the ocean before and if you're trying to prevent me from doing it now, then you're just like him."

Ouch. She grabbed my hand and marched off with me. Oris was the only one who didn't want her to leave, and I was pretty sure he was now having some kind of mental crisis that his jealousy at her being alone with me made her compare him to her grandfather.

Sorcha didn't let go of my hand until we were at the beach and the water was lapping at our feet.

"Please show me. I was never allowed growing up and I've always wanted to know what it was like to swim freely."

"Come deeper. It's not safe to turn into most things when the water is just up to my neck."

I didn't know how deep the pond in her yard was, but at first, she was holding onto me like even water this shallow was deeper than she'd ever been in before. Which pissed me off because that never should have happened to anyone with Tark abilities at her age. It was abuse.

"I didn't know if I could do this, but I already have!" she said, laughing.

Sorcha turned and dove under the water. I was shocked to see a bright orange and red tail flip that matched her hair instead of her legs. Her head popped back up when I didn't change and join her under the water.

"What are you waiting on?"

"I've never seen anything like what you are now. I don't know how fast you can swim. Can you breathe underwater with a human face?"

"I just tried and I can. If I can't keep up with you, I'll change like you. I want to be able to touch things while I'm under. Come join me!" she yelped, diving back under the water.

She was excited and honestly beautiful like this. I followed her a little deeper and let myself change into my shark. She was so much smaller than me and seemed a little surprised at seeing a great white for the first time, but not scared of me.

I let myself float while her hands explored my rough skin. She wasn't scared, and she even touched my teeth. Could sharks blush? She was completely bare up top and Sorcha seemed much less shy about this than I was. She wasn't trying to pull her long hair to cover herself so I wouldn't see her breasts.

Tarks had group bathing like the other tribes, but men and women didn't bathe together like the rest. It wasn't really considered proper to show your private bits to someone you weren't married to, so I hadn't seen a ton of breasts, but I imagined hers were perfect.

She smiled and motioned for me to swim with her. I wasn't like her underwater and couldn't communicate with her like she was doing with me. We all swam together, but this was different. I'd never seen anything like her before and I didn't know how fast she was.

Sorcha ran her fingers along my side as she swam next to me. She grabbed my fin and beamed at me. I got it. She wanted a little shark ride. Which shouldn't even be sexy, but I couldn't stop thinking about her breasts.

I took her deeper to the coral reef. It was beautiful out here and there was always so much life. Sorcha was looking at the colors with awe. I was trying to remember the first time my parents took me out here and how I reacted, but I was also quite young. I'd kill to be able to experience all this beauty again.

Sorcha let go and swam over, but seemed to know she shouldn't touch anything. She was beaming as she swam over the reef. The smaller playful fish, who had never seen anything like her, weren't afraid of her. I kept my distance, as not to scare them off, and watched her smile grow bigger as they darted in and out of her hair and one even got close enough to nibble on her nose. The fish at the reef were not Tark, but they seemed to know she was special and swarmed around her. Sorcha seemed to love every minute of it.

She swam back over to me and took my fin again. I led her into deeper waters. I took her to one of my favorite places. Our territory was far from here, but my dad took me out here as a history lesson. This was the site of one of the greatest Tark battles during the war.

The humans didn't know everything about the tribes. They didn't know we were also underwater. We caught them bringing reinforcements by boat and sank a good bit of them. This part of the ocean had a whole graveyard of ships on the ocean floor. There was all this history in the wreckage I desperately wanted to get at but couldn't. Maybe she'd be interested in this stuff, too.

She was small enough to swim in. I patrolled the waters while she explored. I wanted her to explore to her heart's content, but I hoped Belisarus hadn't completely failed her on the Tark side of things if she wanted to play like this. I knew she healed, but she still bled. She could not get blood in the water if she wanted to be half woman underwater. I could fight off one shark, but it would get ugly if more than one scented blood.

She finally swam out with an old satchel strapped across her chest. I wondered what she found that she wanted to bring back. I was actually very curious because I couldn't explore here like she could. Sorcha nodded to the surface, and we swam up. I changed back, and we treaded water.

"If mermaids don't exist, how are those ships down there?"

"The Tarks can bring down ships, too. Let's get back."

She grabbed my fin, and we swam back to shore until it was shallow enough for me to change back. The weather was starting to change, and it was going to get very cold out here soon. It wasn't completely miserable, but it wasn't exactly comfortable in wet robes. I suggested lighting a fire and started looking for driftwood.

"You forget I'm like you, but different. If you trust me, I can dry you, too."

I let her put her hands on me and steam me dry. It was a strange sensation, but not entirely uncomfortable. Honestly, she probably could have suggested doing anything to me and I would have let her. I was kind of hoping to sit by the fire to dry off so I could spend more time with her before we had to get back.

"Thank you," she said, pulling me into a hug. "That was better than I ever could have imagined. I hate that he kept this from me. There's just something about you and I really want to kiss you. That dip in your hip is also really nice and I wouldn't mind licking it, but we should probably get to know each other better first."

Should I tell her I'd never kissed anyone before? The Tarks didn't know much more about the Spirus or Essos than any of the other tribes, but ages ago, we had a very devout king who took an advisor. It was so long ago, no one knew if he was actually a historian or even knew what he was talking about, but the advisor convinced the king that the Spirus and Essos wanted us to be so devout that we only loved them and our chosen partner.

We basically weren't even allowed to experiment or kiss anyone else. I doubted a lot of that and wanted to change it, but the rest of the Tarks thought that was how things were supposed to be. If the Spirus was standing here in my arms wanting to be my first kiss, I wasn't going to tell her that wasn't something Tarks did.

I was going to kiss her as hard as I could.