What Lies Between the Waves

**~Chapter 3~Under The Sea~**

Hayle's POV

Swimming through open water always helps clear my mind off of things when I was feeling truly troubled by certain thing in my life, today was a special reason, though one that had been bothering me for a very long time. I was coming to my nineteenth cycle of life and I had yet to find my other half, my song, my Suri. My thoughts dwindled to close friends who had found their own Suri many cycles before myself and they now had children of their own to keep their attention instead of adventuring outside of the city.

I clenched my fists, a small spark of anger boiling inside my being, I hated being alone. That thought made me pause and look down at my hand, small sparks were dancing around my fingers, mixed with the ripples and bubbles from the air I conjured along with it. It was very rare for us to be able to conjure more than one Element of the Goddess, usually only the Royal family on occasion is able to do it, but not many can. No one had royal had been seen with this gift in a great many cycles.

Shaking my head I smiled, "ridiculous thoughts." I felt the Elements leave my hand, as I continued, I was never alone, my family had always been supportive of all that I did, I had close ties with other Royal Children from around the seas, some were odd to say the least, but I didn't see them often enough to speculate much on their personalities.

After some time   I had realized that I had swam quite a ways away from the entrance of the city, and that I had actually wandered very near the humans world, my gaze followed the earth as it rose upwards and out of the Goddess' domain. As I stared I noticed that the light of their world had gone to make way for the evening, and the way the water moved told me that a storm was taking place. I turned to leave and go back to my home when I heard a loud splash, as if something had fallen in. I sank down to the sea floor and hid behind a mound of sand and scanned the area, one thing my mother had always said was to be cautious of Humans should i ever come  across them. My eyes fell on a body floating down to the base of the mountain, bubbles slowly rising back to where they came from. a human boy, most likely around my age floated there almost as if in shock, did he not throw himself into the ocean on purpose? i did know of humans who occasionally swam in the ocean for a time.

turning to leave him to his business i suddenly stopped. I should have swam away, I should have left the human to his fate, but something stopped me, curiosity was never something I pursued, I was careful, like most of my people and for good reason, for a millennium we had been hunted and murdered by humans, so we hid, not of our own choice, the goddess had spoken to one of our priestesses foretelling our future should we fight back, she had said that she would rather us hide away and continue to live our lives to the extent she wanted instead of embracing them in the afterlife before their true time to cross into her spiritual domain.

As I got closer I saw an outline of a body, I still very cautious as I approached. Circling slowly making sure that it couldn't see me I got closer and as I did the more I saw, it was a human male, he looked about my age and he had the most perfect features I had ever seen, full pink lips, high cheek bones and a squared defiant jawline, and a pained look on his face, that look did something to me, it made something click. That was when I realized that he needed air, I pulled water in through the gills that were behind my ears and leaned down placing my lips on his gently and released the oxygen into his mouth, he squirmed around slightly, and then opened his eyes that almost glowed and were the color of kelp at the peak of harvest, and they widened as they saw me, but he did not try to swim away from me. I found that curious because that rare human who have seen us have all tried to swim, run away, and even fight us. Our various color bodies, double lidded eyes, and I think our ears tend to set the whole fish man look off. My ears were giant fanlike fins that grew from the sides of my head that were a shade of Grey edged with a blue coloring that made the two colors accent themselves beautifully.