Merman

I never would have imagined he was a merman. Of course, I only saw him once a year, when my family and I came to visit my grandmother at her beach house. Our first encounter began when I was 15, and was running across the dock when the locket my mother had given me slipped free from my neck and fell gracefully into the curling blue ocean. I tried to reach it, but it floated away and I had never learned how to swim. Tears spilled down my cheeks and wails racked through my body, until a gentle hand touched my leg and I saw my necklace sitting beside me on the rotted wooden planks.

“Wha-?”

“Thought you might miss it.” His head bobbed up and down in the water like a multi-colored beach ball, and his grin was just as bright. “I’m Gale”

“Alexis,” After wiping my tears away I offered him my hand and thanked him for finding my necklace. It slipped neatly into my pocket.

“Why don’t you put it back on?”

“The clasp is tricky. I can’t do it by myself. Unless...could you hop up here and help me?”

Gale looked uneasy at the suggestion, and I couldn’t, at the time, understand why.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to...”

“No,” he shook his head. “I want to.”

Gale grabbed the ledge of the dock and heaved himself upward, and I gasped. For a moment before he hit the plank, a long shimmering tail stood where his legs should have. I blinked, and in that moment, they were gone.

“How did you...?”

“You really have to start finishing our questions.” Gale laughed and fire coursed through my neck and cheeks, and I clenched my jaw before I said anything unsavoury. After all, he was pretty cute.

Gale gently pulled my hair across my shoulders, clearing a way for the necklace and all the while leaving a heated trail across my exposed skin.

The clasp snapped closed and I heard Gale gulp.

“Thank you,” I said softly and turned to face him. My grin only grew bigger when I realised he was as red as I was. He looked down and shock passed over him. He gently trailed his fingers across his legs and marvelled at their lightly tanned colour.

I knew it was out of line and would get me in a heap of trouble, but I always said what was on my mind, and at the time, there was one solitary thought.

“I saw your tail.” I blurted out and saw him wince as though it were an accusation.

“You did?” I thought he would deny it. I thought he would call me crazy. But no, he wasn’t like that. Gale believed in honesty before everything else.

“Yes,” the breath I was holding finally set itself free. “It was beautiful.”

He smiled. “You’re beautiful.”

“Stop changing the subject.” He laughed when I looked away. “What are you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I didn’t think you existed.”

“People tend to believe in things they can see. Logic trumps all. But sometimes you’ve got to have faith and belief, and think outside the box. It’s not faith if you use your eyes, you know?”

“You’re philosophical.” The corners of Gale’s mouth twitched.

“That’s how I was raised. We would ask the questions others would pass by because we were a cause for question ourselves. How did we come to be? Are other mythical creatures like us? Do we exist in our own right, through evolution, or something else...you get me?”

“Not really, no.” My giggles seemed to make him happy, as he grabbed me in his arms and hugged me, the smell of salt wafted into my nostrils and tingles came where his breath fell against my neck. He put a hand on either side of my face, pressed his forehead against mine and, ever so shyly, planted a soft kiss on my lips.

I grabbed him and made it turn from soft kissing to heavy petting.

“I never planned to come above ground,” he breathed, kissing every inch of my face between words. I stood, and pulled him with me, dragging him to the beach just as the sun began to set.

“Why not?” I asked once we reached my favourite secluded spot of sand and dragged him down with me.

“Because now I have to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“My family or my freedom.”

I stopped in my tracks. “How long do you have?”

“A day.”

There was something about him that made me feel as though he belonged with me, that he was the other half that would complete me and that we could have a love that rivaled all the romance books I ever read.

But another part of me knew that even if he loved me, as I suspected I could easily love, and might already love, him, that his family was the most important part of his existence and he could never cut them off, even for love.

And he wouldn’t be the man I knew I could fall for if he could.

“You’re going to choose your family.” Gale looked torn and a tear slipped down his face, but he nodded.

“So let’s make the most of our time together.”

It’s 16 years later, and I have never forgotten him. I come back every year, and on occasion I see him, and on more than a few I join him in the water. But today, I have to let the tide pass and our could-have-been love edge away. For the good of my sanity, my new husband, and my 15 years and 3 month old son. Before he discovers who he is, and how his world, like mine, will be changed forever.