There lay a lake in a room. The room's walls were overgrown with moss, thousand of tiny plants conjoining their roots and structures, a tapestry of verdant greens being created. The lake was a perfect circle. Its single edge ran in that shape, a light darting off the mirror it encompassed.
The white beam bolting off its surface came from a source way up in the in visible sky of the room's ceiling. Though it lit the room with a reasonable light, but it was the individual beams shot into the lake with the most power. When the two — the light and the water — met, a prismatic effect coloured the room's walls with a gradient of rainbows.
Ganainm awoke, her face surrounded by the grass protruding from the floor. Despite all the surrounding flora, the place itself was obviously — in an inexplicable way — a room. As far from being a meadow as a place could be.
Katsugi was already sat beside the lake when she arrived, his eyes closed, breathing slowly and gently. When the girl neared him, he greeted her and immediately pointed to what, in his own words, he had been pondering.
Letters of a thousand colours shone from below the lake's surface, a riddle formed in the water. It said:
Never wet, though here I am,
All can see me, fay or man.
Lest the sun's light be your doom,
And turn into but a fume,
See me then, you can too.
Tell me, speak my one true name,
Omit the 'a', it had its fame.
When an answer to this game,
Is provided, through one's brain's pain,
With the last task, you'll be maimed.
Ganainm took a seat beside the Knight. Both then stared at the puddle, their minds equally committed to the riddle. The prismatic letters stared at them as they plunged deeper and deeper in thought. And that was not the only plunging that would be done on that occasion.
As Ganainm's thoughts wandered into newer and stranger paths of her brain, Katsugi started undressing. For a good chunk of time the girl didn't even notice what he was doing. Then, when all his armour was gone, and little of the clothing below was left, she became aware of his actions.
There was nothing there she hadn't seen before, but seeing some of the stuff still made her cringe. The Knight stripped down all the way to his under-trousers, a piece of linen clothing that normally separated his bare body from the toughness of the inside of his armour. He then stretched put his hands, conjoined them towards the middle of his figure, let out a battle cry, and leapt into the water.
His body flew through the glistening letters on the surface without upsetting them. A splash ensued as Katsugi cannonballed into the pond. Ganainm raised her hand — as if a waterproof shield was held in it — before her face, droplets of water meeting it instead of her face. When she lowered the limb, the girl looked at the Knight in the lake.
The man made gentle, waving motions with his arms, keeping himself afloat seemingly without effort. His face was riddled with disappointment — like that of a child's visage when they discovered the floor they described as lava didn't, in fact, burn their little friends' legs away. Katsugi's expression even stalked the border of disgust, the more she thought about it.
"Why'd you do that?" she asked.
"Well," he began, "last time all we had to do was turn around, I thought action to be the solution to this puzzle as well."
"But it say right there," Ganainm pointed towards the glimmering letter below the water's surface, "that we are to call the thing's name. Whatever the thing itself is."
Katsugi then shrugged, something not so easy to do when almost fully submerged. The Knight then swam to the puddle's edge and rolled out of the water. He sat in his previous spot, his body dripping with the pond's cold water.
"Let us go back to the beginning," he then said. "What are we supposed to find out?"
"The name of the thing the properties of which are described," the girl answered.
"What does the description specify about the thing in question?" he pushed onward.
"Well, for one," Ganainm read the riddle again, "it states that everyone can see it, but there's one exception. I'm going to be honest, I don't really understand it, but I don't feel we exactly meet the condition. Unless you do get turned into a cloud of dust when exposed to sunlight."
"It does not," the Knight replied with a chuckle slipping in between his words, "though there are... beings, in my homeland, that have similar umm... issues. They also do not really enjoy water by itself though. Which is particularly tough due to my homeland being, you know..."
She nodded.
"on water." He finished off.
She nodded again. The girl then spoke:
"The 'never wet' thing implies it being tied to water. Given that there's a literal pond in the middle of this place, it's reasonable to assume the answer is somewhere there—"
Ganainm cut off as she saw Katsugi begin an upward motion. She then quickly added:
"not in so much of a literal sense. You've already explored that option."
"I could see it being effective to explore it again," the Knight rebutted.
"If you want to jump into the water just do it, but keep your mind on the riddle," she rolled her eyes. After grinning like the aforementioned child — one that just got permission to have one more dive into a cold lake on a scorching summer's day — Katsugi didn't even bother with the gestures and shouts. He simply took a few steps backwards, jogged in place for a second, and then shot towards the pond, embracing his legs towards his chest as he leapt once more into the water.
After cannonballing — this time legitimately — into the puddle, he made a few rounds around it. As the Knight swam in circles, Ganainm's eyes idly wandered atop the waves Katsugi produced with every move. She then saw something.
For a brief moment, the girl thought to have perceived a glint of an answer. The sheen of a hint. She stood up, the swimming man paying her no attention as he now switched to a different set of movements, one in which performance he resembled a skinny butterfly. With muscles. And scars.
Ganainm neared the lake even more and peered over its edge. Its surface, disturbed by the Knight's activities, gave her none of what she was looking for.
"Could you," she said in a flat tone, mesmerised by the possibility of solving the riddle, "stop for a moment?"
Katsugi answered in an unorthodox way. The blocks of stone at his feet started glowing with a salt-white light, and he rose above the pond's edge. He then proceeded to stand on water. The girl had no questions to ask at this point. She had seen enough in those past few days that this was a lot less surprising that one would think.
As the water settled, no rings appearing after the Knight's taking a stand. The girl then lowered herself, her face nearing the surface. A moment later, the edge a perfect flatness, she saw it. And disappeared.
Katsugi stood there confused for a while. He took a few steps towards where the girl had been kneeling. He trotted around the spot, both on land and water, until he — not unlike his companion before him — noticed something.
His own face, staring him dead in the eye, the same confused expression on it as well. And then he disappeared too.
