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The storm outside the cottage window is unlike anything Aoi has seen before.
Aoi knows storms. Knows the roll of thunder beyond her old apartment walls, knows the soft muffle of a blanket pulled over her head to drown out the squall, knows the devastation she’ll wake up to- her tiny balcony garden toppled and torn to shreds. Aoi knows storms, but she has never seen a storm like this. All rolling waves, wind wild enough to rattle the windows in their wooden frames, so dark outside that Aoi can barely see beyond the first row of freshly-weeded flower beds. It looms so large that Aoi can’t help but trade fear for fascination, lured in close with a cup of tea to warm her palms and a window seat to curl up in.
The wind howls. The sea rolls. Aoi squints into the night and just hopes that the guide to coastal plants she picked up at the garden centre hasn’t failed her. Coarse shrubs with sturdy roots as a windbreak, line the beds with sea campion, daylilies, rosemary. So different from her garden at home with its roses and rhododendrons, so different from her apartment balcony with its begonias and jasmine. The change is an upheaval; and Aoi still doesn’t know if it’s been a mistake or not.
The garden, she could never regret. The feelings which come alongside it though, dragged up from where she buried them deep–
The window that Aoi presses her forehead against, the real-wood fireplace burning low in the living room, the unkempt garden being torn at by the squall- all of it was her father’s once. His tiny cottage by the sea, bought as a holiday home long after he left and Aoi resolved never to forgive anyone who can smile and lie in the same instance. Lived in for a few weeks each year, then passed into Aoi’s unsuspecting hands once he went and died and left again .
There’s a saying about a straw breaking a camel’s back, one that Akane Hina used when she stubbed her toe on the bathroom step and ended up putting the plastic toothbrush holder through the mirror above the sink. Small things that bring everything toppling down into fractured shards of glass. Aoi’s dad was a small thing- fading into little more than a bitter life lesson about trust and love in the nineteen years since she last saw him. Still, somehow, a three-line text on her phone screen spiralled into Aoi quitting her job, packing up her bags, holing herself up in a dust-filled holiday cottage by the sea where storms rattle the windows and none of the flowers are the same.
It’s probably the worst mistake she’s ever made. (When she arrived in that garden with its unruly flower beds and its view of the place where sky becomes sea- Aoi couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so free .)
The thought makes Aoi laugh into her cup, the tea steadily growing cold beneath her fingertips. Because she hadn’t seen him since she was seven, but her dad is still doing more for her than her mom ever has done. The final push to quit a job she’s hated from the moment she stepped through the door. A cottage by the sea to run away to while she decides where to go next. (A garden, many years ago. Hands with dirt beneath the nails overlaying Aoi’s own, as they showed her how to till the soil, how to press seeds into the earth, how to raise something beautiful. Aoi would not be here, if not for that garden.)
Aoi is twenty six, she’s never seen a storm quite like this, and she thinks she’s starting to understand why writers used to run away to the coast to find a muse in something wild and beautiful and terrifying .
She can’t stay here forever. Maybe, though, she’ll find something beautiful (wild, terrifying) of her own before she leaves.
-
When Aoi wakes early to the sound of gulls calling from the rooftop, the first place she goes is the garden. She’s expecting the storm damage; flowerpots toppled on their sides, her meticulous pile of plant cuttings scattered all across the garden path, a few slabs knocked loose from the drystone wall dividing garden from beach. She’s expecting the calmness of the sea too; the water flattening itself out like glass as if it’s pretending the storm never happened, soothing itself into a gentle lull as the tide draws out. (Aoi knows the feeling well.)
She isn’t, however, expecting to see a mermaid in her garden pond.
Aoi sees the tail first- a long scaled-and-finned thing coiled into the shallow water, pearlescent white that fades into a tailfin of seafoam green. The body its attached to is decorated by scales and pearls, while white-blonde hair spills around its head like water weeds- the flutter of its gills the only indication that it's actually alive.
Aoi does not scream.
Instead she stumbles backwards, trips over a stray branch from a storm-damaged shrub, and lands with a muffled yelp into a bed full of prickly beach grass. At the resounding thud, the mermaid’s head shoots up from below the water, eyes wide and slit-pupiled, mouth bright and red and full of teeth, and–
“Are you okay?” The mermaid asks.
Aoi blinks. The mermaid blinks back at her, and at a second glance its terrifying expression shifts into something that could almost be concern , rearing towards Aoi on strong arms and clawed hands.
“You’re a mermaid,” Aoi replies, eloquently. There’s beach grass sticking into her shaking palms and she thinks, distantly, that it’s a miracle her voice isn’t trembling too.
As if it’s the most natural thing in the world, the mermaid nods. Once, twice, her soaked hair shimmering down her back. “I am!”
“Do you-” carefully, Aoi extracts herself from the beach grass- putting herself foolishly near to the mermaid in her pond and her mouth full of sharp, grinning teeth. (She’s pretty- Aoi realizes then- in the same way a summer storm is pretty, an intricate knife is pretty. The kind of beauty that makes her want to throw caution to the wind despite the do not touch signs written all over.) “Do you have a name?”
“‘Course I do! I’m Nene.” The mermaid tells her, with a twitch of her tail that sprays the geraniums with pond water. She sticks out a hand, leaves it there for a few awkward seconds before her mouth ticks downwards into a frown. “Am I not doing your handshake thing right?”
She looks so comically disappointed - staring down at her scaled fingers in betrayal- that Aoi throws caution to the wind and grabs the mermaid- Nene’s - hand tight. In the cool post-storm morning, her palm is surprisingly warm.
“I’m Aoi,” she says with a smile that she means every second of. “It’s nice to meet you, Nene.”
And- Nene stares up at her, eyes wide with wonder like she’s not the one who’s a fairytale made real-life in a too-small garden pond. Like Aoi is something amazing and summer-storm pretty herself. In a way that’s real - nothing like the admiring looks and invitations to dinner that have followed Aoi like a curse from the moment she learned to fold her hands in her lap and smile sweet and blank in the way that people like .
When she lets go, a shift of Aoi’s hand reveals the pulse-point of Nene’s wrist- her heartbeat too fast and arrhythmic to be anything human- and the reality of the situation crashes over her in one fell swoop. “I can’t believe I just shook hands with a mermaid.”
“I can’t believe I just shook hands with a human ,” Nene echoes, collapsing backwards into the pond with her palms pressed to her cheeks. “An actual, real life human !”
Watching her grinning and blushing amongst the pondweed, Aoi isn’t sure how she ever thought Nene could be scary. So, instead of screaming, running, closing her eyes to wake herself up from this stupid, childish dream- she starts laughing. Harder than she has done in weeks, because she quit her job and there’s a mermaid in her pond and it’s five in the morning but she’s never felt more awake. The sky is watercolour-pink and Nene’s scales reflect it perfectly when she tilts her chin in Aoi’s direction and honest-to-god pouts - and if this is a dream then Aoi doesn’t ever want to wake up from it.
“Quit laughing!” Nene sticks out her tongue between her sharp teeth. “I’ve only ever seen humans from a distance, so this is a very exciting moment for me.”
“Well, until this morning I didn’t even know mermaids existed ,” Aoi shoots back. “So I think I’m winning here.”
“Seriously?” At that, Nene’s expression lands somewhere between disbelief and mild horror. “You can’t be serious. Next you’re gonna be telling me that you don’t know about witches or anything .”
For the sake of her own sanity, Aoi chooses to shelve that comment for a much later date. “I mean, there’s not exactly a wealth of mermaid sightings to go on, y’know.”
“Ah,” as she explains, Nene ducks her head sheepishly, like a kid caught stealing. “I guess that’s ‘cause we don’t talk to humans.”
“And yet, you’re talking to me right now.”
“I know !” Nene droops bonelessly against the edge of the pond, her blushing face buried in the fold of her arms. (She’s so expressive , Aoi can’t help but notice, in a way that’s almost captivating to watch.) “I’m gonna be in so much trouble.”
“In your defence,” Nene isn’t human and there’s something about her heart- arrhythmic and honest and worn on her sleeve- that makes Aoi want to trust her. So, she doesn’t even hesitate when a conspiratory edge slips into her smile. “It was a very big storm. You couldn’t help it.”
“I-” Nene starts, then relaxes into a grin of her own. “You’re right! It’s not my fault I got beached. It could’ve happened to anyone.”
“And the tide is out, so it’s not as if you could’ve got back by yourself.”
“Exactly!” Then, somewhere along the way, Nene’s short-lived look of triumph morphs into one of abject horror, changeable as the tides. “How am I supposed to get back?”
If this is a dream then Aoi doesn’t ever want to wake up- but Nene can’t live in her garden pond forever. Once the sun climbs higher and the day gets warmer, the town will wake up and the bay will become full of life again; facing the clear post-storm skies and blocking any escape route from pond to sea. (Besides- Aoi has an entire garden to tidy, and a sneaking suspicion that she could sit and talk to Nene all day if given the chance.)
“I have a wheelbarrow,” she offers, before she can do something she might one day regret. “It might be a bumpy ride, but it should get you down to the water.”
Nene’s grin is shaped like a bad idea. Aoi thinks, if given the chance, she could probably drown in it.
-
A bumpy ride turns out to be a drastic understatement.
Aoi is soaked from head to toe before she’s even left the garden; getting Nene out of the pond an entire battle in itself when her tail is longer than Aoi is tall and covered in smooth wet scales. She spills out of the wheelbarrow once Aoi gets her into it- a too-large mermaid in a too-small space- making the act of getting anywhere without trapping tailfins or fingers beneath the wheels a near-impossible task.
The sand is uneven. The wheelbarrow keeps capsizing, spilling both of them out onto the ground with sand in their hair and bruises on their arms. They get halfway down the beach before Nene decides to announce that she’s starting to dry out and Aoi has to pick up the pace and run- swerving towards the blue stretch of the sea while Nene hangs on for dear life and shrieks.
It’s a complete disaster. It’s the most fun Aoi has ever had. When she finally makes it knee-deep into the water and upends Nene into the waves, she’s laughing so hard that her ribs ache right down to the marrow.
“You’re so strong,” Nene tells her afterwards, with an honest sort of amazement that knocks the air right out of Aoi’s lungs.
“I carry a lot of compost bags,” she replies dumbly- so stupid and so herself that she can’t help but start laughing again.
(Nene leaves with a flick of her seafoam tail. Aoi watches until she’s gone from sight, and the sea has never looked so beautiful before.)
-
It’s only just turned 6am but one of the neighbours is already out in the garden- a sketchbook open in her lap as Aoi hauls the wheelbarrow back up to the cottage. Shijima Mei- she had introduced herself days beforehand- artist and unwilling tea connoisseur, courtesy of her partner’s taste for strange varieties of the stuff. Mei looks up from her work at the clatter of wheel against cobblestone, ruining Aoi’s desperate hopes to pass by unnoticed.
Grip tightening around the wheelbarrow handles, she prepares for the worst- to plaster on a fake smile and make up an excuse for her soaked clothes, the sand in her hair.
“Morning!” Mei calls brightly across the garden instead, without a second glance at the salt-soaked tangles of Aoi’s hair. “How’s the unpacking going?”
It takes Aoi a beat too long to smooth out her surprise into a pleasant smile. “It’s going well. The storm did a bit of a number on the garden, though.”
Mei laughs empathetically at that. “Tell me about it. If you need any help clearing stuff out, don’t hesitate to ask.”
She doesn’t mention the wheelbarrow; nothing to show for it aside from the odd little smile on her face when she turns back to her sketchbook. Before the morning can get even stranger, Aoi dips her head in thanks and hurries the rest of the way back.
-
The night that settles into the bay afterwards is so calm that Aoi half convinces herself she dreamed up the storm, the strange visitor, the smiles that followed. The sea is still as glass beyond the window, the windbreak plants swaying gentle and silver-edged in the moonlight. Aoi perches on the sill again with a cup of tea cradled in her hands, and can’t help but think of Nene as she feels the warmth of it pressing into the tiny scrapes on her fingers. They’re the only reminder she has that the mermaid in her pond was as real as the moon overhead and the pull of the tide.
Alone in the kitchen, Aoi can allow herself a single piece of honesty: she wants to see Nene again. Wants to laugh like that again- open and real and hard enough for her lungs to hurt. Wants to feel like a kid reading fairytales, too young to care about polite smiles or cleaning the dirt from under her nails. Curled up in the empty garden pond, Nene was honest as a thunderstorm. She shook Aoi down to her roots. Made her feel like she could learn to live that truthfully too.
(On a stormy night, Aoi wished for something beautiful and dangerous of her own. If she gets to hear Nene’s voice again, then she thinks she might’ve found it.)
-
The next morning, when Aoi heads outside to eat breakfast in the garden, there’s a mermaid in her pond again. Catching sight of her in the doorway, Nene waves sheepishly from where her face is half-submerged in the pondwater.
Aoi all but runs to greet her, setting her plate of toast down on the grass beside her. “I thought you said you couldn’t talk to humans, Nene,” she teases lightly, heartbeat skipping in her chest at the blush it brings to Nene’s face.
“The tide was high last night,” she protests. “It’s surprisingly easy to get washed aground, y’know!”
Aoi knows a lie when she sees one- can tell it in the flush high on Nene’s cheekbones, the way she can’t quite meet Aoi’s eyes in her embarrassment. Nene’s got more tells than Aoi can count, and yet she doesn’t feel annoyed about the lie at all. Instead she tugs lightly on Nene’s hair, tells her to be more careful next time, then asks if she’s ever tried toast before.
Nene handles her slice of store-bought bread as if it's sacred. Somehow, it makes Aoi’s breakfast taste magical too.
“I’ve eaten human food before,” Nene confesses, when Aoi worries a second too late whether the toast will go easy on her stomach. “Sometimes people drop stuff over the side of the docks, or lose it overboard their boats. I once found an entire pack of chocolate bars- although they were kinda soggy by the time I got to them, even though they were all wrapped up in foil.”
“You should put in a complaint, tell them to do a better job at waterproofing their snacks,” Aoi replies with a laugh that Nene returns full-beam, then lets curiosity get the better of her. “What do mermaids normally eat? Please don’t say humans because I will run away screaming.”
(The worst part is; Aoi isn’t even sure that she would .)
“Of course we don’t eat humans!” Nene shakes her head violently, scattering water droplets into Aoi’s lap. “That’d be gross . We catch fish and forage for molluscs- seaweed and kelp too. I ate a seagull once , but that was as a last resort, I swear.”
“And there I was convinced that you were just luring me in as your latest snack,” Aoi laughs, which makes Nene pout, which makes Aoi laugh even harder . It’s mid-morning and Aoi’s coffee has gone cold by the time she finishes her breakfast, so caught up in talking to Nene that the garden she’s supposed to be working on and the boxes she’s meant to unpack fade into background noise. The sound of activity down on the beach fills the air, but the two of them are sheltered by the windbreak plants; shielded from view as Aoi tidies away her plate and asks if Nene wants to stay a while longer. The grin she receives- full of sharp teeth yet not scary at all- is the only answer Aoi needs.
Shears in hand, Aoi sets about pruning the garden while Nene watches her from the pond. She spins tales to keep her company as she works, telling Aoi about the kelp forest she likes to get lost in, her favourite rock formations carved by years of waves and tide, the best places to hunt for oysters with pearls cradled inside.
She talks about the sea like it’s magic- the sort of place Aoi has always dreamed of getting lost in.
In return, Aoi introduces Nene to each of her plants by name, shows her what rosemary and lavender smell like, teaches her how to weave a wobbly crown of beach aster flowers. (And- Nene clings to each word as if it’s Aoi’s own magic. She can’t remember the last time being heard felt so comfortable .)
Nene stays through lunch, through dinner, until the sun begins to dip low in the sky and the beach is finally clear. When the time comes to lift Nene back into the wheelbarrow, Aoi is half-tempted to ask her to stay the night.
“Think you might get washed ashore again?” Aoi asks later. The beach aster crown is slipping into Nene’s eyes, as Aoi lifts her out of the wheelbarrow and carries her out into the waves.
“Perhaps,” Nene buries her face into the curve of Aoi’s neck- a brief moment of warmth that smells like the sea- and it sounds almost like a promise.
-
Aoi is glad that she has no obligations aside from her garden and her plans to repaint the bedroom- because Nene’s appearance in her pond becomes a regular thing.
Every other day she’s there, scaled and smiling and spilling out of the pond onto the grass, waving to Aoi with a cheery greeting and a request for a bite of her breakfast. Each time they talk until sundown- Aoi never runs out of things to say when Nene is concerned, because she wants to hear everything. Even the messy bits, the rough edges, the parts where Aoi lies flat on her back in the grass and threatens to set fire to her entire garden if snails don’t stop eating her lupins. Nene doesn’t flinch at all- just joins in with cursing garden pests to hell and back, then chimes in with a story of her own about a particularly nasty swarm of sea urchins that set upon her favourite corner of the kelp forest with a vengeance.
It’s been a long time since Aoi has had a best friend. As Nene laments over the time she tried to woo someone with a pretty flower that turned out to be a poisonous sea slug, Aoi wonders if this is what it’s like to have one.
When Aoi needs to finally get around to unpacking the last of her boxes, she fills the bath with water and brings Nene inside with her. Nene lies with her tailfin skimming the bathroom tiles, traces the metal curve of the taps with a hesitant claw, and admits in a tiny voice that she’s always been fascinated by humans- watching them from a distance, longing to see the pretty things they make firsthand.
She sounds the same way Aoi knows she must when Nene tells her about the sea. (A place to escape to, somewhere new and bright.)
And so, as she unpacks, Aoi brings Nene things. A blown glass paperweight the size of a heart, with an entire galaxy of glitter and colour trapped inside. A battered copper watering can that she could never bring herself to get rid of. A biscuit tin crammed full of sewing supplies that she barely knows how to use.
Nene holds each silly trinket so carefully and gently that it almost hurts to watch. Keeps the sewing kit out of the water, stares at her distorted reflection in the dented side of the watering can, cradles the paperweight in her hands as if it’s Aoi’s own heart that she holds. And in return, the next time she arrives, Nene is carrying things of her own. A handful of seashells, a piece of glass worn smooth by the waves, an empty catshark egg case. Each item comes with a story; of rockpools covered by the tide, of underwater markets where shells and pretty rocks are traded as currency, of spending an afternoon following a pack of rays into open blue waters.
With each tale, Aoi falls a little bit more in love with the world below the waves that Nene spells out for her. It has her staring longingly past the drystone wall on days Nene doesn’t arrive, out over the waves where there’s sharks and seashells and so many places to hide. Because as much as she’s come to love the gulls on her roof and the smell of the sea every morning, Aoi can’t stay at the cottage forever. Once summer ends, she’ll have to sell it on, return to the city and all its perfect edges, re-learn how to school her expression into a pleasant mask of a smile.
(She’s never been brave enough to choose a place, lay down her roots, call it home. But if Aoi was like Nene- with scales and fins and a mouthful of wicked-sharp teeth- then maybe she could learn what freedom means instead.)
The next time Nene arrives, Aoi gives her the paperweight. Settles it in the palm of her hand and tells her to keep it safe. Nene wraps her scaled arms around Aoi’s shoulders and hugs her tight like she never plans to let go, then almost pulls her right down into the pond with her.
(It’s an easy decision, really. If she can’t run away to the sea herself, then at least Nene can take a part of Aoi there with her.)
-
It’s near sundown and Aoi is sat cross-legged by the pond under a cornfield gold sky- eating a late dinner of roasted vegetables that she keeps passing bites of to Nene in order to sate her curiosity. Neither of them talk, preoccupied by the reflection of the sun on the waves, the bob of the fishing boats out in the bay.
“I wish I could experience the sea in the same way that you do,” Aoi admits, after placing a slice of tomato in Nene’s waiting hand. Try as she might, there’s nothing she can do to keep the longing out of her voice.
Nene sits deep in thought for a while, before her face splits into a grin that shows off each and every one of her sharp, sharp teeth. “How long can you hold your breath for?”
-
When Aoi visits Mei’s house the next morning, three things happen in quick succession: Aoi calls out a greeting, makes it halfway through a futile reminder that the hosepipe Mei is holding is still turned on, and gets invited inside for tea while her socks dry off after being watered alongside the geraniums.
“It must be one of those days,” Mei laughs apologetically as she leads Aoi down a hallway lined with art- a strange mixture of pretty seascapes, wildlife portraits and horror-esque depictions of underwater wrecks. All signed Shijima Mei in the bottom right corner. “I swear some days I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t stuck on my shoulders.”
“You’re like that every day,” a voice from the kitchen adds on, over the whistle of a copper kettle set to boil on the stovetop. Mei’s partner- Sakura, they introduced themself on the day Aoi moved in- then offers a small nod as a greeting, before gesturing to a table by the window already set for three.
“How did they-” Aoi starts, only to be cut off by the deliberate curve of Mei’s smile. Who knows- it tells her, without speaking a word. Perhaps some secrets aren’t made to be told.
Sakura joins them at the table after a while, armed with a pot of rose tea and a plate of biscuits that smell faintly of lemon, rearranging their skirts as they settle down. They look like something out of a ghost story, and if they didn’t seem so comfortable in Mei’s space, pointing out the paint-stained end of one of her braids, then Aoi would probably have fallen in love with them on the spot.
“Do you know if there’s anywhere in the village that I can rent a boat from?” Aoi remembers her reason for visiting halfway through her second cup of tea, on the tail end of a story from Mei about the dangers of keeping paint water and lemonade glasses on the same table. “And maybe diving equipment?”
Mei and Sakura exchange a look, one that’s too quick for Aoi to decipher, before Mei offers another of those bright, knowing grins. “You can buy diving stuff from the gift shop by the docks- I think they sell wetsuits there too, if you don’t have your own. And for the boat, Yokoo and Satou who live above the bakery have a dinghy that they rarely use- offer to replant their window boxes for them, and I’m sure they’ll let you have free reign of it.”
After a sip of their tea, Sakura adds on; “If not, then I’m sure we can figure something out.”
That’s what friends are for is not said out loud, but it still rings strong and clear as thunder.
-
“Why don’t you come and have tea in the garden, some day?” Aoi asks on her way out, once her socks are dry and the sun is full-mast overhead.
“Only if you’re happy for me to spend all afternoon sketching your plants!” Mei calls back, and Aoi feels suddenly and overwhelmingly welcome.
-
Despite the bright early morning sun, the sea is still cold when Aoi pulls on her wetsuit and rows the dinghy out into the bay, where Nene is waiting for her with open arms and a sun-bright grin.
“Ready?” Her voice is so heavy with joy that Aoi is helpless to avoid getting caught up in the current of it. (Aoi has heard many times about smiles being contagious. Nene’s excitement, however, is an entire riptide- one that Aoi couldn’t escape even if she wanted to.)
So, in place of an answer, Aoi shifts to the edge of the boat and topples right in.
Once the cold shock of the water fades, the first thing that Aoi notices is Nene. Free from the confines of the too-small garden pond, she looks like a force of nature; with a tail longer than Aoi is tall, scales that shine like pearls, wide eyes that almost seem to glow pink beneath the water. It’s another jarring reminder that Nene is far from human- a fairytale come to life with each flutter of her seafoam green fins. Yet, still , she stares at Aoi in her goggles and flippers and silly purple wetsuit, and clings to her hand with a smile that says you’re wonderful.
“There’s so much I want to show you,” Nene says with a voice full of riptide excitement, then she pulls Aoi into the waves.
Nene first takes Aoi to the kelp forest, dives down into the fronds in a streak of pearl-white and comes back up with a starfish the size of a dinnerplate sat in her open hands. She shows Aoi how to sneak up from below a shoal of fish, then laughs when they scatter around her in a bright shimmer of scales. She lets Aoi cling tight to her arm as she pulls her through the water faster than any human could swim, teaches her about octopi and seaweed basket weaving and the best way to spot flatfish buried in the sand. They drift aimlessly alongside a shoal of moon jellyfish pulled by the tide, float on their backs in the open bay and tell stories about the shapes the clouds make, stare down through the water at the wreck of an old fishing trawler that Nene swears she’s going to explore one day.
By the time they make it back to the dinghy, Aoi is freezing and her legs ache and she hasn’t eaten since the previous night, but her heartbeat drums a thrilling tandem against her ribcage that only quickens when Nene offers an arm to help her back into the boat.
“I’ll swim alongside you until you get back to the docks,” Nene tells her fondly, one claw tracing a pattern between the freckles on Aoi’s arm.
(Her voice sounds like sea caves full of secrets and shipwrecks to explore and bright scallop shells pulled from beneath the sand. To the gentle sway of the waves, Aoi suspects that it’s not just the sea that she’s falling in love with.)
-
Like the pond and the bathtub full of water, diving out in the bay becomes another part of Aoi’s routine.
She’s never been one to enjoy swimming, but it’s a different matter entirely with Nene by her side; pulling her though the water to show off another sea cave she discovered by the cliffs, a bank near the shore that’s home to a thousand tiny sand-eels. After the fourth time Aoi finds herself in the bakery with her flippers tucked under her arm, Yokoo just smiles from his spot by the counter and offers her a spare key to the docks so she can come and go as she pleases.
Some days, Aoi wakes up to Nene lying in her garden pond with another excuse about high tide, how it’s surprisingly easy to find yourself beached if you don’t look where you’re going. Some days, the weather is bad so Aoi fills the bath and tells Nene about supermarkets and vending machines and airports while she bakes strawberry scones in the kitchen. Some days, Aoi takes the dinghy out into the bay and chases shoals of fish at Nene’s side until her legs ache and she can barely make it back over the side of the boat.
Their summer days are long and easy, tasting of sea salt and smelling like the rose tea that Sakura gifts to Aoi when they next come over to visit with Mei.
On days when it’s just Aoi and the house she’ll have to leave behind once summer ends, she keeps her hands busy. Goes down to the market to pick up some new plants, reads articles about coastal grasses, dead-heads the flowers- because if she thinks about the garden, then nothing else has to matter. She doesn’t have to stare out at the arc of the bay and the pretty white walls of the cottage, and think about the estate agent numbers she’s been putting off calling from the moment that first summer storm rolled in. She doesn’t have to think about the guilty look Nene sometimes gets when Aoi steps through the back door in the morning, a split-second of shame that’s overwritten as soon as she spots the extra plate of breakfast in Aoi’s hands.
(She doesn’t have to think about the ebb-and-flow of fear that Nene will someday grow bored of her painfully obvious humanness . That at some point she’ll stop finding excitement in electric whisks and scented tea lights and realise that there’s a whole beautiful sea that she could be exploring instead. Aoi has spent her entire life being told that she is pretty-sweet-lovely- but, when the brilliant world that Nene calls home is concerned, there’s nothing she can ever do to compare.)
-
Running through the village with a mermaid in a wheelbarrow is not how Aoi expected to be spending her Sunday morning.
It’s early enough that the sun isn't even a faint glow on the horizon, and the uneven cobbles in the village are treacherous at the best of times- nevermind when Aoi can barely see her own feet through the dark. Nene has her tail and a picnic blanket bundled into her arms, clinging onto both for dear life every time the wheelbarrow goes veering wildly off to the side of the road. By the time they reach a secluded corner of the docks where they can lay down their blankets, Aoi is breathless and giddy, somehow both bone-tired and wide awake in the same instance.
Nene spills bonelessly out of the wheelbarrow as soon as Aoi declares it safe, arranging herself to perch on the edge of the blanket with her tail dangling in the water. “Think anyone saw us?” She asks, with a grin that verges on the edge of wild excitement.
Aoi shakes her head. “I doubt it. And if anyone did, we probably made such a strange sight that they’d assume they were dreaming.”
It drags a laugh out of Nene, light as the waves lapping at the docks. The sun is rising steadily to paint the sky pink as Aoi unloads their breakfast onto the blanket between them; hastily chopped strawberries, a pot of jam, a tin of scones and a flask of rose tea to share. Bananas grabbed from the fruit bowl on the way out, a bag of granola that Aoi forgot to bring milk for, some toast that’s long since gone cold. If she’d been given more warning than a handful of pebbles tossed against her bedroom window and Nene’s toothy grin peering up at her through the dark, she would’ve put in a bit more effort- but Nene seems delighted either way as she pierces a strawberry on one careful claw.
“I’ve always wanted to see the docks,” Nene explains, passing Aoi the tea in favour of staring out at the boats bobbing in the weak morning sunlight. “But I could never swim too close- too many nets and things to get caught in.”
“Well then,” Aoi nudges her lightly with her elbow. “Is it as good as you thought it’d be?”
After watching the gulls wheeling, the lights flickering on in the waterfront houses, the steady to-and-fro of the boats in the sunrise-painted waves, Nene turns to face Aoi and gifts her a small, awestruck smile. “It’s even better.”
“To discovering new things, then,” Aoi swallows past the moth-wing flutter of her heart, then raises her scone in the air as if she’s making a toast. It’s stupid and childish but it makes Nene laugh full and warm as she lifts her half of the scone to tap it against Aoi’s own.
“Cheers!”
The sun has just risen high enough to chase away some of the early morning chill when Nene starts to pull at the ends of her hair. It’s a nervous habit that Aoi has long since picked up on, one that makes Aoi’s heartbeat skip for a different reason entirely when Nene puts down the granola bag and picks at the scales on her hands agitatedly. The way she keeps opening her mouth to say something- flashing her fangs before giving up- makes Aoi want to pack away her breakfast and run. To escape somewhere far, far away before Nene can shatter the comfortable, beautiful place they’ve built here for themselves.
“Aoi,” Nene starts, then, in a quiet voice that doesn’t suit her at all. “There’s something I’ve been lying to you about.”
The sun is rising and Aoi has never felt so cold. Because this must be it- this must be where Nene admits that she’s bored, that she only stuck by Aoi’s too-dull too-human side because she wanted a taste of life above the waves, that the warm sunrise-feeling Aoi gets every time she takes her boat out on the water is something that she doesn’t get to keep forever and-
“I beached myself in your pond on purpose!” Nene says all in one breath, burying her face despairingly into her palms. “I used the storm as an excuse- I swear I was only meant to do it once, but I enjoyed talking to you so much that I had to come back and I was going to tell you earlier but I kept freaking out before I got the chance and- I’m so sorry for lying to you!”
Nene’s watery eyes peer through the gaps in her fingers, a muffled ‘are you mad at me’ slipping through in a tiny voice- and Aoi feels fear shedding off her like water down Nene’s seafoam fins. Because it’s so anticlimactic, such a weight off her shoulders that all she can do is laugh; until her scone almost goes toppling into the waves, which only makes her laugh harder. Nene’s expression of despair morphs into a childish pout, the sort that makes her nose scrunch up and her earfins flatten against her head and Aoi is so head-over-heels in love with her that it makes her ribcage ache.
“Sorry, sorry-” Aoi apologises breathlessly, when Nene frowns and tugs on her earlobe hard. “I just- I knew you didn’t keep ending up in my pond by accident.”
“You did?” Nene’s pout shifts into a wide-eyed look that’s one part confusion and three parts relief.
Aoi nods. “You’re very lovely, but you’re also a terrible liar, Nene.”
Nene’s scowl returns with a vengeance, and she sets upon Aoi with her ridiculously bony elbows- hands curled into fists to keep her claws from catching. “Why didn’t you tell me, then? I was so stressed- I thought you were gonna hate me when you found out!”
As if all the fight has drained out of her, Nene goes boneless against Aoi’s side, her face burying itself somewhere in the curve of her neck. Curling an arm loosely around Nene’s shoulders, Aoi offers her own piece of honesty, as an apology. “I thought you were about to tell me that you were bored of me.”
Nene’s grip tightens at that, her voice still muffled against Aoi’s hair as she replies; “Never. You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met, Aoi. I want to keep talking to you forever.”
The swoop-and-crash that follows is like toppling off the side of the boat into ice cold water, like raindrops down her neck as a coastal storm hits before she’s had the chance to cover up all of her plants. Like seeing estate agent phone numbers written next to the old cord telephone in the hallway every time she heads outside. Aoi curls her fingers into Nene’s pearl-scaled shoulder.
“I want that too,” she says, and the boats sway solemnly in reply. “But you know that I have to go at the end of summer.”
Nene is silent for a long while, before she shifts to rest her head properly on Aoi’s shoulder. “I wish I had legs so I could leave with you.”
And - Aoi thinks, as she holds Nene close- maybe their dreams are more similar than they realised . “I wish I had a tail so I could stay here, too.”
They sit in silence for a while longer, curled out of sight on the dock with feet and tails suspended in the water, their breakfast long forgotten. In the distance, the sun crests the horizon, as the village above and the sea below both wake up to face the day.
-
When Aoi is rolling the wheelbarrow back through the village, after returning Nene to the sea a little way out from the docks, Mei is in the garden with her sketchbook again. As if sensing Aoi’s attempts to creep past unnoticed, the wheelbarrow takes the opportune moment to hit a loose cobble with a resounding clang that probably catches the attention of every person within a mile radius.
Mei glances between the wheelbarrow, the picnic basket, Aoi’s sheepish expression- then turns back to her sketchbook with another one of her kind, knowing smiles. She doesn’t say a word, and Aoi has never been more grateful.
-
“How would you feel about exploring the wreck today?” Nene asks as soon as Aoi greets her from the side of the dinghy. Her earfins twitch as she speaks, betraying her excitement, and- like a boat caught in a storm- Aoi lets herself get pulled along.
“I think I’m getting good enough at holding my breath to manage it now,” Aoi agrees, before diving into the water after her.
It’s easy to reach the wreck of the old trawler with Nene pulling her along. The ship lies against a sandbank that’s shallow enough for Aoi to return to the surface every time she needs to breathe, but still deeper than she’s ever explored with Nene before- if the pressure in her ears is anything to go by. The water around them is deep and cobalt-blue as Nene runs a clawed hand across the barnacles coating the rusted hull of the wreck, traces out the faded name that was once written along its side.
It’s a beautiful thing in its own ruined way- once a boat, now a home for tiny fish and sea stars. There’s a jagged tear in the side of the hull that’s just wide enough for Nene to squirm through, re-emerging at irregular intervals with prizes of old shattered compasses, an ancient, waterlogged computer monitor, a handful of coins made unrecognisable by water damage. They skim across what would’ve once been the deck then, weaving past the tangled nets and knotted taglines as they search for a new corner to explore.
Nene spots another hole worn to the starboard side of the deck and makes a dive for it. Waiting to see what treasure she’ll add to their pile on the rocks nearby, Aoi swims a few metres away from the wreck, attempting to spot any new openings to point out to Nene once she resurfaces.
She doesn’t notice the current until she’s already caught inside of it.
Before Aoi can even tell what’s happening, she’s been tossed far out from the wreck, tumbling head over fins through the water as her goggles are ripped from her face. She can’t tell which way is up, can’t see, can’t breathe- fighting down the urge to gasp for air that sinks its teeth deep into her chest. The sea is a dangerous, ruthless thing- Aoi knows this, has read it in every article on free diving she’s scoured since Nene first led her into the water- no matter how beautiful, no matter how magical, the sea is a force of nature first and foremost. It does not aim to kill you, but equally it does not aim to keep you alive. The sea is dangerous and Aoi is caught in it and there’s water in her lungs, salt in her eyes, strong arms wrapped around her waist and-
And then she’s back on the boat.
Nene is piled in the bottom of the dinghy alongside her like a strange, beautiful snake, holding her tight with trembling hands as Aoi coughs up a lungful of seawater into the bottom of the boat and heaves in a desperate breath that burns on the way down.
“You’re okay,” Nene says. From the way her voice shakes, Aoi isn’t sure which one of them she’s trying to convince. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” Aoi echoes. The gentle sway of the boat and the grounding press of Nene’s hands does wonders to calm her frayed nerves. The sky is blue and the sea is calm, and despite the burn of her muscles and the sting of salt in her throat, Aoi feels remarkably steady when she sits herself upright.
“You could’ve-” Nene’s voice breaks at the edge. “I thought-”
“I’m okay,” Aoi tells her again- will tell her a hundred times if that’s what it takes to chase the awful, terrified expression from Nene’s face. She reaches up to hold her face comfortingly- proof that she’s alive and breathing and moving- and only then realises just how badly her own hands are shaking.
“You need to get somewhere warm- I’ll push you back to shore,” Nene says in an awful, subdued voice, then slips back below the water before Aoi can catch her.
-
The walk back up to the cottage is a strange experience- like wading knee-deep through thick, wet sand. Aoi has only ever come close to drowning once before- during childhood swimming lessons where she inhaled a mouthful of chlorinated water and refused to set foot anywhere near a pool for three years straight. She doesn’t feel that same kind of fear now, the fishing-hook pull of the sea on her sternum exactly as strong as it's ever been. Instead the numbness comes entirely from Nene’s quiet voice, the uncomfortable silence that infected their entire journey back. Nene is a force of nature- a storm wouldn’t be a storm without its noise, the sea wouldn’t be the sea without its riptides.
(Aoi isn’t scared of the water. She’s scared of the way Nene looked at her as if she’d already lost her.)
“Aoi!” Mei is standing by the gate as Aoi’s wet footsteps take her past their garden. “Sakura just made a pot of tea- why don’t you come in and dry off?”
She doesn’t ask about the wet clothes, the shaking hands. Just leads Aoi into the kitchen where there’s already a warm towel draped over the back of the chair and a cup of tea waiting on the table. (Mei and Sakura never ask, and so Aoi won’t either.)
The tea Sakura offers this time has notes of cinnamon that chase away any lingering cold that’s still clinging to the joints of Aoi’s fingers. With her hair dried off and her hands curled around a warm mug decorated with flowers, some of the awful numbness that followed her up from the docks finally begins to peel and shed away.
“I got caught in a bad current while I was diving,” Aoi admits, when Sakura brings over their own tea and settles down across the tiny kitchen table. There’s something patient about Sakura that makes Aoi want to tell them everything- and something timeless below that which gives Aoi the feeling that they know all the answers, anyway.
(But, under Sakura’s calm presence and the reassuring clatter of Mei hunting for plates in the kitchen behind them, Aoi doesn’t find that strange at all.)
“Do you think you’ll be scared to go back in the water?” Sakura asks, after a sip of their own cinnamon tea.
And, with surprising certainty, Aoi finds that she isn’t .
Because she loves the sea, loves the world that Nene has opened her eyes to; loves the danger and deep water just as much as she loves the seashells and silver-spined fish that call it home. She loves Nene as she is- fanged and finned and unmistakably inhuman. She loves the sea as it is too- with its currents and wrecks and unpredictable waters.
When she sat with a cup of tea in her hands and that first coastal storm raging outside the cottage window, Aoi wished for something beautiful, wild, terrifying of her own. Now the sea outside the kitchen window is flat as glass, hides riptides below its surface- and she loves it.
“I won’t be,” She tells Sakura, with an assuredness that the Akane Aoi of a month previous would never have been capable of.
Sakura smiles something knowing and fond, then asks her if she would like a slice of carrot cake.
And, like that, something clicks .
Aoi loves the sea and all the things that call it home. She loves her garden with its daylilies and beach grass and drystone walls. She loves the friendship she’s found with Mei and Sakura in their cosy, mysterious home. She loves this sleepy village by the sea, loves tidying Yokoo and Satou’s window boxes in exchange for a key to the docks, loves waking up at sunrise to the sound of gulls on her rooftop.
Maybe she doesn’t have to run away, not if she can stay here, in this comfortable middle ground between land and sea.
(If Aoi can learn to love all parts of Nene’s world- the dangerous and the beautiful- then maybe, one day, she can feel the same about her own.)
“I’m sorry,” Aoi is already halfway across the kitchen before she’s even had the chance to speak. “I just realised that I really have to do something.”
Behind the rim of their teacup, Sakura is smiling. “Yes, you do.”
Aoi’s shoes are already waiting for her by the door. When Mei sees her out, it feels like magic.
-
When Aoi runs down to the docks the following morning, she still isn’t afraid of the sea. It’s a beautiful morning even if her legs and arms are aching and bruised from the day before, the sky brilliant blue overhead as she takes the oars in her hands and rows out into the bay with single-minded determination.
She starts calling Nene’s name across the water as soon as she’s out of earshot from the docks, a desperate attempt to summon her from the depths. Each distant wave makes itself into tailfins, each splash of seafoam becoming long white hair in the corner of Aoi’s vision- but still, her own voice joining the call of the gulls remains the only sound. She rows as the sun climbs, visits all their usual meeting spots, trails her fingertips through the water in a way Nene swore she’d always be able to detect. ( Like knocking on a door - she’d grinned as she’d explained, with a smear of blackcurrant jam at the corner of her mouth. It’s only been a day, and Aoi already misses her smile with a fierceness that burns.)
Midday approaches but Aoi is no closer to giving up- because if she inherited one good thing from her mother, then it has to be her stubbornness.
Then, finally- finally - a pair of wide, pink eyes become visible above the roll of the waves.
“Nene!” Aoi stumbles ridiculously over to the side of the boat, almost tipping herself overboard as she goes. “I've been looking for you everywhere!”
The eyes blink like they can’t believe what they’re seeing- once, twice, three times, before the rest of Nene’s face rises above the waves to join them. “I didn’t-” she starts, falters, tries again. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”
“Of course I came back, silly,” Aoi feels her smile softening, melting into something achingly fond . “It’d take more than that to keep me away.”
“I-” Nene moves closer to the side of the dinghy, gripping onto the side of it white-knuckled. Her eyes are watery and her voice is shaky- and if Nene hadn’t admitted once that mermaids don’t come with the right stuff for crying , then Aoi would think she was doing just that. (She wants- wants more than anything - to make sure Nene never has to look like that again.) “I thought I’d ruined things, by taking you down near the wreck. I was so convinced that you’d never want to go diving again- that you’d never want to see me again and-”
“Don’t be silly, Nene,” Aoi cuts her off, before she can spiral out of reach. “I know the sea is dangerous, but that won’t stop me from loving it,” reaching out, Aoi sweeps a thumb beneath Nene’s eye; heart beating triple-time as she leans into the touch. “Besides- you saved me, didn’t you?”
“I just-” face still pressed into Aoi’s palm, Nene’s voice shakes at the edges. “I finally started to enjoy being part of the sea, because I had you to share it with. The thought of losing that-”
There’s something bigger there- something that sounds like a girl and a mermaid curled up on the docks, quiet under the reminder that they have to part once summer ends.
The thought of it hurts more than almost-drowning has ever done, and Aoi can’t keep the truth to herself any longer. “You don’t have to worry about that any more.”
“Huh?”
Nene looks so confused and so hopeful , and so Aoi leans into the side of the boat and tells her; “I’m staying. This summer, and autumn, and every other season after,” the seaspray catches in her hair as she speaks, and nothing has ever felt so certain . “I’ve already cancelled the viewings of the cottage. I’ll get a job in the village- I’ve already been helping people out with their gardens, so maybe I can make a profession out of it. I’m tired of running away- I can’t go back to the city, not after you’ve shown me so much.”
“You-” Nene starts- with the sort of awe that Aoi always thought was reserved for sunsets and mountains and summertime storms before she woke up one morning to find a mermaid in her garden pond. “You really mean it?”
Aoi nods. “You’ve given me the courage I needed to love where I am. I’m going to stay here, and I’m going to make it home .”
The grin that blooms to life on Nene’s face is warm and full of teeth and beautiful . She scrambles up the side of the dinghy to throw her arms around Aoi’s shoulders, to press her face into her hair, to melt into it as Aoi’s hands reach up to hold her close and-
And the boat tips, throwing them both in a tangle of limbs right into the water. As she goes overboard, Aoi is laughing all the way.
They’re still close, when they resurface. Nene’s arms sit loosely around Aoi’s shoulders, fingers tangled in her purple hair, eyes creased at the corners in a sharp-toothed smile that makes her look every bit as wonderfully inhuman as she is.
“Sorry,” Nene says into the space between them, as if she means anything but.
“You’re a terrible liar, Nene,” Aoi grins.
Nene stares- like the wide curve of the sky and the unexplored depths of the sea below them don’t matter- and then she kisses her.
The water closes back over their heads as Aoi forgets to keep treading water, but she finds that she doesn’t even care- not when Nene is holding her close, when a force of nature smiles against her lips and calls her home .
The moment only breaks when Aoi remembers that she has to breathe, at some point.
“Right, no gills,” Nene laughs sheepishly, once Aoi is back in the dinghy and her wet jacket has been hung to dry over the side. She’s blushing up a storm, and the colour looks pretty on her. “I forgot.”
“Silly,” Aoi replies, then leans out of the boat to kiss her once more.
-
“Delivery!” Mei peers through the living room window as soon as Aoi finally hangs up a long, tiring call about the process of ending the lease on her apartment in the city. She’s got one palm pressed against the glass, the other hanging onto a tupperware box that she goes to shake, then clearly thinks better of it. “Sakura said you could do with some cake!”
Aoi has long since stopped questioning Sakura and Mei’s uncanny ability to show up at exactly the right moment, with exactly the right thing. It’s just another part of what makes them two of the best friends Aoi has ever had; alongside the weekly tea parties and local ghost stories the three of them often share. Mei passes her delivery through the open window, and when Aoi opens the tupperware box, she finds two slices of coffee cake nestled inside.
“You never know when you’ll have guests,” Mei says knowingly, then heads off down the street with a wave and a tip of her sunhat- one Aoi knows from experience belongs to Sakura.
It’s warm for the end of summer- the sun sitting full-mast in the sky, the beach past the old drystone wall alive with activity. When Aoi plates up the cake slices and heads out into the garden she’s made her own, the beach grass is swaying, the sea campion is blooming, the daylilies line their beds like drops of sunlight.
And- like always- there’s a mermaid waiting in her garden pond.