When Tavras had jumped off of the cliff, he had risen onto his toes with his whole body stretching up in preparation for the leap. His shoulders lifted and drew the leather of his shirt taught. While his clothes covered the majority of what Val would have liked to see, she still appreciated the lines of his musculature that were visible through his shirt. From there, Tavras had dived off the cliff with all of the elegance of a professional diver.

Yet again, he made her feel like a forbidden trespasser observing in on him. Whenever Tavras fully enjoyed himself in the natural world, Val always felt like she did not belong in his presence.

She had stayed put, nonetheless, her ears listening for the splash far below. Many seconds passed before he had definitely fallen into the water, marked by a loud splash. Carefully, Val picked herself onto her hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the cliff.

Some pebbles and dirt came loose beneath her, dropping into the lake below as well. Like this, Val gawked at the water’s still rippling surface, waiting for Tavras to come back up.

All at once, water exploded upward like a geyser. Tavras spun around in the air with his long hair trailing after the beads of water that surrounded him. “Come on, Val. Join me!” With that, he tucked himself into a somersault before extending his body back into another dive. Tavras plummeted down to the lake and disappeared beneath the surface.

No way did Val want to join him. Maybe a plunge like that felt fine to Tavras, being a god of water and all. From this height, the water would hit her like a slab of concrete though. Any mortal human would die upon impact. While Val assumed that she would survive the fall, it would undoubtedly knock the wind out of her and leave her dazed, if not some bones broken.

“Tavras, you’re crazy,” she muttered to herself. Val retreated farther away from the cliff to make sure that both the ground would not cave beneath her, and also so that Tavras could not pull her over the edge without at least a little bit of a fight.

A second eruption of water happened, this time on the far side of the lake. Instead of simply launching himself into the air, Tavras ran up the waterfall. Never mind the vertical angle at which he ran, he still moved against the pounding falls with ease. From the momentum of his run, Tavras arrived at the top of the waterfall. He gave a final leap, flipped in the air, and tapped onto dry land. Clearly, he was showing off, if not just having fun.

Tavras jogged around the lake and squatted down in front of Val. At some point, he had also dried himself off because not a drop of water dripped from him. “What’s wrong, Val? Are you nervous? Are you too preoccupied by our chat earlier to have any fun?”

“No, I just have a little common sense. Maybe a god of water can have fun making a jump like that, but I can’t. I would just get hurt.”

“You’re so distrusting, it wounds me!” Tavras spun around, clutching at his heart. “Sure, you are right that taking that jump would be a bad idea on your own, but you are in the good company of a god of water, though! I’ll soften your fall—I promise.”

Val swallowed hard and wanted to stay put, but how could she resist him when Tavras grabbed both of her hands and helped her up?

“You have to jump,” he said, hands on either of her shoulders, “on three, two—”

Val jumped on her own out of fear that Tavras would push her on the count of two.

Some solid seconds passed while she plummeted through the air. Her short hair whipped up behind her, the last thing to fall. If her eyes would have stayed open, she would have likely seen the rocky walls of the cliffside rush by her, but Val did not want to see that. Her eyes squeezed closed just as tight as her mouth clamped shut. Her descent towards the water continued. Maybe she would have let out a fun whoop, if only she could trust herself not to scream.

Her feet hit the water first. The soles of her shoes gave an audible slap against the surface, then her whole body plunged beneath. Water filled her ears, pressed up against her eyelid, and threatened to enter her nose.

Val recalled the moment when she had been drowning. Panicked seized her heart, making it pound away in her chest. Aside from the dull hum of water in her ears, she could only hear the ticking of her pulse.

Apparently, Foofy had not been the only one to have developed a fear of water. Throughout her mind, she felt the suffocating, irrational fear that she would drown.

Wanting to swim to the surface at once, Val kicked and pushed. Her head reached open air which let her mouth open up to take needlessly deep gulps. The calm waters of the lake had given her a much easier time in swimming to the surface. Nonetheless, her arms and legs shook as she treaded in place.

Nearby, Tavras’s head popped out of the water too. He buckled with his laughter, almost struggling to swim over to her. “I can’t believe that you jumped on two.” He gasped for air between his laughs, for a very different reason than her own gasps. “What if I hadn’t been ready to Bend Water to catch your fall? That was mighty bold of you, Val.”

She blinked the water away from her eyes, feeling both dumb and guilty. “Sorry. I thought that you were going to push me early.”

Despite the way that he had scolded her, he never stopped laughing. Tavras had to wipe tears away from his eyes before he could speak again. “I was totally going to push you on two! You should have seen me, standing up there with my arms hanging out, only wishing that I had managed to push you! Next time, I’ll just have to do it right away on one.” He gave her one of his signature winks.

“I knew it!” Val cried. She swam nearer to slap some water into Tavras’s face.

He dove beneath her attempt, and with a tug at her feet, Val went under too.

“Mmph!” She tried to thrash and kick at him, but Tavras had a tight hold on her ankles.

While Val attempted to push herself back up to the surface, he only pulled her deeper. More so than just downward, he also pulled her to the side.

Hopefully, he had just dragged her over to a shaded section of water, because they had become shrouded in darkness. The lake could not possibly go this deep into an abyss for it to get this dark. They had to have moved into an area of water overshadowed by some low-hanging trees.

One thing that she felt certain about: a weight in her chest constricted around her lungs. The blanket of darkness and this frigid water only served to make Val panic all the more. Unless Tavras gave her one of those stereotypical kisses underwater to share his oxygen with her, Val would run out of air within the next few seconds. Whether or not those kisses worked in reality, she still had some dubious desire to kiss him, even terrified underwater.

To communicate her need for air, Val struck a desperate hand against his shoulder a few times. “Mm.” A high-pitched whine sounded in her throat, weirder underwater.

Tavras tightened his hands around her elbows. Together, their bodies lurched with a few kicks of his legs, and he brought her to the surface.

From this, droplets of water splashed around them. Some of this spray settled overtop of Val’s body once more, already soaked and streaked with water running off of her body. In the open air, she felt even colder than she had underwater.

First, she drew in many raspy inhalations. Once she had regained her voice enough to speak, she cried, “Tavras!”

“Yes, that is my name.” He simply blinked at her as if he could possibly be unaware of why she was upset with him.

From some combination of cold and fear, her body shook uncontrollably against Tavras’s chest. Thankfully, he treaded water for the both of them, because Val hardly felt capable of supporting herself. At the very least, she could look around and see where in the world he had taken them to have been cast into a place, so cool and dark.

Gods, if it was possible to swim to the Netherworld, she might have just guessed that he had taken her there.

By the looks of their surroundings, Tavras had dragged her into some sort of underwater cave. When she looked up, she changed her mind about this damp, cold place being akin to the Nether. The splendor of this place dazzled in her eyes.

Along the rocky ceiling, some green crystals glowed and bathed them in enough light to support their vision. Pieces of dust or some other manner of airborne particulate drifted through the air. These particles caught the light and reflected the luminescence of the crystals throughout the cave.

“Wow,” Val breathed. The incredible beauty of the cavern left her otherwise speechless. The shaking of her body reduced tenfold, only leaving some slight shivers from cold.

A moment of silence held between them which gave Val the time to process her environment with the widest of eyes. Turning back to Tavras, she felt compelled to ask, “Why did you bring me here?”

“I simply want to make sure that you get to experience everything in my Paradise.” Tavras released himself from around her and swam the opposite direction from the way that they had just come from. “Follow me. Allow me to show you.”

She took up in a slow swim after him.

What exactly waited for them at the end of this cave, Val could not think up anything more than a wild guess. Per usual, her mind was in the gutter and conjured up possibilities that could only begin and end as a mere fantasy.

For one, Tavras had to live somewhere. Whenever he left her to sleep near the beachfront at night, he needed to go somewhere for himself to stay the night. For some reason, this cave exuded the vibes of what could be the entrance way to the home of the Sea Itself. By any chance, could Tavras be taking her to his home with the intent of revealing his living quarters to her? Maybe, even, he wished to have alone time with her in the comfort of a civilized shelter over the wilderness of his Paradise.

All of these things, Val let herself hope for. Though at some point, even she had to grow tired of her constant daydreaming and pining over a man—a god—entirely out of her league.

Regardless if her fantastical prediction would turn out to be true in reality, Val felt a thrill of excitement either way. Tavras was in the process of showing her the secrets of his Paradise.

That much alone inspired her to swim on.