Myah could feel herself shrink under his stare as he sat himself directly in front of her. She wanted to push herself away from him, to keep distance between them, but his cold, detached voice was somehow overflowing with…loneliness. And for some reason, she couldn’t help but feel as if she were the reason he had become so lonely. But she couldn’t recall a thing about him. She was sure she’d never met him before in her life, unless… “Were you the man that tried to spear me with a trident two years ago?" Her voice was barely above a whisper, too afraid to know the answer as she leaned in toward the merman.
Aryn’s eyes narrowed at her, his expression dumbfounded as he slowly raised his arm toward her face, pinching the soft, elastic skin of her ruby cheek and giving it a sharp pull.
Myah yowled in pain, cupping the sore cheek that reddened beneath her palm. "Wh-what was that for?" Myah turned to him, her eyes brimming with tears. But she froze at what she saw.
He gave a wide eyed stare at the hand that had hurt her, terrified as if he hadn’t realized why he had done such a thing. For a moment it seemed as if he had no control over his limb. “Why did I do that...?” As he turned to look at her, his attention focused on the tears glossing over her irises and puddle-ing at the corners of her eyes. With the same hand, he tentatively reached out toward her again, aiming for the teardrops spilling down her cheeks. He gasped in awe at such elegant spheres of seawater she managed to produce from her golden eyes. “Myah… Your tears…”
She gulped, but didn’t flinch as his gentle, frigid hands caught a tear from the corner of her eye. She could feel the blood rush to her cheeks, burning where his freezing fingers brushed against her skin. Her heart raced in her chest, every thought in her mind of him being a monstrosity washing away in this one, tender action.
Inspecting the watery beauty, he watched it trail down his palm and across his wrist until it ran out of substance and shrunk to nothing. Finally turning back to her, his expression twisted as his chest filled with a pounding heaviness he had never experienced before. It beat forward, slowly pulling him down toward the teary eyed girl, aiming his lips to hers. His only reason to lay his lips on hers was to learn her language. Now that he had done that, why did he feel the overwhelming need to do it again? He tried to shake off the feeling, but it overpowered all sensible reasoning. He had to do is. The bewitching heaviness in his chest will never stop until he does.
The panicked heartbeat of another human further down the beach broke him from the spell.
"I must go." As he pulled back from her, he realized that she had been slowly leaning in, her teary eyes only half opened.
“W-wait, what?” Myah muttered hoarsely as he turned his head around, searching for something on the empty banks behind them.
He turned back around, his lonely sea foam eyes pleading with her. “Please, do a better job at remembering me this time.” With one strong push, he cast himself into the sea and sunk beneath the cerulean waves, disappearing from her stranded view.
Myah’s heart plummeted, and she struggled to her feet in the baking sand, chasing after the merman. "Aryn, wait!" Mindlessly rushing in after him, she only made it knee deep before the rough waves easily knocked her off her lanky, weakened legs. She screamed as the freezing ocean caressed her sore body with a gentleness that had quickly become familiar to her. Her eyes flew open at the realization that the frigid ocean current that tenderly caressed her cheeks wasn’t actually water.
Aryn stroked the reddened mark of her cheek with the corner of his thumb, questioning what this longing in the pit of his gut was. Her skin was burning under his grasp, her pale pink hair danced in the waters like his favorite seaweed, and her glowing golden eyes were begging him not to leave.
Without hesitance, he gave in to her pleading stare. "If you wish to see me again, meet me here at the same time tomorrow."
She gawked in surprise at being able to hear his strong voice as clear as crystal despite the sea currents.
With a small smile, he pressed his ring finger on the middle of her forehead and dragged it up to her hairline, stating her name with a glowing ember of warmth in his tone. It sent tingles down to her cramping toes. His smile widened at her reflexive response, twinkling in his myrtle irises.
Just as suddenly as the currents came, they swept Aryn away from right before her eyes, and he had disappeared into the vast ocean without a trance.
Myah stayed submerged for a moment, her mind a blur, before breaking the water’s surface and gasping for air. She stayed out and afloat rather than immediately swimming back to shore like how her aching body begged her. Her eyes were locked gazing out at the never ending blueness, and her heart desperately tried to firm a grasp on everything that happened. She tried to make sense of the wild thrashing in her chest, and the sudden hole she felt burrowed into her heart.
She laid a hand on her icy lips, wondering if that merman really was just a figment of her imagination.
Myah awoke with a startle, her sweating body clinging desperately to her tousled bed sheets.
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