nightsinger

05 - friends

IRIS DECIDES TO not go into work the next day and spends another week at home, where the two of them tentatively learn how to inhabit the same space. The following Monday, she sneaks Jameson onto the rescue boat the next day, where a sea lion happily rests in a carrier so that the crew can release her back into the sea. The nightsinger watches from the side of the boat, his gaze half-shrouded in disgust and unfamiliarity, the blues of his eyes stark beneath raven hair. He wears shoes that leave the tops of his feet exposed but cover the bottom, clacking with every step he takes. Stimulation stings his eardrums with every passing second. Wind whistles as gusts pass his face.

The bond doesn't allow them to separate after first coming together, and so Jameson isn't fully sure how long their reliance upon the other will last. The sheer thought of experiencing the agony he felt before, now multiplied in a half-human form, is too great for him to bear. So he follows Iris onto her boat, obeys mortal customs to put on an orange life jacket that reeks of sweat, and watches as she reaches down and coos at the animal. Today, Iris is dressed in watergear with her hair pulled back tightly. He can feel a shimmer of her joy through the atmosphere, and it's unnerving. He doesn't know how to respond to such rawness. Humans feel so easily, and that's what makes them dangerous. It makes them predictable until they aren't.

As he opens his mouth to explain sea lion customs, Jameson feels a familiar sensation deep inside his senses, signaling the approach of his pod. It is warm and comforting and full of alertness. From where Iris waits at his side, she grabs his wrist as he leans over the railing and relishes the sweetness of the rough waves as they slap against the boat. It sounds like home, like the roughest sort of music.

And then—again. A light buzzing sensation thrumming through his body, strikingly captivating. Nightsinger, it tempts. You have come back to your people. How you have been dearly missed.

Jameson grins fantastically. Manically. His chest quickens with feral excitement, and he nearly forgets that Iris drops his hand and tugs on his sleeve as he swings to face her.

Her eyes are so bright it's almost startling.

"They're here," he says underneath his breath. A few other volunteers linger towards the back. Before they boarded, Iris had warned him to not look in their direction and to keep the peace, especially if they said or did anything to him that was unfamiliar to him. Jameson had given her an irritated scoff in return, saying that expending his energy on humans was insulting.

"Cam, here. Take this," Iris says, handing the same woman he'd sung to sleep a black, sleek rectangular radio. She leans towards him so that her nose almost brushes against his cheekbone; her hair seems to attract all the sunlight in the sky, so that the strands are warm and full of summer even in the midst of winter's chill. "Who?"

When he smiles, it's cruel and unusual, more of a flashing of teeth than anything else. "My pod," Jameson says, closing his eyes. "I can feel them. They're tracking this very boat underneath us."

Her blue eyes remind him of how the oceans turn icy season after season. Underneath her own life vest that stinks of sunscreen and chemicals, he can smell flowers strung around her neck. Jameson focuses on the beat of her heart as they fly across the waves, the clicking of the sea lion behind him lulling him to a zone of something otherworldly, the activity of his pod resting in his stomach. He feels captivated, predatory instincts kicking. He hears the rush of the humans' blood to their brain, sees the movement of Iris biting her bottom lip as she waits with him. He notices her locked knees, the tenseness in her stance.

In his natural element, Jameson is unbound and unleashed. If only he could have his tail back and swim away to those who know him best. If only he could free himself from the chains of Iris's mortality.