Dorian Selmaré

The Port City of Tialhae bustled with noise, as it always did.

Seagulls cawed overhead with their sharp, piercing cries somehow meshing with the soothing crash of the waves against the sandy shores. Dorian sat atop one of the many wooden posts lining one of the docks, a half-eaten skewer of grilled shrimp hanging loosely in his grasp. The scent of salt and grilled meats mingled with the salty and briny winds, but none of that could stir up his appetite. He simply stared out across the sea, as if the horizon might finally give him an answer to the weary and heavy mind he's been burdened with.

Another day had gone by.

Another day had gone by with no word of Paxsi. There was no whispering on the glistening tides, no melodious singing in the gales or the wails of the tempests he endured with his crew. Havkaz hadn’t heard a whisper of High Lady Sindar’s silver-threaded voice either. It was as if the kingdom had lost its one true voice to cry to the Goddess Selunaé.

When news first reached him that two members of the Lunarian Throne had vanished—kidnapped? impromptu adventuring?—Dorian had taken to the seas more than usual, desperate for some type of lead that the depths might have answers for.

He had expected everyone in Havkaz's services to come together just like him to find their matriarch and her son, but no. That wasn't the case at all. Instead, the worst thing he had ever heard come from the top was for him to stop.

Officially, it was called a “rest leave.” Unofficially, everyone from the Saltmother to the Wakechildren whispered behind closed doors that he was unraveling faster than a yarn dropped. They said his sails were beginning to fray and his hull was weakening to the point they suspected he'd drown himself in waters too dark for any man to navigate alone.

But they didn’t understand the necessity or the desperation in his veins for his unending search. Because it just didn't make sense. Lady Sindar, who loved her people and spoke to them as if they were her children themselves, was gone without a trace, leaving behind only a strange decree that was splitting her kingdom apart. And Paxsi...Paxsi, who had always found Dorian when he docked, had slipped away months afterwards like sand through the gaps of his fingers.

There was no goodbye. Just a sudden absence that left him feeling more hollow than an abandoned hermit crab's shell.

Dorian’s jaw clenched at the very memory, but somehow he couldn’t put his finger on what really gnawed at him. All he knew was that everything was just too strange and too confusing for him.

The decree High Lady Sindar had passed before she went missing didn't sound like her; the replacement was just too clean. Nyssara, a woman stitched with secrets that could've ran back to Solvaris, was named Acting Lady as though Fiernan—Sindar’s own blood—was too fragile to rule in Sindar's stead.

But he couldn't do anything as a simple Warden of the Currents. So here he was now. Resting...moping...and rotting like the driftwood beneath the beams of the dock.

He scratched the back of his neck and sighed, his gaze drifting lazily over the market crowd like a stray cat watching fishermen sort the day’s catch. Children darted between barrels and stalls, their laughter bringing in the joy the Port City of Tialhae was known for. A couple danced barefoot in the sand to the jaunty melody of a violin in the hands of an expert violinist.

He almost turned away from the cheer. He almost returned to the rickety inn he was staying at with the leaking ceiling and the bed that cried out in a drawn out squeak with every sleepless turn.

But then he saw them and Dorian’s mind immediately went empty.

The sorrow that clung to him like barnacles cracked, then fell away like fine dust. The ache in his chest slowly vanished, and for the first time in weeks, the world finally stood still. With time suspended as his eyes remained glued on them, he forgot how to breathe...until his lungs started to burn.

With a sharp inhale, he puffed out his chest, cheeks filling out with air before he exhaled with a sharp whoo!

He couldn’t name what it was that was beating at his chest like a bludgeoning hammer. He couldn’t think there was an explanation for what he was feeling even if he offered himself to a scholar and let them dissect his soul piece by piece.

They weren’t just beautiful.

Striking didn’t even graze the truth of what his eyes were telling him. They looked like something carved from a dream conjured by the divine Selunaé. They were a dream a sailor might have after a week lost at sea, the kind that promised either salvation or madness.

He was moving before he realized it, wanting to wade into whatever they could offer him. He was drawn in to them like the ocean waves obeying the pull of the glorious moon that slept above them.

When he stopped, standing before them, he realized he had nothing to say.

There was no charming line. No formal greeting. Nothing clever.

Just his heart pounding in a...loud and reckless manner, soaked in a strange pull that felt like he's been missing them for centuries and not that he was simply captivated at first glance.

“I want a future with you,” he blurted out instead, the words tumbling out before he could stop himself. “By Selunaé, I don’t even know your name but I want...I want to marry you.”

Dorian's mouth opened, then closed, and then opened again. He was trying to figure it all out all at once; the words to tell them that he wanted to get to know them and the motions in attempting to steady his body as his heart pulled and tugged him forward as if they were an irresistible magnet,.

“I—I mean it,” he added, steadier now, although his ears burned redder than the sunburn he once got when he was just a young boy who knew little about the consequences of the sun's radiance. “I know it sounds crazy. I probably sound...mad. But I’ve seen things—battle, blood, betrayal—and not one of them has ever stopped me like this like you do.”

He removed his hat and pressed it to his chest, earnestly speaking with a dip of his head. “I don’t want to stay awake a thousand nights, wondering. I don’t want to regret not speaking it. I would adore...whatever you’ll give me. Even a ‘no,’ will soothe me, so that I can live knowing I tried.”

The sea breeze tousled his golden curls, as he let the words settle in with an open, unguarded, and ridiculous sense of genuine sincerity.

“Please,” he tilted his head as he sent them a boyish smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Marry me. Or...at least let me know of your name.”