You think I'd get better at this eventually

The world to Kumiho was little more than a swirling black void of emptiness. Sounds were dampened and distant, his head swimming in a cold abyss of nothingness. Was this what death felt like? Was this the afterlife he had been doomed to—some sort of barren purgatory he was to remain trapped in forever? Everything ached and was numb at the same time, a bizarre combination of pain and desensitization at one time. Man… death really sucked. There was no heaven, no paradise, no nirvana. There was just… nothing. Just like what he’d had remaining in his life when he’d left Ashen. Oh, what a stupid fool he’d been. He had found a good existence and he’d been reckless with it, and now he had paid the ultimate price.

In his stasis, Iho thought about his parents and family back home. They’d never know their boy had perished at sea. They’d never see his face again, never know of his adventures or see the man he had become. Or he had been, he supposed now. And Kitsune… Poor, sweet Kitsune… She’d never know what fate had befallen her poor lost pirate now. In time Iho would devolve into little more than a desiccated corpse washed up on some forgotten beach, picked clean by buzzards and crustaceans alike. The Ashen princess would go on to live her life, no doubt, and maybe he would linger as a bittersweet memory in her mind, but little more would remain of him. What a fool he had been.

Kitsune’s voice was suddenly there, echoing in his brain like the endless echo of the sea from within a conch shell. Surely his life was playing back around him like a heart wrenching movie. Iho didn’t want to watch it though. He didn’t want to be reminded of what had been torn away from him. Kitsune’s voice called out somewhere like a distant echo again. Iho wished it would end so he could just die in peace. And then suddenly, there was a hard pressure on his chest. Gods, that hurt! It felt like someone was constantly pounding on his chest, it just sort of the dull aching pressure. It was strange and uncomfortable and Iho immediately hated it.

Then, like jumpstarting a car, another hit to his chest brought with it a burst of blinding light. Iho gasped as the light blinded him, and then just as suddenly sensation came rushing back to him. The sound of the sea and the gulls, the warmth of the all-too-blinding sun, the pain in his everything. Saltwater burned in his throat as it came sputtering back up his esophagus and his body jerked violently back to life. Icy blue eyes shot open and the larger brute thrashed to right himself, coughing and spitting up a lungful of water as he gasped for air. His body shivered and twitched as it was roused from his deathlike state, looking around in a wild panic to figure out where he was. He was on a beach—where, he didn’t know—with the storms long passed. And there, right at his side, was the beautiful siren that had rescued him from his watery grave.

Iho stared up at Kitsune from his prone position on his belly on the sand, eyes wide as he looked at her like she were some specter from his past. He wanted to speak and say her name, but his throat was still rough from ingesting saltwater and his brain foggy as it reeled back and forth between consciousness and passing out again. Was he still dreaming? Was he actually dead now and this was what heaven looked like? Surely he must be dead, why else would he be seeing angels so clearly? She looked as beautiful as he remembered her being. A little more mature now that he’d been gone for nearly two seasons, a fully grown adult (who was still quite a bit smaller than he was, unfortunately for her) in all her grace and beauty.

To her, she would see a different kind of Iho than the youthful clean cut sailor who had sailed off some time ago. His face was scruffier, with coarse fur having grown along his jaw like a lupine-esque beard, and his coat in general was longer and in need of some grooming. A couple thin silvery scars cut through his fur across the breadth of his broad chest and one of his icy antlers had been broken off about an inch from the end, remnants of his survival with an angry ursine along his travels. His body was more toned now, muscular and athletic from battling unruly seas on his own as well as the number of trials he'd faced in his odyssey. They'd both done some growing up it seemed, but he would still look like her renegade seafarer—just a little more swashbuckler than sailor now. There was only one thing Kumiho could think to say when faced with such a jarring experience from drowning to being resuscitated by a princess for a second time. "...Am I dead...?"

"Speech"