Page 10 of The Call of Azure (Unexpected Love #3)

Liam

The cement is cold and rough against my palms as I lift my ass and flop toward the water like a giant seal.

I am the antithesis of elegant like this, but no one can see me yet, and I don’t want to risk damaging my favorite, custom-designed latex tail by sliding across the ground toward the tank.

At my size, unfortunately, all my tails have to be custom-made, but the bright gold shimmer with black tiger-like stripes and sparkling teal highlights is one of my favorites.

I have a favorite tail. The thought makes me chuckle to myself, the sound echoing around the small, cold, empty cement room.

It’s not the sort of thing I ever planned, and if someone had told me a few years ago that one day I’d have a favorite merman tail, I’d have laughed until I couldn’t breathe.

It’s not the actual tail that I love, though this one is my prettiest; it’s what the tail allows me to do, who it allows me to be.

The tail offers me peace and freedom. It allows me to let go.

When I’m wearing it, I can melt into the tank as if I’m a single drop of water that’s making my way back into the welcoming embrace of home after a long and difficult journey.

I’ve always felt a sense of peace when I’m near the water.

The ocean is best of course, but any water will do in a pinch, and I’ve spent enough years living in dry, dusty places to know just how lucky I am to be back in Seattle.

Every weekend, I try to pull up my map and drive to a new small beach I’ve yet to explore.

There are hundreds of them, all the same in a lot of superficial ways, and yet somehow, each unique.

They are cold water and wind and grey sand with rocks and oysters and driftwood.

Smooth black pebbles or seashells or sand dollars covered with tiny legs moving sluggishly in groups of hundreds across shallow tide pools filled with sea grass.

Little crabs skittering away from sandpipers at the water’s edge, and geoducks that quickly zip deeper into that sand, soaking your ankles with their abrupt jets of seawater if you step too close.

There are small grassy campgrounds filled with RVs where children run and play and laugh while their parents set up barbecues and folding chairs and remember what life is like outside of offices and traffic and obligations.

Abandoned lighthouses are surrounded by hastily erected chain-link fences and seemingly endless expanses of shoreline that fade into dense forests and rocky outcroppings.

They aren’t places filled with picnic blankets and brightly colored surfboards, the way so many beaches are.

They’re filled with tranquility and solitude.

With folks idly wandering close to the water’s edge, jeans folded up just high enough to stay dry while still fighting to hold back the chilled air, and dogs chasing sticks and snuffling along as they follow seagull tracks.

I do very little when I visit the beaches.

I sit on huge piles of driftwood or stand close enough that the surf licks at my toes, and I watch the waves crash against the rocks.

Grey and black and mist. Indigo and azure crowned with white and gold garnishes that shimmer briefly as the sun glints across the surface before being swallowed up and pushed toward the shore, where frothy bubbles kiss the sand.

The constant rumble of the tides attempts to drown out the sounds of wind and trees and gulls.

The endless motion mesmerizing and terrifying as singular drops of water come together to form a sea so deep and strong and devastating that sticks and leaves and men and cargo ships the size of small towns can be pulled out and out and under.

The sea pulls at something deep in my chest, threatening to break me apart or put me back together. It has since I was young.

I sit moment after moment. Hour after hour.

Weekend after weekend, and I wonder if my heart and mind will ever manage to settle anywhere but here.

If I’m still capable of joy and love and peace.

If I’ll ever really find a way to belong in this world.

Or if memories and emotions will push and pull like the endless turning of the tide until the sharp edges of pain and loss that have shaped so much of my life are worn smooth and there is nothing left of me but a pebble tossed up on the shore…

buried and forgotten under cold grey sand.

On hot summer days, I wade out into the chilly surf and let the gentle cerulean waves hold me, carry me, caress me until there is nothing left but the blinding blue sky burned into my retinas and the numb tingle of fingers just on the wrong side of too cold.

In the winter, I bundle up in my not-quite-warm-enough coat and slightly too-small boots that I never seem to remember to replace before the next winter comes and listen to the angry collision of waves against rock as the salt spray and drizzling rain slowly soaks into the depths of my soul until I find stillness or calm or at least a reprieve.

It settles me in a way nothing else can.

While I grew up here, I haven’t always managed to stay close to the cold grey waves that I love so dearly.

There have been moments when I’ve paddled out on a board through warm, tropical seas, skin sunburnt and shoulders burning from exertion, before riding the surf back into shore again and again.

There have been days I’ve strapped a tank to my back and lost myself in the depths of sapphire and salt until I was safe and held tightly, and the rest of the universe was muted and dreamlike.

Sounds there were softer and colors gentler.

I was weightless, and the harsh truths of the world lived only in the background of my soul while I watched yellow fish and red coral and beams of sunlight play together.

There were years I lived in deserts with no oceans or rivers or lakes to be seen for hours and days and miles.

Moments out of time, when a few sips of stale, hot water from a canteen and the laughter and friendship that can only be found in the forced comradery that springs up between those facing horrors together were the only droplets available to nourish a soul or shelter a mind from reality.

Even now that I’ve returned, it’s not always reasonable to drop everything and run off to frolic in the sea, and I’ve found other ways to deal with the world when I’m overwhelmed.

Still, whenever I can, I let the water hold me.

I sink down until there is nothing else to do other than listen to my heartbeat and focus on the fact that I’m not really drowning.

I love that feeling. That moment when I know I can surface at any time but my lungs burn and seize, and I have to somehow both fight and let go at the same time.

I'm in control, not truly in danger, yet I have no control at all.

The sound of cheering brings me back to the present from my journey through all the shores and seas and wastelands I’ve known in my life, and I can’t help but smile down at the water in front of me.

The large swimming pool-type tank is made up of panels of curved plexiglass that form one long tunnel that bends and twists its way through the aquatic center where I perform.

The glass walls are twelve feet tall, separated by support columns every fifteen feet.

The columns are thick cement - wide enough not only to keep the entire structure stable, but intentionally designed so that the exterior surfaces, those that patrons can see, are covered in textures that mimic sand and rocky shorelines.

The tunnels stretch over three hundred feet in total, with four separate entry and exit points in small buildings that connect to some of the center’s large exhibit halls.

They’re nothing more than tight cement spaces that house pumps and filters and lockers, and most people don’t even realize the tiny, detached rooms even exist.

There are clusters of artificial seaweed and grass and thickly draped marine fabric lining the tank’s upper edges so the performers can ascend at any time to breathe without it being overly obvious to anyone watching the show.

We wouldn’t want to ruin the magic after all.

There are large pieces of ceramic coral and swaths of blue fabrics anchored to the bottom of the tank, and they flow and swirl with the motion of the water and the performers’ tails when we get close to the bottom to smile at parents and blow kisses to astonished children.

The mer-tunnels really are an impressive feat of engineering, and they bring a sense of grandeur and wonder to the entire center.

I’ve never really seen anything else like it.

The center isn’t an aquarium exactly. Its primary purpose is aquatic rescue and rehabilitation, but that costs money, and not all rescued sea creatures are able to return to their natural habitats safely.

As a result, most of the rehabilitation work is completed quietly in the background while large tanks for the unable-to-be-released ocean life, colorful exhibits, and water shows, like the mer-performers, educate and attract visitors to help fund the rescue programs.

Those of us who perform are volunteers. We each have our own reasons for offering our time, of course, and while I love being able to provide a bit of magic to the folks that visit, my motives are selfish as well.

The tank is yet another way I’ve found to lose myself to the quiet of water for long minutes at a time.

It’s nothing like the ocean, of course. It’s not vast and untamed, and the taste of salt doesn’t fill my mouth and linger on my skin once I’ve emerged.

It’s not private and solitary. It’s not losing myself in something so large and overwhelming that I have no choice but to realize my problems aren’t as big as they feel.

But it brings joy. When I float through the water with my long hair swirling around me and fabric seaweed brushing my skin, the faces on the other side of the glass are filled with awe and wonder, and I love that.

I miss that, or at least I miss the idea of it.

The idea that maybe there really are things in the world that feel like magic and possibility.

I haven’t felt anything like that in longer than I can remember.

My legs are pressed tightly together, secure and comfortable, and compressed inside my silicone tail.

No one expects to see a six-foot-five, 250-pound mermaid.

Okay, I'm a merman, but the little kids who stand slack-jawed and awestruck as they watch me float around like a live-action dream or cartoon don't usually have that kind of language preloaded, so I'm often a mermaid, and I'm totally okay with that.

“Daddy!”

Sounds are muffled when I’m floating, but I’ve learned to sift through the endless murmuring of crowds and water pumps to pick out the important things.

“Dad, look!”

I surface, taking the deepest breath I can before heading down toward the little girl whose face is nearly pressed against the glass as her wide brown eyes watch me swim toward her with a smile.

“Dad, mermaid!”

A man squats down beside her and watches as I smile and spin and walk my fingers along the glass until her tiny ones mirror mine.

His eyes never meet my gaze. He never looks away from her as she smiles and giggles and, for just a single moment, believes that magic is real.

He stares at her with his heart on his sleeve, like she is his entire world in one chubby little package.

Maybe she is. I’ve never known a connection like that.

Never had someone look at me like I’m their world.

I know that I likely never will. Still, watching moments like this brings me as close as I’ll probably ever get.

Even though I may not really know what true love feels like, I can see it, and when I wake up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and screaming through memories, these moments help me remember that life can be so much more.