Chapter 8 - I Hear Him

Tidecall Memory Fragment 𐤕𐤔𐤕𐤕𐤔: "The Stone Edge"

Location: Shoreline beneath Mikonos Seawall

Phase: Waxing Moon – Tui's Eye Half-Open

Namecall: Saeh-Li of the Silent Vein

Status: Surf-Crested. Hesitant. Watching.

The land tastes sharp.

Even from here, just beyond the break where the sea meets the stones, I can taste its heat—oil and rust and fire breath. Things that do not move with tides. Things that stand still and rot.

I do not like it.

I never have.

And yet… I come.

Because he is there.

I have returned every night since I saw him raise his hand.

Not close. Never breaking the tide line. Just enough to see. To feel.

He sits on the wall. Legs over the edge. Still. Listening.

Some nights he brings food. Some nights he sings. Once, he laughed—softly—and the sound sank into the water like light down a trench.

I did not know longing could feel like this.

The ache is not in the womb, not in the hunger, not in the song-chambers of my throat. It is somewhere… deeper.

Not primal. Not instinct.

It is choice.

Wanting.

Without needing to feed. Without needing to mate.

Just… wanting to be seen again.

I have not taken form again. I fear it.

Last time I was clumsy.

I frightened him.

I spoke the wrong way, touched too quickly, forgot how delicate surface minds are.

And worse—I exposed myself.

My pod would call it foolish. Dangerous. A waste.

But the memory of his eyes—how they held no violence, only curiosity—it burns in me like hydrothermal heat. Ancient and restless.

So I stay. Beneath. Listening.

Tonight, he whispered to the water.

"I'm here."

He doesn't know how loud that is down here. How words like that ripple against the body like touch. Like permission.

He left something behind—a white shell. Smooth. Scarred by years of ocean, yet light enough to float for a while before sinking.

I watched it land on the stone. Just beyond reach.

A gift.

For me.

My fingers twitch beneath the waves. I almost rise. Almost breach.

But I do not.

Not yet.

Because this feeling—this longing—it's new. It blooms without song. Without pressure. Without the call of mating tides.

It's fragile.

And I am still learning how to carry something that isn't born of instinct or salt.

So I stay below.

But I press my palm to the underside of the seawall. Where his legs dangle above. Where his heat curls into the stones. I press my body to that memory of contact.

And I wait.

For a night when the air doesn't taste like poison.

When the stars aren't so sharp.

When I remember how to walk in skin without fear.

Because he whispered into the dark…

And I heard it.

I hear him.