Page 19 of Currents of Desire

“He looked at me,” Jack says. “He didn’t scream. He just looked at me. And then the water took him. Just… snatched him away. Down into the dark.”

He shudders. “I quit the next day. Moved out here away from people. I thought if I lived near the water, I could… I don’t know… make peace with it, but I hate it. I hate it because it takes things away, and it never gives them back.”

The silence stretches between us, heavy and humid. The eye is moving. I see the wall of gray clouds approaching again, a towering fortress of wind and rain.

The reprieve is ending.

I look at this man. This broken, soft, warm thing. He carries a guilt that is not his to carry. In the ocean, death is simply part of the cycle. If you slip, you are eaten. There is no malice in the current, only hunger. But humans attach meaning to the mechanics of survival.

I reach out.

My hand covers his on the railing. My skin is cool and damp, but his is hot and dry. The contrast is no longer violent but balancing.

He looks down at my hand, then up at my eyes.

“The water takes,” I say softly. “Yes. It is greedy.” I squeeze his hand, my claws retracting, the pads of my fingers gentle against his skin. “But, Jack,” I whisper. “The water also gives things back.”

His breath hitches. He understands. I am the thing the water gave back. I am the return on his investment of grief.

For a moment, we are not predator and prey or monster and human. We are two soldiers, battered by our respective wars, standing in the ruins of the world, finding a strange, jagged comfort in the wreckage.

He turns his hand over, interlacing his fingers with mine. The webbing of my hand feels strange against his digits, but he does not pull away.

He squeezes back. “Maybe,” he whispers. “Maybe.”

Then, I cough.

It starts as a tickle in the back of my throat, a dryness that swallowing cannot fix. It erupts into a wet, rattling hack that shakes my entire frame. I double over, clutching my chest. It feels like there is sand in my lungs.

“Nerida?” Jack’s hands are on my shoulders instantly. “What’s wrong?”

I heave, trying to clear the obstruction, but there is nothing there. It is not an obstruction. It is a lack.

I straighten up, gasping. The air feels too thin. Too dry. Even with the humidity, it is not enough. I need the weight of the water and salt soaking into my pores.

“I-I…” I try to speak, but my voice cracks.

Jack looks at me, and his face goes pale. “Your skin.”

I look down at my arm where the gray T-shirt has ridden up. The skin on my forearm, which is usually sleek and iridescent blue-gray, is dulling. It looks like old slate. And there, near the wrist, a spiderweb fracture has appeared. A crack.

I rub it. Flakes of skin peel away like dried paint.

“I am drying out,” I whisper, the realization cold in my stomach.

“But… the humidity,” Jack stammers. “It’s a sauna out here.”

“It is not enough,” I rasp. “I am a creature of the deep, Jack. My biology requires high pressure. It requires salt saturation. The tap water… the rain… are too fresh. It is diluting me.” Another cough wracks me, harder this time. I taste blood. Not his blood but mine. It tastes thin and watery.

“I am dying,” I say, stating the fact as calmly as I would report a change in the current. “My cells are losing cohesion.”

Jack stares at the crack in my skin. He looks at the approaching wall of the storm. He looks at the brown, churning floodwater below.

“Salt,” he mutters. “You need salt.”

“I need the ocean,” I say. “Real ocean.”

“We can’t get to the ocean,” he says, panic rising in his voice. “The roads are gone. The storm is coming back.”