His face is made of sea salt and seaweed. His cheekbones are shaped like seashells, bumping up his jaw line. His lips are puckered like a fish, and hair dark like the night sits slick against his pale forehead. And his eyes, oh his eyes, are the color of the surface of the sea when a storm is stirring the water. Grey and blue and endless. Eyes that one could drown in and never hope to breach the surface. He's beautiful. Captivating. His arms are made of labor and a chest of hard lines. His lower half is a tail the color of seaweed with scales the sizes of pennies creeping up it's length. He's a merman trapped in a net, twisted in the coils.

I stare at him.

He stares at me.

It's my fishing net he's trapped in. The boat tilts from the weight of his body hanging from the beam. I taste the salt on my lips. The sea condensing on my cheeks.

Somehow he gets a hand out between the holes. He stretches it toward me. His eyes express his pain, his misery. His lips open and flutters on words he can't say. There is a vulnerability in the pale curve of his outstretched hand.

I don't know what to do.

The morning sun is rising over the sea, painting the water red. With it comes the full burden of this discovery. The secret weighs heavy on the approaching dawn.

I go to him with a knife in my hands. He watches me with those unearthly, calm eyes as I cut away the knots and the coils. He somehow trusts me not to hurt him. As I work, he raises a hand to the curve of my cheek. His fingers feel like sun caressed by sunshine. It's a warm touch that brings me the image of a castle made of orange corral. A merman sitting important on a throne. Beautiful mermaids with baskets of shells in their arms. Come, the touch seems to say. Come with me.

When he falls through the hole I made in the net, I jump in too.