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“Morning, sunshine.” A honeyed voice calls to her.
Amelia wakes up on the rocks of a foamy shore, her back is killing her, bones pop when she hunches over to get away from the sun’s gaze. Gura is swimming next to her, scaled arms holding her head up. The stare she gives Amelia is enough to make her head burn up and melt in this her tired state, usually she’d be much quicker to hide her crimson embarrassment.
“Woke me up.” She groggily spits out, “Was having a nice dream.”
“Oh yeah?” Gura’s tail splashes the water, spraying her with warm sea salt, “Was it about me?”
“I’ll tell you if you come up here and kiss me.” She taunts, struggling to stand up, but threatens to move away from the rock.
“Wha- That’s not fair!” Gura protests, Amelia knows her feet don’t work well on land, she was aquatic, used more for swimming than anything else. She jumps into the shallow water and starts walking to shore; her shoes are on the other side, drying in the sun from last night when she tripped. Her clothes and hair dried on their own while she was sleeping, though it was uncomfortable. She wanted to go home to change, but some needy little shark begged her to sleep with her.
She doesn’t get very far before a hand grabs one of her ankles and pulls back, tripping her onto the soft sand below. She’s pulled to the shallow end where beautiful blue scales pin her down. Amelia smiles wryly, “So?” She taunts once again.
She loved how aggressive Gura gets, bearing down like she was about to devour her, only for soft lips to take hers and eat at her laughs and smiles. Gura’s teeth are sharp, but careful and tentative; soft bites to her lips draw dots of blood but nothing more. Their kiss ends when Amelia chokes and pleads for air, that’s how it always ends, that’s how she likes it, the dreamy state it leaves her in was something she wished would stay.
Amelia laughs while gasping for air, now Gura is the one smiling down at her, “So?” She asks mockingly.
She pulls her down to that their foreheads meet, until their arms rub against each other, the feel of scales scratching against her skin was always satisfying, it scratched itches she never knew she had, “Dreamt of swimming through empty waters. Kind of lonely.”
“Oh, so nothing about me?” Gura sounds disappointed.
“Probably would’ve been if you didn’t wake me up.”
“Sorry for saving you from toasting out here.” She rolls her eyes.
“Wouldn’t consider myself saved, you don’t provide that much shade.”
Gura feigns offense, scrambling off Amelia back into the water, “Well then, guess there’s no difference if I’m right here, then.”
She whimpers, “Don’t be like that, I was just teasing. You wouldn’t leave me here all alone to bake, would you?” She drops her voice until it sounds like a quiet, pathetic, yearning thing. It always works, it gets Gura to grumble and climb back on top of her form however much of the sun she can.
“That’s going to stop working eventually.” She tells her.
“Then I’ll find some other way to tug at your heart.”
Gura sighs, bearing her teeth down on Amelia’s shoulder and drawing blood, leaving another set of teeth marks where five others lay, “I fell in love with an evil woman.”
Amelia laughs, the water is never comfortable to lay in, but doing it with Gura on her makes it worthwhile.
“You said you were dreaming of swimming through the ocean?” Gura suddenly asks.
“Yeah?”
“Do you wanna, maybe, if you want, actually explore it? Just the surface of it, of course. With company?” Her voice quieter with each word she speaks, Amelia thinks that’s unfairly cute. Her face reddens at the idea, but she can’t help but want to tease her shark.
“Oh, Gura, could you be asking me out on a date?"
“Be serious, Ame!”
Amelia laughs, “Of course, dummy. I love you. You could ask me to follow you into the water and I would.”
Gura rolls her eyes, but Amelia can tell she’s loving her words. She gets into position, as they’ve done many times before. Amelia wraps herself tightly around Gura’s hips, who, with speeds boats could only dream of, rockets them away from the little beach into the vast ocean of nothing. Nothing but the clear blue and the glowing sun, and occasionally a carp or two.
Amelia never thinks she’d see anything special out her, but that was never a concern for her. She loves the rides, she loves the way sea salt sprays her face and the way the wind throws her hair about wildly. She loves the way Gura swims so cautiously as to not throw her off, she loves the way the scales vibrated against her body during the motions, she loves it all.
Their stop is always the same, a lonely wooden raft that can hold the two of them on top of it. It’s been floating here for ages, it’s a miracle it’s stayed in one spot for so long, though Amelia has a suspicion that Gura’s been maintaining it since they found it. This is where they first kissed, it was special to them, and Gura is nothing if not sentimental, though she tries to hide it. It was sweet, and Amelia would be lying if she said she didn’t yearn to see the raft everytime they swim up here.
They always let silence take the wheel by now, hands threaded together. It’s not the first time the sun’s threatened to cook them alive, but Amelia’s gotten used to it by now; Gura still needs the occasional dip in the water to rehydrate, only to come back up and link their hands together again.
“Hey.” Gura says.
“Yeah?” Amelia squeezes her hand.
“It’s been three years.”
“Yeah.”
“I… wish we could see each other more. You know, away from here, I want to see what you do.”
“That’s hard.”
“I know. People don’t like us. Me.”
“…Yeah.”
“I just wish…” Gura chokes, “I could’ve been human. Maybe then this’d be so much easier.”
Amelia jumps and starts to comfort her, shushing her and wiping tears before they can start to fall, “No, no, don’t say that, Gura. Who cares what anyone thinks? I love you, okay?”
“God, you must be so lonely.” She continues, “I just wish, every night, I could be there, to… to… I dunno, to help put you to sleep. I want to brush through your hair every night, I want to lay next to you, I want to hug and kiss you goodnight, every night, and I hate that I can’t do that. I hate that I’m leaving you all alone, Ame.”
“Gura, I…” She rests her forehead on her sharks, and softly laughs, “I am, but it’s worth it, being able to come by and see you again, to waste the day away with you. I’ll find a way, Gura.”
“You’ve been saying that for a year.”
“I know… I’m sorry.”
Gura laughs, her tears have subsided, she just stares at Amelia with a toothy smile, “Don’t be, I know you’re trying.”
Amelia smiles back, they stare out into the clear ocean together, until night comes, and she snuggles into Gura’s back as she swims her back home.