It was a dream that startled him awake that last night. A vague dream, of swirling colors and glimpses of strange creatures that undulated unsettlingly about bizarre landscapes. He had been having similar dreams frequently as of late, and saw no meaning in them besides what he already knew.
He sat up, bedclothes sticking to him with the cold sweat that covered his body. Wiping his brow with the back of his hand, he reached up to uncover the single window that looked into his small room. Outside, the moon and stars hung silently in a cloudless black sky, reflected in the calm waters below. He stared at the view for some moments, his mind pulsing and throbbing with the confused thoughts one experiences soon after waking from a dream. Soon, those thoughts coalesced into what they always did- thoughts of her.
He sighed. He had almost completely resigned himself to never seeing her again. Almost. Still, even if he did accept what at some level he already believed to be the truth, those worries would remain. Nothing could remove them from his mind… nothing except seeing her again. He did not want anything more than that.
Closing his eyes, he leaned his head on the cool glass of the window. He knew that thinking would not bring her back to him. But still, it was all that he could do. Slowly, he lifted his head from the glass, breath fogging it as he leaned back. He watched the window slowly clear as his eyes started to close again and he began to sink back into bed.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open and he pressed his face and hands to the window. Out in the water floated a small spot of grey, bobbing up and down with the waves. As he watched, it leapt out of the water, revealing a long, fishlike body for a split second before vanishing back underneath the surface.
It was her.
The steel emptiness inside of him disappeared in an instant. Without thinking, he rushed out of his room and out the door of their small home. The night air bit at his exposed skin and his feet slapped painfully on hard stone, but he did not care. A wide smile was splayed across his face as he ran down the empty street to the docks.
He stopped, breathing heavily, on the very end of a pier, and looked down into the water. The mermaid’s head slowly emerged from the inky depths, and she smiled at him, lips pulled back to reveal her jagged teeth. The boy returned her smile as an overwhelming sense of relief washed over him. She was all right. He knelt down before her, meeting her wide yellow eyes with his own.
“Where have you been?” he murmured. He had not truly spoken words to her very often, but did continue to have a sneaking suspicion that she understood him. Indeed, as he spoke, her expression changed from a cheerful smile to a knowing one, almost wise. He had known this since he had first laid eyes on her, but she was no mere beast of the waters. Behind that wet, grey-skinned face- so alien and yet so alluring -was something almost human.
That face…
After all this time, he still had not touched her. She had remained in the water for each and every one of their meetings, and he on his boat. But now, she floated mere inches from him. Slowly, he leaned forward and extended a hand. It shook ever so slightly, and she turned her bright eyes toward it inquisitively, but she did not pull back as his fingers caressed her cheek. He breathed out, slowly. It was a feeling like he had never experienced before. Her skin was smooth and wet and cold, but at the same time had a sort of warmth. An unusual warmth, not like the harsh heat of a fire or lamp, but of a kind that flowed readily from her to him, through his hand, through his arm, all the way to his heart. It was a pleasant feeling.
Her smile changed once more.
Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth as well, stretching across her face like the shadow of a bird of prey advancing on an unsuspecting rodent. It still conveyed a sort of knowing wisdom, but this time she seemed to know something more. Something he did not know, and never would. It was a smile that one could never think would come from a human. Her eyes remained locked on his, and gradually he began to still. Soon he could not look away from her gaze. She was all he saw, all he felt, all he knew.
Out of the water, gleaming in the moonlight, came a hand with slender fingers. They flexed, and in an instant they were tipped with wickedly sharp claws, of a material blacker than the sky. The boy took no notice, still fixated with rapt attention on her face.
The clawed hand settled on the boy’s wrist, fingers one by one dropping and wrapping around it. Tiny beads of blood welled up where their sharp tips touched his skin, but still he did not react.
She lifted his hand from her face and leaned slightly back in the water, tail lazily swishing underneath it, carrying her away from the pier. Her hand was still held aloft, gripping the boy’s arm within it, and as she moved back, he was pulled into the water before her. There was a splash, shattering the silence of the night, and the boy’s head surfaced after a moment. His gaze had not changed at all.
She swam up to him with another fluid motion, and wrapped her arms around his limp body, shifting his head so it rested on her shoulder. Turning over in the water, carefully, so that his head did not go beneath the surface, she began to swim out to sea. Her tail surged powerfully through the water as they moved out into the harbor, away from the houses of the village, past the anchored ships, towards the great blue beyond.
His body remained held tightly under her, his chin resting on her shoulder, face just above the water. He stared at the night sky silently, unblinking, the only motion the slight shaking of his head as his carrier swam through the ocean, and the ever so slight indication that he was drawing breath. He did not look back at the home he had lived in all his life, and had yearned to leave for almost as long. All he saw was the glimmering sky, the stars blinking, the moon glowing.
Soon he would see nothing but the abyss.
ns 15.158.61.12da2
