The surface broke like old skin.
Thin, fragile, warm. Not the cold pressure of the deep I was born to—this was light, and air, and taste of smoke.
The ocean exhaled me, and I rose with the tide, gills sealed, spine burning.
My head breached the world above and I saw the sky bleeding fire.
Explosions—red and gold—tore across the stars.
Laughter rode the wind.
Music spilled like bait from the hull of the ship floating in the distance.
I froze just below the surface, just enough for my eyes to break the line.
My tail curled below me, coasting the swells.
The ship was nothing like the wrecks I've seen on the seafloor, bones eaten hollow by salt.
This one shimmered with glass and electricity and mortal joy.
And he stood near the edge of it.
He laughed as sparks lit the sky again.
Young. Early bloom of adulthood—ripe, reckless, alive.
Dark hair blown back by sea wind.
Mediterranean skin that echoed the sun's last kiss.
But his eyes—
His eyes were the color of shallow coral sands.
He turned toward the sea for a moment. And I swear—he saw me.
Something in me cracked.
Not fear. Not hunger. Ache.
I followed.
The ship cut slow across the bay, singing metal into the water.
I trailed in its wake like a ghost, lit only by the shimmer of fireworks above and the faint rhythm of his heartbeat—
yes, I could still feel it, like a drum in the deep, calling me forward.
They docked near a place of stone and smoke, where humans danced and drank and let their lives pour out into the night.
I watched from the shadowed cove, my body aching, singing to me that it was time.
Time to remember the shape I wore in dreams.
The shift hurt. It always does. The tail folds into legs, the gills seal tight. Breasts rise, lungs ache.
My skin warms, peels of salt. I walk—unsteady, barefoot, hair dripping with memory.
Naked at first. Then not. A dress, taken from a line. Light blue, clinging. I do not care if it is theft.
The sea taught me hunger long before land taught me shame.
I walk through the crowd, heart thundering, every sound too sharp. I keep to the corners. But I see him.
He has a drink in his hand. A cigarette between his fingers. Laughing with friends.
His mouth moves like a song I haven't learned yet.
He gestures when he speaks—broad, expressive, honest.
There's no mask on him.
And I am undone.
What am I feeling?
Wonder.
Longing.
A terrible ache.
A fascination so deep it feels like drowning upward.
He is beautiful in the way fire is—warm, impossible, and distant.
He belongs to the land, to a rhythm I do not know.
But I want to trace his skin with the edge of my memory.
I want to place my ear to his chest and listen.
Listen for the tides.
I do not speak to him. Not yet.
But I follow.
And every step on this shore burns.
And I do not stop.