The years faded away. All who once knew them had passed beyond their reach. For long years he had visited his love when his destiny allowed him. Soon she grew old and grey though he stayed as familiar as the two sons that grew older than him in looks, though not years.

He listened intently as the other who no longer grew old regaled him with tales of his long lost beautiful Pirate King. Although the one telling the tales thought she should have taken the title of Queen as to not confuse those telling the tales, nor those hearing the tales, but he knew his fierce Pirate King would never turn herself into a queen for the sake of others.

Sometimes it pained his empty chest to think of her, but so long ago had he ferried her across to the next world as they whispered their goodbyes into each other's open mouths, that he found he could no longer recall the color of her eyes. Were they blue like the sea that claimed him? Or were they brown as the land he could but infrequently step upon? He could no longer remember and it angered him.

One more thing lost to the sea.

The color of his Pirate King's eyes.

His second born son.

Three of his seven grandchildren.

After the third grandchild, looking so very much like her grandmother, drifted by him on her lanterned boat he decided to stop coming ashore for when he came ashore he tempted those on the land. They saw him, his ageless beautiful face and they smelled him, his salty vaporous sea and they wanted to follow. Again and again he told them the sea is a harsh mistress but again and again they followed.

So he stopped stepping upon the land.

Hoping. Praying that his memory, his legend, would fade from their consciousness and not a single one after would ever hear the sea's wicked call.

The other would whisper, hot and wet, in his ear that the sea would call who she willed whether he was there to represent her or not. His dark beauty mirroring her own. His presence was not needed to make those ashore long for the wavering dip beneath their feet. It was all he could do not to push the other one from between his slick thighs. He wanted to deny what the other said, what he claimed to be true of the sea and her wild whims, because he did not want his sacrifice to be for naught.

The other said it was not a sacrifice that it was time, finally time, that he gave himself over to them both.

The sea and the other.

They were the ones that claimed possession of him now.

They were the ones that he sailed upon.

They were the ones that he could call home.

And neither could he ever find on land.

The sea because the laws of nature say she cannot. The other because the only sanity he can claim now is between those smooth slick thighs for all else has fallen away.

So he sails upon the one and beside the other.

The sea bears them both, a strange vibration and a call keeping them never too far apart.

He accepts them both now. The sea because she is his destiny, the other because he seems to have become his fate.

He rocks and sways upon them both. Riding their waves again and again. Sweaty and hot, holding tight, now unwilling rather than unable, to let either one go.

As one is below him, the other surrounds him.

Both rock him to sleep.

And to both he binds himself.

One by destiny.

One now, by choice.