Sea of Love

The setting sun cast a golden beam upon the water, where it shattered into a thousand dancing stars on the gilded waves. Sea birds called to each other in pitched harmonics, composing an avian chorus. Passing the stone outcropping, a solitary monolith holding sway against the boisterous sea, a pod of dolphins cavorted on the waves, adding their own sonorous clicks and whistles to the voices of the airborne choir.

A clipper under full sail, her canvas bloated with salty air, made fast for that rough testament to rigidity upon which she perched, as soft and gentle and yielding as the rock was hard and mean and belligerent.

Her hope-filled gaze followed its approach. Her seaweed eyes sparkled with flecks of golden sunset; her aquamarine mane draping her shoulders and shielding her nakedness. Her emerald scales glistened in the waning sunlight.

She kept her vigil for him. The golden-haired sailor had promised his return, had sworn his fealty. She ached for this to be his ship.

The others were wrong of course, not understanding the world of Man as she. They loved. And she loved this one as no other, as she could love none of her own kind. A love to unite two disparate worlds.

The clipper loosed her sails, slowing as it approached the rock outcropping. The captain's golden hair billowed like his sails in the sea breeze, and his steel eyes met hers, almost unbelieving. So it wasn't a dream. It was she.

Her elation threatened to stop her heart with its ferocity. She waved to him, her sea-hair flowing, revealing her bare femininity, enticing the gawping ship's crew.

The golden captain called to his mates, his eyes flaming with...rage? What were his words? Kill the heathen witch? Stop her from harvesting your souls for the Devil? What did he mean?

She never felt the steel of the harpoon pierce her breast. His words, colder than the stone upon which she sat, had rent her heart before the hard iron could breech her. How could she have been so wrong?