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Circe stopped at the edge, digging her toes into the sand and looking with a new and sudden distrust at the water. It looked the same as it always did, but she stood still and uneasy all the same. She lifted her eyes to where Telemachus was already deeper, up to his bare thighs, and she watched as he dived smoothly under the water. She knew a few moments panic at the possible treachery of the sea before he surfaced again, seemingly none the worse for wear.
"Circe?" he called. "Are you coming in?"
"I'm not sure," she called back, looking again at the water. Telemachus pushed back his hair from his face and strode up to where she was standing. She took two steps forward and the water closed over her ankles, making her gasp. It was not the same as she remembered, even though she'd just swum here yesterday, had swum here a thousand times.
Dropping to his knees in front of her, Telemachus touched her toes, stroked the tops of her feet, then wrapped his fingers around her ankles.
"Circe?" he asked again. "What's wrong?"
She looked down at him, at the way he waited so patiently at her feet, unconcerned by his position of supplication. His face was open, and she knew the question had no hidden barbs waiting to trap her. She swallowed hard and made the effort needed to be open.
"I don't like the water," she said. It sounded ridiculous to her ears even as she said it. She'd been in and out of the water the whole time she'd known him, and for the long years before that. It wasn't the source of her power; that sprang from the complicated elements of botany and her own will. It had been, though, a place of freedom. It wasn't now. She looked all around at the smooth, glassy surface, blue-green and gleaming.
"It's not safe," she continued, when it was clear that Telemachus was waiting for her to finish her thoughts. She looked around again at the wide blue sky and bare rocks, open and with nowhere to hide.
"You see it as a mortal sees it," he suggested. She considered for a moment; this was the first time she'd been to the water since her change.
"Maybe," she said. "Is that how you see it? So wide and pitiless? Nowhere to rest?"
"Yes," Telemachus said. "But that is true for many places. We cannot be afraid of them all, if we want to live."
"What do you mean?" she asked. Telemachus shuffled closer on his knees and his wet hands slid up from her ankles, over her calves and behind her knees, to rest on the smooth muscle of her thighs. She looked down at him and smoothed his wet hair back from his face.
"You have known, but until now have not felt, what it is to live with death," he said. "It can smother you, that knowledge, grind you down into paralysis and indecision, so you exist in a grey world of safety. But death can come anytime. There is nowhere safe, except in your own heart and mind."
"I didn't understand," she said. She'd known what mortality meant, and had thought she'd understood. She'd thought of it often, from the time she'd met Prometheus until now, but now the spindle was running down for her, and one day the thread would be cut. She looked at the sea. It was changeable day to day, but constant over eons. She had been like that, changing barely at all for long years, no matter whether she was calm or stormy.
"I don't fully understand either," he said. "Until recently, I lived in that grey world. It's only now that I am willing to live fully, in the knowledge of death."
Circe looked down at him and heard the love in his voice and on his face. He was the same each day, but the years would change him inevitably. And now they would change her too. She shivered as the water lapped around her feet. She had not realised before how fundamental that change would be.
Looking away from the world that seemed so dangerous now, Circe leaned down and kissed him. She tugged him up by his shoulders and he kissed her back, long and soft and lingering.
"Put your feet on mine," he said. Puzzled, she did so, changing to laughter as he walked them back out into the water with her arms around his neck. She gasped in sudden fright as something brushed the back of her thigh and leaped back from him. An innocent piece of seaweed floated away from her. She turned back to the choked sound of his laughter.
She shook her head and launched herself at him, sending him crashing into the water. She followed, grappling with him. He rose up spluttering, and lunged after her. She slid from his grasp, dodging behind him and diving for his legs. He went down again, and Circe laughed in delight. They wrestled in the water, slippery skin and strong hands on each other's bodies, each seeking the upper hand. Circe triumphed at last, and they stood gasping and smiling at each other with the water sliding off their bodies and the sun already drying their shoulders and backs.
"When I was a child, I used to sometimes swim like that," she said, "for the sheer joy of the water and the movement." It had been a long time since she'd thought of such uncomplicated memories. She had few, but they were something worth cherishing. And that delight in movement and the moment, that was something she could pursue.
"You are beautiful, and joyous," said Telemachus. She pulled him closer and turned her face up for a kiss. He gave it, and she felt the love and hunger there in the way his mouth opened for her, and the soft grasp of his fingers on her face.
"You make me both," she said. "And I see there is much more to being alive than I had known, even given all my long years of life. To find that joy, first, in the most fleeting of moments."
Telemachus slid one hand down her body, over her wet hair, tracing her shoulder, down her side to rest on her lower back and hold her close enough to rock against her and start hardening against her thigh.
"I would not call the moment fleeting," said Telemachus.
"No? Perhaps swift? Ephemeral?" she asked, smiling up at him. She laughed as he growled in mock reproof. "Show me this extremely enduring moment then. Prove it with actions, and then I will believe it."
Telemachus caught her up in his arms and carried her out of the water to the rough wool blanket spread there. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and squeaked in mock fear, and she felt his smile against her hair as he awkwardly manoeuvred them to the ground. Laying back against the blanket, the sky above was wide and blue and open, nowhere to hide and achingly empty. She smiled at it for a moment before pulling Telemachus close and forgetting everything else for a while in the joy they felt together.