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We happen to be in the area again a few days later, and we see the young man and the young woman running together on the mountain paths in the early morning, making jokes, and challenging and encouraging each other. They stop near us, and we watch them stretching, laughing, talking, and exercising.
But what are these exercises they do? Is it from the formal dance form you would call ballet? It does seem to be from some sort of dance, maybe what you would call modern, or perhaps street.
Or it could be martial arts.
In the middle of a sweeping kick, Earth Prince glances toward the lake below, and a furrow crosses his brow as he puts his weight back on both feet. Water Princess looks around from her position in attitude derrière and follows his gaze down, gasps, brings her back leg down from behind her and starts towards the lake, cutting down across the twisting paths, running lithely through the thick purplish-green underbrush and trees, shouting. Earth Prince kicks off his shoes and runs, too, but not down. He runs towards a precipice, and we feel alarm. At the edge, he leaps and launches himself, but it's too late to try to stop him.
The cliff is too far from the lake.
Water Princess, startled, looks up as she runs, and sees him as we do, performing a beautiful swan dive in an impossibly long arc through the air over her head, dropping cleanly into the water near where they had seen the swimmer in trouble.
We do not see anyone else nearby who might have seen his impossible dive.
Without breaking stride, she continues down the mountain, searching the opposite shore as she runs, and we follow. When she sees her parents with Earth Prince's sister and brother-in-law on the opposite shore, she calls to them. Having gotten their attention and communicated her concerns, she kicks off her own shoes and runs into the water, leaning forward and leaping in as she approaches waist depth, swimming in powerful strokes to where Earth Prince had entered the water.
Diving under the surface, she finds him in murky purplish-green water, wrestling to free a young girl from the tangle of underwater vines above the lake floor, and the girl, in fright, fighting him, her breath escaping in bubbles around her face.
She swims around behind the girl, wrapping one arm gently underneath the girl's arms and lifting her free. At her touch, the vines seem to relax from around the girl, and the girl seems to calm down, relaxing into her embrace. Water Princess looks at Earth Prince and he points up, then turns to examine the vines. Kicking, she ascends with the girl in tow, working laterally through the now easing undertow.
When she breaks the surface, the adults are launching a skiff, so she treads water and concentrates on supporting the girl and helping her clear her lungs and breathe. Shortly after the skiff arrives and the girl is helped in and the adults take over her care.
Earth Prince surfaces and beckons, and Water Princess, her face showing some puzzlement, follows him back under the water.
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