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[just_another]

Despite his mother's warnings, Joel has found himself on the beach once again, not far from where he sailed straight into a storm not three days earlier. She would be furious if she found him here, but this is where he feels most calm, where he's always felt most able to think clearly and lately it seems he's in desperate need of thinking clearly.

So much has happened over the past several days and while Joel is completely certain what he feels for Spencer is real and genuine, he's also truly conflicted for the first time in his life. He has duties. There are expectations that have been placed upon him and in less than two weeks time, he is expected to have picked a bride.

That's something Joel knows he simply cannot do.

Walking along the sand, he looks out into the water for a moment, then begins to shed his clothes. He doesn't care how it might look, if there's anyone nearby to see. His fingers fly over the buttons of his shirt and he drops it to the sand. A moment later his pants follow and he wades into the water in only his breeches, pushing through the waves and then diving under, cutting through with strong strokes. The cold water clears his head and he turns over, floating on his back for what feels like forever before he finally makes his way back to shore.

It's as he's dressing again, his pants once more fastened and his shirt half done up that his vision suddenly goes dark. It's like he's under water, he realizes. Shafts of sun cut through the gently rolling waves, but the deeper he sinks, the darker it gets. There's a flash of a shimmering tail, too big to be a fish, too small to be a shark. Dark laughter. A brief glimpse of a beautiful woman with long, black hair. She's smiling, but Joel doesn't much like what he sees in that smile.

She's saying something, her lips moving, but the voice that comes out isn't hers. It's Spencer's. It's the voice he remembers from that day on the beach and Joel stumbles in the sand, only realizing then that he's still standing on the beach. All of this, everything he's seeing, it isn't really happening.

He directs his attention back to the woman with the tail just in time to hear Spencer's voice whisper two words. A promise.

He doesn't know what any of it means, but as soon as it's begun, it's gone. Joel is left standing on the beach, his hands still on the buttons of his shirt, staring off into the waves as if they can give him some kind of answer.

[Joel's an adopted prince who doesn't know he's also a witch and has no idea he's just had a premonition while on the beach anywhere you want to find him. Enjoy? :D]

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[just_another]

Joel huffs out a sigh, then drops down into the sand and nods for Caden to join him. They're both going to return to the palace with grains of sand in the creases of their trousers and their mother -- not to mention the head of their cleaners -- is going to follow them around berating them for it, but after so many years, he doubts it comes as a surprise to anyone when they return home in this state.

There's a lot to tell, though, and he wants to be comfortable while they talk.

"When I was out there that day, when the storm destroyed my boat, I know I said Spencer saved me and he did, but he couldn't have done it in the state he's in now," Joel says. His gaze flicks carefully to Caden and then back out to the water. "I was a good distance from the shore and he's in so much pain right now he can barely walk, but when he saved me, he was strong. He moved through the water like he belonged there and when he was with me on the beach, he was speaking to me, I would swear it. He told me a story, he asked me to remember him, to remember his name."

There's no other explanation as to how Joel had known it without having to guess. He had seen Spencer and he had just known.

"And when the other sailors came for me, he disappeared without a trace," he says. "But I would swear I saw something heading into the water. Something with a tail. I thought I had just imagined it, but the more time I spend with him, the more certain I am that I didn't."

[writtenby_caden]

Caden sits down next to Joel and buries his toes in the sand, knees bent so that he can rest his elbows on them. A brief flash of terror runs through him at Joel's story because he came so close to losing his brother. He has no idea what he would have done.

But Joel is here, sitting right next to him, so Caden forces himself to relax and take in everything he's saying. Joel has always had an overactive imagine, just like Caden himself, but they've both always been clear on the line between fiction and reality. Joel isn't making this up.

"You think it was Spencer," Caden says thoughtfully, squinting out at the sea. April was a siren, after all. It's not outside the realm of possibility. Spencer isn't a siren though, he's sure. He doesn't know much about them, but they seem to exude a certain sort of confidence that Spencer hasn't quite seemed to master. Plus there's the face that Spencer suddenly can't talk. It all lends itself to something more like the stories they were told as children. "He was a merman when he saved you, and now he's something else? Is that it?

[just_another]

"I know it was Spencer. He told me his name before he disappeared, that's how I knew it even though he couldn't speak, but I thought... it seemed so crazy. Even if he was a merman, then why does he have legs now, that doesn't make any sense at all, does it?" he asks and he doesn't really expect Caden to be able to give him an answer. He's talking mostly just to get the words out of his head, to explain to his brother what's going on.

"But I saw something just now and I don't know how to explain it. A woman... a mermaid, I suppose, and she was speaking in Spencer's voice. If he doesn't have it, but someone else does, what does that mean?"

Or did it mean nothing at all? He's had things like this happen once or twice before and he's never been sure what they mean. If they're just dreams, if he's going crazy or if there's some purpose to them.

[writtenby_caden]

Caden nods thoughtfully and reaches up to rub his chin as he looks out into the water. Not for the first time, he thinks about how he wishes that he and April could have remained friends somehow. Maybe she would have some answers here.

"Well, if Spencer was of the merfolk and he's suddenly walking around on land, there must be magic at work," Caden reasons. He thinks back on all the stories he's read in his life, focusing on the ones involving magic. "He's here with a new part, while missing an old one. They say all magic comes with a price, you know."

[just_another]

After Shea, Joel has never trusted magic. It always seems to come with too steep a price and most people who use it seem to want to twist it to their will, make it work for them instead of for others. He thinks of someone doing that to Spencer, offering him the chance to walk above water, but taking something as important as his voice from him and it makes his blood boil. Spencer doesn't deserve that. He doesn't deserve to be in pain like he is.

"It would explain why it seems to hurt him to walk," he says, his voice soft. "A price for having legs in the first place."

And the way he's speaking now, it sounds like he believes it. That Spencer is a merman and that now he's here and he has to do something in order to stay here, but can't tell anyone what that something is. It isn't fair.

[writtenby_caden]

"It would make sense," Caden agrees. He accepts it all easily enough because while he doesn't know that much about magic, he knows that it's real. April is a siren, and if those are real, there's no reason that merpeople can't be real as well. "It's a price he's willing to pay, it seems."

Caden hasn't told Joel about his talk with Spencer on the beach, or the way Spencer assured him that he would stay at Joel's side. He meant it when he told Spencer that their conversation would stay between them. Still, he wants his brother to know how much Spencer wants to be with him.

"I don't suppose you've asked him about it." He looks at him thoughtfully. "How do you communicate, if I can ask?"

[just_another]

"We just... we just do," Joel says when he realizes he can't quite explain it. They don't converse in the traditional sense, they don't sit and talk for hours, but they've managed thus far and Joel doesn't imagine that changing. There's just something about Spencer that he's found easy to read right from their first meeting.

"I don't know how to describe it," he says. "He's just easy for me to read. I don't quite know how we've been communicating." And while it hasn't always been easy, it hasn't been terribly difficult either. He doesn't feel like he's missing the important things.

[writtenby_caden]

"I'm glad. It sounds like you've found something truly special, Joel." He is happy for his brother, but Caden can't help but remember what he used to feel like when it came to April. He was hopeful and optimistic as well, and so in love, and now sometimes he feels like just a shadow of that young, radiantly happy man he once was.

Part of Caden knows that his relationship with Joel will soon start to change. It's to be expected, now that he's embarking on a serious relationship of his own, and for one selfish moment he doesn't want it to happen. He doesn't want things between he and Joel to change.

He shakes it off soon enough and focuses on how glad he is for Joel, and he smiles over at him.