See Level (short story)

The air, like my heartbeat, is fast-paced and fierce.

It whips and howls around me like I’m inside of an invisible, impenetrable bubble. I’m split in two by land and sea—my bottom half in the water, my top half sitting on the sand right where the shore ends. Along the shore, the wind sends grains of sand flying through the air like they’re being sucked up into the sky. I grip my hair tightly in my hands for fear that it’ll send me flying, too.

It would be what I deserve if it did. The moon hangs lower and brighter in the sky than I’ve ever seen it, shining a spotlight on my delinquency. No one is around to see; I timed this perfectly, staying up three nights this week to study when everyone falls asleep and when they wake up, even taking note of what time Aria wakes restlessly in the middle of the night to lap around the sleeping girls a few times before returning to her slumber. That usually happens around three hours before sunset; I gave it an hour after her return for safe measure, just to ensure she didn’t stir anyone else from their sleep with her movements.

So the coast is clear now, and I have about two hours left before they start waking up. What I want to do should only take me thirty minutes or less. I’m safe, but as I sit here with my butt growing cold and numb from the rocks beneath me and the moonlight illuminating the goosebumps on my arms from the biting air, I’m questioning whether the effort was worth it.

It’s just been so long, though, since I felt my own hands running through my hair. We can handle our pampering for ourselves during the winter months, since there are less people out, especially near the water. We still have to be careful and travel in pairs so someone can keep watch, but most times there’s nothing for miles to watch for so we just end up helping each other rather than stand idle.

With tonight’s sharp winds and icy waters it’s hard to tell, but it is summer now—which means it isn’t safe to be out. But I studied and timed it. If I can just endure the cold on my scalp and my skin for long enough, I can be done and back with enough time to even get a nap in before the moon lets the sun reclaim center stage.

I have to start now. I scan the shoreline with my eyes, searching for a bucket or a shell large enough to scoop up water with. Anything that could’ve been of use has been blown toward the trees, far out of reach. My eyes land on a plastic bag, of all things, a few feet away from me. I swim over to it, submerge it under the water, and bring it back up to pour over my head. It works in that the water falls on me, but most of it lands right back in the ocean and barely touches enough locks of my hair to make a difference. I push the bag away with a grunt.

I have enough time, but I can feel it dwindling. I start swimming forward, down the shoreline scanning with my eyes again. Something in the distance moves, way over by the trees so I can’t make out what it is. It’s large and white.

It must be the wind jostling it. I keep my eyes on it to make sure, and the movement stops. I turn to swim forward again and from the corner of my eye I see more movement from the white blob.

This time, I freeze in place. The wind is settling now and the thing is still moving, so now I’m aware there’s danger. This isn’t part of the plan. Nothing is supposed to be here; nothing was when I first came out and checked my surroundings. So what is that?

Just as I’m considering giving up and leaving while I still can, the vague movement grows into something that I’m too confused and afraid to miss watching unfold.

The white blob is a blanket that someone (as in, an actual person) throws off of them, storming away from it and about to head toward the ocean when another (!) person comes out from under the blanket. The first person is a woman; I can tell because she’s naked, her breasts facing the moon as she runs her hands through her short curls in frustration. The second person is a man, which I identify the same way. I’ve seen naked women before, but I’m taken aback by the bare male frame. I’m not sure what I expected, but for some reason the foreignness of what I’m seeing makes me want to look away.

They both look relatively young, maybe around my age if I had one. The man walks over to the girl and pulls her hand into his. She pushes away from him, turning her head to the moon and saying words that he covers with his lips. She tries pushing him away, but her arms slowly turn limp in his hands as she starts moving her lips against his. They engage in whatever this is for a lingering moment; it looks like she’s pulling some kind of energy from his mouth into hers, sucking and biting his lips like they hold a special nectar. He seems to gain something from what he’s giving her, too; he grabs her by her bottom and pulls her in closer.

And then it stops again. She’s pushing away, shaking her head. They’re too far away for me to hear what they’re saying, but he seems just as confused by her indecisiveness as me. He gestures back toward the blanket, tries to pull her toward it but she walks away. He follows, takes her hand again, pulls her in. They’re still too far to hear, but it’s clear that he’s pleading a case and she’s refusing what he’s offering. But she seems unsure, prone to being swayed. He can see this, too, so he caresses her hair and leans in to offer the nectar again.

She turns her head away from it, from him, and looks in the opposite direction. In the seconds it takes me to remember that I exist and am more than a mere witness to the scene unfolding before me, she sees me. I see her. We lock eyes together, I draw in a breath, and then together we let out a shriek loud enough to startle the fish.

I dive under and swim with them for my life. My heart pounds harder than it did before and the water pushes my hair all around me, covering my eyes and wrapping around my arms, but I push forward anyway. I flail my arms around to find my way and instead find something colliding with me.

“Nova?”

Aria raises her brows like she’s looking at a strange fish. She studies my appearance, the wildness of my hair and probably bewilderment in my eyes, then looks up toward the surface and back to me.

“Nova.”

“Aria, you have to help me. I don’t know what to do. I got seen and I came straight here but I don’t know if they’re still up there and—”

“You need to slow down. Breathe,” she orders. I open my mouth wide and pull, feeling the water pass over my gills. My heart begins to beat with less force than before. Noticing this, Aria continues, “What were you even doing up there in the first place?”

“Look, you’re not going to understand so I really don’t want to even hear it, but…I was trying to wash my hair.”

Aria snickers and tries to stifle it. I turn my back to start swimming away from her.

“Okay, Nova! I’m sorry,” she calls me back. “It’s just kind of irresponsible to get caught up over something so silly.”

“Don’t you ever get bored?” I want to hold back the question and the aggravation in my voice when I ask it, but it escapes too quickly for me to stop. “We spend every waking moment here.”

“We live here, Nova. I like it here.”

“I do, too, and I would rather live here than up there. But don’t people visit places other than where they live? I mean, why do I have to be afraid of up there? There’s just sand and trees and humans, and yes, the humans can be dangerous—”

Nova raises a finger. “They are dangerous. All of them. They’re the reason why there’s so few of us now.”

“Yes, the humans are dangerous. And I’m willing to be careful. But they’ve always been dangerous and they always will be, and I just don’t think that should mean I have to live a life where I only get to feel the sensation of running water over my dry scalp and my fingers through my own hair once a year if I’m lucky. Living like this isn’t worth it if I’m not living.”

I’m almost breathless after pushing the words out of me in rapid succession. And I don’t know where they came from, but I’m grateful for finding them. I’m not sure I even knew for myself why I was really up there until she asked me.

She rolls her eyes in classic Aria fashion. “Okay, girl. I hear you. Go live if you want to live. But whoever you saw is probably still up there, and depending on how much of you they saw, we could have a real problem.”

I hate that she’s right. I know it was irresponsible and this could be bad, really bad in a way that I certainly know better than to risk, but I still hate that she’s right.

“There’s a man up there,” I whisper to her.

“Oh,” she scoffs. “Then you should just go back up there and seduce him. That’ll take care of it.”

I’ve never spoken to a man before, let alone seen one naked. I know that seducing men is something I’ll have to learn one day (even though the older sisters say it’s an innate skill within each of us), but for now the thought makes my belly turn the way just the sight of his body did.

“There’s a girl with him, too.”

Aria’s eyes widen. “A girl?”

I nod. She says nothing and we float in the silence of what we both know this means. Then she takes my hand into hers and interlocks her fingers with mine, and I feel calmed by the warmth between our palms.

“We’ll go up together to see if they’re gone. If they’re not, we’ll handle it together. Just follow my lead.”

I tighten my grasp. She pulls me up past the sleeping fish and floating weeds; the closer we get to the surface, the slower we swim. Finally, as the top of Aria’s head kisses the surface, she motions with her eyes for me to swim away from her to the other side. I move carefully to not create too many ripples. It’s hard to listen with the water in my ears, but I follow what I think is the sound of their voices. I stop at the opposite end of the shore from Aria. From afar, she looks at me with an approving nod.

For some reason, before going up I feel the need to fix my hair. Just in case he’s—they’re—still there. I brush my hands through it, cross my fingers for luck, and then emerge.

“I fucking told you!”

The girl’s shrill voice almost sends me running back under. She’s pointing at me, screaming these words at the man. He inches toward the shore from where they tentatively stand by the rocks, clothed now, squinting at me.

“Hi?”

“Hi.”

The sound of my voice seems to shock them both. I’m not sure what I sound like to them, but I imagine they weren’t expecting me to sound so much like them. So normal.

“Come out,” the girl says to me. She’s holding herself with her arms, trembling from the cold. “Come out of the water.”

“I’m sorry,” the man says. “My girlfriend is—are you okay? That water is cold. We’re just concerned because we saw you earlier and thought you drowned.”

“She did not drown,” she glares at him. “I know what the fuck I saw.”

“Sydney, will you chill out?”

“No! Stop trying to make me seem crazy, Tyler. You always wanna be so worried about every girl that isn’t me.” She turns to me and takes a step closer to the shore. “You, can you come out of the water please? Your whole body.”

I stay put.

“Did you hear what I said?”

I did, but a lump of nerves is forming in my throat that chokes down any response.

“Okay.” She huffs, and then starts toward me. Sand kicks up at her feet as she stomps down the shore, preparing to head into the water.

“Sydney, cut it out.” His calls from behind don’t stop her. He calls her from by the trees but she keeps a steady path, locking eyes with me as she closes in. I feel a sharp tingling near the base of my spine and gulp like I have a mouthful of oil. I know whatever happens next will be more dangerous for her than me, but I can still feel fear rising through my body.

“Sydney, get back here!” Tyler follows behind her now. She doesn’t turn.

“Sydney!”

She’s at the edge of the shore. The tide rolls in and just starts to tickle her feet when we rise.

I hop myself up on one of the rocks near me, extending my whole body onto the one across from me. Aria floats to the edge of the shore, still a few feet away in the distance, her whole body visible in the moonlight over a rainbow of seashells.

Sydney stands still, stuck in her tracks. Tyler stands behind her with his jaw hanging low enough to inhale sand.

“That’s a mermaid!”

Tyler still stares back and forth from me to Aria, hushed.

“That’s two fucking mermaids!” Sydney yells at him, seemingly in a greater state of vindication at her suspicion being correct rather than shock at what they’re seeing.

Aria swims over to me. She places her hand over mine and gives me a questioning look. I nod to confirm that I’m okay. I do feel that way, surprisingly; looking down at my tail spread out over the rocks, glistening with iridescence under the moonlight, I feel more radiantly beautiful than I ever have. Afraid, yes, of how this interaction will unfold—but beautiful. It’s puzzling to think that I came to the surface more concerned about feeling water on a dry scalp than beholding my glowing lower half.

“Hello,” Aria says to them. They each take a step back; Tyler clutches Sydney’s hand from behind.

“Wow,” Sydney says breathlessly. She releases Tyler’s hand and leans over, still standing in place, for a better view of us. Her eyes twinkle, reflecting the water as she ogles us. “I always knew you guys were real. Since I was little.”

“Sydney, shut up.”

“Can I touch your tail?”

“No,” Aria says firmly. “You may not touch our tails, or any other part of us. You shouldn’t even be looking at us.”

“We won’t tell anyone about this. It’s supposed to be a secret, isn’t it? We’re not gonna blow up your spot. Right?” Sydney looks back to Tyler for confirmation, but he’s still a few inches behind her, staring at us like we’re sharks. I’m starting to see, through him, why they’re easy to seduce.

Aria laughs. “I mean, no one would believe you even if you did.”

Sydney looks down at my tail, slowly taking in each color and scale. The end of Aria’s sticks out in the water, protruding behind her like a protective guardian. When Sydney gazes at it, Aria pulls it back down under the surface.

“How do you…where is…” Sydney struggles finding the words to complete her questions. “I just have so much I want to know.”

“We won’t be telling you any of it.”

Aria’s curtness causes Sydney to frown. I can tell she wants not only to know more but to be liked by Aria, by us both. She wants the approval of the mystical creatures whose existence she’s still reeling from having discovered.

“Can I at least know your names?” She asks, looking at me now.

“We don’t have names,” Aria says. “It’s best you and the person behind you turn away and never come back here again.” She’s glaring at them now. She scoffed at the notion that they could ‘blow up our spot,’ and it’s true—human sightings are mostly harmless in moments like this, where it’s dark, there’s two or less of them, and they have no access to cameras or other weapons. But if they come back here or bring anyone with them, it could lead to bigger problems. It’s how we ended up where we are now, so many thousands of miles from the coast we once called home.

“Sydney,” Tyler taps her on the shoulder, suddenly remembering his capacity to move and speak. “Let’s just go.”

Sydney groans at him. “Tyler, we are never going to see real mermaids again.”

“As far as we’re concerned, you never have,” Aria warns. “Listen to him.”

“Come on, Sydney.” Tyler pulls on her arm. “We don’t know what these things—

“What were you doing earlier?”

The three of them all turn to me in surprise. I didn’t expect to hear myself speak either, but I suppose I have a lot I want to know too.

“What do you mean?” Sydney asks me.

“Nova.”

Sydney gasps. “Nova!”

Aria palms herself on the forehead.

“That is such a mermaid name,” Sydney grins at me with an earnest delight, and I wonder how something as simple as what my name is can bring her excitement.

“Earlier, when you saw me,” I continue, clearing my throat. “You were doing something. Touching each other. Was he…giving you something?”

Tyler giggles. Sydney turns to smack him on the shoulder, and then looks back to me with a peculiar expression. “You…you don’t know what kissing is?”

I look over to Aria, waiting for her to make sense of Sydney’s words. Aria looks back at me like she’s waiting for the same thing.

“Wow.” Sydney tilts her head at us. Then she taps her finger on her chain and looks to the sky. “Hmm…how do I explain this…Do you guys have boyfriends?”

Aria and I both giggle. “No,” she tells her. “We have no use for men down here.”

Tyler seems offended by this.

“Okay, well, do you date each other? Like other girls?” Sydney asks us. Again, Aria and I look at each other in confusion.

“‘Date?’” I ask. Sydney laughs in disbelief at this, which confuses me even more. Aria looks like she’s growing impatient with the humans and this exchange.

Sydney ponders for a moment then, taking a half step closer to the water, tries again. “Do you…love people? Like, what is your word for engaging in activities with people you love?”

I’m growing impatient too, now, with my own lack of understanding. Mermaids have the ability to understand almost the full range of human languages, but I never knew certain words were missing from our vocabulary.

Sydney looks at us, nodding. She seemed to be struggling with her own lack of understanding, nonetheless fascinated with ours. “Okay so, love is…” She takes a long pause, biting her lip while she waits for clarity to come. When it doesn’t, she looks over to Tyler. “Babe?”

He looks from her to us, then shrugs. “Love is, like, when you like someone a lot.”

I nod. “Oh, we know what liking things is. I like light-fish. And the moon. And Aria.”

Aria glares at me and I wince silently at my forgetfulness. At least we’re even now.

Sydney shakes her head, seeming to not even notice the reveal. “No, no. I mean, yes, love is like that in some senses. But what I mean is like…”

There’s another pause for a while. Aria is a few seconds from shutting this down and pulling me back under but something in me wants to understand Sydney as desperately as she seems to want me to understand her. She crouches down to our eye level.

“What makes your heart beat really fast?”

This isn’t the question I was expecting. I look down at the water watching the marathon progression of tiny fish. The things coming to mind are all attached to fear, but I have a strong feeling that isn’t what Sydney means. I search for the answer in the water for some time, leaving space for Aria to chime in. Then suddenly it becomes as obvious and clear as the moon in the sky.

“My tail.”

Sydney looks at it and then frowns. “Hmm…I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think that’s something you’d love in the way I mean.”

“So describe it to me then,” I hop off of the rock I was seated on and dip into the water, closer to both her and Aria now. “Describe what you mean.”

Aria’s glare from the corner of my eye is fierce. But what she said earlier about “living if I want to” floats around my mind; we’ll never see them again, and we’ll soon return below where life is normal, but for now I want to explore up here while the window to the bizarre is open.

Sydney starts again, placing her words carefully. “Love is a strong feeling, probably the strongest feeling we can have. It fills up your whole body. Takes over your mind. It’s a little scary, but when it’s good it’s the peak of happiness.”

“So why is it scary?” I ask.

“It’s only scary when it hurts. It only hurts when you lose it, or it’s not being reciprocated, or when you’re so afraid of something going wrong with it that it makes you anxious.” Sydney looks down speaking these words. “But that’s all in your head. That’s not what love itself is. Love is…caring about something so much, so deeply, that the feeling you have for it is bigger than the sky and the ocean put together.”

Aria and I both frown at this. The humans have the earth, and from what I hear of their adventures and creations across it, it’s an expansive world for them. For us, the world is the ocean. The look in Sydney’s eyes, and her genuine fascination with just knowing we’re more than a figment of her imagination, tells me that she chose those words for a reason. There’s more to the planet from her perspective, but for me the ocean contains my home and every other home I could ever have, and the only thing I’ve ever looked up to is the sky. To put them together would be to combine both halves of all that makes me whole. Both halves of all that is.

I try to imagine that; the insurmountable presence of it. It’s nearly unfathomable, so much that it invites me to fantasize about it while intimidating me all at the same time. I’m starting now to understand the fear Sydney spoke of earlier.

If there’s something I could care for that deeply—so deeply that the thought of losing it incites pain and anxiety, deep enough to surpass the volume of my whole world—then it would be…

“My tail.” I look up at Sydney and nod, growing more certain about my conclusion. “I think that’s the only thing I feel that way about.”

To my surprise, Aria looks at me and nods too. “Yeah, I think I feel that.”

Sydney seems fascinated with us in a different way now; the weight of confusion has shifted to her, and now she’s the one looking at us like we’re speaking a different language.

She sighs and sits down flat on the sand. “Have you ever felt that way about another person?”

“You mean, like, a mermaid?”

Sydney nods. “Yeah, or just anyone else.”

I start thinking of every creature I’ve interacted with: Aria and every other mermaid, the fish, the rare times I’ve seen humans in the past, all the other mammals that have made their way to the water one way or another. And then I look down at my tail.

“No.”

She seems still frustrated with this answer, or the way it puzzles her.

Tyler’s face also spells confusion, probably at both what I’m saying and the fact that this situation is even happening at all. Aria is by my side in the water, paying close attention to my words like they’re making clear for her something that was once opaque.

“You remember what you saw me and Ty doing over there? Kissing?” Sydney asks me. “So, there’s different kinds of love, right? There’s the self-love I feel for, like, my tits for example. Then there’s the kind of love I feel for friends and family. Then there’s…intimate love, romantic love. Like what Tyler and I have.”

“Which is the one you were describing before? That big, deep, scary feeling?” Aria asks her.

This gives Sydney pause, which tells me it isn’t as easy of a question as it sounds. “All of them, really. But the stuff about how much it consumes you, scares you, takes up your whole world…that’s the intimate, romantic love. It’s the same thing as the other kinds, but a lot more intense.”

“I think that is what I feel about my tail.” I’m looking at it as I say this. I don’t usually get to see it this way; most of the time it’s just a vehicle for the rest of me—a functional thing. But this moment may be the first time I’m giving so much thought to my tail as an independent entity, a thing that I have a relationship with despite it being part of me.

Sydney leans in now, knowing it’s her turn to ask for more. “Describe it to me.”

“It’s…” I pause, looking for the words in my scales. “You said something earlier about reciprocation. My tail is something that carries me. Every day, in every moment, it takes me wherever I want to go safely. It lets me know when there’s danger or when I’m beginning to feel fear—it’s aware of my emotions and helps me be aware of them. And it’s so, so beautiful. It takes away the breath of anyone who gets to see it, including me. Just a glimpse of it from miles away, even just the very tip of it, has crashed boats and caused people to faint. I think there’s something glorious about that; something that adds a beauty so magical to this world that it inspires generations of folklore and stories. If I could write, it would inspire me too.”

I look over to Aria, as she’s the only one here who could possibly connect in some real way to what I’m saying. But she’s now sprawled out over the rocks with her tail outstretched, looking down at it in awe. Sydney and Tyler look at us the same way.

“Yeah,” I continue, the ideas settling now in my mind. “If I'm understanding correctly, that feels like what love is to me. It’s the feeling you would have for the thing that inspires you the most. And I guess I’m lucky, because I wouldn’t rather have that feeling about anything other than my tail.”

“Why not?” Sydney asks.

“Because it’s the one thing I know will never leave me. And I couldn’t leave it if I tried,” I tell her. “So then there’s no reason for the love to hurt me or cause fear. That, and…I mean, I’ve been swimming my whole life. It is the only thing I’ll ever do. But I enjoy it, since it’s the thing that makes me feel the most free. And the only reason I can do it is my tail. So to me, my tail makes me feel more free than anything else possibly ever could, and that seems like how you’d feel about something you love. That’s what you and Tyler have, right?”

I look up from my tail to Sydney now, but she’s looking past me: into the water, to the horizon and beyond. Tyler’s eyes are locked with mine.

“How did you get a tail?” Sydney asks.

“What do you mean?”

She turns back to me. “How do you become a mermaid?”

Aria and I share a knowing look. She slides off the rocks and into the water, swimming over to grab my hand.

“We have to go,” she says to the humans. “And so do you.”

Aria begins to pull me away from the shore.

“Wait! Please, just answer this last question and we’ll leave you alone.” Sydney takes steps into the water.

Tyler grabs her arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Then he turns to us, waving goodbye. “We will leave you alone now. See you never.”

Sydney brushes away from him and calls out to us again and again, using both of our names. Aria and I keep putting distance between ourselves and the shore, the humans, everything that just happened.

But the sound of Sydney’s voice doesn’t get any farther. She’s probably confident in her swimming skills, because I can hear the giant, unafraid steps she’s taking into the water. Aria brushes her tail against mine and I can feel her thoughts sending a shiver through my scales: do not engage—let her drown if she wants to.

Sydney keeps begging us to wait. We don’t, keeping our eyes forward and aiming for a spot in the distance deep enough to prevent being followed by anything without a tail. It isn’t Sydney’s voice that bothers me, but Tyler’s. He’s cursing her for being stupid enough to talk to mermaids and try following them into the ocean. The sound of his voice has grown farther and farther away, which must mean he’s still standing at the shore where we left him. We’re dangerously far out for a human and she’s stepping through the water, seconds from approaching a point where her legs won’t be able to reach the ocean floor, and who knows from there how long she’ll be able to swim if at all. And Tyler, the man who she shares this grand experience of “love” with, is standing at the shore just watching her do it.

I stop swimming and turn around.

This stops Sydney and Aria too. Aria opens her mouth to reprimand me, but I swim away from her and closer to Sydney.

“We can give you one.”

“Nova.”

I ignore Aria’s booming voice behind me and focus on Sydney’s widening eyes. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“A tail.”

“How?”

Aria inches closer to me. “Nova, the sun is going to be up soon. Quit it.”

Again, I move closer to Sydney. I point down to the water to answer her question. “From down here.”

Sydney tilts her head. Tyler strains to listen from the shore, only now taking steps into the water to hear better. “I…I don’t really remember it at all, but I know that at some point in the past I was up there, and then I came down here. Ever since I’ve had a tail. That’s how mermaids happen: we bring each other into the sea.”

I look back to Aria and she’s behind me with her arms folded, shaking her head. She’s right to be upset; I’m being reckless, and I’ve dragged her into it, and now I’m revealing secrets that I myself don’t even understand. But it’s my truth, and I think giving the truth to someone pleading for it is the right thing to do.

Half of Sydney’s sweatpants are soaked and her curls are drenched with water and sand. Yet standing there, staring at us, she glows with beauty in the moonlight. It’s a beauty that feels familiar, yet not in a way that I’ve ever seen. I can tell she sees the same thing in me. She takes one more step into the water.

“Bring me into the sea.”

Aria grabs my shoulder from behind. “If you don’t leave now, I will.”

“Wait,” I turn to her. “Just think about it. The humans are a threat, yes, but if we take her then she’s no longer human, right? No longer a threat.”

“Yes, but she’s with him.” Aria gestures over to Tyler, whose ankles are now fully submerged.

“I’m not going with him. I want to go with you,” Sydney says to us.

“Would you really rather come with us than stay with him? I mean, don’t you love him and all?”

“I thought I did, but…I think I might have been wrong.” Sydney looks thoughtful when she says this. Then she looks at Tyler, who’s gazing at the scene from a distance. “But you won’t have to kill him, right? Since he knows now?”

Aria laughs. “We can manipulate men’s minds. We make them forget anything we don’t want them to remember seeing.”

I smile at her. She’s beside me now, closer to Sydney. I can tell she’s more open to this now, whatever’s happening between the three of us. I brush my tail against hers beneath the water and she looks at me, returning my smile. We take each other’s hands and then reach out for Sydney’s, gently pulling her toward us in the water.

“Sydney! Sydney, I’m coming!”

Tyler jumps into the water and begins swimming over. He’s edging closer, but not quickly enough to cause any concern. It wouldn’t matter to us, anyway.

Aria and I pull Sydney close and form a circle in the water, leaning in until all three of our foreheads are touching. We wrap our tails around her legs and she shudders; I squeeze her hand for support and a similar sensation runs down my spine. A peak of orange glow just barely breaks into the sky above us.

“You ready?” Aria asks Sydney. Tightening her grip around our fingers, she nods her head.

Each holding one of her hands, we break the circle and turn to swim further away from the shore. Just as we pause at our dive point, Sydney looks back at Tyler one more time. I think she’s about to voice second thoughts, maybe got cold feet from seeing the new desperation with which Tyler tries to wade toward us. He’s only a few feet from us now.

But Sydney looks back at me and says, “You know, I was wrong. I actually don’t know if I’ve ever truly loved anyone at all.”

She seems not saddened by this epiphany, but empowered by it. Excited by it. Free because of it.

I pull her into an embrace. Aria holds us both. Together that way, fused into a single being like a lost limb rejoining a starfish, we submerge and disappear beneath the ocean surface.

Above it, Tyler floats whipping his head from side to side with stunned eyes, searching around him for a clue of where he is and how he ended up in the water.