Sean stood for a long moment at the cliff face staring down at the ocean. It was just after nightfall and some remnants of the suns light still clung to the heavens. Only the brightest stars were already making themselves known in the heavens and the moon had yet to rise over the distant horizon. A pleasantly warm breeze blew inland driving back the cold creeping into his bones.
Breathing was a matter of habit and muscle memory for Sean, not a matter of survival at all. It still felt right that he should take a deep breath before diving so he did. He filled his lungs with air he really didn't need and leapt off the cliff. It wouldn't accurate to describe the action as diving, it was really just a blind leap into the surging waters below.
Almost a full second after he'd leapt from the cliff he plunged into ocean and plummeted all the way to the bottom. Once he was there another human habit seized his consciousness and he spun around several times trying to find his way back to the surface. It was dark and he couldn't tell up from down. He was sure he was about to drown. It took him almost a minute to realize that his lungs were burning. There was no need for him to panic, he didn't need to breath after all it was just a bad habit the man he had been had developed over twenty seven years of living. Oxygen was one of the toughest dependencies to kick but when you managed it the world opened up.
For human eyes it was black as the pit beneath the waves. His eyes could see easily see the beauty all around him. A few feet to his left a large red lobster walked across the bottom of the tank searching for its prey, and behind it a skate nearly three feet across was gliding through the water. A small forest of kelp had grown over a sunken rowboat and a school of silvery baitfish darted this way and that through the wriggling stalks.
Sean blew most of the air out of his lungs sending the bubbles to the surface and started to swim. As beautiful as this place was he wasn't here to see the sights there was something, someone rather that he'd come to see. He was had been a strong swimmer when he was still alive so he choose to swim beneath the waves. He didn't have to though, he could easily have willed himself through the waves as easily, more easily actually, than he willed himself through the air. There was something satisfying about doing it as a mortal would though. It was nice to kick his legs.
It took a few minutes for him to get to his destination. A small cave beneath with a dim glimmer coming from it. The light was a faint green, he would never have been able to find it during the day even with his heightened senses. There was a slight current flowing out from his destination, just enough to force him actually swim towards his goal.
She was there waiting for him just like she'd promised she would when he'd met her on the shore weeks earlier. Like him she wasn't human but she wasn't vampire either. She was a creature of the sea. Her hair ran the entire length of her body and black as oil, thick as well like dreadlocks floating around her slender face. Her face something exquisite, silver grey skin, hollow cheeks what would have looked gaunt on a human but seemed appropriate to the streamlined beauty smiling at him.
"Hello Ruto." Sean thought. She could hear his thoughts as clearly as humans would hear his words. "You look amazing." It wasn't simply flattery. She was a beauty amongst her own people and to a man who'd spent his life on the surface she was truly exotic. Her arms were almost human but blade like fins extended from her forearms aiding her way through the waves.
"As do you my prince." She responded twisting her body slightly so he could get a better look at her body. She had small breasts by human standards, all a part of being hydrodynamic, her hips were slender as well almost giving her the appearance of a child but she was the same size as a normal woman and her face was even more mature. The first hints of middle age creasing her face. Amongst her peoples, a race unlikely to live past their thirties it made her a hag and had driven her from her own kind. For Sean whose people still considered him a whelp at two hundred sixty odd years she still looked like a child.
Sean swam up to her and wrapped his arms around her pulling her close to him in the same motion. She wasn't like human females, soft and yielding. Instead she was firm and it took her a moment to succumb to his will and let him pull her forward. She had been with males of her own kind before and they were like her, hard and firm. There was something about the softness of Sean's skin that sent a chill through Ruto's frame.
The sea woman kicked her legs slightly pushing Sean back against the wall. Her lithe legs were ideal no matter what the use, long, slender and ending in flippers that would have served her acceptably on the land. It was easy to see how ancient mariners had believed these creatures to be part fish but she was not part fish and part human, she was something else entirely. Sean had no word for her save for beautiful.
