Page 44 of Potions & Pints
They finally pulled out of the hug to look at each other and Tan wanted to drink in every feature. To see her again after years of mourning her death was nothing short of a miracle.
Her hair floated gently in the seawater and she smiled up at him. It was like a bizarre mirror image of how he’d seen her last — hair whipping violently in the wind, her eyes shot through with terror as their ship went down off the coast of Gamlin Ait, swallowed by the Heaving Sea.
Tan had a million questions all clamoring to come out but when he tried to speak, it was as though all words were lost. Or perhaps as though they were all rushing desperately from his brain to his tongue and getting stuck in the doorway. Finally, one ponderance struggled out from among the others and managed to find its way into speech.
“How in the world did you end up here?” Tan uttered.
Dania smiled. “Well…”
She gestured to the gills on each side of her neck and Tan rolled his eyes.
“Yes, water elves, obviously,” he said and smiled at the rhythm of their old banter reestablishing itself quickly, even after so long. “I’m familiar.” He gestured sarcastically to his own gills.
“But I mean,herehere?” Tan said. “Pili rescued me and the rest of the crew — I was here for weeks after that. Why didn’t I see you?”
Tan remembered the long weeks in silent mourning as he and his crew recovered in Laeve Taesi. He couldn’t bring himself to speak about Dania then, and he hadn’t mentioned her since. It had been far too painful — something he’d buried deep within himself in the hopes the hurt wouldn’t resurface.
Dania smiled sadly. “I guess I got caught up in a different current,” she said gently. “I was found by water elves from Saemania. They took me in and healed me — honestly, I was half-dead when they found me, and it was a long recovery. But it was in that time that I learned I was a healer too. I’d just never had anyone to teach me before.”
She continued, “I stayed about a year with them, but a tribe only needs one healer and when my training was done, they sent me here. I would have searched for you if I’d known, but that storm…they told me there were no survivors, and I believed them.”
She smiled sadly again, as if that answered all Tan’s questions, but they both knew there was so much more to catch up on. Almost too much to even attempt.
Tan simply shook his head, barely able to comprehend what was happening. He’d been sure he’d lost his sister forever and he supposed she’d thought the same about him. The fact that they’d met again like this, years after going down in the same shipwreck was almost impossible.
“And you? How are you back here now?” Dania asked, her brows furrowing slightly.
“Oh, you know,” Tan joked in affected nonchalance. “Much the same thing as last time, only with a little bout of sleeping sickness thrown in for good measure. Oh, and also an exiled prince. You know, the usual.”
“Oh, of course,” replied Dania, playing along. “The same thing happened to me just yesterday.”
The two of them smirked at each other and Tan was glad they still shared the same wry sense of humor.
“So then,” Dania added with a teasing smile. “Still a scoundrel I see.”
“But of course,” Tan replied, grinning back. “And proud of it! At least most of the time.”
The smile faltered a little as he thought of how he’d changed since his last trip to Gamlin Ait. He supposed he had other things to be proud of now than just being a scoundrel, but he still wasn’t quite sure how that sat with him. There was a warmth to it though, that was for sure.
“Well, I’m sure you’ve been doing a lot up there since I saw you last,” Dania said, a knowing look suddenly in her eyes that even Tan couldn’t quite read.
“Do you ever miss it?” asked Tan. “Ever think about coming back up?”
He wondered, too, how Dania had changed since the shipwreck. She was still herself, of course, but even through their joking it was clear she was older now, more her own person. He could see as much already and it made him both proud of her and sad for what he’d missed.
Dania shook her head softly. “No,” she replied and he could hear the surety in her voice. “Now that I’ve found my gift for healing, I’m happy where I am. Besides, it’s a lot less dangerous than wandering the high seas with my wayward pirate brother.”
Tan had to laugh at that. “I believe you were a little wayward yourself for a time,” he quipped back.
“All the more reason to stay here,” Dania shot back just as fast, a playful grin on her face. “The only thing I missed was you and the crew.”
“I missed you too,” Tan said and the siblings smiled at each other, all the years of pain and longing and unspoken mourning washed away in the cool flow of the ocean current.
“Now I take it you were here to see your friend?” Dania asked and Tan let out a sigh of anticipation. Now that he knew it was Dania looking after him though, he relaxed a little. He was sure Vir was in good hands.
Tan nodded and he got the feeling Dania could see in his eyes how much Vir meant to him.
“Don’t worry,” she said soothingly. “He’s going to be perfectly fine. He just needs to rest a while. There’s an anemone here that cures the sleeping sickness which I’ve already given him but he’ll need to keep taking it for at least a week, maybe longer. It works slowly so he’s still sleeping now, but he’s not at risk anymore.”
