Clear Blue

by Elamimax

Love

Break now, O waves

Wait we've already

Had this one

I had never truly danced before. Not like I’d been told about. I’d awkwardly attempted the robot at my grandmother’s eighty-fifth birthday once, had been thoroughly (and deservedly) mocked by a few kids a decade younger than me, and I’d never tried again. Dancing, I had decided, was the kind of thing that happened to other people. 

And now I was being spun around like a top in the middle of a cobblestone street, by a woman whose promise of being gentle had been forgotten, wafted away like the scent of lavender on a summer day. That might have been partly my fault. I wasn’t a natural dancer, but Aria knew how to lead, and I was happy to follow. She knew how to move me, one hand on the small of my back, nudging me left and right with confidence and a gentle strength that was as easy to pick up on as it was attractive. 

She was steering me, and watching me intently while she did so. Before, the look on her face had been pitying, but now her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted, smiling happily. The music filled my chest. The longer it went on, the easier it got for me to let it seep into my arms and legs. I didn’t have a lot of experience dancing, but I was sure as hell dancing now, and it was…

It was magical. The music had an infectious rhythm, and I let Aria twirl me around the fountain more than once. I didn’t even realize I was laughing until she laughed along with me and I heard her voice in contrast with my own. There was a ball of joy in my chest that hadn’t been there before for as long as I could remember. 

After what felt like decades, or possibly seconds, she deposited both of us back in our seats. It was only when my butt touched the chair that I realized how out of breath I was. My head was swimming, and my legs felt like they could have kept moving for hours more. The whole world spun for another moment, my eyes drifting across the now-visible stars between the lanterns, until they landed on Aria. 

“That,” she said, “was amazing. I did not think you had it in you, but I’m always happy to be proven wrong.” 

There was a moment of quiet, ‘casual’ silence. I smiled at her and she reached out across the table and gently touched the back of my fingers with hers, casually eviscerating me with lightning and nuclear fire. At least it couldn’t get worse. 

“I’m proud of you.” 

Oops. “Thank you,” I mumbled. “You did tell me to do my, uh, tasks.”

She bit her lip happily as she picked some crumbs off her plate, then looked at me from under her heavy eyebrows. “Good girl,” she said, killing me instantly. 

So while dancing was something that did now happen to me, words no longer were. I just mumbled and stammered myself into an escape to who knew where. I just needed to do something about the blush on my face and the giggle stuck in my throat. “I need to cool off,” I finally managed, and she just nodded, hopped up, and hooked her arm through mine. 

“You know,” she said, “you’ve been here this whole time, but if you truly are from elsewhere, I only just realized you might not even know about the Marina.” Something about the way she said it, enunciating the capital M, made me curious.

“Marina, sea, boats?” I said. “I think there was one where I grew up, but I only vaguely remember.

“Just one?!” Aria exclaimed. She was offended. “That’s ludicrous. I insist we go to the Marina tonight! Clearly you have been missing out, and I intend to rectify that situation immediately!” She dragged me along to the pier. 

Pretending I wasn’t vaguely confused about the whole thing, I looked around. The only thing in their tiny harbor was a couple of fishing boats. It really wasn’t grand enough for the word marina, so I had no clue why she was being so insistent. Boats were boats. Maybe she really liked sitting on the pier to watch the sun come up? But then why had she wanted to come here tomorrow? 

I was slightly disappointed when she let go of my arm and walked to the edge of the pier. A hysterical bark of a laugh escaped my mouth when she stepped off, almost like a cartoon character, but thankfully I recovered quickly enough to rush over to the edge just as she surfaced. She giggled as she put her elbows up on the floating boards and looked up at me, wiping her wet hair out of her face. “You should jump in,” she said. “The sun’s been out all day and the water is lovely.”

“I…” I said, looking down at the dress she gave me. I didn’t want to ruin it.

“You worry about the clothing,” she said. “That is kind, but unnecessary. Is that your biggest concern?” I thought for a second, then nodded. “Good.” She half leapt out of the water, and I tried not to look at the way her own clothing clung to her body before being unceremoniously grabbed by my collar and yanked into the sea. 

The water was, in her defense, indeed lovely. I could tell as it went all the way up into my nose and presumably pickled my brain. Thankfully I had half expected a stunt like this, so I’d managed to grab a big gulp of breath before hitting the water. It was remarkably clear. I was used to seawater being one of those things that was vaguely brown-greenish-gray, and completely opaque. This was like being suspended in liquid glass. I saw the stars above, the stones of the beach below me. Next to me, smiling under the water and the shimmering light of the moon, her hair around her like a floating crown, Aria looked at me.

There was something different about her. The weightlessness of the water, of course, but it was more than that. Her eyes looked more reflective. Her skin was a bit shinier. Or it could have been the ten-foot-long tail where her legs were supposed to be. 

All of the air I had stored exploded out of my mouth when I attempted to shout my surprise, and I suddenly realized that I needed air to breathe. Swimming up, I felt two hands under my arms and was lifted to the surface a lot faster than I would have been able to if I had been on my own. 

I couldn’t give two shits about splinters as I threw myself onto the wood of the pier and immediately scurried back over to the ledge to look down, just in time for Aria to surface and for her forehead to smack into mine with the kind of hollow thud you’d expect from dropping a bowling ball on a wooden floor. 

It took us both a second to recover in shocked and pained laughter. She was still rubbing her forehead as I made my way over to her. “What,” I said, “the actual—“

“Marina!” she said, sticking her tail out of the water and waving it left and right. Even in the moonlight I could faintly see a myriad of colors reflected. “I thought you knew.”

“Obviously,” I said, “I didn’t. Are you Marina?” 

“I’m a Marina. I’m Aria, like I said. I thought you said they had one of us near where you grew up? Or did they look different?” She leaned in really close to me. The dripping of water on wood and the waves lapping against the pier was the only sound for a second.

“I… ‘marina’ is a word for like… a ship dock where I’m from. It’s a place to keep a lot of boats,” I said, realizing that this probably sounded mildly offensive to her. 

There was that hearty, excited laugh again. Aria dipped below the waves for a second and wiped some water out of her eyes. “That’s extremely silly,” she said. “No wonder you were confused. I thought you knew. You’ve never seen someone like me before?”

I shook my head, then paused. “Well… you’re in children’s stories. Fairytales. You’re called mermaids.” I felt really embarrassed, and judging by the way Aria was looking at me, she could tell, leaning in close to observe me. I wasn’t sure if I could feel her body heat, her face near my own, or if I was imagining it. “You used to be stories about women that dragged sailors to their deaths, and then later just about people that lived under the sea.”

“The latter is more accurate,” she said. “We have a strong relationship with the people who live on the surface. Charting shipping lanes is easier for both peoples if you have the benefit of perspective. Though I personally like coming to land a lot.” She looked at the town. “Home away from home.”

“Where I’m from you’re… fiction.” 

“Interesting,” she said. “Well, I am happy to inform you that I’m very real. See?” She leaned over and put her hand on my arm. Her fingers, wet and warm on my shoulder, sent a shiver up my spine. Her voice became a light whisper. “I’m real and right here.”

“You are,” I said, breathless, our eyes locked onto each other’s. “I think.” I shouldn’t have said that, not because she was offended but because it broke the spell. She pulled away a little bit and smirked.

“How do I prove that I am real, mysterious, beautiful stranger,” she asked. “If I’m not real, why are you the one without a name? Without a house or a home?”

“You don’t stay in the village, do you?” I asked. She shook her head. “So where is your home?” She looked behind her, the open ocean glistening in the light of the moon. 

“Would you like to see?” she asked. I wanted to, I really did. “You hesitate.”

“I’m not like you,” I said. “I can’t hold my breath that long, or breathe under water. Which I assume you can.”

“I can,” she said, “but that’s no problem. There is a solution, though it is temporary and somewhat… intimate, I can help you breathe underwater for a moment, if you like. I’d have to touch your neck, if you are okay with that.” Something about her tone of voice told me that she already knew what I was and wasn’t comfortable with, but I appreciated being asked anyway. 

If this was a hallucination or a coma dream, and mermaids were already real, I was willing to go along with whatever fiction came next. Even if that included touch-based magic. Maybe a little bit more so, even. I nodded. 

She hoisted herself onto the pier, her tail hanging lazily in the water, and sat down next to me. Carefully, she wiped her hair away from her neck, spending maybe a little too long looking at me, at my jaw. It felt like she was caressing me with her eyes. There was that subtle hunger again that I couldn’t quite place, but my heart beat slightly faster in my throat when she finally moved. 

I had expected her to touch my neck with her hands and say a magic word or a spell or something like that, so when she leaned in close and I felt her hot breath on my skin, I whimpered. It could have been my imagination, but I thought I felt her laugh for the briefest moment, before her lips touched me and all of my hair stood on end immediately. 

There was a strange moment of fullness, of my entire body responding to something, like the moment after having a limb fall asleep where the blood flows freely again, but everywhere all at once. 

Aria pulled away. I wish she hadn’t, but she did. Even she looked like she hadn’t wanted to, but when her eyes met mine, I just barely managed to avoid whimpering a second time. If she had asked me to cut off my own head I probably would have done it. 

“Swim,” she said, softly. I jumped off the pier into the water, and for the first time in my life, I breathed the clear blue sea water.