Chapter Text
It wasn’t a good day for fishing, or anything for that matter. The storm clouds were dark, almost malevolent, hanging over a pair of siblings like a warning that only one of them seemed to receive. He looked over to his older sister with a raised brow as she continued to fish alongside their father.
She was braver than him, braver than most people he knew, but this was reckless. Had it not been for their father’s prodding, insisting that she’d done nothing to engage their family since returning from college (far from true), she wouldn’t have felt the need to prove herself on this absolutely short-sighted fishing trip.
“You catch the best fish when they’re riled up by the storm!” exclaimed their father as the strong winds rocked the water and their boat. “You’ll see!”
“Is that a claim backed by any science?” asked the younger brother, trying not to vomit. Thunder cracked in the sky, hard and loud. “Whitney, that don’t sound good!”
Whitney bit her lip and looked up at the clouds. Lightning surged close by, hitting a tree on the far side of the bay. It wasn’t a good day for fishing at all, but if she had to listen to her father call her “useless” one more time she’d snap in half.
“It’ll pass!” She shouted back in her brother’s direction, not knowing how true that statement was. “It’s only a thunderstorm!”
“It’s a monster of a storm!”
“You’re a kid, Man-Man, you don’t know anything about storms,” said their father. “My pops took me fishing in a hurricane.”
“I’m very sorry for you, but this isn’t safe.”
The boat rolled over a wave that nearly capsized them. Whitney thought about tethering herself to the boat in case something drastic did happen, but she was afraid of letting the fishing rod go for even a second.
“Look on the bright side, Mancini, this is gonna be a bitchin’ personal essay.” Whitney looked back at her little brother and smiled. “Still thinking about majoring in marine biology?”
Their father scoffed. “He’s not going to college! He’s staying right here with me, gonna be the fisherman that you never could be.”
Whitney rolled her eyes. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, for the first time in years.”
“But I’m here.”
“Yeah, and you ain’t caught shit yet so don’t say nothin’ about it till you do.”
Thunder struck again, shaking the boat and water. The trio struggled to maintain control as the wind picked up. Whitney was starting to agree with her brother, they had to get out of the water.
“Maybe we could come back tomorrow,” she suggested. “It’s supposed to be sunny then. We’ll be out same time as those biologists from town so Mancini can see them in action.”
“They’ll just slow us down!”
Mancini snapped. “How, dad? How the fuck would they slow us down?”
“You never met no scientists, you don’t know how they are! Before they got here, the fish came in droves. They’re fucking with the ju-ju!”
“They’re scientists! They’re not fucking with anything!”
“You’re too young to understand, Man-Man.”
“Oh my God, dad, I’m 17. Please stop calling me Man-Man before I get married.”
What happened next was too quick for Mancini or their father to catch, but it happened to Whitney in slow agonizing motion.
First, Whitney snagged something, something big. She gasped, elated. She started reeling in her catch immediately. Whatever she’d caught had some fight, but so did she. She was practically bent over the side of the boat, perched right over the water. Her father had to hold her waist to keep her from toppling in.
He hooted and hollered, but the storm raged on and Mancini wasn’t so sure this would end in their favor.
“Hold on, baby girl!”
“I caught something!” She squealed. “I cau–”
A flash! Loud and sudden! It crashed into her fishing rod and surged through her arm, her chest, and her torso. She released the rod and her father let go, allowing her to fall forward into the storm-rocked sea.
As the pain knocked her unconscious, she saw glowing silver eyes surrounded by a pool of blood rush in her direction.
Whitney woke up with a gasp, soaking wet and terrified. The storm-clouds had rolled away and been replaced with stars. Wherever she was, it was unfamiliar. A bit of sand and rocks forming a quiet cove, one she’d never been to despite growing up in the bay.
She looked down. Her clothes were singed and torn from the lightning strike. Her body ached, but that was all. She didn’t see any burns on her dark skin, only scarring.
Someone saved her life, and they’d worked a miracle. She should have been dead or in a burn ward by now. Whoever her savior was, she couldn’t see them.
She crawled back and surveyed the area. She could see lights of boats, all out searching for her, but they were distant, they wouldn’t have been able to hear her unless she swam out to them, but maybe whoever saved her could hear.
“Hello?” she called out. “Fuck…” She slowly stood and went searching for a boat or a cave where someone could have been, but there was nothing but the cove. Being alone was even scarier than dying.
The water bubbled, startling her. She jumped back, nearly hitting her head on rock behind her. She was surprised when the top of a head appeared from the water and looked up at her with bright blue eyes.
“Uh…” She cleared her throat. “Did you save me?”
The head nodded.
“Am I dead?”
The head shook.
“Great… Am I awake and seeing this right now?” The eyes crinkled at the corners, that amused it. “Well, you speak English. You from around here?”
The head then rose to reveal a nose, a mouth, a neck, and supremely toned shoulders. If Whitney weren’t so sure her savior was lying and she was dead, she’d take note of how attractive they were.
“You, uh… You dive without a wet-suit?”
The man’s mouth spread into a smile. He dove backwards into the water, flipping a silver tail into the air as he did. Whitney’s eyes grew two times their size.
“O… Okay? Okay. Okay, I’m dead.”
He rose from the water again and shook his head. He swam up to the sand. Once out of the water, she saw his full, shimmering tail. It was beautiful, it reflected the moonlight like a Rainbow Fish book.
Her handsome savior had a tail. This was new.
“Okay!”
After a while, the tail turned into two legs. He stood himself up. It was a clumsy endeavor, one she could tell he wasn’t used to. Furthermore, he was very tall and extremely naked, but he didn’t seem as uncomfortable with that as he was with walking on two legs. She looked up at the sky before settling on his eyes as he drew closer to her.
He grabbed her wrist and ran his fingers over the lightning scars, then pointed at the sky and gave her a look. What you did earlier was fucking stupid and you’re lucky to be alive.
She sighed. “I know…”
He pointed to himself and grabbed some of the sand, rubbing it over a burn he must have missed the first time. Keeping his eyes on hers, he watched her wince as it stung, before the stung dulled. Then he pulled her wrist into the water, washing away the sand and healing the burn.
He raised an eyebrow. Understand?
“I get it.” She looked down at his abdomen, he had a scar of his own, about the same dimensions as her fish hook. She looked down, ashamed. “I did that to you…”
He looked down at the scar and ran his fingers over it. Then, he shrugged. He pointed to similar scars on his shoulders, chest, and arms. It happens all the time.
“I’m still sorry.”
Her new friend grinned and pinched her cheek. It’s cool.
He pointed to the ships in the horizon, then pointed back at himself. Then he made a swimming motion and pointed to the shore.
“I gotta teach you sign language… Take me back to the bay, please.”
Still very naked, he pulled her into his buff arms and dove with her into the water. At first, she panicked. She wasn’t born with gills so this endeavor felt beyond the scope of possibility. For a split second she feared he was one of those mermaids that drowned sailors and ate them.
Then, he blew into the water, creating a giant bubble that he stuck around her head so that she could breathe.
So he wasn’t one of those then.
He swam her that long way back to the bay, quick as could be, undetected by the passing boats searching for her. He laid her down on the sand and the bubble around her head popped.
He couldn’t stay, the sailors would catch him. Before he could retreat into the water, Whitney called out for him. He looked back.
“What’s your name?” she asked, handing him a twig to write with.
He thought about it for a moment, and she worried that he didn’t know how to write. But then he quickly scribbled something into the sand, throwing the twig out of his hands before speeding back into the water with a final wink back at the woman he saved.
She stood up and read what he wrote,
Name me.