Free Waking Storms by Sarah Porter

was a light scraping and a few pebbles rolled away beneath her back. She looked up and saw his face above hers, the mist so close that all the world beyond was canceled out.
    He pulled away from her, and Luce let her head fall back against the stones. Her thoughts rocked dizzily in blue darkness.
    She’d failed abjectly. He was still alive, and Luce realized with despair that she would never find the willpower to attempt his murder again. He was half crawling and half thrashing up onto the beach, dragging himself upright until he sat cross-legged just beside her, bent over so that his face was only a foot above hers. Salt water streamed from his slicked hair and coursed like tears around his cheeks.
    “Jesus, that’s cold!” He almost barked the words, and Luce let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. He was looking straight at her with the same lack of surprise he’d shown the first time she’d seen him, when he’d gazed at the mermaids as if he’d known about them all his life. “Can you come sit under the trees? At least that way we’d be out of the wind.”
    Luce sat up, still waist deep in the water, and shook her head. “I can’t take my tail out for more than a few seconds. None of us can.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s incredibly painful. When they start to dry out. And if we can’t get back to the water pretty soon it kills us.” It was strange to hear her own voice addressing a human being. She sounded shaky and her hands were trembling. He leaned back and grimaced at her.
    “You just tried to drown me. And now you’re seriously coming out and telling me the best way to kill you?” He snorted. “What makes you think I won’t do it? Are you really dumb enough to trust me? I could drag you onshore right now.”
    Luce considered the question. The waves dashed against her back. “I could get away. I can outswim an orca. Getting away from you would be practically nothing.” His expression stayed rough, sardonic. “And I didn’t try to drown you that hard, anyway. Not hard enough. I’m supposed to make sure you die tonight. And I just blew it completely.”
    For a second his face froze in astonishment, and then he cracked up laughing. Luce found herself laughing, too, though her laughter had a desperate sound, and she knew it wouldn’t take much for her to burst into tears instead.
    “Supposed to? So it wasn’t even your idea? Somebody told you to? Another mermaid, I mean.” Luce was still laughing, or gasping, too hard to answer. She just nodded. “So how come you didn’t do it? It’s not like you give a shit about killing people. You murdered my whole family. Or at least you helped.”
    “I don’t want to kill anyone,” Luce objected, but her voice was feeble. The boy just glared at her, suddenly vicious, and his eyes went blank and desolate.
    “But you don’t even know what that means, do you? A family? Do you—whatever you are—do monsters like you even have parents?” Luce’s insides clenched with pain, and she looked down. Getting drawn into this conversation was obviously a horrible mistake. Mermaids and humans couldn’t possibly have anything good to say to each other. How could she have forgotten that? “ Got it. You don’t.”
    Luce made herself look back at him. “I don’t anymore. My parents are both dead.” She still half hoped that he would soften again, but instead he gave a bitter laugh.
    “Yeah, but for you that’s normal, right? I bet your parents swim upstream to spawn and then die. You were hatched from an egg or something. Like a salmon with...” He hesitated and pitched a rock into the waves. His whole body was trembling. “Whatever. You look beautiful, but that doesn’t mean anything. You don’t have any real emotions at all.”
    Luce fought down an angry impulse to point out that, if he really thought she was a talking salmon, maybe he shouldn’t have kissed her. That wasn’t what mattered, and he could say he’d only done it to stop