#different idea

Embers shot up into the air, filling the navy blue sky with bits of red and orange fire as they floated higher into what some might call the divine heavens.  Albert didn't know if there was a heaven or even a hell for that matter, but of a part of him didn't care either.  He was stuck in limbo here.

It'd been two week since he'd come to the island and things were going well enough with his supplies as well his own sanity.  The house had been built perfectly to his specifications for his solitude, and thankfully the solar panels were doing just as the salesman had promised.  Living in a kind of vacation home was not how imagined he'd spend the rest of his life, but it wasn't bad either.

Just lonely.

Time was the enemy now as he found himself puttering about home, desperate not to fall into ambivalence.  He'd been reading a lot. And fishing.  Fishing a lot, which thankfully was helping with the supplies as he poked at the burning fish bones of his campfire.  Worry wasn't in him though as he closed his eyes listening to the waves all around him, letting the calm of the ocean settle his mind.

But not his heart.

Never his heart, which only ached with the emptiness.  It's a tragedy to be trapped in paradise but still unable to find happiness.

Maybe this was hell.  

Albert opened his eyes to the bright sun above.  It hurt like hell.

He didn't know what time it was or how long he had been here in the sand, but he knew it was the same as it ever was awakening with the sand in places he didn't think sand could be and the aches of his former night.  Bones ached, muscles spasmed, and his tongue felt like sandpaper as he tried to lick his lips to help with the dryness that made them burn moreso than the soon to be sunburn to his skin.

Soft lips pressed to his own and a flood of life emanated back into him.

The face of Seafom lifted from his with a smile on her full lips as she looked down from the crown of wet green locks above him as they swayed like vines from above.  Her eyes always bright and full of the sea's energy with that beautiful color he had decided to call her by.  A voice of the tides caressed his skin and lightened his weary body as she spoke to him.  "Owl-burt."

"Good morning, Foamy," his hand gently reaching up to push a lock of the vibrant hair from her face.  She would smile brighter to match the one now pasted on his face, her head curling into his bruised and battered palm as his rough callouses caressed sea-wrought skin.  "Did I sleep well?"

"Owl-burt," Seaform repeated as she ran her hands along his bare tanned chest, her fingers noting the bits of scarring and fresh cuts from his monthly ordeal.  Where once she had been terrified she had now grown used to it Albert supposed, it used to shame him but now had become the light at the end of his nightmarish tunnel.  Her hand noted along his chest to his stomach and even lower as she grinned widely, her sharpened shark teeth prominent as her bright eyes.  "Lowver."

"Oof!  Easy my dear,"  Albert laughed at her as he tried to twist a bit to his embarrassment at being caught so by her, but it was all fun as her musical laugh flitted into his ears.  The beach was full of their voices as the lovers laid in the sand.

It had been almost seven months now since he had come to the island and five since had first met Seafoam in that shrieking moment in the shallows.  Things had progressed slowly and fraught with as much danger to him as it had been for her, granted she had the luxury of swimming away from his episodes as he had to fight not to be drowned.  Or bitten.  Or crushed.  Or who knows how many other horrible ways he may have been maimed by the mermaid of his dreams in her process of learning about him.

Seafoam was exciting, precious, and beautiful.  And she was his.  And he hers, he supposed.  At least that's what he told himself, language was still troubling for the pair.  But they had time.

"Time is all I have with you," Albert touched her neck and face again, to which Seafoam happily guided her face into again.

Coming to the island had been a punishment, an attempt at redemption for the terror he had inflicted on his home and family.  He had created his own hell and was satisfied with his sentence.  But then she came to him.  And where the aftermath of his crimes had seemed to be only darkness, the sea had brought him hope and love.

"I love you, Seafoam."

"Lowve, Owl-burt."

The 'Shadowflame' was sinking.

Albert should have probably been worried or angry that was boat slipping into the ocean so fast but then again being here on this lonely island was exactly what he had planned.  Around him sat the brief supplies he had brought with him, mostly camping gear and a ton of canned food but it would be enough to establish himself here.  Enough to keep him away from everyone else.

Enough to try and forgive himself.

Not enough for him to not hate that stupid name that his brother had given to the boat.

And definitely not enough for him to forget what had happened the weeks prior to his self imposed exile.

"I'm sorry, Mitch."

Albert would turn and start to gather his gear as he headed toward the center of the isle, his boat shoes slipping a bit in the hot sand as he stalked to the new home he had had constructed.  Shoulders straining as he lifted the bags and Albert Smith trudged forward to his new supposed 'simple life'.

Nothing was ever going to be easy again.

From the ocean behind him, there was a silent agreement from the pair of sea-foam colored eyes.

Albert took a long pull from his bottle as he stared out a the sea, his face calm as he watched the sun slowly dip on the horizon shedding it's red streams across the blue mirror of his exile.  It was beautiful.  But he wasn't only out there watching the boundaries of his self made prison for a pretty ending to begin the beautiful night of paradise.

There was something out there.

Someone out there.

He'd first seen them last month after his ordeal, the flash of green hair and shimmer of a form on the surface.  It was thought to be a heat induced dream or a part of the hangover that usually followed him on those nights.  He'd created stranger boogie-men to haunt him upon waking.

But then Albert saw it again.  A shadowy shape swimming through the clear waters with the speed of a dolphin but the lithe frame of what he thought was a shark.  He'd been most certain it was shark as quickly he'd scrambled back to the beach, vowing for an hour never to swim on this side of the island again.

A week later he'd been spear fishing in the same spot, finally getting over his fear of losing a foot to a tiger shark or something.  The shadow passed again, but the frame was leaner in spots and wider in others.  Hardly a fish but not quite sure what else it could.  An eel?  A snake?

A person?

Doubt clung to him like his shadow, always at his feet but just as easily in front of him as it could be behind him.

Since that day he'd come out every evening to keep watch on the water, having found that he caught sight of the shadow the most when it day came to a close.  Imagination was all he had to keep him company other than the many dead or soon to be authors he had in his well used library and now it come to touch upon reality.

"Maybe I'm going crazy."

The horizon broke with a flash of green, streaming behind a shadowed face.

One with bright green eyes to match.

"Or I am already."

The moon was full.

Bright lit across a black sky the brilliant white orb lit the island like a spotlight as it cascaded it's refracted lenses of light on to the world.  The wind blew softly with a warm breeze in a feeble attempt to cool the hot day sending palms into a sway of leaves and creak of timber.  But it wasn't just the wind that moaned and howled tonight.  There was something far more dangerous.

Rounding about through the sand a hulking monstrosity tore about in a fury.  It's black fur bristling as flecks of foam and blood flew from it's maw of mouth, the teeth yellowed and sharp within the muzzle of a canines.  Arms wide as palm trunks and hands thick as larger than a clam shell slashed at the sand, truly pounding sad in it's ultimate frustration.

The seafoam eyes who watched could still not decide what it truly was or wanted.  Only that deep in her heart, was a deep seeded sense of pity for the human who she had continued to visit for the last few weeks.

She had been afraid at first, especially from the first time she had seen him change.  Bones cracking, hair pouring from all over him, as muscles grew and flex into the behemoth that claimed the island once a month in a rage of the deep ones.  It was terrifying.  But she dare not speak of it with her people.  They would want him slain at his weakest.  They wouldn't understand.  No one under the blue understood.

No one but her apparently.

For sure there had been other of her people who had come to the surface to observe or contact, but near all of them always ended in tragedy.  Murder, capture, or worse had befallen those who had contacted the air breathers.  Or touch them for that matter.  They were obsessed with them it seemed and coveted what they would take when all they needed was ask.  She had seen the hooks, the lines, and the nets.

And the bones.

But this one had been different.  He wasn't exactly handsome like her people with their dark skin and lithe bodies from the constant motion they must keep as the ocean spoke to them as much through them.  The currents guided all, her people who listen and protect.  The monster man had a sense of sadness all about him, something that made her pity and wish to help him as much as be near him.  He had been kind, speaking in his gibberish language but always calm in his movements and gifts.  The gifts were always incredible.

The sing song of his animal wrapped tomes where magic seemed to flow with his strange words.  Or the flame that could spring to hand with a mere push of metal or spring of wood.  The liquid fire as well had been good though she'd only had a few tastes, sending a shock through her body from head to tail tip.  She had enjoyed the glow but hated the hours after, yet still would come for another bite another day.

The creature was nice.  Pitiful, but nice.

Watching him now run across the sands, tearing into trees and howling into the night the beast made her heart skip a moment as slid through the tide and skid into the water and wet sand.  Gleaming red eyes stopping to find her own and lock.  She sat still staring back.

In those precious seconds she saw deep into those red eyes and felt a strange wanting within them.  Not so much to hurt or maim, but a shadow of the man she had been seeing for so long.  As pity had been in her heart so now in it's eyes was fear and shame.  

The moment passed as the shadow of her friend disappeared to be replaced by the rage again.

She watched him run.  She watched him rage.  She waited for his return.

She came to the beach three days after his last spotting.

The gin bottle had fallen numbly from his hand to land with a soft thump in the sand as he stared at the woman slowly climbing out of the ocean looking like everything and nothing he'd imagined.  The green hair he'd caught sight of so many times sat full and loose about her dark skinned face while the same striking sea-foam eyes bore into him.  She was beautiful.  

She also had a tail.

Where legs should have been, there was a thick moving green tail to match the mess of hair that shone so brightly in the coming starlight that filled the beach.  The scales shimmered and shifted easily as the shark or dolphin he had thought was hunting him before when he had first spotted her.  Coiling under her as the waters lapped about her lower half, bits of foam locking Albert's eyes to completely in a rapture of the miracle that come to him.

Albert's legs matched the bottle as he lowered down to his knees to find himself on her level now.  Her eyes were sobered him from his previous drink but intoxicating him the longer they stared at one another.  He had to say something.

"Hi."

The woman looked at him curiously, her head tilting as the word swam to her ears only to slow and drown before it made sense to her.  She spoke nothing as they sat with the awkward tension of two strangers never having meant to meet.

Albert coughed and tried to clear his throat again, speaking slower thinking that somehow it would be clearer to her.  A hand was raised to match.  "Hell-oh."

Still she stared at him.

The wind said more than the two of them with the waves rolling in with their backup chorus.

Albert lowered his hand and started to slide forward.  "Can you-"

The shriek that ripped through his head caused Albert to scream just as loud and horrifyingly.  Hands flying to his ears as he howled in agony before flopping into the sand to writhe and shake in unimaginable pain.  What seemed to last forever eventually subsided as his hands shakily fell away from his ears, the tears and sobs of his chest the only sound now on the beach.  As Albert rolled over to his stomach, his aching eyes looked to the spot of his visitor again and found no one.

"Wha the hell?"

The sun rises and night falls away as Albert awoke on the beach, naked but surprisingly not afraid.  He'd been wiser than the last time.  Or so he planned by being alone.  Overcoming this hurtle might not be so much a trouble on the island.  The sand between his cheeks was another story.

Shaking and weak hands would slowly push him to sit up to look out across the now red ocean, thankfully from the sun.  It was beautiful how it shimmered and shone as an unending mirror reflecting back the blue lightening sky above.  His sigh of relief fell into a ragged sob as he rested his face in his hands.

He wasn't sure if he fell asleep from the previous night or his own sobs, but when Albert opened his eyes the sun had risen even more to heat up the sand as much as his hot skin.  A sunburn was likely inevitable but it beat what he feared as he tried to push himself up to stand.  

The beach met him faster with a soft thump and grunt.  Albert found himself laughing a bit as he struggled to get up, though the hot grains of white sand were now burning him from chest to between his legs making it all the more necessary to reach the water.

Crawling forward, Albert would eventually feel the cooler sand under his hands with a relieved laugh as he continued to crawl forward as the tide grabbed him and helped pull him into her embrace.  The blue and white foam was relished as he felt the salt blast him in the face and cool water blanket his burning body as it pulled him tight.  It'd been a while since he'd felt being held.  

Kicking his feet weakly he would ride the tide out further, floating into the deepening shallows as he felt strength flow into his limbs and skin from the water.  The ocean always had that effect on him even as a kid when he'd been sick or just in a bad a mood.  His father would grab him by the scruff and toss him out in to the breaker with a laugh as the waves would settle him.  Diving down into the blue water he would feel a moment of jubilation from the memory.

Arms pushing further down as he kicked, until finally reaching the sandy floor to dig and claw his way through the silt.  The silky texture was intoxicating to his nerve damaged tips and hands as he felt the wet sand simply disappear between his fingers.  Brown clouds of ocean smoke would float ahead of him while the salt did it's damnedest to eat away at his eyes, sucking the hydration from them with a painful burn.  Bare feet would twist and plant before propelling him back up to break the surface of the sea.

Sputtering and coughing as he treaded water to stay afloat his hands would quickly reach to clear the blindness from as he blinked away the salt and water.  His vision clearing as best it could as he spun about to make sure he could see the beach still.  The last thing he wanted was to be lost out at sea when he'd finally survived the month.

As the seawater cleared from his eyes, Albert blinked harder and squinted focusing away from the beach.  There was a break on the surface.  Something different from the rising and falling  waves as he kicked to stay afloat.  

"The hell is that?"  It was stupid to talk out loud, but everyone had to know they still had a voice at times.  Squinting harder and wiping at his eyes again, he would spit a mouthful of arriving wave out as he tried to pinpoint what it was.  Probably just a floating pile of seaweed or algae.  But then he could have sworn it was moving just like him in it's fight to stay above the waves.

It'd looked like hair.