She raises a brow. ‘Of course? Do you think I go around doing this with every sailor?’

And Francis pauses. ‘Sorry…’ He writes. And then, ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Yes?’

‘Um.’ Francis’s nose scrunches up into a frown. He draws little circles across the page.

Just when Angela is about to ask him if he’s mocking her, he finally jots down a word, then two, until his writings blossom into an entire, completed phrase. ‘If you bed me… will my soul disappear? I’m really sorry! I don’t want to offend you! It’s just— I have chickens, you see. I would like to have a moment to release them into another farmer’s land, before we do anything, if that will be the case. I don’t want them to die.’

Upon reading his statement, the siren’s bewilderment is only fueled. She cringes, and finds, that she does not even have the time to be offended, with how ridiculous the entire prospect of this exchange is. ‘Am I supposed to understand that you would still be interested in me, even if I slowly ate away at your lifeforce, each and every time we would frolic with each other?’ Angela cannot recall a time when she had ever been this befuddled by someone in her lifetime—this, makes her giggle.

‘I wish I could hear what your laughter sounds like,’ Francis writes her. He looks a tad dejected, as he sighs, then writes, ‘No, I would not mind. I know I am only something of extreme impermanence  in comparison to you. I would rather experience the pleasures of life, and act on my impulses, rather than perishing old, crippled and lonely with regrets.’

Angela tilts her head to the side. She glances up at him, then down to the notebook. ‘You seemed alone before I came here, though.’

And Francis goes red in the face again. He huffs. ‘That’s— Because…’ The young man’s features grow dull. Grey. Angela wonders if she hit a sore spot. ‘I come from a place where people would always tell me what to do,’ he admits, after a few moments of pause. ‘How to be. How to dress. How to fit in—I tired of it immensely. Then ended up here. It’s nice to be alone, sometimes.’

He forces himself to smile; it does not work, however. Angela sees right through the act, for she has been one of its performers herself, for many years now.

‘I did not want that anymore,’ Francis tells her. ‘Never again. So, I ran away. And now, it is peaceful. Now, I don’t have to worry, about being pushed around anymore. Therefore—‘ His grim blooms into a genuine one. Their eyes meet. Angela thinks that she will have to ask him sometimes, how he managed to obtain such a lovely, milky gaze. ‘Therefore,’ he writes, as he grasps at her hand and squeezes it one, singular time, ‘I am not lonely, here.’

‘I am free. It is all I ever wanted.’

Angela leans in.

She pushes her lips to his. Their kiss is soft, brief, and yet, she is able to feel his pulse thrum throughout her gums. Usually, this is where she would draw the line. Eat the man. And go home.

Oddly enough though, the siren finds herself unable to view Francis as food. She wants… to make love to him, and to lose herself even more in the sweet fragrance of his sex. ‘May I see you?’ she writes, inside a notebook now almost all entirely filled by their daily conversations; a strange memento of their time spent here together.

Francis steps away from the bathtub with a shy nod. A gulp.

He slides out of his pants, with less hesitancy than Angela expected. There is a dark spot on the deep, emerald breeches he wears. Before he reaches for his tunic, he pauses to stare at Angela with parted lips. And when Angela glances downward, at her skin, she immediately understands the brief shock sprawled across his features—indeed, the pigments of her body have shifted from a deep purple, to a much lighter pink.

She jots down the words, ‘For mating purposes,’ into the notebook, before holding it up proudly in front of Francis’s gaze.

“Oh.” The young man, too, flushes a deeper shade of mahogany red. He shows her a curt nod. Mouths the words, I see, before he strips his chest of the lighter garments that had remained across it, revealing ribbons of scars that hug his chest tightly—his once pale, yet now tanned skin. And it becomes extremely obvious to the siren—just from staring at the contrast between his toned arms, and the pale strip that sits at the edge of his waist—how many moments Francis truly spends outside in the sunlight.

Her attention comes to linger atop his chest again. It seems, that someone has intentionally cut out pieces that were doing him no good. Francis does not appear ashamed of this one bit. And, that is great, Angela thinks, as the young man joins her into the bathtub, with an affectionate smirk sprawled across his peach lips. He should not be. Has no need to be.

He is exquisite.

He is mine, now.

When Francis is done with entering the tub in turn, he straddles Angela’s waist. The siren digs her nails into his back to ground him against her, as she feels her slit reveal itself in the frontal region of her tail, she mouths soft tunes that she would have sung for Francis—and only him—against his chest, had he been able to hear her.

He does not pull away, when her long, and rough tongue enters his mouth. He moans around it, just as he does, when Angela slips her hand between his legs, and pushes two cold digits inside of his warmth.

Once they are done—fumbling around, rubbing their sexes against one another’s, until they have lost track of time and it is nightfall already—Angela realizes this may become a problem.

She does not want to go back to the sea. She wants to stay. Here, with him. And do this again. Again. And watch—forever—Francis unravelling above her, blurting out incoherent, cries of fervent passion, as he fucks himself against her fingers, fondles her breasts then sucks on her nipples, until she, too, is trembling—a mess, beneath his tender, cautious strokes.

Yet, when midnight comes, the young man must retire to his quarters.

He cannot sleep under water—and she, cannot join him on land. ‘Sorry,’ he writes her, and Angela can tell that he truly, is sorry, with the way his features sink at the prospect of leaving her. ‘Tomorrow,’ he tells Angela.

‘Tomorrow, again.’