Resort

Sunlight flexed and broke, rivulets of molten white running from crests and pooling in troughs of the ocean's surface. The surf lapped gently at the broad sandbar and pulled at his ankles as he trudged to the ocean side of the strip, farthest from shore. At the edge, he dropped the waterproof bag he was carrying before sitting next to it. The moon had pulled the water down to an awkward foot in depth, just enough to cover his lap.

Unrolling the mouth of the bag, he withdrew a bottle and struggled with the local-made cap for a minute before getting it open, too used to twist-offs back home. Beads of sweat had lifted the cheap label on the short trip out and it was slippery in his hand, but still cool. As the level of the liquid in the bottle slowly fell, the water on the sandbar dropped another inch or two. The bag ran aground in the sparkling shallows. His wetsuit had long since been dried by the beating sun, turning the black material into a scalding prison. He unzipped, shucking to his waist before tying the arms off there.

The afternoon stretched. Idly before, but with more attentiveness now, he watched the clear water away from shore. A stronger splash, or the flip of a fluke, even just the long line of movement beneath, nothing, until... there. A green shimmer beneath the white dazzle of cracked sunbeams, and leading it, pale skin.

She surfaced nearby, breaking the small waves with a bounce that tossed her hair in short, slightly-curling clumps. White shoulders showed against blue water as she squinted in his direction, making sure she knew who was there. His wave seemed to reassure her, and she returned it with a high-pitched, wordless shout.

Eyes, he reminded himself as she dove under again, surfacing much closer the next time. She swam up to the sandbar, resting her elbows there without climbing up on it. Soft breasts bounced in the lapping water as she settled there, chin on her hands. Eyes. The self-admonition was almost pointless.

"Hello again." Her voice was moist, water still draining from lungs as she took in the sunlit air. "I'm not... late, am I?"

"Nah." A shake of his head emphasized it. She came from a place without watches or clocks, even more so than the resort on the shore promised.

"Good." Apologetically downcast eyes showed she understood she probably was, despite what he'd said. When she looked up again, he finally made good on his resolution to meet them. They were a bright, clear grey, the color of soft sand beneath pure water. "How is the resort?"

He glanced over his shoulder at his charge, the long, low compound screened incompletely by a ragged line of palm trees. The hurricane had knocked some of them over and hurled others into the main building. The lobby was still more open-air than the plans called for. "Still there," he acknowledged with a sigh. Frustrations of dealing with recalcitrant contractors who were supposed to be effecting repairs didn't seem the thing to drag out to the sandbar with him.

"It'll be nice when the lagoon is clear again," she enthused. It was still choked with blown branches and a capsized boat, more evidence of the storm. "And you won't have to chase people off anymore."

"Waking up every couple hours to make sure they aren't stealing the copper wiring out of the walls does get a little old." A chuckle accompanied the agreement, only a little forced. The situation was funny, except when he had to keep a machete around just in case.

"And it'll all be lit up again at night." Still leaning on her palms, she went on dreamily, "Little lights strung all along the beach, white, red, orange, green. And maybe you..." Her voice trailed off as she remembered what else the resort opening again would mean.

He cleared his throat, reaching over to the bag to restrict its movement a bit. It probably wouldn't float off, weighted as it was, but it could tip over. Taking the cue, she perked up again, clapping her hands. "Did you bring me something?"

"Of course." Rooting around in the sack, he pulled out a sealed plastic bowl and a spoon. The silverware was monogrammed with the resort's logo.

"Hot?" she asked, grey eyes alight with interest. A splash, and she heaved herself up out of the water more completely, balancing upright, "seated" on the sand next to him. Steadying her with a hand at the small of her back, he flicked a short glance down to the uneven line between white and green, where the swell of her rear would have started.

He nodded, pulling his eyes back up when she turned at the waist to face him. "Soup. The recipe's from near where I live."

She'd already seized the bowl, pulling the lid off and setting it aside. In her excitement, she let it drop into the shallows, forgetting it wouldn't just float in the water next to her. Inhaling deep with the soup held up to her face, the pink lines along her bare flanks fluttered. "It smells like... home!"

"Clams," explained the man, his smile having slipped into a grin at her infectious joy. Another nod encouraged her, and she took the offered utensil in one fist with awkward concentration, dipping it in and bringing a careful spoonful to her mouth.

"It is hot!" She dribbled a bit of the chowder down her chin with the exclamation and he pushed it aside with one finger. Cooked food was a novelty even if, in this case, it came out of a can.

"Potatoes," he went on as she slurped more, barely pausing to examine the chunky ingredients, "and bacon. Pork, from pigs."

She bobbed her head over another bite, acquainted with the concept. "It's good," she mumbled, managing to contain the soup better this time. The spoon went unused when she tired of it slowing her down and tipped the bowl up to her lips, drinking noisily. She found another use for it moments later, scraping up the dregs.

"Warm," the sigh was accompanied by a vigorous rub of her gently-curved belly, right above where scales ended and flesh began. Half-expecting it this time, he caught the bowl when she dropped it at her side, just before she let herself fall backward into the shallow water with a slap. It didn't quite submerge her face, so her second satisfied sigh was audible. Her eyes were two slitted arches of happiness above her strong nose. Not for the first time he wondered if the shape of her face had something to do with hydrodynamics.

First one eye, then the other snapped open slyly, meeting his. "You're staring," the teasing tone burbled slightly when a small wave filled her mouth.

Not much use in denying it, so he cleared his throat. "Yes."

She pushed herself up again, the attendant bounce another threatened distraction. "Maybe I should wear something, like a human." All her teeth showed in the grin as she hiked up the sash around her waist that was her only garment. It did little to cover her endowments, being just a place to keep a bank card, a Maritime ID, and a thin-bladed ceramic knife. "How's this?"

Large pink aureoles peeked out at him around the twisted fiber of the sash. It did almost nothing to obscure her plump breasts where they hung on her chest. "Not bad." A stammered chuckle accompanied the admission.

"You're staring again," her liquid voice was softer this time, and she was looking down at her tail, shimmering beneath a thin layer of sunlit water. Color spotted her cheeks. It was a struggle to make his smile look a little less involuntarily hungry. It wasn't what he was looking at that bothered her, of course, it was how he was doing it.

"Sorry." This time when he tore his eyes away he directed them at the horizon, bright with reflected sun.

She splashed, twisting her tail and torso to flop across the sandbar, laboriously closing the distance between them. Quickly, he lifted his knee to avoid blocking her path, but when she managed to shift herself in front of him, she leaned back against his chest. "You can stare, you know," her voice was soft and breathy, broken up by the far-off rumble of dying waves, "but the intensity makes me shy."

Hands encircled one of his arms, making him realize he'd been holding them stiffly outstretched. She pulled it to her lap, drawing an idle circle in his upturned palm. "I don't know why you do," she mused, more firm now, "I'm not beautiful like, say, Lish."

His other hand joined the first, covering hers. "It's her job to look good," he pointed out, "that's how she gets movie roles. And she doesn't have a lot of competition, she's the only one like you in the business." That earned him a small giggle.

"I think," he concentrated on the slight rise and fall of her abdomen as she breathed, rather than the occasional brush of bare breast against his arm, "that you do better without makeup and a team of artists."

There was no reply. She leaned back comfortably, her long tail stretched out between his legs, diaphanous flukes trailing in the deeper water beyond the edge of the sandbar. The fingernail-sized scales covering her "lap" were slick and sharp-edged against the back of his hand. When he turned his palm over and laid it flat on what would have been her thigh, it left light-chased ripples in the clear seawater.

Limpid grey eyes watched his hand, then looked up at him as he slid it down her smooth scales, feeling unfamiliar muscle flex beneath. The short tassels decorating her sash wafted and splayed, covering nothing at all.

A late afternoon wind tousled their dried hair and raised goosebumps on his arms. She was impervious, her soft body insulated against the chill of deeper waters. "It's only going to be," his voice was rough suddenly, as if the few minutes of silence had been long enough to rust it with disuse, "another month. Thirty days. The resort should be re-opening by then and I'll go home."

In the long space between his words and her reply, he considered that time. The end was racing up toward him, and it was a canal, not an ocean where he might swim around it.

"Your friend can't...?" she didn't know how to formulate the question completely.

He shook his head, several days' stubble combing her hair. "He told me about this because he knew I needed a vacation, some time alone. There's no place for me to stay when the job's done." The thought twisted and struggled, but the conclusion was still the same. "I'll miss you."

Hesitantly, she raised an arm, reaching up and behind herself to run fingers along his scalp. The gesture brought the pale cap of her shoulder up to his lips, and he kissed its cool surface. "Until then," she said, watching the sky color to evening with him, "stay with me, and I'll miss you, too."