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Sun, Seawater & Serpents by Amethystine (with inspiration from WhiteMantis! And Blizzard & WoW, as well, I suppose)

-Illustration by WhiteMantis (Picture is located within the text of the story, at the appropriate spot)

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"Do you ever wonder why we just... _help_ these random people?" mused the mage, as he rummaged through the undergrowth for something.

"What do you mean?" was his reply, coming from above the Forsaken. The voice was female, but a bit gruff, and those who might have heard it would have been right in suspecting that the woman who possessed it was rather.. 'rough & tumble'.

The ragged yet ruggedly handsome cadaver of a companion glanced up, "I mean just that. What makes us always end up taking these silly little... quests?" He rolls the last word he spoke around in his mouth, the scars at the edges of his lips shifting but not worsening, as the condition of his flesh might make one think could happen. "They're hardly quests, really.. why do we call them that? I've never thought about it, but they're not quests, they're.. mini-quests? No.. fetch quests? Heh, just fetching, really. Saying quest bequeaths them with too much importance."

The location of the hard to spot lady was made clear by the undead being's glowing eyes being turned upwards, toward the canopy of the tree whose roots he was searching around. The woman was revealed as she unfurled from a sturdy branch, like a colourful flower blooming. Her legs were hooked over the branch, and as she bent down to look "up" from her upside down perspective, her thick dreadlocked locks of fiery orange-red hair tumbled down around her purple-skinned, freckled and fair face, "Lonerin, dear, _love_..." she smirked around her the little, curved tusks that jutted out of her lips at the corners of her grinning mouth, laying the affection for her partner on thick so her next words wouldn't cut too harshly into his haggard hide. "STOP saying 'quest'."

The troll girl continued, "I don't care what they're called. They're easier than slaying beasts and raiding dungeons or lairs. It's an excuse to explore and relax.." She then deftly dropped down out of the tree, flipping herself around to land like a cat on her booted feet as she picked up where she left off in her statement "..and spend more alone time with you.." she finished, grasping the mage by his backside while he remained hunched over in the bushes, giving her a chance to lewdly grind her crotch against his rear, as if she was able to do anything but tease him in that position. It was a constant joke for the adventuring duo who were also a couple, to act like Rak'hara was the male in the relationship.

Or at least, Rak'hara thought it was funny. She snickered as Lonerin blushed. Which was quite a feat, for the biology of the bucket-kicked boy's body.. his pale skinned cheeks went dark with the rotten blood in his veins. The troll laughed a bit more upon seeing his flush face, fawning over him. She thought his blushes were the cutest thing. She tugged him up by his collar into a standing position and spun him around to face her, easily able to throw his slight weight around. She then roughly mashed her lips to his, and the way her tusks prodded his cheeks and lips here and there as she hungrily kissed him, it could easily explain all the vague scarring around his mouth.

Lonerin kissed back after a moment of surprise. One would think he would be over getting shocked by his love's sudden and aggressive affectionate actions by now, but the fact that he wasn't was one of the reasons Rak'hara continued to be so smitten with him. The odd pair peeled themselves apart after a moment of making out, just gazing into each others eyes as the troll's four ear-rings jangled together in the quiet aftermath of their passionate embrace.

To break the silence, the Forsaken mage lifted one of his arms, his bare-bone fingers clutching a bunch of what looked like weeds. "By the way, I found them."

"Why didn't you tell me??"

"Because I only just picked them when you grabbed my butt! I didn't want to interrupt.. that."

"Haha, you lusty little lich! But we can have some fun, _after_ we take all this stuff back to that weird bald naga guy."

---

"Excellent, excellent! You two are life-sssaversss indeed!" said the serpent, in his strange, sibilant speech. The two adventurers had just presented the 'python' with the items he had asked them to acquire, making the male mirthful and causing him to sit up quite high on the bar-stool they had found him coiled around.

He took the offered, rough-hewn bag, which contained the ingredients he had asked for, and looked through them, his snout stuck into the sac, his tongue flicking excitedly into its interior.

"If you'll jussst give me a short time, I'll have your, uh.. 'rare' rewardsss ready right away!" The odd ophidian twisted away from the patient pair and began dumping out the contents carefully onto the bar, where he had set up a number of glasses and mugs and steins with various liquids he must have secured from the barkeep. The human that was acting as bartender looked quite a lot like the dwarven proprietor of potent potables they were used to seeing in the tavern. Perhaps the new human was a relative of the regular guy? The human was stocky with a thick beard, and seemed, when they really looked closer, to just be a taller version of the dwarf.

But that would be impossible. Or would it be? What also would have been impossible is for the normal stout owner of the bar to have allowed this.. 'Amethystine' to use the end of his counter and so much of his glassware!

Soon enough, that corner of the room was full of strong scents and the sound of steaming solutions.. bubbling without any nearby fire! Rak'hara and Lonerin exchanged nervous glances and took a step away to sit at a nearby table, although they continued to eye the exotic creature. He was alien, but also very plain. It was as if someone had stripped a naga of all its interesting features. There were no fins or tendrils or spikes.. it was as if the streamlined serpents of the sea that they knew so well had been smoothed down to nothing but bare scales. He was also the opposite of a naga's colours, being brown and golden yellow, instead of the normal watery shades of blue and green.

It was no wonder the strange scaly being had been laying low on the outskirts of town when he first approached them for help, offering the most rare of items for their assistance, and had chosen the most deserted drinking hole in the most dead part of the day to conduct their dealings.

The strangely smooth serpent squirmed on his seat as his serums sizzled, pouring glasses into mugs and mugs into steins, he eventually combined it all into one big jug. The liquids coalesced into a murky blue and green that the average Azerothian would assume that Amethystine should rightly possess on his scales, rather than the exotic earthy tones he was coated in.

"There, all done!" announced the apparent alchemist. He gestured the pair over with his tail-tip as he carefully doled out the drink into three identical flasks. The trio of containers had closeable tops and were the fanciest implements he had on the bar counter, probably having secured them from a craftsman elsewhere in town, as they were much nicer than the tavern's wares.

The python passed the pair one flask each, after sealing them up tightly. "Drink thessse near water. The bigger the body, the better. Bessst if it'sss briny, too, actually. Why don't you two sssweetheartsss head down to the sssea and have a nice walk on the beach? I don't know about thisss place, but from where I come from, a ssseassside ssstroll isss quite romantic."

Lonerin gasped a little, while Rak'hara laughed lightly. Both were shocked, but the mage was taken aback while the troll girl was simply amused. They didn't really advertise that they were a couple to the world, if only because they didn't like the discrimination about dating a dead dude. And yet, this snake had seen their secret, sussing them out with ease. Perhaps he had met other couples like them before!

"Sssorry if I ssstartled you two. I guesss I jussst have a nose for that sssort of thing. Or a tongue, anyway," said the snake with a wry grin. "But sssince your reactionsss told me I'm right, all the more reassson for you to take my advice. Go! Go to the beach and take a break from all the raidsss and quesssting."

The serpentine stranger shooed them away with waves of his hands. "Resssting before quesssting, I alwaysss sssay. Go enjoy the rewardsss of your hard work for once! You've been a great help to me, you dessserve it."

Rak'hara and Lonerin buckled under the python's pervasive persuasions, leaving the tavern and heading toward the seaside, slowly. They were unsure about it at first, but were used to following directives by others. Just.. it was odd for the directives to be so.. open! Normally they knew what they had to collect, or kill. To have the mission goal of 'have a nice time' was weird to them.

Nevertheless, with each step they took toward the sea, the better they felt about the concept, feeling more free than they had in a long time. By the time they found themselves with sand underfoot and waves before them, they were so pleased to be there, together, that they scarcely remembered it being anyone's idea but their own.

All the while, the true progenitor of their plan to pass the day upon the pale piles of pulverized pebbles had been silently stalking them from afar. The python peered down at the pair from behind a pointy outcropping of rock, far from where they began to remove their various armours and heavier clothing.

One might assume that the mysterious male was a peeping pervert, but the calm and impassive way he watched them would help disprove that notion. He watched, as if expecting something, and sat quite still amongst the rocks. Passive and patient was the python, concealed to the couple by the craggy outcropping.

Both Rak'hara and Lonerin had removed their boots and let the sand shift between their toes as they walked together. Slowly, they relieved themselves of more and more armour and clothing, strolling slowly up and down the shore, talking jovially about their past adventures. Talk of tense traipsing through tunnels turned to talk of more meaningful matters. Lonerin leaned against his love and whispered sweet nothings into her long, pointy ear, the bridge of his nose brushing against the 4 round gold ear-rings she wore there, making them tap together. The troll turned maroon from her traditional purple as she heard what the mage said.

The pair pulled away from one another, both suddenly of the mind to make a move upon their mate. The eyes of each scanned the other, finding them both to be all but unclothed, standing there on the deserted strip of sand in their skivvies. They also realized that they've been holding those shiny flasks the whole time, still clutching them in the middle of the bottles' dual oblong shapes. The containers of the constrictor's concoction had twin spheres on either end.. as though someone had fused two light bulbs with their bases together and flattened one of the domes for a base, the other end getting a tiny, tapering spout.

Lonerin looked lustily over his love's lithe body, eyeing the simple tattoo of a scorpion on the skin of her bare belly. It was made up of black, geometric patches of ink.. which would, on their own, seem like nothing more than vaguely angular areas. But, they were arranged artistically to approximate the silhouette of the strong stalker of the sands, stinger ready to strike. The undead sorcerer had sworn, several times before, that he could have stared at it all day.. tracing the edges of a few of the bands that made up the arachnid's armoured backside with his bony fingers, he remembered how Rak had laughed at him, one of those times.

He smiled, remembering it with perfect clarity. It had been a kind laugh, from when the two were still becoming increasingly familiar with each other, and, to him, the troll's tattoo was another brand new feature of the fierce, yet fun foreign female. Lonerin had proclaimed his desire to study the scorpion for several hours, and he could remember how her head and flung back slightly, her dreadlocks dancing gracefully around her head as she laughed.. the thick strands of hair never seeming to flop unbidden over her beautiful face, as he almost expected them to. He remembered it all due to his intense infatuation with her, recalling her precise playful tone and affectionate affectation as she had replied:

"You just want me to keep my clothes off for your 'studies', my new friend."

He had not disagreed about that particular detail of the situation, grinning a bit lewdly before re-asserting that his interest really was for the bit of body art on her slim midriff. He had said that there was something about it.. how it suited her, somehow. He had told her that he could tell it fit her, but that he didn't know why, exactly.. but that he hoped for nothing more than the chance to find out, by becoming her questing companion, if not something more.

Despite the forsaken's constantly glowing eyes, Rak'hara could tell a number of things about his mood as they stood together on the beach, while others only ever saw a reanimated body.. a 'zombie' (She would never use such dis-respectful terms herself)! As she flexed her long, two-toed legs on the warm sand, she could tell that he was being rather wistful, remembering something special.

The freckled female slowly slipped closer to her magical mage of a man as he did the same, his sharp fingers still softly stroking the sensitive skin of her small tummy. She suddenly had a thought of the past herself, remembering how there had been a time in her life when she would have been much too frightened to come that close to a Forsaken. The troll girl had originally been a touch timid around Lonerin, thanks to a previous encounter with a particularly evil undead Shadow Priest.. but the kind nature of the friendly fire flinger had melted her defences in very little time. She had come to care quite deeply for the pleasant person that was preserved within the pale, flawed flesh, no longer seeing the scars and seams in his skin as anything more than indicators of manly misadventures and perilous predicaments he had gotten himself into and out of!

Rak'hara reached up to wrap her arms around 'her boy', holding him tightly as they both reminisced about the earlier days of their relationship. Their embrace eventually led them to sit on the sand together, bottles still securely held in their hands.

Lonerin became thirsty before long, and cracked open his flask, which prompted his partner to as well. They both knew what they were drinking as they began to sip at the slightly salty stuff. They remembered that it was from that reptile and they remembered their slight misgivings, but at the same time, they didn't care. They were together, bolstered by their beautiful memories of one another, they knew that there wasn't anything to be concerned about in consuming the concoctions, as long as they were there for one another.

They were ready to dive head first into another adventure. Which is exactly what they were about to do, in a more literal sense than they might have imagined!

They snuggled in the sand, the afternoon sun warming the grainy granules of grit that gradually got grinded against, with their slight shifting. Both drank more and more of the serpent's supposedly special stuff, finding that the flavour grew on them, bit by bit. They didn't discuss the drinks, though. Rather, they remarked upon the sand and its pleasing surface heat, contrasting with the slight chill of the sea air. They slowly came to confess their admiration for all things aquatic. They realized they both liked swimming more than either of them realized.. as well as simply enjoying bearing witness to the beauty of the briny expanse.

Whether those thoughts were genuine or generated has never been determined, to this day.. although neither Rak'hara nor Lonerin wants to know, either way. Who would want to remove or ruin such sweetness in their past?

No matter how they came to it, their talk had led them to the decision to go skinny dipping in the waves after much mirthful discussion of marine matters. They know now how odd it should have seemed to them, but as they tried to rise and run to the sea, they discovered that they were completely unable to get up from the small valley of sand their cuddles had created. It was almost like a nest, into which they had nestled their bodies.

The two shrugged to one another, even though they had also found that their last scraps of clothing had also already been discarded. None of those odd occurrences made them take note of anything wrong. They knew it was out of the ordinary and not what they'd expect to find around them, but there was nothing _bad_ about any of it, even their inability to walk to the waves. They were tough! They could just drag themselves into the water, it was no trouble at all, and they did so without a second thought.

It took the two a decent amount of time to pull themselves along, progressing to the pulsing and pounding surf. It became both harder and easier, first one and then the other.. more weight, more body to tug along. It was during the harder moments that one might have thought about how the minute minerals that blanketed the ground should have been scraping their sensitive spots.. or at least irritating them. But instead, no such feelings came, as if their skin had thickened considerably.

As they reached the portion of the shore where the sand was soaked with the repetitive waves, things quickly improved. As soon as their clawed hands dug into that wet, clumpy, almost muddy sand, the couple was cruising forward. Surely, it was just a matter of that sand being more 'lubricated' for them to drag their non-functioning forms into the foam.. even though only their hands had struck the fluid-infused footing.

It certainly couldn't have been that contact with the water had accelerated some kind of .. _change_ in their bodies! Of course not. It wasn't as though said acceleration had added the ability to finally make use of what had taken the place of their legs. Nope, not at all.

Before they knew it, they were floating in the water beyond the shelf of the shore. To advance past the point where the seafloor of the shallows dropped sharply away below the surface would have been quite a swim for them, usually. But they didn't know that. All they knew was how wonderful it felt to be there, held afloat in the midst of the moisture, watching one another.

As they examined each others bare bodies, both were over-come with a sense of how fantastic the other was, there in the water. Something about the sea made them see each other in a new light. Both of them became ever more attracted to one another.. seeing their lover in such a natural setting in their natural, naked state. It was like they were no longer that much different from one another. A strong undercurrent to their time together, at least at first, had been about their two very different races.. species, even!

But then, they felt none of that. Looking between themselves and their mate, they could see very little different. Although, what differences there were only served to increase the intense draw they felt for one another.

Rak'hara couldn't put her finger on it, but Lonerin looked larger, stronger, more manly, more muscles showing all over his form. Perhaps he had been bulking up during their adventures and she hadn't seen it all under his armour. She loved her slim and suave Forsaken, but deep down, doesn't every girl want a nice big strong guy to hold her? At least sometimes! She sighed softly, staring wistfully at his flowing physique.. not really thinking about how she was breathing underwater.

Lonerin loved how the liquid seemed to lift Rak's hair up into a series of spines, the dreadlocks drifting smoothly in a line, in the water. A few more of the thick strands of hair dangled next to her face and fluttered about, in direct opposition to the rest, over her head. The mage thought it was cute, somehow, the shapes her hair had formed. But more over, he couldn't ignore how the weightlessness of the water made the troll's chest float freely, not held down by gravity.. or by several layers of clothing and armour. The pair of purple, sexy spheres seemed to be bigger, there in the brine. Lonerin decided the lack of clothing and the lack of gravity (for the most part), was what caused the apparent change.

They circled one another effortlessly, focused upon one another, watching their bodies.. they kept seeing new and lovely things about one another! Beautiful, unique, new things that only made each of them love the other more, cute quirks, neat niches and all.

Swimming round and round, spiralling together, their eyes darting all over, hungrily eating up all the new facets of the others form. There were some parts they knew were weird, but just decided to disregard, just as they hadn't been distraught with their failure to walk on the beach. The one thing they couldn't ignore, though, was when they suddenly stopped spinning around and found themselves pressed together, front to front.

Lonerin looked down to meet Rak's gaze, love practically pouring from his face, as though the power of his desire and devotion for his beloved was what caused his eyes to glow. The troll returned that gaze with the same swelling of the heart. Both could feel a sensation below their torsoes, a sensation as though their legs were utterly locked together.. but without the awkward sense of their knees or ankles being hooked together. They both had the same idle thoughts in the back of their minds.

The thoughts were thus: How long they had been underwater. How they had been breathing the whole time. How different they really were. How they didn't care. How much they loved each other, no matter what they looked like. How.. now that they weren't such different species, they could be together without that one little idea of their differences acting as a nagging nuisance. How deep they had managed to wander.

With the combined weight of all that information pressing in on them, along with the pressure of the ocean, Lonerin was forced to put a voice to what had been whirling around in his head.

~Rak, we're nagas.. now.~ The voice the undead male put to his thoughts was, ironically, not a voice at all, but a verbal bit of telepathy sent straight into his sweetheart's skull.

The former female troll blinked once, her slender chin-tendrils flexing in the split second of thought that passed behind her closed eyes. The blink passed as quickly as any other, though. The now gilled girl grinned, ~Ya mon, I know.~ As she spoke through her mind, she nodded.

She had always known, and so had he. Maybe they had been blind until they could see how perfect they could be, in their new shapes.. but the blurriness had faded and they knew that their legs at merged into useless lengths of body while they had snuggled on the sand. They could remember the burst of metamorphosis as they reached the water, the elongating former legs surging into strong serpentine tails.. firm fins unfolding along their bodies as they had hurried into the deep.

They could also remember how they had smoothly swam in spirals, entwining their long tails and bodies into an impressive corkscrew below their torsoes, which wriggled and writhed under their more traditional embrace. Each twitch of muscle or terminating transformation could be felt by both parties, the powerful proximity and considerable amount of coily contact was beyond compare to any intimate intermingling they had ever shared before.

The large, more bestial male of the sea-snake-like species smiled and nodded too. He almost said something like 'We weren't before', but thought better of it. It went without saying. Instead, he took the lead without asking, which is something he rarely did, but always thought Rak would appreciate, him being more of a guiding force for their team of two.

He leaned his large snout down towards the mostly human face of his counterpart, kissing her deeply. His thick tongue inched into her mouth as she kissed back firmly. The fact that female nagas were so much smaller and more human-like in appearance had been hotly debated for as long as anyone could remember. Some so-called scholars said that the curse that originally made the race of high elves into the 'damned' naga had been more cruel towards the males for whatever reason.

While Lonerin continued to lovingly kiss Rak's slightly altered lips, he began to flap his thick tail-fin, poking out from the bottom of their twined tails, making them ascend.. rotating slowly as they went. He didn't agree with the explanation of a differing curse on the genders, he was convinced by one look at Rak's rapturous form that it was a matter of evolution! The females had progressed into being beautiful and beguiling to tempt sailors onto rocks, to plunder the cargo of their fishing ships, stealing the large catches to feed whole families of naga.

At least, he thought it was possible.. judging from how impossibly attractive he thought Rak'hara was, at that moment.

They spun and rose faster as Rak also began to pump her tail and kiss more firmly back.. their speed building more and more, their low angle of ascent giving them plenty of time to enjoy the sinuous and slick writhing of their tangled forms as they went. Their tight twist was in the shape of a double-helix, the flow of the water around them causing them to spiral, spinning so fast that the only thing they could clearly discern amid the blurred background of sunny surface and dark depths was one another.

It seemed appropriate to them both, then, that the only thing either of them could make any sense of in their new environs was the other. And, as they kissed and embraced with their quite-adept-at-embracing bodies, it occurred to them that, in their admittedly weird world of warring Worgen and wild warlocks, that their bond was really one of the only things that truly made any sense to them.. even in their warped new forms.

Throughout it all, the adventures, the grinding, the raids, the fetching and the questing, the tedium and the excitement of their lives in Azeroth, they had had each other, and they still did. They always would.

The two twined serpentines both reached that same sentimental conclusion just as they broke through the surface, their tendrils and crests trailing streams of salty water as they rifled out of the water at an angle. Each of them, in the height of their flight, their adrenaline surging, the sea and sky still spinning into a hazy background for their counterpart, experienced a tangible moment of perfect togetherness and love for the other.

The projectile path of the powerful pair came to its inevitable ending as they crashed back into the surf, finally coming apart to fully examine their new selves. Parts were prodded and fins were flicked and folded, coils caressed and loops linked and loosed.. tendrils touched and privates probed. Before they got too carried away, though.. hands were held. Arm in arm, the adventurers swam smoothly off into the setting sun, seeking new experiences and excitement. As well as somewhere a bit more private to continued their careful.. 'self-inspections'.

One might believe that only the coily couple would know of their passionate plans, but someone who had been watching the entire escapade would also be able to easily divine their destination and the dirty deeds on their minds. And just as Rak'hara and Lonerin hoped to have heads full of harrowing and hedonistic happenings upon their return, so too did the someone who had been observing their transformations.

After all, Amethystine didn't want to think he had given them a lame reward for their help!

He had also hoped that his untested concoction would work as he had intended, to turn the drinker into the particular type of naga that existed in the odd realm he had found himself transported to. It had, clearly. He had been able to discern his success for quite some time, which was why the thick finned crest was already standing proudly atop his head, the rest of it sprouting steadily along his serpentine spine. His metamorphosis was much simpler than his helpers' had been, amounting to little more than a change in colours and surface features. Due to the ease of his evolution, the python had found it quite pleasurable indeed. Being able to watch the departing duo was also quite the treat for the fan of fluctuating flesh and forms!

(Above art by WhiteMantis. To visit (and praise) her posting of it (and to see it full-size), go here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5856282 Thanks, WM!)

The serpent stretched segments of his lengthy back, shifting his coils over the cool, sea-smoothed stone he was perched upon, re-gripping around its perimeter as his body did its own stretching and shifting. He was laid flat on his front, with his head resting over his folded arms. He idly attempted to make a chin-tendril curl around his pinky as the two questers faded to a speck on the horizon. The last few meters of his mass morphed their colours and gained the grand fin's final points. His own transformation was complete, and he immediately set off for Vashj'ir.

There were a few moments where Amethystine considered trying to follow Rak and Lonerin, since they seemed to have been headed in the same general direction of the marine metropolis, but he was reminded of the whole reason for his new form. He had done it to blend in, and to be able to visit the region where some of the ancient magics of the Highborne night elves that had become the Naga, might still reside. He had been told if there was anywhere in the world where he might be transported back home, it was there.

*Although, since you're reading this, I think it's pretty obvious that Ame got back home safe and sound, don't you?*

---

Bonus feauture, you can now see some of the in progress stages of the wonderful illustration done for this story:

Initial pose ideas: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5708114 Pose refining: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5708220 Lineart: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5708293