wear the moon like a halo

SUNJATA

the flood

feeling alive while you fight for your life
as you swim back to the beaches

He lets the usual nicknames roll off her tongue, his face impassive and masked as they land, finding nothing particularly him within them. Until she says the nicknames she already has come up with, but even then she picks another, one that has her smiling and amused and Sunjata’s head tilts toward her curiously. This breaks his composure, a dark brow raising and a crooked smirk forming on his face. “Beastie?” He murmurs, as if tasting it on his tongue, her whisper in his ear has him focusing a bit more intensely on it. “You haven’t even seen the half of them yet.” He rumbles, managing an almost awkward huff of a laugh, before he can feel the shift in the waves, the break in the clouds, the wind that pulls and tugs at them.

But he does his best to protect her, to keep her head above water, to keep her flush against him. And despite them both going under, he manages it. He keeps her pressed against him, however, close enough to feel her rabbiting heart, one arm wrapped around her while the other lifts to pull her hair from her face and her eyes. “You’re okay.” He rumbles, reaching down once he’s managed to pull the hair from her eyes and cheeks and neck to rest that arm around her too.

He isn’t on his back anymore, they’re both quite upright in the water, bobbing with each subsequent wave, enough that his dorsal fin cuts through the following waves that try to come at them from behind him, smoothing it out. “You did well holding on.” He offers her an easy smile to that, encouragingly.

Because the ocean was unpredictable, much like himself, and when it threw the waves at you sometimes all you could do was roll with them and hope that you came out right side up on the other side.

don't be scared of the tide, just prepare for the ride
as you float, you float, you float