Chapter Text
The hurricane had long since drifted away from them, leaving the air eerily still and quiet, and smelling of spilled seawater and salt. Even without the sun, air was impossibly clearer than water, with every smell and sight focused in painterly detail even before the first light of morning. Eric hoped he’d see the sun soon, because the human girl hadn’t awoken yet and the only way he could help was to hold her and keep her warm, with his tail wrapped around one of her legs.
She was breathing, and that was all Eric could hope for now. Maybe after the sun rose a human would come along and take her to safety, but until then he wouldn’t leave her to suffer alone. He pressed closer to the girl to still her unconscious trembles.
The shore was dark as an abyss, even with the moon and stars in distant schools above. By the day the land was alive with color and birds and humans, but at night it felt as lonely as a cold sea, with nothing except the wind and body heat that burned between the both of them.
Heart to heart, fabric to skin, skin to scales. Not as close as two souls could be, but it was enough.
When Eric didn’t drift into sleep, he listened. He heard a rolling tide, a soft breath, and sometimes both intertwined. Each sound fell into a loose pattern that he followed for what seemed like hours, all the while waiting for the sun and more help to arrive.
Then finally, the human stirred, and he turned her to the side so she could cough up seawater. She gasped and sputtered against him and he rubbed her back uselessly, trying to hold her steady while keeping her warm.
She must have felt the hands on her as she began to struggle on a not-yet-conscious instinct. Eric loosened his grip then, but she was too weak to put up much of a fight anyway.
He tried backing off, but she wasn’t yet strong enough to hold herself aloft. So he gripped her securely again. “Hey, hey--shhh. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
She stilled a little and Eric continued. “Are you all right? Is it okay to--?”
He moved closer, and at her nod wrapped his tail around her leg once more.
The girl moved her leg to cling tighter, and beneath her bunching, torn skirts Eric felt bare skin press against his tail. He blinked, noting the contours of muscle and anatomy he’d never had a chance to see fully, and craned his neck to do so. There was calf, ankle and a full set of toes, though he had names for none of them. All clinging around his tail as her only lifeline.
Eric had, until this night, only seen humans from above, on their towering ships and walking tall as he hid beneath the surface. He had never imagined one feeling so impossibly small.
The girl looked up again, her gaze unfocused in semi-lucidity as she blinked away salt and sand from her eyes. “Who are--what are--?”
Eric remained silent, but sensed she knew what his answer would have been. Whether she would believe what she was seeing, Eric didn’t know.
“You’re still cold,” He told her as she breathed shuddered breaths against his chest. “Stay close.”
Cold, yes, but just as strong, with a determined if shaky grip on his skin. She would survive, if he could will it, if only the sun would trickle above the still sea.
He heard a single gull: the first to greet the morning in the muted blue light before the sun. Soon, her salvation would come. He just had to carry her a few minutes further.
“I’m not dreaming,” the girl muttered against him, almost to herself, with a faraway gaze.
“No, you’re not. You’re gonna be safe soon. Sun’s gonna come up and someone’s gonna come and help you.”
Her voice faltered. “But you already have.”
And so did his. “I can’t forever.”
There came a few more birds to greet the morning, and to fill the silence as the girl took just a moment longer to answer him, clinging tighter in place of the words she struggled to find.
“You’ll be just a dream,” she whispered, voice drifting on the edge of grief, and finally recovered the strength to look him in the eye.
He cradled her head in his hands and with that one moment his heart sank with hers. And now that she could see him as he was, what could he possibly say to her?
He pressed his forehead to hers, knowing the truth he had would only hurt, and having no moments of comfort to spare her as he felt the bittersweet warmth of sunlight on his fins.
“I hope it’s a good one,” his smile was soft and tinged with the same grief as her voice. She would be safe in the human palace, but what else? What questions did they have no more time to answer?
With what seemed like the last of her energy, she moved closer to him, and that meant more than words.
He rocked with her, breathed with her, feeling the steadfast beat of her heart against his own. Maybe this was all last night was destined to be: a waking dream that would wash away with the sun.
Eric looked back, watching the line of sunlight turn the sand a brilliant gold, and the girl recoiled her leg as its warmth drifted over her foot. She dug her nails into his skin as if she’d fall away from him at any moment.
“Ariel!” Called a voice in the distance, one he recognized from last night’s party on the ship.
Eric’s breath stalled in his throat as he looked for the source, but the human was still behind rows of trees. He heard footsteps and they bounded closer.
The girl was right to hold him tighter as he slipped his tail out from between her legs.
“Please, don’t--” she begged as he pulled back, “don’t leave me here--”
And that was the last he heard of her as he tore his heart to let her go, slipping back with a quiet splash into the sunlit sea. He swam down to the depths and away from the shallows, hiding behind a rock that bent toward the tide, feeling part of his heart left with Ariel as the human approached and chastised her for sadistic strains on his blood pressure.
Ariel.
He had a name for the piece of heartache left for her.
“I’ll come back for you,” Eric never got the chance to whisper until he was under the veil of water, swimming back to a life and a sea that felt so much emptier than before.