I had always been told the ocean never truly sleeps.

The tide began to lower, slow and deliberate, as though the sea were drawing in a breath. Foam fizzed and popped along the shore. Crabs scuttled in frantic bursts. Snails vanished into the sand, burrowing deep, as if the land itself had warned them.

The last of the sun slipped behind the horizon, taking its warmth with it and bruising the sky purple and black. I was not afraid of the dark, on the contrary, I enjoyed it, but of course I feared what lived within it.

My feet struck the wet sand with a sickening sound. My mother would have said I had overstayed my welcome. The oceans would be waking soon, and with it the things that belonged to it.

I ran.

I ran until my lungs burned and my breath tore violently in my chest. With every step, the hairs along my neck lifted in warning.

Something was watching me.

Fear crept down my spine, my stomach dropping into despair. I should have listened to my mother.

Then a faint glow caught my eye as the water pulled back farther than it ever had before.

She lay exposed upon the seabed, a woman crafted of moonlight and salt. Her skin shimmered like pearls beneath shallow water. Long hair, the colour of crushed coral, drifted around her as though the sea still cradled her. Curled in on herself, she slept with a soft smile, untouched by the retreating tide.

My feet halted.

A goddess lay before me.

Never had I seen anything so beautiful.

Her eyelids fluttered open, dusted with scales that caught the dying light. She did not speak, yet I heard her all the same. A song weaving through my thoughts, warm, aching with the promising belonging. She lifted one web-slender hand and beckoned me forth.

My body moved without permission.

Something scratched at the back of my mind, a warning, a half-remembered story about creatures that lurked in the ocean, but it slipped away beneath the sound of her call.

Her fingers closed around mine, warm as sunlit shallows. She rose with effortless grace, water clinging to her skin though the sea had long since fled. I wanted to stay. I wanted to sink into her embrace and never surface again.

She cradled my face gently. Her golden eyes shone, then narrowed, pupils slicing thin and dark.

Cold flooded me.

I remember nothing after that.

When I woke, I lay alone on the shore, the sun burning bright and merciless above me, as if the night had never existed. I lifted a trembling hand to my throat.

Warm red stained my fingers.

The sea murmured behind me once more.

I was alive.

And somewhere beneath the waves, she was already dreaming again.