After the team returned to the Sea Pearl Palace, they enjoyed a hearty meal, only to head off in different directions shortly thereafter. Everyone went about their own business. Mittar, having some urgent work-related matters to attend to, left the hotel early. His parents decided to call it a day. The journey had been long, and they were in dire need of a good, long sleep.
Mukei initially sat down at the hotel bar for a drink, but was soon joined by Llyr, who began prying into the undersea-walker's line of work. It turned out that Mittar enjoyed talking about his family, which is how the former Foreign Minister learned who Mukei was and what he did for a living. It came as no surprise that the researcher's interest was piqued by someone working in a similar field.
As they had done over the past few days, Ajtony and Kamu vanished, as if the earth itself had swallowed them up. Then again, had anyone asked the hegins about it, they would have simply rolled their eyes and walked on without a word. Given what was known about the leader of the Immortal Mist and his companion, it was hardly strange for either of them to effectively disappear from the face of the earth, or at least from the part of it that living humans can perceive.
"Gotcha, you silly hegin!" The Danovus woman grinned, bursting through the open balcony door of Tele Tete's room and literally throwing herself into the hegin's arms.
"Well, what's gotten into you?" Tele Tete raised his eyebrows as he wrapped his arms around the woman's waist to steady her before she could collapse to the floor.
"My head's spinning a bit." She blinked rapidly, causing her face to contort into a grimace, though it smoothed out just as quickly, and she snuggled even closer to the hegin. "But I feel better already, now that you're here." She whispered, resting her head on his shoulder.
"Alright then. I was starting to get worried. If you weren't a danovus, I'd say you were drunk, but as it is..." Tele Tete grimaced, let out a long sigh, and scooped her up into his arms. She let out a little squeal, then began to giggle.
"I didn't know you were this strong." She traced her finger along the hegin's face.
"Whoever you drank from, you must never drink from them again. It's completely scrambled your wits." The Tele man rolled his eyes as he moved to lay the "anovus down on the bed. Or rather, he tried to lay her down, but she refused to let go of him. "Physalis." He said, using her name to draw her attention to the situation.
"I love it when you say my name." The danovus began, though her words stumbled, as if they were struggling to leave her throat as quickly as she'd formed them in her mind. "It's so... so..." She tried to start another sentence, but failed.
"That settles it. You're completely drunk. You need to get some sleep. You'll feel better afterwards." Tele Tete sighed, then took hold of the woman's arms with both hands to remove them from around his neck. But a danovus, even when drunk, is still a danovus, and far stronger than an average human.
"No! Don't go!" Panic was clear in her voice as she spoke, she also yanked him back, causing him to fall right on top of her.
"Alright. You win. I'm not going anywhere." The hegin man conceded, shifting them to the side and pulling the danovus closer. "Get some sleep, Physalis." He said, his voice softening, but the woman lifted her head and shot him a grumpy look.
"And what about a goodnight kiss?" She asked, sounding completely serious, which left the man blinking at her in surprise.
"What?" Tele Tete blurted out.
"I'm not sleeping without a goodnight kiss." The woman insisted, still sounding grumpy.
"Oh, for the spirits' sake..." The hegin glanced toward the ceiling, then planted a kiss on her forehead. "There you go. Now..." Before he could finish his sentence, the fanovus woman kissed him on the lips. "Physalis?" The man gulped after the kiss.
"Well, now that you know how it's done, do I get my goodnight kiss?" The woman asked in a gruff tone.
"Just one, though." Tele Tete gave in, and at his words, Physalis Alkekengi's face lit up.
"Good." The woman gripped the hegin's clothing. The man offered a faint smile, taking the danovus's face in one hand and slowly leaning in closer. At first, the kiss was merely a gentle touch, as if Tele Tete wanted to savor the moment. It only gradually deepened into a true, profound kiss, by the end of which his hand had wandered from her face into her hair.
"I'm going to get jealous that someone else's blood has left you so intoxicated." The hegin whispered after the kiss.
"Yours is tastier." The danovus woman murmured, before drifting into deep, rhythmic breathing under the gaze of the hegin, who watched her with a smile.
While such things were unfolding in a room within the Sea Pearl Palace, Achilleus following his daily routine, visited the volcanology center to play with the young undersea-walkers and the volcanic rock found on the seabed. The undersea-walker kids took great delight in watching the hegin's skillful handling of the stone.
Citar and Wandi had, in theory, gone on a date. No one knew where they had gone, however, nor how long they might be away. Just as no one knew where on earth Teveli had vanished to, though Benkó did remark that perhaps the youngest Teike boy began learning the customs of his ancestor, allowing the earth to swallow him up without a trace.
The others, specifically Suk, Rahul, Benkó, and Razvan, visited a section of the palace that supposedly housed a lake, nestled deep beneath the sea, where one could bathe. It must be said that this unique natural phenomenon was a rather strange sight for the young ones. In fact, Razvan was so unsettled by it that, for a while, he refused to even follow the rest of the group.
Ultimately, he only entered the water because Rahul literally dragged him in. This didn't mean, however, that the leader of the Athamanas let go of the chüvigh boy, quite the contrary, even minutes later, he was still staring suspiciously at the water, clutching Rahul's hand as if it were an anchor tethering him to reality.
"Hey, Suk, aren't you worried that thing might sting you?" Benkó asked, pointing toward the jellyfish that was, as usual, hovering right next to Suk's head. "The undersea-walkers said it could even be fatal. I don't get how you can be so calm." The Bokló boy remarked, grimacing.
At first, the only response he got was the Zovárd boy tilting his head to the side and blinking at him in confusion. Then, when Benkó didn't elaborate, he slowly turned toward the jellyfish and looked it up and down.
"You mean... Like this?" The Zovárd boy grabbed the jellyfish from beside his head and pressed it straight onto his other arm. "It just tickles." He said with a shrug, to which the Bokló boy, mouth agape in a grimace, simply shook his head.
"Right. I don't know why I'm even surprised." The boy muttered, sinking deeper into the water.
"Zovárd. Need I say more?" Rahul asked, his tone laced with irony, before rolling his eyes and interlacing his fingers with Razvan's.
"Not my fault you lot are such softies." Suk said, letting go of the jellyfish once more and settling in comfortably to enjoy the underwater lake.