Between Sea And Sky

The ocean was endless, yet Erebus felt trapped. He drifted through its depths with the ease of someone born to water, but the salt in his veins brought him no peace. While his fellow merfolk laughed and chased through the coral kingdoms, Erebus often lingered at the edges where the currents grew wild, where shadows curled into secrets, and where the light of the human world spilled down like broken glass. There, the sea was quieter. Colder. It was his sanctuary, and his prison. Tonight, the water shimmered against his skin, but the stillness inside him would not relent. He stretched out, long muscles cutting through the current, and for a moment the flicker began again an uninvited glow pulsing faintly from his tail. He cursed under his breath and curled it closer, hiding the light as though the sea itself might whisper his secret to the wrong ears. The glow was no ordinary shimmer of scales. It lived, it breathed, it changed. Sometimes it blazed like sunlight; sometimes it dulled like ash. And though he had learned to control little, he knew enough to keep it hidden. Whispers said only royals bore such marks. But he was no royalty not even close to be prince. He pressed the thought away as he pushed higher, higher, until the ocean began to thin into silver. His chest tightened with anticipation, as though some part of him already knew what he would find waiting above. The surface broke around him in a thousand droplets of fire, moonlight scattering across his skin. Erebus inhaled sharply, filling his lungs with air he was never meant to crave. And then he saw her. On the shore stood a woman, her figure outlined against the restless tide. The wind tangled dark hair around her face as she braced a notebook in one hand, pen moving furiously across the page. She paused only to lift her eyes to the horizon, as if searching for something the sea refused to reveal. His heart thundered in his ribcage. The glow betrayed him just a flash, bright enough to ripple gold through the water before he smothered it again. But in that instant, the woman’s head snapped toward him. Her gaze locked on his. It lasted only a second, or two at most, but to Erebus it stretched endlessly. The world shrank into the space between them: ocean and sky colliding in her eyes, his pulse pounding in his ears. Then her lips parted, soundless, and she stumbled a step forward as though she doubted what she had seen. Erebus’s body tensed. Every law, every warning he had ever heard screamed at him to dive back to the ocean to vanish before she could blink again. Humans were forbidden. Contact was unthinkable. But still, he lingered and was caught in the pull of her presence, of the way the moonlight curved around her as if it chose her above all others. Her pen slipped from her fingers, landing forgotten in the sand. He saw her chest rise, fall, then she blinked hard, shaking her head. “A trick,” she whispered to herself, though the wind stole the words before they reached him. “A reflection… a prank.or what?” And just like that, she bent to retrieve her pen, dismissing the impossible. The air burned against his skin. Erebus’s jaw clenched as he forced himself back beneath the waves. The glow of his tail pulsed again brighter this time, fiercer, betraying emotions he refused to name. Far above, Eva adjusted her glasses and stared into the endless dark, her journalist’s instincts humming in her chest. She wanted to laugh, to dismiss it. No camera. No proof. Just a fleeting shimmer of gold in the water. But something about the moment clung to her, stubborn as salt. And in the depths, Erebus closed his eyes, the taste of air still on his tongue. He told himself it had meant nothing. That she had not seen him.Trying to convince himself that fate was not so cruel. But the ocean, vast and merciless, held its breath. Because what passed in that single heartbeat had already begun to unravel destinies written long before either of them were born.