mayyari

You could never call your lover kind, but he is gentle. 

You feel it in the pads of his fingertips at your waist as you lay in your small cottage bed, soft and cool as the kiss of an ocean breeze, nails angled outwards to avoid the scratch. 

See it in the drawing of purple brows and flutter of lace-like lashes, blue-red gaze receding when you ask when he’ll be back. 

You know what he’s doing, why he’s doing it – to spare you that precious moment longer – but it is a useless gesture. 

By now, you have catalogued his every expression and, though you do not know the exact meaning of every tiny inflection, you are particularly familiar with this one. It is unmistakable, the same way the pulling tide heralds the devastation of an oncoming tsunami. 

“I see,” you say quietly but he is quieter, the guilt tempered by the finality of resignation. 

Your lover is gentle, yes, but he is cruel too. 

“It’s okay,” you tell him, reaching slowly for his face, allowing time for the instinctive flinch (you don’t understand this one, perhaps never will) before he sinks into your touch. He lets your thumb gently pull his bottom lip from between the points of his sharper-than-strictly-human teeth, sighing, reaching with his own fingers to wrap around your delicate wrist.  

“I have to go,” he whispers into your palm, closing those ethereal eyes and kissing the flesh there. 

It is a small loss before the larger one, and it prompts you to squeeze your voice through the rapidly growing lump in your throat. “Can I walk with you?” 

You ask this every time, your consistency unmatched by his answers: sometimes, his face is a living stone, brittle as coral and just as sharp as he refuses your pleas; others, unshed tears beg you keep him company to the very end, feet pickling in brine at the demarcation of your worlds as he delays and delays and delays. 

Your lover is cruel, and ever so fickle. 

Today, he is neither cold nor needy, a wistful smile gracing his face – so beautiful that it’s heartbreaking. “I’d like that,” he says, and the pain is sweet, his softness salt in the wound.

You smile back, smile through the sting, and pull your wrist through his grip so you can lace your fingers with his. The nails are stained with the darkness of the hadalpelagic zone, yet another mark of his otherness. "Let’s go, then." It was time to return him to where he belonged. 

The trek down the cliff-face is harder for its ease. Whenever your lover returned to you, the exertion of ascension was lost in the flush of joy in your cheeks, the laughter in your chest buoying you through the air as you tugged him towards the sanctuary of your small-bricked cottage. In contrast, the descent is far more frustrating, the both of you digging your heels against the encouragement of gravity, idling, stretching the sunset into forever. 

Another time, the both of you might have filled the silence with promises. Planned your next adventures with the eagerness of small children. Today, you are weary, and adult, and (one of you, at least) only human. At very least, the silence isn’t unpleasant. Like your lover, it is mournful, but gentle. 

He tightens his grip as you reach the beach, the sand silky between your toes and burnished orange by the throes of a dying day. A glance at his face and you know he wants to say something, but instead he pulls you forward. 

Ahead, grey waves reach desperately for land before they are yanked back by some unseen force. Steeling yourself, you put one foot in front of the other, the way you’ve done a thousand times before, across the dampening sand until the water finally engulfs you in a sudden, greedy surge. 

The cold sends a thrill through you, pulling a tiny noise from your throat. By the chill in the air, you know you’ll need a fire tonight in order to dry the linen of your clothes properly, that you’ll spend it curled by the bright flames until the shivers leave, pretending to yourself that he had conjured them just for you. 

Another few moments and you’ve adjusted enough to recover your bravery. You go to take another step, only to be halted in your tracks. 

You turn your head inquisitively, and see that he has gone still. Unmoving. His eyes are the only live thing, the sunset setting the red in his irises afire, the colour so hot and brilliant it makes charcoal of the blue. He looks serious. Unhappy in a way he wasn’t a few minutes ago, before the beach and the sand and the wind in your hair. And suddenly, you feel uneasy, dread rising unbidden. 

You swallow hard. Pulling answers out of him is uncomfortable – you hate the reluctance of his capitulation, the undercurrent of resentment in each word – so your only option is to wait, the frigid sea claiming first your ankles, then cresting at your calves. 

Finally, he speaks, and there is a thread of discontent in his smooth voice. “Why do you never order me to stay?” You barely hear it over the rumbling hiss of the waves. His gaze breaks from you, shifting, unable to fully bear – or bare – the vulnerability beneath the question. “You know I… can’t go against your commands.” 

In contrast, you relax, muscles going fluid – of all the possible, horrible things you were imagining he'd ask, this was easy to answer. 

Years ago, when the two of you were still new and raw and clumsy, you’d recited to him the stories told by the villagers, about siren kisses and the undrowning. Asked him if it were true, and why he didn’t just take you with him. Why do you have to leave me behind?  

His reply was an open wound when he confessed that the creatures of the sea had a long memory, and the sea’s was longer still. That it would be impossible to keep you safe without trapping you in a cage. A cage to keep his world at bay as it sought vicious recompense for an old, forgotten transgression.  

“Can a creature truly love you from behind the bars?” you use your entwined fingers to pull him closer, and his stumble is awkward and graceless, as though he’d been sinking into the sand before your response unstuck him. 

His laugh is faintly bitter, though you can’t quite tell why – there's still so much you don't know about your lover, despite the years. “If you asked me, I would certainly try.”

You reach up with your free hand to stroke his smooth cheek. He presses into your touch, nuzzling at you. “That’s why I’ll never ask,” you tell him, your hands and heart so full of him, so full of love for this beautiful creature who washed up on your shore one day and changed your world forever. “I want you to be free to love or leave me, and bask in the joy of knowing you are by my side by choice.” 

His kiss is sudden and fierce as an ocean tempest, all open mouthed and tongue and teeth. Your knees buckle beneath its force, collapsing into the water, and he follows you, eyes glowing aquamarine as you kiss like you don’t need oxygen, because you don’t need oxygen, the pull of the waves rippling above your heads as you drift into deeper and deeper waters. 

I love you, he tells you, the words ringing in your head – yet another of his strange, salt-encrusted powers. I love you. I always have. He sounds desperate, almost, hands scouring every inch of your body that they can reach and then some. I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried. 

You keen into his mouth, swallowing brine with every brush of your lips, rejoicing because it tastes just like him. It’s amazing how, even without his power, his touch manages to stoke a fire inside you, the warmth spreading in defiance of the sea’s chill. 

His eyes are all you see, glowing pin-pricks in the dusk-murked waters, the way your noises shift his gaze into something hungry, almost violent. He is a predator, after all, and this is his domain. 

Still, there is a question in his eyes, one you recognise even without the telepathy, and you respond by trailing your fingers along the iridescent scales that now bejewel his hip. 

His smirk is shark-like, teeth bared as his hands go between your thighs. His fingers slip in easily despite the salt, owing partly to your coupling earlier that afternoon and partly to the changes his power makes to your body. You shudder at the jolt that zips up your spine, water conducting electricity, grabbing at his muscular shoulders for stability in a world eternally suspended. 

Frankly, you’re still tender, ever so slightly swollen from the ministrations of his sinful tongue, so it doesn’t take long for the sensitivity to build, his black-tipped fingers coaxing at your spongey insides until you’re curling desperately around him, your scream a soundless stream of bubbles as he forces wave after wave of feeling from you, wringing out every drop of pleasure he can. 

It’s not till you collapse against him, boneless as a jellyfish, that you feel something harder and thicker than his fingers push inside. 

“Wait, please-” your desperation is strangled by a throaty gasp as he thrusts hard, scaled hip bones crushing against your thighs, his laughter a siren’s song of dark satisfaction. 

It’s been a scant few hours since the last time, so of course your body remembers him. Welcomes him deeper and deeper, clenching and pulsing and shivering as he sets your nerves alight over and over and over until you can’t think straight, grateful he took care of your need to breathe before you forget that too. 

The pressure erupts a second time and you’re convulsing again. You can hear the dampened grunts he makes as he grips your hips and hastens, chasing his own release in the mess he’s made of you. Until he snaps into you a final time, pouring heat into your twitching depths, teeth scraping along your shoulder muscle. 

You wind your fingers through his hair, violet dyed dark in the now inky water, lazy and sated by the feeling of him still inside you. I love you, you think, the tone shifting wry-ward as the endorphins fade and the ache starts settling in. Even when you make it harder for me to hike back up the cliff. 

A musical chuckle brushes your ear as he lifts his head in response. It’s harder to tell his expression in the darkness, but you can imagine it: your mischievous lover and his indolent smirk. Should I carry you home, like some kind of royal liege? 

Home… The cottage flashes in your mind, its white-washed insides and salt-pickled timber roofing. The flowers and vegetables you grow in the garden, the shelf of deep sea treasures your lover has gifted you over the years. It’s true you love the cottage, but it’s been years since you could truly call it your home. Not since the solo ascent started feeling like a hollow chest cavity, like you’d left your heart somewhere beneath the foam-capped waves. 

What seems like an eternity ago, you had once sat by the village bonfire, listening to the elder priestess speak in a voice as rough as driftwood. Long ago, we all lived together in the sea, she’d rasped. You'd hung on her every word, clutching each one like a life-raft, knuckles white.  Until, one day, some creatures dreamed of exploring the world outside. In order to survive on dry land, they trapped the sea inside them, wrapping it with flesh and membranes so they could take it with them. And that is how humans came to walk the earth. But there’s a part of us that still remembers, and still longs to return… 

Hmm? Your lover kisses your cheek, bringing you back to the present. What do you think, your highness? 

It’s a sorely tempting offer, one you very nearly give in to, but you know that having to say goodbye a second time might very well be your undoing. The weight of your bond (he’s never fully explained it, but the pieces you’ve put together over the years are understanding enough) is a shackle: knowing that he cannot deny your true requests, you must guard yourself lest you succumb to weakness and attempt to contain his beautiful ferocity. 

…It’s okay, you tell him finally, you’re grateful for the ocean’s embrace, that the sudden stinging in your eyes dissolves into seawater before it can form tears. Just… Could you hold me a little longer? 

There’s a tentative stroking of your hair, his fingers combing through the clouded mass as he leaves kiss after tender kiss on your cheeks. Of course, he soothes. As long as you need… 

It’s truly nighttime when you emerge from the waves, the stars like pricks of ice above your head. You’re already shivering by the time you reach the very edges of the tide, and it’s convenient, the way it masks your burgeoning sobs. 

“Wait!” you hear his voice call out, and you can’t help the way you instinctively turn for him, like you’d follow him wherever the end of his song lay, even if it meant following him into death. 

“Yes?” you ask, trying your best to even your tone as you look at him, a dark silhouette but for his softly glowing power, an unearthly, ethereal creature so very unlike you. 

“I’ll be back soon.” 

Your smile is watery and thin, but real. “Is that a promise?” you ask. 

Your lover laughs, and suddenly the aquamarine marks on his body pulse, eyes glowing hypnotically as he clasps his hands to his mouth like a prayer. Then, like blowing a kiss, his fist unfolds and a streak of blue arcs towards you. 

You’ve seen this before, but it never fails to astonish as you reach for the little fish. It dives for your hand, wriggling happily as it zooms through the air. 

“He’ll keep you safe until I return,” your lover tells you. 

You giggle as the tiny blue creature circles you twice before snuggling into the dip of your collarbone. When you stroke it, it feels strange, silvery and slippery and not quite solid. 

There’s a frown in his voice, “Don’t spoil him too much, though, or he’ll become insufferable.” 

You smile at him mischievously, “Now, that I can’t promise. I suppose you’d best return quickly, my love.” 

There’s a put-upon sigh. “I love you,” he says resignedly. 

“I love you too,” you reply. There's a stretched silence, the waves crashing and crashing and crashing. “...Farewell, until next time.” 

“Until next time,” he repeats softly. 

You glance at him, limned in moonlight, taking a moment to sear his silhouette into your mind. He doesn’t move, watching, and you think to yourself that your lover is truly heartless with the way he insists on making you leave first. 

But the cottage is a ways above and the shivering is starting to set your teeth to chattering, so leave you must, forcing your aching thighs to first conquer the shoreline and then the upward-winding sandy path. 

It’s only after you reach the top of your cliff that the tiny specks of aquamarine disappear, your lover’s silhouette swallowed by the waves. 

And, just like that, you are alone again. 

Once more, you are left to wait.