☁ my bloom space☁

The precedent to it all is a concurrent nightmare. The kind where the dreamscape is no longer a separate realm to craft vivid, unreal images.

The nightmare is like a memory. You feel Rafayel’s warmth, from a steady flow of ichor than blood. His life pulses as yours weakens, a brief flicker of pain caused by the curved dagger you welcomed through your chest.

The worst part about the memory—nightmare?—is not your life fading. But the haunting settlement of grief in Rafayel’s eyes. His arms around you tightening as your strength wanes.

And instead of tear droplets falling onto your shoulder, there’s a stream of pearls.

You always wake as soon as the memory falls to pitch black nothing.

Scales?

You return to your spot on the sofa beside him, soft mumbles and murmurs of distress from Rafayel as you observe a newfound visitor along his skin. Splotches of tiny blue ridges blanketed by sparkles. They glisten just barely with the overcast of minimal moonlight casted through the window’s glass panes, wielding its beauty but with something ominous and enticing hidden beneath.

Your fingers lift, just barely hovering over the scales beneath his right eye. You don’t touch them, nor do you make contact with his skin, struck by the more intensified heat instead. Scales or not, the ferocity of his fever causes your brows to furrow in concern.

“Rafayel…”

You’re just about to lean over to grab the thermometer again, when he voices a dulled, groggy: “Huh?”

Instantly, you’re face to face with his contemptful, hardened gaze. It’s still Rafayel, yet your heart picks up its pace. Uneasy. Fear that you’re speaking to someone else.

“Um, these… your… your neck…”

“Mmh?”

“They don’t… hurt, do they?”

His voice has taken a darker timbre, unlike the lighthearted inflection you’re so used to. He declares, “You wouldn’t be able to touch them without harm getting in the way.”

“Is… this related to why you’re sick today?”

You’re more cautious now, stiffening as you scramble for something feasible to say. You don’t look away from Rafayel; it’s the only thing you can manage to show him you’re present, however bewildered you may be right now.

But he just scoffs, followed by an empty chuckle, “Shocking, isn’t it? All those legends about the Lemurians… They aren’t just fairy tales.”

Lemuria.

The lost civilization that once lived within the deepest part of the seas. Merfolk who were brutally hunted and tortured by humans, just like their marine kin. Tragedies logged in scrapped pieces of fragile paper, preserved by library archives, or the historical tomes you had once spotted in a small shop from a further seaside town.

You weren’t privy to the the large population that didn’t believe in Lemuria, or anything else like it. Gods, spirits, curses—Lemuria’s history and traditions fell within the classification of esoteric subjects that creates heretics.

There are things in the world that are not always defined by logic and science.

Human existence in itself is a complication; and fortunately, any phenomena that couldn’t be challenged with simple solutions was enough to fascinate you.

You sit there like a fool before Rafayel, lost in thought about the powerful revelation.

“So… you do…”

“Have a tail, yup.” He answers quickly, suddenly sharp-tongued with stern mockery directed towards you, “Whenever I cry, my tears turn into pearls. I can kill anyone with just a song. And these scales are the sharpest weapons in the world.”

You glance down, hand on your thigh balling into a fist as you swallow the lump in your throat.

“I believe you, you know. I just… it’s difficult. To wrap my head around.”

Rafayel hums, tilting his chin down a little to observe you. His eyes narrow, seeming to weigh your sincerity.

“Funny. I expected you to be more greedy, just like all the other humans.”

“…What?”

He leans in, provoking: “Aren’t you going to make me your hostage? Maybe tie me up for a few centuries and keep me as your slave to do whatever you wish?”

“No…!” You immediately protest.

You shake your head furiously—suddenly feeling this tightness in your chest. “No, that’s not what I want.”

Your heart is not aching on its own, no. But a phantom wound is searing itself into your chest, beneath the surface. So close to the skin as if to rip through. And as far as you’d known, there was never a scar or accident for the centerpoint just above your sternum.

Even then, the pain doesn’t ease as Rafayel’s demeanor causes you this unfathomable grief.

He seethes, his hovering body following yours as you lean back: “Every year, there’s a day when the tide is low, and it flows in the opposite direction. It’s when the Lemurians are at their weakest.

“Even the most feeble human can kill us once they know of this.”

A lone tear rolls down your cheek as you reach forward, your palm cold against his bared, heated chest. “Rafayel, I don’t want to hurt you. Please—I want to help. You’re burning up really bad.”

Immediately, he keels over, groaning. He hisses from a punishing rise in dizzying heat, his body just about collapsing on top of yours.

“I don’t… feel so good…”

“Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

You hurry, cushioning your knees on the sofa to straight your posture as best you can. You press your shoulder underneath his arm, sloppily adjusting Rafayel to sit up the way he was before.

Reaching over his lap, you grab the fallen blanket, draping it back over him.

He starts to writhe now, shuddering. Eyes squeezed shut, his fingers twitch the moment you make contact with his skin. The back of your hand nestled beneath his bangs, gauging the temperature.

You do your best to avoid the scales as you draw back, not wanting to add to his discomfort.

“Your fever’s gotten worse…” You observe, looking over his struggling form.

“I’ll grab an ice pack. Just hold on—”

His hand clasps around your wrist just as you’re about to stand.

Urgency now set aside, you brave yourself to face him. To really look at him in an attempt to know what to say, to figure out how to bring some ease to his tension. And when you try, you are shot with dangerous contempt present in those eyes, now aligned with desperation. Maybe even some grace winding its way back in for you.

“Rafayel, please let me go.”

“Do you regret staying?”

“…I don’t… I don’t understand.”

He pulls you closer, hovering over you again. This time, he secures you with his other hand gripping your waist.

“You still… have time to care for someone else.”

“I can’t leave you when you’re sick. I can’t leave you when you’re… like this.”

The corners of his mouth turn downward, easing into a frown. His furrowed brows haven’t lifted either. It’s as if your answer’s disappointed him; the wrong thing said.

And finally, you see it.

You see Rafayel’s foundation of bottom of the pit anger.

You recall the banter from when you visited him in the hospital. 800 years, he’d tossed in like such an arbitrary remark. Something laughable, something to scoff at with no consequences.

800 years of rage.

800 years of resentment.

800 years of scorn.

You don’t know what transpired. You don’t know every single step that led to—this.

The tragedy of Lemuria.

The tragedy of the special bond you two once shared those lifetimes ago.

Rafayel pulls you back, confessing, “What if I am always like this? What if… I change and become someone dangerous?

“Would you regret staying then?”

He eases at your hand cupping his soft cheek. In the passing minutes, more scales have permeated. Despite his former warning, they pose no threat as they press into your palm. No skin punctured.

“I won’t regret it.”

Your voice quiets, an intimate whisper reserved only for the both of you.

Your thumb begins to brush tiny circles just beneath the scales lined beneath his eye.

It’s your turn on the confessional, to which you promise and swear: “I don’t regret it right now. I won’t regret it when that time will come, however it may be.”

He doesn’t believe you.

In spite of everything; in spite of the deeply tethered web of past grievances and paramount instances of only knowing home in another person—

Rafayel, in his most vulnerable, feeble state, doesn’t believe you.

Not quite yet, at least.

You know he doesn’t, too.

“Rafayel…”

You call to him, tinged with a silent unmasking of fear.

“I… don’t know why you said the things you did. But if you wanted to kill me—hurt me—you wouldn’t have waited until now.”

He answers promptly by letting go of your wrist. Though the hand on your waist is an unrelenting strength.

Rafayel lets go only to let his touch run up your side, towards your sternum. A tentative, enticing ascend where he wills his fingers to spread apart just enough to barely press down on your breasts.

He stops when his fingertips reach your neck, his hand unraveling to curl the palm around it. He doesn’t squeeze, keeping the hold there in contemplation.

You let him.

While watching the mixed hues in his eyes flesh out into a solid, deviant blue. The same shade manifesting in varied streaks along his hair, purple strands surrendering to their fate.

“I could hurt you.” He mutters, nudging your thighs apart so he can settle in between. His breath fans over your lips, not minding the fever in its incessant purpose as an obstacle.

Not minding how his thumb taps along the center of your throat.

You let him.

Hoarsely, you promise, “I will never hurt you.”

He has to be sure.

Rafayel stops tapping his thumb, unclenching his jaw as he rasps, “Promise?”

You nod, gaze unwavering. Tears glittering as the moonlight widens its overcast. You crane your neck just a bit for a short gasp of air.

You declare, and will do so over and over, again:

“Promise.”

For now, it’s enough. Rafayel finds it perplexing how he’s so willing to accept this. Your compliance coming a bit too easy, the frustrating aspect of it stemming from the fact that you meant every word.

He was used to the threats. Used to the onslaught of his kin’s pain that he continues to carry as a driving purpose. No room for whatever he may need.

The only constant making room for him, it seems, was you.

He should hate you for it.

Instead he just sighs, resigning. He finally lays his body weight on top of you, breath now fanning over your neck. His fever still ran high.

“You can stay,” he whispers. Punctuated with a kiss to your juncture, then a spot on your neck where he feels your pulse.

“At least until sunrise.”

You feel like you have no right to move. No right to adjust yourself for comfort’s sake. Not when questions are floating, circulating through your head.

Not when Rafayel needs you.

You nestle closer, wrapping your arms around him. You bury your face into the top of his hair, trying to keep your own breathing quiet.

Did you even have the right to fear?

To weep?

“Don’t cry,” Rafayel breathes, his voice heavy with sleep already.

“I’m just… worried.” You swallow nonexistent pride, embracing him tighter.

You fail at keeping your voice steady, faltering with a whimper.

“I don’t… like feeling helpless. I got scared.”

“…Of me?”

(There was no point in lying. Not when everything was already laid bare.)

“Only a little.”

“…Do you regret staying?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Unspoken: let’s go to sleep.

Through the long night, his fever fades.

You didn’t mind paying the price of being sleepless, so long as he could recover this way.

You want to know more, but you refuse to pry where it’s unwarranted. You refuse to mettle where it’s not your place. All you know is this need—this ache—to be there for him.

To stay by his side, for every second wouldn’t be a waste. And for now, that would have to be enough.

Sweet dreams, Rafayel.

You don’t understand who he is at once.

In the beginning, it had been a simple mission. Two paths crossing naturally because of an incident. You were chasing after a threadbare connection to the murders you had been assigned to, anything that would have made sense of the mystery unfolding in front of you. You were a full-fledged Deepspace hunter, with all the responsibilities that came with it, and you were determined to make that count. All the blood, sweat and tears you had dedicated to this vocation had all paid off the day they handed you your uniform. You were determined to serve that uniform with dignity.

Under that guise, he slips the bonds of fate and reunites with you again. Mysteriously, lightheartedly. An important witness who just so stumbled on the hunter assigned to the case. An accident arranged. You just don’t know that yet.

It’s when he really begins to penetrate every aspect of your life that your brain kicks into overdrive. You’re sensitive to every interaction, dizzy with déja-vu. It doesn’t help that he seemed to look at you as if he knew exactly what was happening. Imagine a doctor who’s sat on your sickbed, and he refuses to give the life-altering diagnosis. Out of pity. Out of fear. Whatever reason he can conspire so that he can keep on dangling the truth away from you. For a very long time, you cannot even think of the possibility that you’re an experimental mouse in Rafayel’s maze, and he’s studying your reactions. Delineating from his own past what he expects and does not expect from you. You’re too busy trying to find a way out.

You don’t realize at first that the familiarity you associate with his pretty face runs deeper than just a red-scaled fish won at random at a booth. You barely even make the association that he’d taught at your university, during your preparatory education for the job. It’s Tara who points it out in what was supposed to be some normal girl-talk. He’s gorgeous, after all, and Tara one of your closest friends. You indulge her gossip every now and then from the fringes of the social circles you still entertain. Professor Rafayel, she’d said, excitedly snapping her fingers as the name rolled of her tongue. You’d sat up arrow-straight, although for a different recognition than the one Tara was experiencing at the identification. That’s who he is. He teaches art history, I think. Wasn’t that one of your electives?

You knew him. You knew him beyond a capacity of words, unable to formulate why his eyes pierced deeper into your brain than some of your most familiar childhood remembrances. You turned the name over in your mind, like the childhood game you’d always won at, playing Memory with your actual memory. It was unbearable.

He had been creeping up on you for a very long time, like an ailment, or a slow-working poison. One of the first few things they force you to go through at the beginning of a hunter education is basic self-aid classes, where they teach you not to exacerbate the spreading of the poison by moving or exhausting yourself. Movement meant blood circulation, and a heightened blood circulation meant a quicker way for the poison to reach all the vital areas it needed to kill its victim. What precious immune response your body could have mustered up is quickly squashed by you running, running, running. You were running after the truth, running after your memories, running after what it meant that Rafayel had fallen in love with the idea of you. But not really you. Of that, you were certain.

It’s the very first accusation you hurl at him when Rafayel finally has to confront the possibility that your memory may be returning. What little barriers your mortal mind possessed are quickly torn through as your past life crashes through it like water breaking apart a dam. You remember the piercing sensation of your nervous system trying to commit suicide from the flood of experiences it was recovering, and Rafayel’s gentle hands trying to cradle you, wanting to help you, and you remembered the way you had pushed him until his back had hit the mahagony closet that decorated the corner of his room. Neither of you were particularly violent. But what had been the most vivid impression of that day was the screaming you had then subjected at each other, an eternity’s worth of pent-up anger, and resentment, and love lost and regained. It hadn’t taken long for Thomas to crash into the room, disturbed by the noise he had heard upon his arrival into the studio, and he’d torn the two of you apart from - well, what was it? You would never raise a hand to hurt Rafayel, and you didn’t do so in that fight. And Rafayel, past life or not, would rather die than ever inflict pain on you. But there was a desperate fumble of fingers, the tearing at whatever flesh you could grasp, the urge to claw open his chest to prove to yourself that it couldn’t possibly be true, that your chest didn’t contain the proof of a deity-level heist. And Rafayel, lovelorn Rafayel, didn’t lift a single hand to defend himself. Just shouting, and shouting, and shouting. You barely even remember the way Aunt Thalia herself had to drag you out of that room, probably called by Thomas, who by then had been panicked at the intensity of the fight.

It was heartbreaking, the way Thalia’s face only evoked the memory of her nephew’s. They looked too alike. Even looking at her had wanted to make you yell anew. And she, too, looked at you as if she knew that her appearance only made you want to crumble with the shame of what you had done to her, her family, and her home.

You remember, then, she had said. The tone in her voice had sounded entirely too sad and forlorn for you to continue to hold on your anger. It dissipated, like foam on the water, like your memories eroding over time. Glass smoothed to treasure. You sank deeper into the cushion of her expensive car, turning to look through the tinted windows. Your parting gift is the sight of Rafayel stumbling out to the porch, his face wet with tears, watching you go. It’s a sight that haunts your nightmares from then on. Yes, you told her. Yes, I remember.

To say it was a betrayal would be an understatement. What you feel haunts you to your bone marrow, curdles the blood in your veins. You spent way too many nights tearing at your hair, torturing your scalp for the memories that stir below it. Ignorance really was bliss. Whatever feelings had been growing in your heart for Rafayel are quickly dampened by the realization that no matter how much he loved you, you could not let it ruin him further. He was chasing a dead girl, that’s all it was. You’d end it here and there. It can’t undo the damage you’ve done, but it could cut him free at last. Of a bond he didn’t want. Of a love he had conjured for someone else.

Your heart fights your brain’s assumption. After all, you never once asked him. During the fight, he had never mentioned your shared past, not once. His concern had been real and current. Your brain shuts your heart up pretty quickly. He’d been watching you for so long, after all, long enough to determine whether you acted like the bride he had chosen so long ago, before he decided to re-introduce himself. And he’d never told you the truth. Instead, you’re forced to grapple with a bone-crushing guilt that threatens to swallow you whole. Your fault, your fault, your fault.

It’s your fault that Lemuria is dead and gone. It’s your fault that Rafayel’s only memory of his home is constrained to the few paintings he allows himself to reminisce over. It’s your fault that once again, Rafayel is forced to wander the earth alone.

The bride of the Sea God is gone. You are all that remains.

You can’t even tell anyone. Who’d believe you? A therapist, perhaps, would indulge your ravings, but that would only get you a private suite in the mental asylum. You may as well put the strait jacket on yourself. Whatever survived of Lemuria lives on in the fairy tale books told to children, in the occasional lecture of a professor teaching about folklore, in the family bond between Rafayel and Thalia. No, no one would believe you. And you cannot go to Rafayel. You cannot ever see him again.

But that’s not on fate’s cards for you. Of course not.

The first social outing you let your friends convince you to attend (which was a New Year’s Eve, your favorite celeberation of the year, which in and of itself should be sick and twisted. Couldn’t you have see him again on Christmas Day or something?), you manage to end up right back where you started. In a soul-gripping stare-off with the man who knows every inch of your mind, all your dark and light corners. He looks at you like a man haunted. He’s a ghost attending a hanging, and you feel the noose closing around your neck. Whatever torture the retrieval of your memory is forcing you through, Rafayel has already lived through it. He already had to stew in his own memories, since he didn’t have the luxury of losing them as you did.

Sweet Simone who has no grasp of social cues at all, who’s already drunk out of her mind, says then, “You already know each other, right? Rafayel, please make sure she dances tonight! She’s not allowed to pout today!”

And with that, Simone plucks your hand and places it into Rafayel’s. You both flinch at the motion, an ironic reenactment of the father’s bride giving over his daughter to the groom. Tradition, too, is a kind of memory. You stare up into Rafayel’s eyes, stumbling into him as you’re pushed into a makeshift dancefloor, which is really just Tara’s living room. Neither of you breaks the hold. Neither of you comments on the fact that this is the first real interaction you’ve had in weeks. You silently place your other hand on Rafayel’s shoulder, and he places his on the your waist, the fingers fitting perfectly into the curve there. Like it’s made for him. Like his body remembers.

Rafayel’s sunset colored eyes darken noticeably. You make a point of ignoring that reaction, and let yourself be guided into the dance. You don’t want to talk. You don’t want to verbalize that gut-wrenching feeling that you’ve confirmed every prejudice Lemurians ever had about humans; like the human you were, all you had given him in return for his love and devotion was agony and despair. You want to apologize for making him fall in love with you. You want to yell at him for deceiving you. You weren’t the woman he fell in love with, and you wouldn’t turn yourself into her. But at the same time, the woman you were at the moment wanted to weep with the loss of him.

How mortal of you to be so irrational. How expected of you that your brain and your heart are in an ever-warring conflict.

The silence between you is palpable. Instead of initiating conversation, you angle your head around, taking in the scenery. Tara’s apartment is unrecognizable. There’s an actual disco-ball hanging from the ceiling, a tacky, glittering planet Simone had found in the thrift store a block away. She loved to frequent it, and the friend group was often blessed with some kind of trinket or piece of clothing she managed to scavenge every time a fresh batch of donated stuff was displayed in the store. The kitchen is lined with cheap booze, the expensive stuff hidden in the guest bedroom. The door there is locked shut using a passcode, and the group chat, signaling your friends’ drunkenness, keeps asking what that passcode is, since no one seemed to remember in their intoxication that you could scroll up and check past messages. There are alumni here, some you recognize and some you don’t. You even catch a glimpse of Xavier and his hunting partner turned romantic partner, but they quickly disappear behind the curtain that hides away the door to the balcony.

Truthfully, it was your fault Rafayel was here. You were the one who had introduced him to Tara after she had made that connection between Professor Rafayel and Painter Rafayel. No one even knows he’s the reason you weep into your pillow after night. No one could know the truth, so you hadn’t even bothered creating a story that would legitimize a falling-out. In their minds, he’s still just Rafayel, who may or may not be sweet on you. To Tara, he was just a friendly face whom she associated with you. But he didn’t have to attend.

So you finally ask, “Why did you come?”

You’re still not looking at him. You keep your eyes fixated on Simone, who’s knocking back yet another round of shots with Leila, a Deepspace hunter from a different, lower-ranking squad. Leila’s face is already taking on a greenish hint that reveals she cannot keep up with Simone’s voracity. Someone should have warned her that Simone drinks like a sailor, but you guessed it was too late for that. Your fixation on the girls is the only reason you don’t start collapsing in Rafayel’s hold; you want to come apart at the seams below his touch, disappear in the waves of emotion. Below the hand that grips his shoulder, Rafayel’s shoulders rise in tandem with his chest as he sighs out. “You know exactly why I’m here. We should talk.”

We should talk. That so doesn’t cut it. You make the mistake of turning your gaze on him and immediately regret it. His eyes, as changing and churning as the sea, reflect the light sparkling off the cheap discoball, but at the moment, all they’re reflecting is the helplessness in your own. This is exactly why you didn’t want to see him. Although you are proud enough to not want to demean yourself because he doesn’t see you as the person you actually are, you aren’t strong enough to claim that he leaves you untouched. It’s always his eyes. You sink into his gaze like an anchor disappearing beneath the waves, deeper into the ocean’s embrace. You think of a lost city and an unfinished ceremony. That pushes you to tear your eyes away, just in time to see Leila rush off to the bathroom. Simone, meanwhile, has moved on to a new victim, although Nero appears to be an unwilling one. Despite being in a loud, packed to the brim room full of party-goers, he’s actually reading a book on wanderers. “Maybe me blocking you on all social media and cutting you out of my life wasn’t a clear enough message. I don’t want to see you. And I don’t want to talk to you.”

Rafayel’s fingers guide your head back to him. It’s a gentle gesture, bespeaking his tenderness, yet the expression on his face is anything but. It’s the same expression he had when you pushed him away on that doomed day, both physically and emotionally. “You’re human,” he says, his tone dripping with bitterness. He speaks the words as if they are sufficient explanation alone for your stubbornness. “You don’t understand what it feels like. Maybe you can live on and pretend that night never happened. But I can’t, and it’s killing me. You don’t even care that I’m standing here because another second without you is torment to me.”

You suppose you’re acting like a hypocrite, because the words hurt. You physically recoil. You catch the unhappy glint in Rafayel’s eyes before he methodically wipes it away, his emotions like paint on a canvas. Sweet Rafayel, always showing the knife but never intending to stab. Because he loved yoo too much. You admonish your brain. No, because my past life tied him to me against his own will. He remains a careful artist, creating a narrative that befits him. Your heart - his heart, the one you stole like the thief you are - painfully pounds in your chest as you lean in and tell him, “You should’ve expected this when you gave your heart to a human. But I’m not her, Rafayel. I will never be her.”

You step away, ending the dance. But Rafayel’s hand slips down, until his fingers are clenching your wrist, painfully encircling it until it feels like a handcuff. Normal you would have broken the hold, maybe punched him if he was a strange drunkard in a nightclub. But you are changed, remade. The melancholy of the past hangs over you. You are not strong enough to be free of him. “No, you are not,” he bites out. It’s clear you’ve hurt him. You forget that your words are knives, too. “You never were.”

The meaning of that is lost on you. This time, you shake free. You refuse to let him see your tears. Turning on your heel, you abandon Rafayel once again. As you always do.

How to explain what you felt? How to explain that your heart was beginning to burst open like a blossoming flower because of what you felt for him? How to make sense of the feeling that even though he made sure to find you again, you can’t be sure he loves you for what you are and not what you were? It’s not in you to doubt his intentions. Although you are slow at it, even your brain is beginning to understand why he took your memories during your time as a princess of a vanished city. Even slower, you are coming to terms with the fact that Rafayel’s love for you had been pure and without regret when he had given you the sea god’s heart. But you cannot find it in yourself to accept it.

You cannot find it in yourself to live on a sacrifice you never had intended for him to make. It should have been you.

It only takes three steps to reach the kitchen slash makeshift bar, but Simone is long gone. When you swivel your heart around, deluding yourself with the poor excuse that you’re looking for Simone, a quick scan of the room reveals that Rafayel is gone as well. Must have melted back into the crowd. The relief you feel inside your chest transforms into grief rather quickly. You are a strange creature, vibrating like in a metronome into two wildly different directions. Never stopping. Never changing.

You shake your head, flinging away the thoughts. You decide to tap Nero’s shoulder, cupping a hand around his ear so he can hear you yell, “Where’s Simone?” He cringes away from the loud sound, but helpfully points to the main bathroom. You give him a thumbs-up in thanks, which he only acknowledges with a nod before returning to his book.

At least one person here was enjoying himself. Even if he wasn’t really taking part in the celebration.

You slip into the bathroom, then turn the lock so no one else can enter. You’re not the only guest aside from Simone. Both Tara and Michaela have made themselves comfortable, with Michaela lounging in the bathtub fully clothed and Tara kneeling next to a puking Simone. You stare at them in disbelief. “Since when does Simone throw up from drinking?”

Michaela laughs. “You’d be throwing up too, if you realized the orange juice you’d been chugging was actually Malibu Beach.”

“What?”

Tara, having finished tying up Simone’s hair, shrugs. “First hint should have been the suspicious burning down the throat, but I don’t think Simone was paying much attention,” she drawls out. She’s not exactly sober, either. “She was just focussing on hydrating. Nero told her it was important to stay hydrated, because it helps when the alcohol is broken down inside your body. I don’t know. That’s what she said.”

“Shouldn’t we, like, drive her to the hospital?” You gesticulate wildly with your hands to the door, as if anyone needed clarification on what you meant. You are still hazy from your interaction from Rafayel. Your heart is still on that dance-floor. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Tara eyes Simone, who’s dry-heaving now. It’s Simone herself who speaks up. “Am fine,” she manages to choke out. Her fingers clench and unclench around the toilet bowl. She doesn’t sound particularly believable. She’s a skilled topic-changer, though, clearly embarrassed, since she’s never been this drunk. “How was your dance?”

You cast your eyes to the ceiling, at the paint separating from it, eager to fall like confetti. You imagine that fall, swirling, swirling. Coming down. You are out of your body and in it all at once. “Lovely, Simone. Thanks for asking.”

The new year comes with a loud, yelled out countdown from the party guests. You girls huddle around the intoxicated Simone, hugging each other as the count reaches zero and the new year is ushered in. There’s a shout, and lots of whoops and hollering. Even Simone manages to spit out a “yippie!”, without ever raising her head from where it’s hanging over the toilet.

You lean your head on her shoulder, rubbing circles into her back to comfort her. Tara’s and Michaela’s encouraging comments for Simone to straighten up and have some water fade into the background, forced to the edge of your perception as you think about Rafayel and what it would have felt like to kiss him as a new year’s celebration. It’s a wish you shouldn’t entertain. A fantasy that won’t come true. But Rafayel is right. You’re a human, destined to want what you cannot have, desperately trying to reach it anyways. If you hadn’t extricated yourself from Rafayel, you would have smothered him with it, that feral, violent attempt to keep him. Everything you’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.

Perhaps that didn’t make you as different from her as you thought in the first place.

You remember the days before the ceremony. While your descent into Whalefall City had been tainted by fear and unwillingness at first, every second you had spent in Lemuria’s embrace and Rafayel’s vicinity had managed to coax out the embers of your old faith. Like a fire being stoked, you had come to accept what giving your heart meant to Rafayel. And you would have done it. You’re not quite sure when the decision hit you. In fact, in the time you had spent with Rafayel before the ceremony, one moment had started blurring into one another, becoming a blend of pure happiness. You stopped asking him to take you to the surface. You stopped trying to evade his questions.

Instead, you had found yourself opening up in a way you had never done before.

Your upbringing had never allowed for real bonds and relationships. You had been a lamb, although a particularly pretty one, destined to land on the chopping block. Only they hadn’t given you the dignity of blindfolding you, so the sight of the knife had made you panic. That panic is erased the second you begin to bask in Rafayel’s affection. Because whether you had wanted it or not, Rafayel was falling in love with you. Perhaps neither of you had realized that a simple agreement would turn out to be a consuming, everlasting love.

All you had been thinking about was how to stay in that moment forever.

Although Rafayel had told you shortly after your migration to the deep sea that he didn’t like being touched, that quickly changed due to the warmth of your tenderness. He’d begun to let you trace the paint adorning his skin, retracing where the veins raised up to kiss his skin. Hand-holding is something you both quickly become accustomed to. One day, he finally is able to completely surrender to you. He falls into your embrace, pillowing his head onto your lap, and does not move. It’s the ultimate sign of trust he can give you.

He puts himself into your hands.

You had cradled his face, and you knew then and now that you’d never hold anything as precious as him ever again. He was the most delightful, most important part of your life now. Not many people were able to change their minds like this. A more modern diction would call it “a complete 180”. You begin to bend for Rafayel, stretching to accommodate his existence, his love. Your heart yearns to become his, that final step that would erase all boundaries between the two of you. There is a Lemurian song, old and melancholic, that describes love as the union of two souls to become one pearl forever. True love does not need mortal bodies. It persists forever, in any shape it can take. A bond eternal. You find that fitting. As your fingers softly trace their way down his cheekbones, the look in Rafayel’s eyes tells you that his every want mirrors your own. Without intending to, you have become one.

Rafayel reaches up to catch your fingers. He tugs your left hand to his lips, dropping a kiss into it, as if the need to kiss you was as natural as the need for your lungs to require air. “You’re very silent today. I thought we decided to discard this fake sense of politeness and etiquette, and just speak of what we think.”

“I’m not thinking of anything except you.” In another life, you may have blushed. In this life, you keep looking at him straight-on, willing him to see. How much he plucks at your heartstrings, to the point where you’re sure every creature of the ocean can hear the melody of worship they create. “‘Tis pleasant here, and we are together, and the sun is setting. I’d bottle this moment for eternity if I could.”

Rafayel’s beautiful face takes on a mellow expression, one you cannot decipher. Despite the fact that he is a young god, and he has bared his soul to you, there is still an entire culture, an entire life that seperates the two of you. But all he says is, “You need not bottle it. We can stay like this forever. In fact, I wish for it to be so, and you are not permitted to leave me.”

This time, you place your hands at his cheeks and lower yourself until your noses are touching. There are no sounds, no noises in the deep sea, nothing but the sharp intake of breath Rafayel’s lungs exert due to your proximity. There is a tiny, arrogant little part of you that is pleased to know you can evoke these kinds of reactions in him. His lungs don’t need air, not really. But you make him want to draw breath. The larger part of you is too concentrated on the fact that your heart is racing, and there is a joy flooding your entire being that is threatening to make you explode at the seams, to float out of existence. “As long as you wish for it to be so, I will never leave you. Do you doubt my intentions?”

Rafayel laughs shakily. His own fingers come up to tangle in your hair. “Of course I do. You’re human.”

You lean down even further, his lips only a width of a kiss away. His fingers tug at your hair, an unconscious urge that tells you the desire inside you is reflected in him thousandfold. What an honor it is to be loved by a sea god. What a blessing. “Liar,” you whisper to him. Rafayel’s response is to raise his head, and then he’s kissing you, and there is no need for words. No need to speak of what you think. Every kiss is a message. I love you. I devote myself to you. I want to be with you.

Of course, this isn’t only where your treachery begins. It’s his treachery that sets in motion the events of you obtaining his heart, his treachery that fools his own people as they never expected from the ruler of its own folk. You at least can accept that Rafayel was acting in the name of love. However, you'd rather he forget his love and live on than make you carry the burden that everything that has ever meant anything to him ceased to exist just for you.

It's those kinds of memories that make you grab your head in the middle of the night as you're forced to relive them. Brain-splitting, deafening. The lines seperating past-incarnation-you and current-life-you blur every time you think of Rafayel, because aren't you the same at your core? Don't you both love him more than anything else in the world? You'd like to pretend you could slide right back into her, fit yourself around her like the last puzzle piece needed. As always, though, you recall how thinking like that made Rafayel turn his back on everyone except you. What had made him selflessly spare you from your fate, twice. Not only did you cheat death on that fateful day when the ceremony went wrong, you did it again when the chance came to return the heart to its rightful owner. Back into your own four walls you went, clueless, protected, and forever seperated. You weep at what could have been. You weep because of what you did to him.

It's those delightful thoughts that float around your waking brain the morning after.

When you slipped out of your dream of the past, you almost had a heart attack because of the arms wrapped around your frame. For a second, your heart had burst out of your chest in exultation, thinking you were with Rafayel, even though rational thought would have made you question why he was here in the first place. The arms in question however are not one set, but two sets of arms, with one belonging to Simone in the middle of the bed and the other belonging to Tara at the other side of it. Michaela had walked home with Leila, who after upending the contents of her stomach felt much refreshed and grateful for the fresh air. Simone could not be trusted to go home on her own, and you would have slept over at Tara's anyways, which is why you ended up in this predicament.

You gaze up at the ceiling of Tara's bedroom, feeling restless. You had no answers for the girls last night, at least no good ones. You couldn't tell them about why there was tension between Rafayel and you. In the end, they had given up their line of questioning and instead turned their attention on Nero, who, after the party was over, still peacefully remained to finish his book. While they pestered him about when it was his time to finally find a partner, Tara had pulled you to the side, and in her eyes you had seen the worry she didn't want the other girls to know of.

Whatever it is that you're going through with him, Tara had said, her tone careful and gentle, I'm sure it can be solved if you guys were to sit down and talk. You taught me that, you know. To always communicate what you feel. And it's worked out this far, hasn't it?

The painful grimace you had turned on her in response ressembled more a cat bearing its fangs than a human person trying to smile. He's not my boyfriend, Tara.

Tara hadn't let that point fly. She kept looking at you with that steady look you'd never expect her to possess, the rare moments in where your friend discarded all humor and told you the truth as she saw it. No, he's not. But we both know he means more to you than that.

Well, she's not wrong. As Tara went to rejoin the group to chase Nero out of her apartment because she was growing tired, you mulled over her words, distressed. Of course he meant more to you than that. He was the air in your lungs and the blood in your veins, the joy in your laughter and the very first tear you cried in grief. If someone cut you open, they'd need no archeological background knowledge that his imprint was marked all over you. There is something at the core of your existence that knew and cherished Rafayel before it learnt to recognize and care for yourself, something that got separated from him during the creation of humanity. Perhaps you're being stubborn and stupid, and the past lives don't matter at all, because you'd find him in every lifetime so you could fall in love with him again. Perhaps being stupid is all you have left. In your heart, you cling to the belief that this is the right thing to do, that a healthy affection cannot spring up from a relationship as sacrificing and destructive like this, from a bond that surpassed all boundaries.

You seek to set him free. You don't want him if it means subsuming his will to your own because of a bond your past life forced on him.

Maybe you're nothing more than an archnemesis, instead of being a soulmate to long for. You dig your fingers into your palms, welcoming the pain, knowing it will never compare to Rafayel's hardships.

You know it will be a quiet patrol when your brain begins to hunt through your newly-acquired memories like a movie reel.

It keeps doing that, as if your brain is trying to cope with its' boredom. It's a little like lying awake at night and telling yourself it's time to sleep now, but then you start remembering the top ten most embarrassing moments of your childhood. Your brain likes to see you suffer. It seemingly has picked up on your general self-depricating mood and now intends to make it worse. In one moment, you're balancing yourself on the red-tiled roof of a small house, and in the next you slip back into the memory of a soft as down bed, while gentle hands cascade down the shape of your body.

It's a bitter-sweet kind of torture. You yearn to envelop yourself in the memory, of the feeling of Rafayel touching you with the same reverence as a devotee in a shrine. It had been a long day of journeying on the surface, where you had pointed out where you had lived, what you had done and what adventures you had lived through. Rafayel, attentive and inquisitive, was eager to learn more about you. Although he tended to do things his own way and mostly denied what you asked for just because he wanted to tease you, he had jumped on the chance to learn more about your life immediately. The smugness that usually accentuated his every behavior vanished. It had made you blush to realize how earnest he was with his interest in you. You felt light as a feather, giddy with happiness.

It would have scandalized his attendants if they knew he ended his day with bed in you. Neither of you cared. You knew the ceremony was approaching fast, and you wanted to spend every available minute with Rafayel, for as long as possible. His touch was reassuring. His gaze had made you melt.

This is what true love must feel like, you had quietly thought to yourself. It feels a little like faith.

"You always disappear so far into your head." Rafayel's melodious voice tore you out of your mindspace. His tone was both amused and wishful. "I wish I could follow you there, discover all the treasures that lie hidden beneath your skull. I'd give anything to know."

"But you do know everything about me. I have not hidden a single thing."

"Yes, I know." Rafayel's face tipped forward. The luxurious room was softly lit by several hanging lamps, in which the glass in-laid with mosaic patterns which created colorful displays on the walls. It painted Rafayel in a mysterious allure that made you think he couldn't possibly be real. It was difficult to fathom that you were in the presence of divinity sometimes. "But I am interested even in the most simple of thoughts. Does it make me sound insane when I say that I want to live inside your head? The way you think and articulate yourself is not only endearing, but interesting to me. And it makes me want to not miss out on a single thing."

You cradle Rafayel's face into your hand, watch as he hides his face in it. Like a pearl returning to its shell. "You already live there," you whisper to him, your heartbeat too loud inside your ears for you to raise your voice. "You accompany my every thought. Whatever I do, I always imagine you being there, laughing along and making fun. In the darkest of moments, it's your memory that brings me light."

For a moment, nothing happens. But then your palm begins to drip with something, the hot tears searing a path into the skin there. Rafayel is crying. You draw yourself up, alarmed, but he hinders you from any movement by embracing you. "Every time I think you cannot possibly read the wishes of my heart, you prove me wrong," he laughs, the voice shaky from emotion, but filled with genuine joy. His hands guide you towards him, closer and closer, until the hug feels like a cage keeping you in your place. You close your eyes and let yourself be enveloped in warmth, your worries slipping away. A kiss lands on your temple, then your cheek. "Your sincerity is a dangerous thing. It will undo me."

It's with that self-fulfilling prophecy that you tumble out of the memory, falling backwards into present time, landing harshly on the roof. Your spine screams in sensation, the landing echoing in every vertebrae. Ouch.

For a second, you are so dazed from the pain you do not move. That could be dangerous. If these flashbacks hindered you from Deepspace hunting, you could lose more than just your job; it could cost you your life. After making sure you didn’t hurt yourself, you hurl yourself down the roof, deciding that camping out in a higher place will just invite in the possibility of falling from it after another memory.

Your shoes hit the ground fast. You fall into a crouch, eyes still directed on the building you had been keeping watch on. Your constant visits to the Nest had paid off in the end. Supposedly, this place was used for illegal dealings, possibly involving protocores. You were hoping for a connection to the aether core currently being investigated by your department, but you’d take what you get. As long as you get the job done. You’re not a cop, but as long as you manage to write a report at the end that proves you were at least doing anything, Jenna would know you weren’t slacking off. The new moon offers some good cover as you noiselessly weave in and out of the surrounding streets until you find an appropriate hiding place. You then pass your time camping out in the crown of a maple tree, your fingers drumming melodies on the handle of your gun. You’re getting bored.

You almost decide to abandon your post for the night, determined that the tip-off had been bullshit. That very thought almost makes you miss the sight of one limping Rafayel, cradling a wounded arm and sliding along the alley like a stray cat.

For one horribly long moment, your brain finally empties of action. You blank out completely. If it would have been any other time, you would have reeled back from the momentary bliss, excited by the fact that everything was finally silent. But you don’t. You can lie and make up excuses all you want, but your heart knows the truth. Your love makes you drop to the ground immediately, not even thinking about doing it, your steps morphing into a sprint before you reach him.

He recognizes you before you barrel into him. You hadn’t expected to gain such momentum, and you try to extricate yourself from the embrace since you do not want to upset his wounds, but then Rafayel’s hand fists the back of your uniform and crushes you against him. “Rafayel?” you say, uncertain. You hadn’t expected him to react like this.

Rafayel slips in your grip, sliding. You readjust your hold, bearing his weight for him. What the hell was he doing here?

He doesn’t react, at least not in the way you want him to. There is a shaking in his chest that feels like an earthquake, an entirely too sharp rumble which you only belatedly come to understand as laughter. He’s laughing, despite the fact that he’s bleeding out in a random alleyway. Rafayel, who never bleeds without purpose. Rafayel, who knows better than anyone else what the scent of Lemurian blood does. “How ironic,” he manages to gasp out, the harsh sound entirely too close to your ear. You shudder when his nails dig into your clothes, seemingly reaching for the skin there. “I was praying for salvation, and here you are. Is this a joke?”

“Are you being followed? What the hell happened?”

He draws himself up with your support. When you look back at him, the cover of darkness is too heavy to see the look in his eyes. But his mouth is curled into a deceptive version of the smile he had sported in your recollection. “This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof,” he says. You blink at him, not understanding. “I did love you once. And I love you still.”

“You’re delirious.” Your heart is pounding in your chest, clawing at the ribbed jail it’s enclosed in. “We need to get you home.”

He tesrs a hand free from where it dug into your back, which makes him stumble. You move to steady him, and then his hand is cupping your cheek, and Rafayel leans down until the darkness embraces you both. There is no light, no visibility. There is only him. “It’s Hamlet,” he whispers, as if that would clear up everything. “No appreciation for the arts. And here I thought I was your Ophelia.”

“Rafayel?” You ask, nervous. The hand cradling your face slips, and then he does, too, and you almost don’t catch him before he meets the ground. You hold him up with all your might, cradling him against your chest as if he could be safe there, as if that wasn’t one of the many lies you told him.

The glint in the waves should scare you. It should.

You climb down with your awkward human legs, your unwebbed hands finding holding points on the stones where his couldn’t. The mystical sea creature watches as you descend further and further, the tail hidden in the water angrily swatting back and forth like the threatening stance of a cat. You try to not let that deter you. You try to ignore the sharp taste of fear and the knife-like sawing it seems to exert on your nerves. You are the princess of Philos, after all, and if you can’t face one measly Lemurian, than maybe you should never have become princess at all.

You drop to the ground just a few feet away from him. This close, the sight of his face robs the breath of your lungs. He is beautiful. He is more than beautiful. You’ve always been entranced with the description of Lemurians in your books, always eager for any detail you could scrounge up. It just doesn’t compare. It cannot encompass the miracle this young man seems to represent. You shakily raise both hands at him to show him they’re empty. “I’m not going to hurt you,” you tell him. At the raise of his eyebrows, you realize how ridiculous that sounds, so you amend, “Not like I could without you pulling me to my watery death. I realize that. But I have come to help free you from the trap’s grip, and I have brought a knife. I will pull it from my robes if you permit me, and I promise I will only use it to help you.”

His face is dangerously impassive, calm as the deceptive sea before it swallows entire ships whole. You cannot trust the ocean, your lady’s maid cautions in the back of your mind. “Like your promises mean anything to me, mortal,” he tells you, and in his voice, you find he cannot hide his true emotions as he does in the grimace of his face. His anger boils the sea like a stew. You shrink back from that anger, and you miss the way his face softens at your reaction. “But rest assured that if you free me without hurting me, I will not - what was it you said? - pull you to your watery death. I’d much rather be supping on your blood and bones in case you do betray me, so maybe fear that.”

You stare at him, momentarily distracted. “Do you actually do that? I thought that was a myth the priests made up to demonize Lemurians.”

He stares back, stupefied by your lack of appalled reaction to his naked threat. “Does it matter?”

You scratch your cheek. At home, everyone always complained about your level of detachment from human behavior. You were an outlier in the court, the weird tulip in a rose garden. Perhaps that weirdness went even as far as the mystical ways of societal interactions below the sea. “Well, I suppose not. I’m going to pull the knife out now, okay?”

He waves a hand to indicate that it doesn’t matter. And you understand what he means: that knife doesn’t matter. The being in front of you was created to hunt everything the sun touched upon, had horrified eons of humanity to the point that their documentation seemed more like horror stories told at a campfire rather than a historical note. This knife would do nothing, would change nothing. If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead. But you see the relief flash by in his eyes as he realizes that you are truly going to help, and your heart soars. This is why you came down here. To help a living, breathing entity. To do good. So you carefully, slowly extricate the knife from where you have hidden it in your clothing, and then, under the predator’s watchful gaze, begin to approach him.

The closer you get, the more you understand why humanity fell to these creatures’ allures. His tail reflects every color of the rainbow, pure sunlight contained in every individual scale. It is heartbreakingly wonderful. You do not know of a single thing in the mortal world which could be as lovely as this. As you step closer with your gaze locked onto that mermaid tail, you slip on the algae on the ground, and you shriek as you fall.

You find yourself in the deadly creature’s arms, staring your mortality into the face.

There is no way to hide it for you as talentedly as he does, so when you look up at him, the fear in your eyes is entirely real. This time, you are not caught up in your fascination with Lemurian history, and you remember the threat of becoming his supper. Yet he looks at you with pure amusement, his corners twitching as if he has to hold himself back from laughing. “Well, I do suppose there’s nothing I can do if you decide to become my dinner voluntarily,” he tells you, and in the gentleness of his tone, you recognize he is capable of joking. You unclench your hands from the fists they had balled into on his chest, an instinct born out of your fear. His hands on your waist guide you back to steady ground, and they linger there as you straighten up, just for a moment. Then he draws them back. “Do make sure you’re not just entangling yourself in the trap instead of helping me. I’d have to eat you for survival.”

“Ha, ha,” you murmur, trying to lean into the joke so he can see that you appreciate it. And you do. You’d come down here with a half death wish, tired of haunting the palace grounds. The tone of your life had come to be a monotonous one, boring you to death. There was nothing to lose in the decision to head down to free a possibly feral predator. You either died or you helped someone escape death. That’s all it was.

At least that’s what you try to tell yourself. The entire time you cut away the knots and tangles in the net to free the merman from his prison, you ignore the way his gaze on you makes your heart skip a beat.

When all is said and done, you fling the shredded net back into the land. It disappears behind the treeline you had been climbing down from, swallowed by the greenery. It should not be able to trap another ocean’s creature a second time. “Will I see you again?” you ask. It’s a stupid question, but you cannot hide the yearning in your voice. He truly was a wonder to behold. You expect him to mock you again, to draw up another threat so he can spook you and keep you as far away as possible from the sea.

Instead, you watch as he extends his hands to grab your own, your smaller hand disappearing behind the elegant tangle of his fingers. There are rings adorning his knuckles, each and everyone bespeaking his inheritance. You are still hesitant, but you cannot find it in yourself to move away from someone who holds you so tenderly, fully aware he could crush the bones in your hand down to sawdust. The violence in his eyes is as great as the gentleness in it. “Perhaps when you inevitably fall to your death into the sea, since you do not seem to have the steady gait of a sailor’s legs,” he answers, referencing your earlier stumble. He still doesn’t smile, as if he cannot bring himself to do it. But the corners of his mouths curl, and you find yourself smiling at him anyways, your joy honest and radiant. “I cannot hold you to your promises, as you are human, but you can hold me to mine. If you ever need a friend in the sea, I will return the kindness you have shown me today.”

“So you’re not going to eat me?”

He snorts. “I might still decide to do so,” he says. “But for now, the taste of your lips suffices.” And the man leans in, without forewarning, without any respect for courtesy. As your hand is tugged forward so you can fall back against his chest, you open your mouth to question him on as to what he means, but then he’s kissing you and your realization cannot keep up with the speed of the desire hitting you straight in the face. It wells up in you like a geyser exploding into the sky, unbidden and strangely familiar, and instead of pushing him back from stealing your very first kiss, you let yourself be entwined against this rude stranger and kiss him back as if you’ve done this a hundred times before.

He tastes of recognition and memory and blood.

His sharp shark-teeth dig into your lower lip, softly tugging at it as he breaks the kiss and leaves you behind. You draw in a shuddering gasp as you return to reality. “Exquisite,” he teases, and then your stranger turns and dives back into the waves, gone with the blink of an eye.

You are left behind on the shore with a mind as jumbled as a kaleidoscope, teetering on the edge of a memory that has been taken away from you a lifetime ago. You do not understand. You cannot understand. But you raise your fingers to your lips as if you can still feel the kiss there, as if your body will always know who Rafayel is even if your mind never can.

In this life, you massage away the taste of that freedom’s kiss while you stare at the familiar stranger in the bed.

You do not want to address the irony of the situation, the fact that you remember this specific instance right as you save his life again. Rafayel, sleeping away the pain in his bed, is bandaged up to teeth, every wound having been carefully nursed by you. Truth be told, you should have left the second you were certain he’d survive the night and sleep peacefully, but you couldn’t tear yourself from his side. You stare down at the blanket, down at the fingers that are only a few inches away from yours. They don’t look as elegant as they did when he was still a mermaid tossing in the waves. More roughened and scarred. But they are the same fingers. And they are reaching for yours again.

Even in sleep, even unconscious, even unaware that you’re actually there, Rafayel reaches for you.

Helpless, you strain your fingers to meet his in the middle. You cannot find it in yourself to deny him right now, not after seeing him almost bleed out on his own bathroom tiles. S’all good, he had said. We’re together. Don’t mind going like this. The moonlight, enveloping the room in its light like skimmed milk, glints off the ring on his ring finger, the one you’d given him before you came to realize who you were. Wearing it like a marriage ring. His sleep-drowsy fingers curl around yours awkwardly, curling like a cat’s paw before they finally slot inbetween yours. As if on command, a heavy, satisfied sigh leaves Rafayel’s mouth, and he curls his body into the direction of your joined hands. Finally at peace.

It breaks your heart.

The tears spill over your cheeks before you can stop them, burning as hot as fire, heavy as a promise. You want to shake him awake and apologize, want to tell him that you never intended to push him away like that, that you thought you were doing the best possible thing for him. And haven’t you done the same? the insistent voice in your mind cries out, still enraged with the injustice of the situation. Haven’t you decided for me in the same manner as I am deciding for you right now, when you took my memories away and took away the only chance I had at returning my heart to you before changing that prophecy forever?

You hold his hand tightly, the only thing anchoring you in this world. His bedroom seems to sway like a boat in the waves, and Rafayel is the only stability you can hold on. You breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, as if that truly helps, and you make yourself hold still, to stop the tremors so Rafayel can keep sleeping peacefully.

Does it really matter who you are, when he loves you despite it all? Shouldn’t you love him just for that?

You stare at Rafayel’s face, pondering. You wonder if you yourself can know where her love ends and yours begins, interconnected as you are. Perhaps you’ve been holding up an impossible standard the entire time.

Perhaps you’ve been chasing after the shadow of self-punishment because the light of Rafayel’s forgiveness was too bright.

You spent the night thinking about your own inadequacy as you stare at Rafayel resting, the steady rise and fall of his chest serving as a calming influence on your own wellbeing. You return to a sense of calmness, smoothing over the sharp edges of your thoughts as they turn to sea-glass, an ocean-made treasure you can finally gift him, just as he wished so long ago. You don’t let go of his hand once. Ignoring your feelings is too tiring now. You watch as he finally rouses from his dreams, watch the way his eyes squint adorably, his sleep-tousled hair falling over them. It wrenches at your heart, but for once, it’s not a painful feeling. What stings is the way he realizes that you’re still here, and then, the way he freezes when he sees your intertwined hands, as if afraid that if he acknowledges it, you will let go of him. You want to reassure him that you won’t, but you don’t voice it, not yet. You still have to address the elephant in the room. So you say instead, “Good morning, Ophelia.”

He screws his face up in embarrassment. “So that wasn’t a dream,” he mumbles, but he finally relaxes back into the mattress. His satin pillows sink with the weight of his head, cushioning him like your lap did another lifetime ago. His free hand moves to cover his face, rubbing away the night of agony and the last traces of sleep. “I thought my extravagant imagination conjured you up, but you’re here. Talking to me. Did a miracle happen over night?” His voice is sharp-edged, provoking. A defense against your usual cruelties, just as Hamlet began to reject Ophelia as their relationship faltered. You understand the reference now.

You only shrug. “You did say you wanted to talk on New Year’s Eve, so let’s talk. I’m here now.”

He stares at you as if you grew another head, The corners of your lips twitch, reminiscent of a smile. You don’t want him to think you’re laughing at him. “That was ages ago.”

“So you don’t want to talk?”

“I don’t want to just talk,” he hurls at you, a sword drawn up to wield at you. He’s standing on the edge of a cliff, on the precipice of a fall. You see it in his ocean eyes, that wish to trust you anew and believe you are what you claim to be. It’s not in his nature to trust humans, and you’ve only reinforced that stance.

But he hasn’t let go of your hand yet.

You swipe your thumb over his knuckles, watch the goosebumps raise on the skin of his arms, racing up, up, up. You want to follow that path, litter it with kisses and fall right back into that memory of where you loved in full and were loved in return. You can’t let go of the guilt you’ve shackled to this relationship, the guilt you’ve been punishing him with, but you want to try. “I know,” you whisper, not trusting yourself to speak louder. Afraid of breaking apart in his hands. “But let’s start talking first. I thought I’d lose you yesterday.”

“My love,” he sighs. Slipping back into the diction you were thinking of before he awoke, back into a world where you guys were one pearl, one love, one soul. “Please don’t expect me to start believing you’re afraid of losing me when all you’ve been doing is trying to achieve just that. I’ve waited and waited and waited for you to want to talk. I’d have expected fish to start flying and the seas to flood the earth before you ever wanted to.”

You grip onto that joke like a drowning sailor clings to a life buoy. If he can joke, then maybe it means all hope isn’t lost. “Can’t you try to understand me here?” you tell him, and then your voice finally breaks, and you can’t hold yourself back anymore. You’ve spent so much time trying to pretend you were fine, trying to pretend you didn’t need Rafayel’s love. Gaslighting yourself into believing this was the right thing. Rafayel begins to draw himself up, despite all his wounds, and when he lets go of your hand to draw you into his embrace, you finally let him. You pillow your head on his shoulder, his trusted and familiar shoulder, and begin to dissolve into sobs. “Did you think … this is … easy for me? You lied to me … and you took my memories from me… and you sacrificed your entire life for me. And here I sit, trying to bear all that. You’ve lived your life all this time, shouldering this burden, accepting it. But I’ve died and been reborn so many times, and I’m fighting so many memories at once. Did you think I could just slip back into that role, into that soul? Did you think I could bear it, when it feels like I’m building up a sand castle that keeps getting swallowed by the sea?”

Rafayel cradles your head in his hands, holding you up. You don’t rely on your own strength for once. You let him carry your entire weight, the way you’ve never been able to, because all your life you’ve been trying to hold it on your own, struggling with it as Atlas was struggling to hold the sky in the ancient Greek myth. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into your ear, and it feels like he’s speaking into all the hollow spaces inside your soul, the holes you’ve been trying to patch with hatred when all they needed was a little love. “I’m sorry for misunderstanding you so badly. I never realized. I’m sorry.”

You close your tear-blurred eyes, slumping into the hug. He rocks you like a child that needs comforting, not pressuring you once, just sliding his hand over your head in a steady soothing rhythm. You draw in a shuddering breath, and another, and another. He smells like the only home you’ve ever known, the home you’ve been missing in every lifetime, unnurted by the ones claiming to be your family or caretakers. “I can’t be her, Raf,” you weep, clawing your fingers into his hurt shoulder. He doesn’t seem to mind it. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I really can’t.”

His hand stills, the fingers intertwined with the curls of your hair. Resting there, like it belongs there. “But I don’t want you to be,” he says, in the most sincere way you’ve ever heard him speak. It sounds like a vow, and you lean into him, eager to hear more. Your breath hitches. “I’m not the man I used to be anymore. Isn’t that what life is all about? Changing and growing? I can’t pretend that there isn’t a past between us, something that belongs to another time. But I am a different Rafayel, too. A Rafayel that wants to learn about you and fall in love with you all over again. If you let me. Please, please, please let me.”

Can you?

You open your eyes again, trying to orient yourself. When you lean back to look at him as best as you can, his face looks hopeful and open, a look that shakes you to the core and breaks apart the last shackles of your heart. So you nod at him. You nod and say, “Okay. One step at a time.”

The look of joy in his face is so exultant, so bright, that you have to blink away the blindingness of it. You let him lead you back into the light, slowly, steadily. “One step at a time,” he repeats. He takes your hand into his own, kissing the fingertips that worked so hard to bandage him up. You are still unsure, still tentative. But you have never been more certain than you are about the knowledge that you love him enough that you want to try.

So you try.

You let him back into your life, on your own terms this time. You introduce him to your friends a second time, with the only addition of a romantic declaration, where you clarify to your friends that Rafayel and you have been seeing each other. You delight in the blush that dusts across Rafayel’s cheeks, a color as beautiful as the gleaming scales on his mermaid tail. You relearn the map to the other’s soul - how Rafayel doesn’t like sleeping in any other bed than his own, how you have to follow a specific rhythm in the morning before you start your day, how you both used to prefer an adventure but now prefer the comfort of your own four walls. The way you take your coffee. A preference in food. A changed behavior. Who would have known there was an actual scientific endeavor behind love?

But the most freeing thing is being able to talk about what happened between the two of you. There are no accusations, no screaming matches anymore. Like two government officials hammering out the terms of the truce, you try to make sense of what has happened and how it changed you. You watch as Rafayel’s sad eyes trace the shape of a scar between your chest, and he in turn endures your self-pitying thoughts whenever your guilt threatens to crush you because of what happened. Your love is in active metamorphosis, discarding and fashioning new appearances. In awe, you two begin to find common ground again.

It leads you back to the sea, the one place you used to dread.

In the warm afternoon light, the traces of his shoework light up like stars in the sand. Shoes and jacket long forgotten in the house, you follow those steps like a treasure map, the sea breeze kissing your skin as you hurry to meet it. Whitesand Bay cleaves into the earth before you, opening up as a metaphoric maw as it swallows the waves. The tell-tale glimmer of a shimmering mermaid tail greets you, a beacon at sea, a lighthouse guiding you home.

He’s never once showed you this form ever since you two have met again.

When you finally reach the sea, Rafayel is waiting in the shallows for you. Fully conscious that you are still wearing clothes, you wade inside. You care more about being with him as you care about being soaked. Rafayel angles his head up, looking at you with a mischievous glint in those seafire eyes. Pink like coral, blue like the ocean. Entangled, as you two are. One as a pearl. “Decided to brave the cold water, did you?”

You smile at him, glad for his humor. “Isn’t that what you intended, siren king? Or are you just cosplaying as a rubber duck today?”

Rafayel’s seductive lips curl into a pout, one you want to kiss off of him. “You’re being mean, cutie,” he accuses, and yet his arms reach to pull you into his lap. The scales there can’t compare to a featherbed, but you feel safer than anywhere else in the world. “But yes, I was hoping you found me here. I had a looooong day of being super important at work. Wanna unwind with you.”

“In the water?” you gently prod, proud of seeing his true form again. In answer, he tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear and finally gives you the smile you’ve been yearning to see. “Yes, in the water,” he says. “And if you can’t behave yourself, I’ll drown you.”

“Ha-ha. Brave words for someone I would turn into a five-star sushi meal.”

Rafayel rolls his eyes, but doesn’t quip back. When he looks at you again, his face is the picture of tender joy, a quiet but resilient happiness. A happiness that you’ve helped him rediscover. You touch your fingers to his cheeks lightly, basking in his warmth. “I have to ask you something,” you say slowly, trying to unravel the last threads of your reunion. He leans into your fingers, chasing the touch, so you give in and hold his face in full. “When I told you at that party that I wasn’t the same bride you married eight hundred years ago, you answered that I never was. What did you mean by that?”

“Can’t you tell?”

The question seems like a tease, but his smile is earnest. It’s the expression of a man basking in the peace he has achieved, a true sense of tranquility. The past cannot be shed like a snake sheds it skin to become something new, but it has become a foundation of something entirely better, something that lives in the curl of Rafayel’s lips and the echoes of your laughter. “I was never chasing after your after image, my love,” he finally clarifies. “You and I, we are connected beyond just two souls meeting. I love you for who you are and who you have become. And I love you for the person you have helped me become. Even though the past has interlinked us forever, it’s the present with you I want. I can’t help the person I was before, just as much as you can’t. And we don’t know what the future holds and who we’ll become. But I love you despite all that. What I learn, what I change, what I become is what I want to do with you. I want to build with you. I want to be with you.” He taps a finger against your temples, then slides it down to the curve of your jaw so he can angle your face up. You raise it towards him, towards the sun of your life, the only rise and set you ever want to experience. “Like a pearl, you have a thousand different faces which you still have to explore or are already polishing. And I think the greatest happiness of my life will be in witnessing that with you. It is you. You are my happiness, now and always.”

You place your hand on his heart, and he covers it with his own. For a second, you both become quiet, taking in his words, his heartbeat, the sacrifices that had been made to achieve this reunion. But to reject them would be to void them of meaning, and you refuse to do that when Rafayel has given your life just that. Maybe it doesn’t really matter how Rafayel came to be in your life, or what memories have shaped your bond before you took fate into your own hands. What matters is that you’ve returned to the heart that knows your own, the one that reflects every emotion to you and sees you as you are, and despite all that, loves you anyways.

And besides, it is much better to walk in the light than it is to stumble through the shadows.

“You knew me all along,” you state, the statement a glaring accusation. “And here I thought I was rescuing a handsome stranger.”

The sea is much calmer tonight, not as angry as it had been when you first freed Rafayel from a net’s clutches. His surreally beautiful face turns towards you from where it had been fixed on the sight of the sunset, the golden light only enunciating what was already perfect in your eyes. He looked ethereal - and embarrassed, as if being caught in a lie wasn’t something he was proud of. “And yet you’re here,” he tells you, wondrous. Perhaps not comprehending how you could still stand him, after all that has happened.

You dip your toes into the surf, the train of your dress already drowning in it. He’s staring at the satinous material as it drifts in the waves and exposes the lush flesh of your thighs, the skin he used to kiss. “Yes, I’m here,” you say. You look at him with a smile that is entirely too kind for someone who’s been pulling the wool over your eyes. “What did you think would have happened?”

“I was being treacherous,” Rafayel answers, feeling numb. Steeling himself for rejection. He cannot trust your smile, cannot let himself walk to his own doom. And yet he cannot bring himself to shy away from the careful hand that splays itself along his wrist, then finds his way up his arm. He lets himself be tugged closer to the shore, the one place he as a Lemurian had always dreaded. He despises the land. But he loves you. As you surrender to the water, he surrenders to you, letting himself be pulled out of it. “Our story is not the best. I made you take my heart. I cursed you to this fate. I even took your memories.”

“And yet I fell in love with you anyway,” you tell him, your voice as soft as your caress.

He screws his eyes shut. “You love a memory. ‘Tis all.”

“No, I don’t think so.” You cock your head at him, the sight of it as adorable as always. He remembers your habits as clearly as his own; how you had cocked your head in confusion before you scrunched your face up, as if your entire face was acting in accordance to your brain. The sight tears into him even now, and he doesn’t argue against you, stuck in his devotion to you. “I fell in love without knowing who you were. You were just a stranger I helped, a charming face with a sweet smile. But I fell in love of my own accord, without the memories I had. It doesn’t matter who we are. Our hearts are born with the knowledge of what key opens them up, and my heart will always wait for you. It sings for you.” Your face lights up with a smile, and he can’t help himself from reciprocating. From the darkness within his own chest, his own heart begins to crack open to receive the light you bring him. “It loves you, as I do,” you remind him. “We will learn together who we are. Your love will be the mirror to my growth, as mine will for yours. I am not afraid of that.”

Rafayel is not afraid either. For the first time in his life, he begins to hope.

Desperation. You hear it in a keening sound, a song sung all wrong. A mourning wail carried on the waves, even as you sink far below them.

You hear your name, ringing in your ears. A voice so familiar, but your limbs are lead, if they’re even still there. If you haven’t become one with the yawning abyss, the emptiness of the ocean itself.

You hear him.

You’re gasping a moment later, pulling air within your lungs as you lurch forward. You cough, and sputter, as if ridding seawater from your lungs, but all you do is fall to the ground, unable to move.

But your body never slams against the hard surface. There’s something warm around you, soft against the seawater slicked against your skin that's still trying to claim you.

There’s a hand at your forehead, pushing your hair back, pulling the seaweed from your legs. A voice in your ear.

“Come back to me, cutie,” he urges, fear laced in the sweet voice that makes your heart sing, and you wheeze in another strangled breath. “Come on, breathe with me, you can do it. Please?”

He’s as frantic as you, and it’s only when you feel that soft warmth pressed to your cheeks, cradling your face, that you come face to face with the ocean itself.

It’s the water at sunset, blue and pink you know in your soul. A picturesque gaze that can hold as much of a dangerous storm as a calm tide. Now it is somewhere in between, a storm that has suddenly brewed on the horizon of an otherwise warm, peaceful day.

You go to him. Reach for him with shaking hands, willing to drown yourself again just to hold him close.

“Cutie,” he says again, eyes wide and pleading with you, and you blink rapidly. “I need you to breathe. Please, you’re scaring me.”

You gasp in another breath, then let it out, as shaky as the slow exhale that he gives as an example. He takes your hands to place over his heart, and you let the familiar beat of it calm you, feeling it in your own chest as the bond warms beneath your trembling fingers.

“Rafayel,” you choke out, trying to expel more seawater, only to realize your throat is tremendously dry.

“Yeah,” he sighs, smiling at you, but it’s wavering. His eyes are a forced reassurance, panic thinly concealed, one hand holding yours to his chest as the other brushes your hair from your eyes again. “It’s me. You’re okay, okay? You’re gonna be okay.”

“Mhm,” you hum, nervous energy elongating the sound to comfort yourself, and he reaches down, untangling you further from where your body was trapped.

When you glance down, you see not seaweed, but thin bedsheets wrapped around your body, ensnaring you. Rafayel gently frees your limbs from them, soothing his palms down your sweat-slicked skin, no seawater to be found.

“What—” you clear your throat, trying to force yourself to swallow, and Rafayel reaches past you to flick on the lamp by your side of the bed. He brings your water to your lips, gently tilting your head back, and you eagerly wet your throat before you try again, “What happened?”

“You had a nightmare. You were flopping around like a fish out of water when I woke up.” He shakes his head, his attempt at playfulness faltering and fading, a dazed look in his eyes.

His voice is shaky, somber and scared when he adds, “I thought something was wrong, I thought you were—”

He breaks off, pushing his hair back from his face, letting out an unsteady whimper.

Rafayel suddenly wraps his arms around you and pulls you close, tugging you into his lap on the cool floor.

“I thought you weren’t breathing,” he whispers, fingers trembling as they trace up and down your spine, and the cool weight of his wedding ring against your skin has your breathing start to steady out. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought you were—”

He stops, opting instead to hold you close, curling himself around you. Slowly, he begins to rock you both back and forth, soothing himself as much as he did you.

“I’m sorry,” you croak out, and he gently hushes you, kissing your forehead.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispers, kissing along your brow and down your nose, calming himself with the feel of your skin, the familiar scent of it, even drenched in sweat and fear. “You can’t stop a nightmare, silly.”

“Still,” you say, wrapping your arms around him tight. “I’ll try harder next time. Can’t scare my fishie that bad again.”

Rafayel laughs, a hushed relief lacing through the sound, and he smiles into your neck.

“Good,” he sighs, squeezing you tight, like you might slip through his fingers otherwise. “I owe you a few jumpscares for waking me up like that, too. Just to keep this marriage fair and all.”

“Mm, you're on,” you mumble, exhausted now, even more than before as the adrenaline slowly begins to wear off.

Rafayel hums under his breath as his rocking becomes less frantic, and more calming. He leans back against the bed frame, tucking your head under his chin.

Something in the song he weaves eases your soul as much as it makes your skin prickle again, and he notices you tensing.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, running a hand down your arm and squeezing it gently, encouraging and reassuring you both.

Your husband was always eager for touch, for the feel of you to ground him, as much as his existence kept you solid and sane.

“I dreamed I was drowning,” you say slowly, and feel his body go as tense as yours.

“You did?” The question is a breath, a stutter underneath it. It sounds like dread, like grief waiting with open claws and sharp teeth.

“Yeah.”

You’re both quiet for a moment. You can feel his nails dig into your skin just slightly. An unconscious habit, a need buried beneath his own skin to keep you as close as possible, to merge yourselves together.

“I don’t remember why,” you continue, resting your head against his chest to listen to the anxious race of his heart begin to settle at your proximity, from the vibration of your voice against his skin. “It was dark, and I couldn’t breathe, and then I was…gone.”

Rafayel’s nails subconsciously dig in enough for you to hiss, and he quickly lets go, soothing out the marks with his lithe fingertips.

“The sea is under my control,” he says in a low tone that sends a shiver down your spine. “I won’t let it take you.”

You laugh breathlessly. “Just like that?”

He hums, pressing a kiss to your temple.

“Yeah.” His voice is lighter, teasing, but still holds a hint of that dark promise to any force of nature that dared to try and stand in front of the sea god’s wrath, in his path to his bride, his wife. “Just like that.”

“What if the sea doesn’t listen?”

You lean back, watching his handsome face as it scrunches up in thought. Your eyes trace the beauty marks that dot across his skin, the shimmer of thoughtful eyes in the low light of the home you'd made together.

Sometimes you wondered if the artist had sculpted himself, with all the inexplicable beauty that made him. Ethereal and dangerous, elusive and yours.

“Then I’ll tell the sharks and whales to swim with you and carry you back up, obviously.”

You laugh softly. “And if they don’t listen?”

“Then I’ll tell the moon to change the tides and bring you home, of course,” Rafayel says brightly, smiling down at you and booping your nose with his finger. As if your questions were what was silly here, not his increasingly outlandish answers. “Satisfied?”

You shake your head. “What if there’s no more moon, or sun, or fish? Then what?”

He hums, glancing off to the side as he thinks. There's an almost imperceptible shift in his eyes, a purposeful glint.

“Then I’ll follow you down,” he says, turning back to face you.

The glee and mirth he wears like armor, so ingrained it fits more like a second skin to hide what’s sensitive underneath, fades to let you see your husband’s sincerity; his devotion for you, and forever only you.

He leans down, soft lips meeting yours in a gentle kiss that eases that part of your soul that feels split between here and somewhere far away.

“I'll follow my wife wherever she goes,” he murmurs against your lips, deepening the kiss until you’re breathing him in, filling your lungs with the air you’d been desperately searching for upon waking. “How’s that, cutie?”

You smile, pecking his lips again.

“Well, your wife would like to go back to bed,” you say, and he laughs softly, kissing across your cheekbone and down to your chin, leaving loving pecks all over your face until you’re both giggling.

“Oh, I can do that,” he says, hoisting you into his arms before rising to his feet with graceful ease. “Make it a little harder for me next time, why don't you?” he adds, just so you pinch his cheek playfully and fill your shared bedroom with your sweet laughter.

Your husband tucks you into his side of the bed where it’s nice and dry, making no protest when he climbs into the side you’d soaked with your sweat in your fitful sleep.

Rafayel hushes your concerns, telling you it could all be fixed in the morning, and sings softly under his breath until dreams beckon to you once more.

It’s still a familiar song. But when you dream again, it’s only of moonlight and his kisses, calm tides at last, and knowing a bond that would never be broken.

So, it's kinda hard not to notice that Raf is surrounded by birds and winged beings imagery - which is rather unexpected for a fish in human skin.

A non - exhaustive list made on the spot:

Artsy Birb

the crying statue on the cover for the "Long Lost Treasures" World Underneath story chapter

the statue he repairs in the Ivory Nightfall illustration

the "one winged angel" effect in the cutscene of "Fires of Devotion" as the Sanctarch

his conflictual interactions with birds (it seems they're often competing for food)

last but not least: his seagull choir

If this was just a matter of a random statue or two it could be chalked up to just aesthetics. But the constant repetition makes me think there might be something more to it.

There's also the fact that they chose Artsy Birb to represent Raphayel - he's on par with Xavier's Galaxy Kid, Sylus' crow, Zayne's snowman and Caleb's apple. The choice seems obvious for the other guys, it's only baffling in Rafayel's case. Why would the devs give Raf a random cutesy mascotte when everything else is studied in the finest details? This is not a half-assed game, and it was expecially true back when the game was first launched.

Also, why can he communicate with seagulls and other birds?

We know he can easily understand fish and other seacreatures and that they understand him - as one would expect from the sea god. But birds? It's unclear whether Raf and birds understand each other to the same level as Raf and fish, but I think it's obvious there something going on there - you don't train a seagull choir just by bribing them with food after all. Keep in mind we never see him interacting with other animals like he does with birds - there was no real communication with the cat on Hat Island for example.

TLTR: it seems the game has been dropping hints from the very beginning that Raf might not be just a fish. He probably was a bird at some point.

These are all in-game hints. But I think there are also some interesting points to consider if we look at the possible materials the devs drew inspiration from.

1. Sirens in Ancient Greece were (almost) birbs

The choice to link Rafayel and birds is not as strange as it might seem at first - sirens were depicted as half-humans, half-birds in early on. We first meet them in Omer's Odyssey, but their physical appearance was left to the imagination.

In early Ancient Greek art they were consistently represented as half - human, half-bird - initially as human-headed birds and later with human upper bodies and bird legs, with or without wings.

Also, sirens were musical beings, not just for their mesmerizing voice - they were often shown playing a variety of musical instruments

Wikipedia also informs me that "Originally, sirens were shown as male or female, but the male siren disappeared from art around the fifth century BC"

Sirens started to be depicted as mermaids during the Classical period; Romans followed this new trend and during the Middle Ages, sirens physical appearance as half-human half-fish was cemented.

How much of this is Infold taking into account? I don't know, but it seems evident the writers did their research in western myths and literature, and this whole Greek Mythology thing ties in nicely with Rafayel and his interest in painting + his association with western classical art (Greek, Roman, Italian).

Fun fact not related directly to Raf but reinforcing the relationship with Classical Art and Italy: there's a bird in the Mediterranean Sea, the Scopoli's shearwater, whose call is disturbingly human-like. From what I understand, they sing mostly at night and they sound like a wailing baby. There has been some (minor) speculation that early sirens myths were inspired by them. After all, their home is on islands near Sicily - and wouldn't you know? Scylla and Charybdis, the two monsters Odysseus survives right after the sirens, live in the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and Italy. They live exactly where the Odissey's sirens would have been.

TLTR: sirens were half-human, half-bird creatures before they became the mermaid-like creatures we all know. Also male sirens were a thing once. They've always been associated with music

2. Rafayel as in the painter Raffaello or as in the archangel Raphael? Maybe both?

Another interesting thing to notice is the choice of his western name.

As I said before, I truly believe nothing was left to chance in this game, especially at the beginning, so the devs probably spent quite some time and energy to find names that would fit the guys in all languages (a post I made about Raf's Chinese and Japanese names here)

The first thing we might associate with the name "Rafayel" might be Raffaello Sanzio, the famous Renaissance Italian painter. Raffaello's career as a painter was (relatively) short, but painting in Europe was never the same once he made a name for himself - everyone wanted to paint like him, and then later great painters like Caravaggio made a point of *not* painting like him. In short, he influenced European painting for years to come.

Raffaello's work followed the Platonic aesthetic principle of Beauty - and honestly, there's so much to unpack here it would warrant its own post but.

Raffaello sees Ancient Greece as a model (so... an ancient civilization long gone. Like Lemuria)

Plato thinks beauty is super important because it's through beauty that our soul remembers its divine origin - beauty is guide and motivation in the soul's journey to reach the truth™️ (Raf and Lemurian sure see the world differently than humans. Is this because they can see through some kind of illusion or not? We can't say atm but it's something to keep in mind I think. Also we know Raf is quite opinionated when it comes to aesthetics - he makes fairly important choices based on how things look)

In Raffaello's art, beauty reigns supreme - his paintings are famous for their delicate colors, their harmonious compositions, the graceful movements of their characters. (Raf's paintings are also quite famous for their beauty and again - beauty is always a factor in his choices)

Raffaello can also be considered one of the founders of western archeology as he dedicated a lot of effort in the study and retrieval of roman art (which he did with very strict procedures and criteria).

Archeology plays an important role in Raf's storyline: the search for Lemuria's ruins by ever, his efforts to protect it, Lemurans struggle to preserve their culture and traditions and to protect what's left of their homeland + their dream to be able to revive it.

Not to mention Rafayel is often involved in conservation and restoration work (the statue in ivory nightfall, the paintings in Destined Dawntide...)

What about Archangel Raphael then?

I must confess I'm not particularly well- versed in Bible lore. Here's what I found about him.

His name means "God has healed" or "God is the healer" and he's one of the angels that lives in God's presence.

He appears in the Old Testament in the Orthodox and Catholic Bible and in Jewish Midrash (critical explanations of the Bible).

He's consistently associated with healing and guiding. He often heals people from blindness. In at least one episode he acts as a guide while disguised as a normal human and only reveals himself at the end of the journey (Book of Tobias).

He's also often identified as the unnamed angel who periodically stirred the (healing waters) of the pool of Bethesda in the New Testament (John).

TLTR: Raffaello seems like a good choice for inspiration for Raf's name - they are both very famous painters who are very opinionated about aesthetics and what can be considered beautiful; also archeology is very important to both of them

The Archangel Raphael also has some parallels with our Raf - Rafayel is a guide of sorts for his people, and there's definitively something going on with blindness, though in this case it's him who needs healing. Also association with water.

So - sirens were originally depicted with wings and Raphael, one possible inspiration for Rafayel's western name, is an angel. Angels are traditionally depicted with wings. It seems Rafayel's inspirations support the idea that, at some point, Rafayel did have wings.

Why doesn't he have them now? Why is Lemuria associated with the sea and not the sky? What changed? What happened?

What does it all mean for Rafayel's narrative?

I'll give my own two cents in the next post - this one is already long enough as it is.

My one cent for the moment: one super interesting point I noticed - sirens, Raffaello with the platonic idea of beauty, Raphael - one thing they all have in common is the connection with illusion, things not being what they seem on the surface.