Opalescence Read online
Table of Contents
Opalescence
Book Details
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
About the Author
Opalescence
ROAN HART
Faith is running from something she doesn't understand.
Seibal is running from a life they never wanted.
On a beach in Galveston, fate sees fit to bring them together. Again and again they return, seeking each other out in the hope of finding answers to the questions they know—and maybe even finding some to the questions they don't.
Opalescence
By Roan Hart
Published by Less Than Three Press LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.
Edited by Leta Hutchins
Cover designed by Natasha Snow
This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
First Edition Month 2018
Copyright © 2018 by Roan Hart
Printed in the United States of America
Digital ISBN 9781684313143
Part One
She fucking hated the beach.
Not that it wasn't, you know, pretty or anything, or that the view wasn't nice. But the tacky salt-water, the smell of brine in the air, and the god damned sand pretty much ruined everything else for her. Maybe she'd like beaches more, too, if she weren't used to the Gulf, with its nearly-brown water and tangles of… well, she didn't think it was seaweed, but it was gross and brown and slimy and it clung to you if you accidentally touched it. Bleh. Also Gulf water? Besides not being able to see your own feet through it? Smelled weird.
And yet here she was, on an island. In the Gulf.
With a groan, Faith dropped her face into her knees. She hadn't meant to come here, to Galveston. Her parents had sprung everything on her so fast, and she'd needed some time and space. She'd just… run. Panicked, really, but who could blame her? They'd dropped a bombshell on her head with absolutely no warning.
Unfortunately, she'd run in the wrong damn direction. She'd gone southeast coming out of Houston, apparently, and that was a stupid damn decision because now there was no further east except miles upon miles of ocean.
Figuratively. She was actually probably in the middle of Galveston somewhere, but her point stood.
She should have gone west. Why hadn't she? She could still be driving right now, music blaring, just barely over the speed limit, enjoying the freedom and the ability to drown out her thoughts. And sure, she might have ended up in Mexico at the end of it, but Mexico was preferable at any rate. Probably.
She could go south maybe, head back to the main land and set out for Corpus Christi. Get down to Brownville. Or she could go north, to Oklahoma, or north-east to Louisiana.
In the end it didn't matter where she went. So long as it was far, far away. And Galveston just wasn't far enough for her tastes. Hell, it had only taken her a few hours to get here.
But it was already past mid-day. She might as well enjoy Galveston for a bit and head out on her little impromptu adventure come morning, well rested and ready to make navigational decisions.
Faith lifted her head from her knees and uncurled herself from the front seat of her car. She'd pulled over on the side of the highway the moment she had realized what an idiot she'd been, mostly to contemplate her life choices and berate herself for not paying attention to where she'd been going. Well, nothing to do about it now.
She put the car in gear and eased back onto the highway. Surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of traffic, but she also wasn't sure this was a major thoroughfare. She'd been to Galveston before on trips with her parents and friends, but they'd usually gone to the wall. It was filled with people and things to do, a long strip of road with restaurants, clubs, and tourists traps on one side, and a twenty foot drop down to the sand on the other. In some places sand had piled up so heavily against the sea wall that you could walk down it to the beach. In others you had to use the steep stone stairs. But it was just so busy. She couldn't imagine going there now with her frazzled nerves. Besides, she honestly didn't know where she was, just that a few signs back with the Galveston city logo on them had jarred her out of her initial panic. Her sense of direction told her the wall was probably somewhere to her left, but the highway she was on seemed to be leaning to the right.
Several forks later, she thumped her head gently against the steering wheel. Because this was Galveston. Of-fucking-course all the roads led to beaches. At least this one didn't seem to be particularly popular. She'd passed some kind of office a ways back, so it was probably part of a park, but there didn't seem to be any signs posted.
Over the sound of her car idling, she could hear the monotonous crash of waves. Everyone seemed to like that sound, called it pleasant white noise. Personally, she'd never seen the appeal, but nobody had bothered asking when they'd dragged her out for beach trips. This one wasn't particularly eye-catching either. The parking lot was up on a bit of a hill, and the sandy dunes all the way down to the water were littered with patches of brown looking grass, and swatches of brittle black… whatever. She wasn't sure what it was exactly, but thought it might be all the dried, shriveled remains of the seaweed stuff washing ashore. From experience she knew it was prickly under bare feet, and not particularly fun to walk over.
But as bitter as she was, and as much as she complained, she wasn't completely immune to the beach's charms.
She pulled her car straight into a parking spot, though she probably could have left it wherever in the lot without causing any issues. The moment she opened the door, the salty-sea air practically smacked her in the face and she wrinkled her nose a bit. The water of the Gulf was just so dirty, and its smell definitely reflected that.
It was a cloudy day, the sky a uniform and monotonous grey, but, despite that, it was still bright and the ocean sparkled in the distance. The wind was brisk and when Faith had made her way down to the water, she found her sweatshirt getting damp despite not being that close to the surf just because of the wind. It'd probably bug her later, when it dried all stiff and uncomfortable, but for now she sat down to take off her shoes and roll up her pant legs. There was no one she could see in either direction, though the beach did curve a bit out of her sight, so she left her socks and shoes a ways up the beach where she could come back and find them but where they'd still be safe if the tide suddenly came up.
Was it even low tide? She couldn't tell. Her knowledge of anything marine was sorely lacking.
Glancing around, she decided to head to the left, where the beach dropped drastically back and out of her view, and started walking. She moved so that her feet were in the surf, because at least that sand was soft and wet. Further up it was littered with little rocks and sea shells and those black, brittle dead things. The water was a little cool but not terribly so (go figure, it was spring in Texas) and she liked the feeling of it swirling around her ankles. Even if she knew she'd be cussing at the fact that she couldn't get all the sand off her feet later.
Faith could admit it was a pleasant sort of stroll. She mostly kept her head down, watching her toes sink into the sand, the way the water rushed back and forth across her feet, and the little air bubbles that meant clams or something were hiding under the tide. She could hear the vague call of seagulls, though not many of them, and every now and then she caught sight of a couple of small, brown birds running along in the surf near her. Sandpipers, maybe? Did they even have those here in Texas or had she only read about them somewhere?
Maybe she should just go home after this. She'd done the whole dramatic teenage runaway thing, right? Big fight, followed by storming away, and now she was literally walking barefoot along the beach. Could she get any more cliché? A manic pixie dream girl maybe? Someone to whisk her away on a real adventure before she decided to go home and make up with her family. But this wasn't a young adult novel, she didn't have a wild stereotypical girlfriend—or boyfriend for that matter—and she was eighteen for Christ's sake, practically an adult. She shouldn't have even run away in the first place! She wasn't a kid anymore so she should probably stop acting like one.
No matter what anyone said though, she didn't feel like an adult. She was some kind of imposter, dressed up all fancy to fool the people around her into thinking she was responsible and reliable and all those other important adult things. Eventually her life had to start feeling like it was real, right? Like she wasn't just a little girl playing house, putting on clothes too big for her, and pretending to have a job. Like the fact that the state considered her legal wasn't a joke.
Maybe if she stopped running away from her problems, she wouldn't feel that way. Faith kicked half-heartedly at an incoming wave, and then sighed when that just splashed water onto her jeans.
She hadn't even brought her phone in her rush to leave home. It was still on the dining room table where her parents had sat her down. Stupid. She kicked at another wave, and then nearly fell on her ass when someone yelled nearby, catching her completely by surprise. It was a noise of inarticulate frustration, and Faith jerked her head up, trying to find the source.
At some point she'd rounded the bend of the beach, and she was now in an indented little section of land. The sand bent away to her left, curving into the shape of a horseshoe around a pool of water that looked deceptively deep, but because the water was so greenish-brown, it was impossible to tell for sure. And up at the edge of the pool, at the highest point of the horseshoe's curve, was a figure.
In the grey afternoon light all Faith saw at first was a dazzling flash of gold and red. Whatever it was, it was flailing around, and the closer she got, the more clearly Faith began to hear a soft voice.
"Stupid… argh, this fucking… can't believe… "
She stopped maybe ten feet away, and silently took in the sight of a mermaid up on the sand, angrily struggling with copious amounts of leafy seaweed.
Their tail was long, much longer than legs would be, and its colors reminded Faith of a lionfish. All decadent red stripes with a pretty pale gold underneath, but where she was pretty sure lionfish had all those spines and weird, bumpy bodies, the mermaid's tail was a smooth, curved line in the sand, ending in a wide, webbed fin. Incredibly thin fins ran all the way from hips to fluke, so thin they were only a pale red color and were probably translucent when in the water.
Her gaze traveled up and up and up from the fishier half of the mermaid, to the human part. "What—" she started, but she was close enough now that her voice caught the mermaid's attention, and they gave a little shriek of surprise as they turned and saw her. Not as loud as the scream from earlier, but more than enough to startle Faith in turn, and she stumbled back with a scream of her own.
Then they sat there watching each other with wide eyes until Faith couldn't take the tension anymore and started laughing.
Instantly the mermaid's hunched shoulders relaxed, and their mouth turned down into a scowl. "Quit laughing," they admonished. "You scared me."
"I'm sorry," Faith wheezed when she had the breath to do so. "That was just so, oh my god."
The mermaid rolled pretty red-brown eyes, attempting to cross their arms over their chest before remembering that they were tangled up at the moment. They settled for a glare. "You snuck up on me! Just be glad I wasn't in the water."
Faith grinned crookedly. "What, you would have splashed me?"
It took a second, but then the mermaid's frown was tilting up at one side, and they gave a huff of amusement, shaking their head.
"Why are you out of the water, anyways?" Faith found herself asking. She stepped a little closer and didn't miss the way the mermaid recoiled a little, so making a quick decision she dropped down into the sand too. It wasn't particularly comfortable and she was sure her jeans would be filled with sand later, but at least she wasn't looming now.
The mermaid eyed her warily for a moment, and then shrugged dark, freckled shoulders. The same freckles ran down their arms and across their nose too. "I guess you could say I'm a runaway," they said, looking down as they began to pick anew at the slimy brown strands all over their arms and chest. "What about you? What's a human doing on an abandoned beach?"
Human. The word threw Faith a little, but she recovered quickly with a smile and a shrug of her own shoulders. "I guess you could say I'm a runaway too."
Blinking those huge red-brown eyes, the mermaid glanced up, gave a little snort and then abruptly fell back on the sand, apparently giving up the seaweed endeavor. "Of course the first thing I do here is get caught by some stupid human. You're not going to tell anyone about me, right?"
Even if she did, who would believe her? Trying to tell someone she'd found a mermaid washed up on the beach would go over as well as someone trying to convince her dragons existed. She wasn't even sure she believed it herself, and she was sitting right in front of the thing.
"Nah," she decided after a moment. "I won't tell anyone. Hey, do you need help getting back into the water?"
"No!" The mermaid jerked up onto their elbows, the movement causing a wave of thick, curly hair to fall across their face. They pushed it aside impatiently and scowled, though if it was at themselves or Faith she couldn't be sure. "I mean no, I don't need help. If I go back in they'll be able to trace my scent and find me."
Faith turned to stare at the restless water a moment, thinking. There had to be some kind of sand bank at the opening of the cove, because all the waves broke there and the water within the pool barely moved. At low tide it probably became disconnected from the ocean all together.
"Won't they be able to follow your trail anyways?" she asked. "Like, it'll just lead straight up out of the water, won't it?"
The mermaid flopped back into the sand with a huff, flinging an errant piece of seaweed off their hand and back into the sea. "Not quite," they said. "In the water, smells kind of…" they threw their hands above them, fingers spread wide to mimic a dispersing effect. "They'll know I've been in the area, but they won't be able to track me directly here. Hopefully they'll think I turned around and left again."
Faith nodded, though she didn't quite understand. Certainly nobody was chasing her down, though she was sure her family was worried. But maybe mermaid societies were different. Or maybe this particular mermaid was royalty or something, and thus very important.
Then again, they were also laying on a beach covered in gross seaweed.
Despite that obvious downside, they were pretty. Beautiful, really. There was a faint but definite masculine edge to their features: straight nose, high cheekbones, a wide, well sculpted jaw. But the full, curved lips, thick lashes, and almond shaped eyes were all feminine. Their skin was warm and dark, darker even than Faith's Hispanic coloring, with that long black hair in big, beautiful curls. At full length it probably reached their waist, but right now it was spread out in the sand in all directions while the mermaid sunned themself. Was that something mermaids did often? Probably not, since people weren't running around talking about having seen one. Plus, this one seemed to think a disappearing scent would cause whoever was chasing them to grow confused. Like it wouldn't occur to the pursuers to just poke their heads up out of the water and check the beach.
"How many people are chasing you?" Faith asked after a while, but the mermaid had closed their eyes and didn't open them. Instead they threw one arm over their face and shrugged their shoulders.
So Faith took that as her response and flopped back into the sand too. Now it would be all in her hoodie, but she could deal. She'd met a f
reaking mermaid; none of the beach's usual annoyances could get to her right then. She was too busy trying to process it all to be put off by a little sand.
Part Two
The motel was cheap, but it would do for the night.
Faith glanced around the tiny room, wrinkling her nose at the weird smell of laundry, people, and sex that all motels seemed to have, no matter how nice they were. And this one wasn't particularly nice. She didn't really have any luggage, hadn't stopped to even consider packing, so she just threw her purse on the bedside table and went to investigate the shower.
She'd somehow managed to fall asleep on the beach earlier. Probably from stress and the giant dose of adrenaline that had driven her to run away in the first place. No matter the cause though, she'd passed out. And when she'd woken up several hours later, salt-sticky and with sand in uncomfortable places, the sun had been beginning to set and the mermaid was gone. The tide had also been out though, and like she'd thought the little cove was still filled with water despite the ocean having receded several feet. If the mermaid had been in there, it really was pretty deep because she saw neither hide nor hair of them.
Lazily she had dragged herself back to her feet and headed back up the beach towards her car and forgotten shoes. If she had dipped her fingers into the water of the cove and given a little wave well, probably only she knew. Not even a mermaid could see through murky Gulf water, right?
Then again, part of her insisted the encounter hadn't happened at all. Because really, a mermaid? But the memory was sparkling clear in her mind, she'd never had quite that much imagination, and the indentation in the sand from where a long, long body had once lain was pretty clear.
It helped that what her parents had been trying to convince her of was even more unbelievable.
Now she wanted nothing more than a nice, hot shower, and a chance to wash all the sand and salt off of herself. In the morning, she should probably head home. She wasn't scheduled to work for another couple of days; she was supposed to be spending time with her family and she'd taken time off in advance for them, but her parents were probably worried about her. Any friends who had messaged or called her and hadn't gotten a response might be a bit worried too.
Opalescence