Sometime after she hits the water, Sheba opens her eyes and finds herself drowning.

The seawater assaults her eyes, fills her ears and nose and mouth, garbling her senses, and she flails, panicking, as a wave sends the world spinning sideways and over and under. She's heard of being so lost you can't tell which way is up; she's never experienced it until now, but it's no exaggeration.

Everything is cold salt and liquid motion for what feels like forever, until something hits her shoulder, and a moment later a weight strangles her wrist. She can't see it, eyes squeezed shut again the turbulence, but it pulls at her, and she lets it, not so much for hope of rescue, but because she can't find the strength to fight back.

The absence of water shocks her nearly as much as the plunge, dizzying her with new sharp edges, clarity and sound and tethering solidity. A voice scrabbles at her ears, but Sheba can't put the words of it together, only barely comprehending the presence of the first things she's clung to since the sea -- a person and staff and driftwood.

The makeshift raft rocks and bucks beneath them like a wild horse, and Sheba clutches at the splintering wood with numb fingers, while the words continue. The thrum of a now familiar mind runs beneath them, warm as a hearth, and it promises kinship and concern amid a flickering strain of worry.

Sheba opens her eyes enough to get her bearings -- Jenna hasn't let go since hauling her aboard, but the driftwood raft doesn't appreciate the weight of two passengers, and the horizon feels terribly far away. Seawater forces itself up from her throat, as if reminding her of nearly drowning, and Sheba curls tighter into a ball to cough and hock it up.

"Are you alright?" Sheba manages to raise an eyebrow between coughs, and Jenna winces. "I guess that's a pretty dumb question," she amends. "Are you going to be alright?"

Sheba shrugs. "It was a long fall."

Jenna pats her back, frowning. "I have some healing herbs, if you need them," she offers, and then glances behind them, surveying the waters. Experimentally, she dips her improvised staff in the water, pushing through the waves like a gondolier. The raft wobbles more than it actually moves anywhere, but it's a start.

"I think I can see the shore from here," Jenna decides, and Sheba turns to follow her gaze. Sure enough, the coast of what might be Idejima marks a thin green line in the distant sea. A longer pause settles over them both. "Hey, if I took my cape off, could you blow wind into it like a sail?"

Sheba blinks. Back home, to ask a magical boon of her should have been a reverent thing, a prayer to the gods themselves. Her captors' demands came with cruelty and impudence, but Jenna is neither of these things. She asks as casually as if she's suggesting Sheba help her paddle.

"I suppose," Sheba answers, still thinking. Jenna pulls off her sodden cloak, and Sheba summons a whirlwind to set it billowing; the raft jerks a bit at first, but their speed increases until they're sailing at a good (if unsteady) pace towards the shore.

When the waters are shallow enough to wade, they disembark, both sodden and dripping, but alive. Sheba's shoulder throbs horribly once she warms enough to feel her limbs, though she refuses to acknowledge it, despite Jenna's visible concern. Sheba has been at someone else's mercy long enough; it's high time she dealt with something herself. Jenna limps slightly on the sand, using her staff for support, but she, at least, takes the time clean her ankle with water from her waterskin, and dresses the wound with a crude poultice of crushed leaves and a rag from her pockets.

The lighthouse beacon should be visible for miles, but it's nowhere on the horizon. Sheba can just sense the pulse of distant Psynergy, earthy and deep, too far away not to worry her.

"What were you doing out at sea, anyway?" Sheba asks a few minutes later, when her mind had put itself together enough to think properly. "Weren't you and the old man headed for Idejima?"

"There was an earthquake," Jenna explains, and her voice grows tight with uncertainty, worry for the scholar, Kraden, tangling in her guts. "We got separated, and then a huge wave came after it. I've never seen one so big... I grabbed a tree floating past and held on tight, until I found you."

She seems to come to a realization of her own. "Felix and the others must have been separated, too. You were with them, weren't you? Did you see what happened to--?"

"I fell," Sheba interrupts her, sharply. "I fell off the lighthouse when the beacon lit, because your brother decided to do it anyway, even after Saturos and Menardi were dead. I don't know what happened to Felix, and I don't know what happened to any of those other people. The last thing I saw was them dragging him back from the edge, fighting and screaming."

"Even when... wait, they're dead? And Felix still carried out their plan..." Jenna's expression shifts, indistinct, a tumult of conflicted feelings -- shock, joy in revenge, guilt in cruelty, betrayal, grief -- Sheba can't sort them out, not clearly, so she doesn't try, but just lets Jenna stand there and feel.

It takes what must be half an hour of aimless walking and fending off maddened wildlife before they stumble upon Kraden, who has apparently been sheltering in a grove far uphill since the wave, in case of another disaster. He's sitting on a tree stump, and nearly doesn't see them arrive, until Jenna calls out to him from twenty paces away.

"Kraden! You're alive!"

His eyes light up, crinkling behind his narrow glasses, and he's hurrying over to them a moment later, still inexplicably spry for his greying hair. His clothes are still damp when he reaches them, drying in the sun. "Jenna! Sheba! Oh, thank the elements you're both alright!"

Sheba tells him the same quick story she gave Jenna, cut shorter again, so she doesn't have to offer every detail. Felix is still bad, their captors are dead, Sheba fell off a lighthouse, and she doesn't know anything else. Jenna coaxes her into dealing with her wrenched shoulder as the sky darkens into late afternoon, and Kraden supplies kindling for a fire by evening.

Jenna lights the fire without tinder or flint -- she snaps her fingers, and the dry twigs burst into flame, crackling gleefully in the shallow firepit. Sheba watches the rings of light fade from around Jenna's wrist, warm and lively, an energy so utterly like and unlike their captors' all at once, and tells herself she's shivering from growing cold of nightfall.

They don't find Felix in the morning. They don't find him through the day, or the day after that, either. Alex doesn't deign to show up with directions or a map, so they judge directions by the sunrise and head east -- with any luck, toward a town.

Jenna declares herself the leader of their little band, and Sheba has been following just a bit too long to object. She could pull rank, but divine child means nothing here, least of all to someone who can set her hands on fire just by thinking about it, and Jenna seems like the better navigator, anyway. By the time they reach a town, it goes unquestioned.

When they next meet Felix, he is in chains, and Jenna's friends have quite a lot to answer for.

---

OMAKE

Jenna stares at the log on the far side of the gap, arms crossed, mind churning. Sheba, with some resignation, tosses another whirlwind at it. The bark rustles slightly. Nothing else changes.

"This would really have been easier with Felix's psynergy..." Kraden comments, making no effort to help.

Jenna scowls. "Ugh, I knew I should have studied telekinesis spells back in Vale!"

Though the log, blocking the path through the temple, does not say anything, Sheba can't help but assume the gods are laughing at them.