May I have this dance?

May I have this dance?

“You know, I met you in a dream.” Christos says, his hand offered, his leg kicked out behind him. “And you know, we danced.” At first it was a salsa, quick and in the hips, but slowly, it moved into a waltz, and movements of the shoulders. Hali twirled around the Herengon, as the clouds circled the Isle.
Hali was raised under water, obviously. She is born to a family of guards, that was their job, their duty, their life. Her parents would train and would go out on adventures, and they would protect the King of the Seas. Hali would join them, training under her parents tutelage, but it didn't make her happy. What is a cleric, without a cause to serve? What is a warrior, without the just to protect? Hali left her parents, they could never see eye to eye, as a storm brewed in Hali's mind, a fiery spirit that the calm of the sea could not contain.
Every night she dreams of thunder and lightning. Of air, and of water. Of passion.
Hali meets Christos for the first time, in a moment of crisis, the Temple is under attack. Christos explains all the things he can not do. He can not stop time, he can not stop the storm, he can not tell you where anything is, he just got here. He can't stab things, no swords. Can't shoot things, no bow. Christos has a stick. “Well, what exactly are you good for then?” Hali asks, and the rabbit offers his hand. “I can dance.”
Nature has its own rhythm. The roaring of thunder, the crash of waves. The sound of a jet-stream that tickles your ear. The feeling of a volcano in your chest. The sound of bubbles escaping for the air. Gasping, reaching. Ascending,. The shock of lightning. The rumbling sound of the clouds, heavy with rain waiting to happen. The beating of hearts.
Christos places his hand on Hali's swollen belly. “You know, it takes two to tango.”
Her pregnancy was not easy. She watched Triti grow and bear Baz with such grace, but Chrissy was such a battle, a storm within her.
“No Mom! They clean up after me!” Chrissy yelled, he may have shied from others, but never to his mother, who shot the attitude back at him. “Seriously? You go do your duty.” Her boy liked to compete with his cousin, his brother, really. Baz Tertu grows alongside Chrissy, the only children with a family, bound to a temple of the refuge.
Hali held her sister's spear, a moment before training, so many years ago. “The water acts against you, but it also acts against them.” She shifts her shoulders, “Move with it, not against it.” Her parents learned to stand in place, to be guards. “Never stand still.” She floated away, “Move with it.”
“Follow my feet. Move with me.” Christos explains, stepping with his love in his arms. He taught her to dance. He taught her to pray, he taught her to love. Hali was a girl of duty, and of rebellion, but Christos taught her to be a woman of love, and of focus.
Chrissy was a Genasi like herself, but he looked so much like his father. He was a wild child, but was lucky enough to grow up with the orphans of Karagidia, and with his best friend. Baz. Together they would train with Mimi, and together they would take their vows to Iris.
The storms of the sky did not so much effect the deep water. Genasi lived leagues under the sea, and though the storms made waves and rain and thunder and lightning, it did not reach the deep. Chrissy was never afraid of storms. Even when raised on the isle, Chrissy saw it as the world, as something that was to happen, either way. With or without interference, the world has its storms. Chrissy did not see it as a bad thing, he saw it as a moment of passion, he saw it as a dance. A foxtrot of chaos.
Chrissy and his father weren't the only family Hali had, she still had her parents back home, and she had a sister, Kali who came to live with them on Karagidia, and who helped with Chrissy, and Baz, and the orphans. Kali took to learning the path of medicine from Hali.
Hali was told to learn from the god of war, but Hali didn't want that. She wanted knowledge, she wanted to heal. When she left her home, she joined the Church of Dodnir. The problem with questioning everything however, is that you question everyone. Hali met and argued with every cleric in the church. She questioned everything. She had dreams that showed her truths the clerics did not want to admit. Even as a young woman she had dreams of the future. Hali was a dreamer of Dodnir, and no one wanted to admit it but a single woman. They called her Entzun, and she listened to each of Hali's dreams.
Hali dreamed of a dance in a desert that brought on a storm.
She dreamed of a fight in a church, with a red tiefling with green freckles, and green eyes.
She dreamed of a Captain, and a crash, and a battle with Tritons.
She dreamed of an Island, and of a Temple, and of those who would live there.
She would dream of a child, and a lover.
Christos is a cleric of Iris, he dedicated himself to the storm, he saw every obstacle of life as just something the world throws at you, and that to him, was always a storm of some sort. He worshiped her for her love of family. He helped take care of many siblings and many more cousins for years before heading out on his own. Beginning his grand adventure. Christos fought centaurs and golaiths in Chorto, he fought Shadar-Kai in the Shadowfell, fought twisted fey and dark hobgoblins in the Feywilde. Battles ghosts in the haunted woods of Laban, and Leonin warlords across the world. Christos danced with danger around Minos, and he never thought he would settle down, until the day he offered his hand to Hali.
Christos was the man of Hali's dreams, smart, pious, charming, passionate. He was at home at the orphanage, around so many children, and eventually his own. Christos and Hali raised Chrissy together, and Chrissy was headstrong, just like his mother, and was full of tempest, like his father. He would study under both his father and Mimi, who was like a grandmother to him, and he would fall in love with the lessons, the myths, and the legends of Iris. The adventures with Tidbit, the Conquest of Besar, the Child of the Summer Rain, the wish that destroyed Laban. The worst side of best intentions. It was Aunt Triti that started calling him Chrissy, and it was from her that he learned of first hand stories of Iris, of the fey, and of the Unseelie Court. However, the portal below the temple has been inactive for the last eighteen years, two years before he was born.
The portal had been a guaranteed path to the Feywilde since the power was stabilized, eons ago, but as of late, it only works for minutes at a time, unpredictably. And without a sure way to get back, few take the chance. Chrissy knows of one, a Dragonborn, who went through, but he has not been seen since. Mimi assumed he was lost, Christos says “He is in a storm, but all storms end.”
Some of the kids, like Baz, hated storms. He studied Iris to over come the storm. Chrissy studied her because he knows their inevitability. Storms will come, storms will go, and then they will come again. To be fearful of their destruction, is to be blind to their cleansing. Chrissy and Baz often took two very different takes on the teachings of Iris. Baz saw her attachment to Tidbit as a motherly role, looking after the halfling to protect him and teach him. Chrissy understood it to be one of mutual chaos. Energies that fed into each other and causes storms all their own.
“I want to go see her, I know Mimi said we could after we graduate, I think we should take the chance.” Chrissy looked out off the temple roof, past the trees and across the seas. “The wilde has been disconnected for so long, who knows what has changed?” Baz shakes his head “What if we can't get back? What we if get lost?” He looks worried, “Time is different there, what if we do get back, but it's so long that everyone is dead? What if we miss everything? What if we lose everyone?” Baz was always afraid of losing those he loved. Plagued by nightmares of storms that took away his family. Chrissy loves his family, but he knows one day they will no longer be. One day his mother will die, his father probably before that. Mimi would come first, logically. Eventually the older kids, and eventually Baz. Death is just a part of life, the last storm anyone faces.
Chrissy dreams of a world below water, it is the same of the Temple, but he is only with his Aunt Kali, and she teaches him of the storm. Of purple lightning, and of lost adventurers. Chrissy dreams of his mother and his father dancing. Together in a patch of green grass surrounded by brown desert. An oasis at the end of the world. He dreams of battle, and of a plea, a plea to the gods.
The morning after he takes his vows with Mimi and Baz he approaches his father, “Dad, I want to go to the Fey.” Christos shrugs, “You know, that's probably a really bad idea, but I understand why. What did your mother say?” Chrissy shakes his head, “I havn't asked her.” His father laughs, “Yeah, she would not be happy to hear that.” He reaches up to place a hand on his son's shoulder, Chrissy was an easy foot and a half taller, “Follow that storm you have.” Chrissy nods and turns away, “Boy, I am leaving for a trip myself, be careful.” He steps forward, “I love you son.” They hug for a long moment before Chrissy pulls away, and they bid farewell.
It takes the young man a few days to ready for his trip, and then it would take a few more before the portal opened, as a storm ravaged the skys above the temple, the magic warped through the portal below it. Baz shakes his head, the reality of his decision to come along hitting him, the thunder above scaring him. “What do you think you are doing?” Mimi shouts entering the tunnel. “That's not safe!” Baz hesitates, a step from the portal. Chrissy steps behind Baz and between him and Mimi “We are going to worship Iris.” Mimi approaches still, “Chrissy, you know it's not stable, I can't let you go through.”
Chrissy turns and pushes Baz through, before feeding the electricity to his hand. “We are going, we need the storm.”
Shatter.
Mimi's face cracks and shatters and she falls to the ground. She suffers in her final moments.
Chrissy runs through the portal as it closes, meeting his friend inside the Feywilde.
“Is everything okay?” Baz asks.
Chrissy nods, “It will be.”