For a brief instant I was fearful, instinctively knowing I was not alone. But then I could feel his familiar hands upon me in the darkness. Randar’s powerful fingers stroked me with hesitancy, arousing me into wakefulness. This was how it always began. After my incantation was performed, we had become connected. This was the most dangerous of times for my poor Randar. The whale would remain deep in slumber, vulnerable upon the ocean floor, while Randar’s human body and soul would be given to me. He must be of man and whale to create our water witch. I turned from my belly to my back. I lifted my hand to brush his wet, sleek, dark hair from his confused brown eyes. I smiled tenderly into his handsome face. He looked so bewildered. My poor Randar; one moment he had been swimming, hunting, perhaps playing with a sibling. Rolling and tumbling through the waves. Now he was a human man, and in the arms of a human female. “I don’t understand.”
