Of course finding land was half the battle. Jace panicked, he had not been checking the depth of the water under the keel the past two days, as he had been mostly distracted by the alluring and insatiable kindred woman who was sleeping peacefully below deck. Using a quick scrying spell, which was a melded spell of search and land and depth glyphs he breathed a sigh of relief. They were still in deep waters, and not particularly near anything dangerous.

Removing the ice from the boat was actually easier then he feared, as all it required was careful use of the glyph “shatter”. He quickly removed the ice with a sweep of the air glyph. The water was unusually calm, which he was thankful for, as he wasn’t really in the mood to brave a choppy sea in this boat while it was subzero outside. Hobbling with the crutches was getting irritating to him. He had been on them for about 4 weeks. Granted he had done no real traveling, but he just couldn’t imagine a life on these things for much longer.

He had asked Verna about magic to regrow the lost limb, thinking that the regrowth glyph might work, she shot him down explaining the problems and theories regarding the glyph. He even experimented himself with it and found what she said to be accurate. The regrowth glyph didn’t seem to work at all on pretty much anything. What he found strangest about the glyph was its extensive ties to the glyphs air and sky. This made him wonder if the actual glyph originally meant something else.

Without an obvious way to restore the leg he had toyed with the idea of a prosthetic. However, he had never handled one before. Making a boat was easy, as he had spent countless hours on them growing up in the summer time. Making something with joints seemed a bit beyond his reasoning. Especially since he never really studied human anatomy before beyond what he learned in sex ed. Worse still was the idea of a peg leg. Something in his pride just couldn’t give up to the extent to actually use a peg leg. What was depressing to think about is that without any other options on the table, he feared a peg leg might just be a solution to the problem, no matter how stupid he’d look.

Getting the yacht underway, he randomly chose to head south, along the coast, reasonably guessing that they had been blow north by the storm. One of the worst things about days like this was handling the lines. The lines being formerly part of a plant meant they absorbed water, making every pull of the lines like dipping your hands in ice water. Then keeping those wet hands warm afterwards was nearly impossible. If they weren’t so close to shore he might have been tempted to wait this day out. However, 5 miles easily could be covered in two hours with a breeze or tide, basically they were far too close to just give up on the day, so he had to find ways to keep himself dry and warm. The day remained unexpectedly calm, which he was thankful for, and he felt they made fairly good time, despite the freezing temperatures that only succeeded in rising to the point the lightly falling snow turned into a light drizzling rain, which of course made everything miserable.

He, from time to time would warm himself up by remembering the past couple of days. Even if he never touched Verna again he suspected he’d never be able to get those two days out of his mind for the rest of his life. Jace was by no means a sadist. Nor did he get into teasing other people much. He knew he was a bit straight laced and a bit dull, but he just didn’t like making other’s uncomfortable. That said something about Verna seemed to press his buttons a bit. So while they were enjoying each other he discovered an interesting fact about this seductive red haired beauty. She really liked being physically dominated. He discovered it by accident, he pinned her hands above her head because she was hurting him by raking his back too hard with her nails. He had to use magic to do it, and she briefly struggled against him with magic, which he resisted. From that point on she went nuts. He never fucked a girl who was so out of her mind locked in pleasure. It was an intoxicating thing, knowing you’re making your partner go wild like that. If it was just a matter of her going wild, those past couple of days already would have been memorable. What really tipped the scale was how she kept him going and going. That woman seemed to know exactly what might turn a man on, and simply wouldn’t let him stop until she was too tired. It was an amazing experience.

He kept a close eye on the depth, and around noon, or what passed for noon in this weather, he realized the bottom was sloping up toward them, by midafternoon he estimated they were probably in 200 feet of water. Being bone chilled and exhausted he chose to anchor while there still was light, and the depth was reasonable for anchoring like it currently was. The shore was still miles away and from what he could see, uninhabited. Worst case scenario he could always try to fish again, if the food situation got any worse.

After securing the yacht, he went below deck. Verna finishing prepping something like dinner. All plants again, likely tasteless as usual. He figured if he ever made it back to Earth he should start on mild buffalo wings. He was surprised his stomach rumbled even smelling the bland vegetable stew. How he ever got used to the lack of taste in the diets in this world was beyond him. She was wearing little. A pink barely opaque bottom, which would have doubled nicely for hot pants on earth, with a pink matching tube top which left little to the imagination. The material these articles of clothing were made out of would have been instant hits on earth, as it looked more like wispy filmy mist then actual cloth. Having touched this material before when he saw Sam wearing something made of it, he knew it was a type of clothing, despite its darn near illusionary appearance.

Verna’s back was to him as she worked some magic on a pot, heating the stew, the shining glittering spot of small scales at the base of her back shining in the dim light like rubies. He had learned that her scales were immensely sensitive, perhaps more so then her skin. Unable to prevent himself from causing her a little discomfort, he placed one of his icy cold hands directly on the small of her back. The resulting girlish screak and her teleporting, actually teleporting, directly into the blankets was so out of character with the cool beauty persona she gave off he actually couldn't help himself from breaking out in a laugh. His laughter doubled when he saw her stick a teary eyes fire haired head out of the pile of blankets as she gave him an angry look that actually looked cute rather then frightening.

Verna clearly realized the angry glare wasn’t getting her anywhere, and blushed red. He wasn’t sure why she was turning red, he had seen and touched pretty much everything of her, so for her look so shy was a bit weird. His laughter died down as he tried to figure the blush out. Then Verna, eyeing him cautiously, spoke, “You’re not touching me with those icey hands again.”

“Oh?” Jace looked at Verna carefully. For some reason it sounded like a challenge when she said it like that. He remembered a bit from the prior couple of days and his smile grew larger. “Is that so?” He was tempted to push her on the subject, but he knew where that would head. He wasn’t quite up for another two-day marathon. So he turned to the food and asked “is this done?”

He thought he heard her say “coward” under her breath, before she answered “should be.”

He sat down and started to eat straight from the pot. It was about as tasteless as he recalled, not that Verna was at fault for that. Nothing to taste when the ingredients had none in the first place, and they had no spices for it.

After eating his fill, he told Verna about being in sight of shore, and the direction he was heading. She simply shrugged and said “You should learn to scry more. Had you scry’ed the location of the nearest town you wouldn’t have to randomly pick a direction to sail.”

He winced. She was right of course. There was a lot he should use magic for that he did not. So he admitted it to her, “You’re right, I should have.”

She smiled brightly, “I like that about you. Do you know how men typically respond to a woman telling them they made a mistake? Among your people I’m sure you can imagine. Among mine, the back of the hand is typical.”

He winced, learning yet more how horrible these people were to each other wasn’t a good dessert. “There is some of that where I come from.” He admitted honestly. “However those men are mostly the exception.”

“But no Dragons there, yes?”

“No dragons.” He replied.

“What a strange place.”

He sighed, and set aside the rest of the food. “You eat yet?”

Her yellow cat like eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You’re not trying to place those icy hands on me again?”

“I’m not going to bully you again with my icy hands.”

She looked at him a long time, then slipped out of the blankets and crouched down next to him. Once she had a spoon full of the stew in her mouth he placed both cold hands on both side of her waist and dropped her into his lap. He held his icy hands on her stomach as she squealed and thrashed. Eventually his hands warmed up, and she stopped struggling, leaning back against his chest. “You lied” She breathed, the tone in her voice was throaty, as she twisted in his arms and brought her face to his.

Jace figured he could try one more marathon.

It was in this way they gradually made their way down the coast, eventually finding the port city of Lotsorn, around the time their food ran out.