I’ve lived in the same place all my life; an old fishing town off the northeast coast of the US. Small and virtually undisturbed. But we had a cool harbor, a pier that boasted a small ferris wheel and carnival games and all that. It was great for people who visited to get a taste of delicious lobster and fish, nice for those who had to live here all year round and didn’t have much else to do but play on the boardwalk.

It was one of those nights.

It was one of those nights where I didn’t have anything to do. I could see the blinking yellow lights of rides and games from where I stood along the rocky shoreline. The music was gone. It was quiet here.

No one came to these boring little stretches of the beach. It was hard to lay down a towel and swim. The shore was littered with rocks of varying sizes. Some large enough to stretch out on, others pebbles that got stuck underneath a shoe. Not the best place for enjoying the water in a playful summer sort of manner.

I was here because I lived nearby. It was like having my own private beach. All I did was throw stones in the water. And that’s what I was doing now, standing in a bomber jacket and shorts and hurling rock after rock into the choppy seawater. It was nearly dark. A storm was coming. The clouds were deep grey and the water almost black besides the foam. It was a pretty picture. Fun to toss rocks in. They would barely skip before disappearing underneath the water.

I was just going to go home.

I was.

But then I heard it. Or rather…

Him.

He was a clear drop of water in the blackest of oceans. He was the light that filtered between the leaves of dense trees.

And he sang. Was singing. Singing a song that’s meaning was tightly grasped between slender wrists and pretty palms and woven by a silver tongue.

I didn’t realize it, but I’d walked right into the ocean. I was only about knee-deep when I realized I was in the cold water. It was cold, because it was already nearing the end of September. And there the voice, the pretty thing, sat, partially on a rock, partially in the water. He was shiny and silver and gleamed like a rainbow trout. His hair was silver. His skin was pale. His eyes were a multitude of colors–purple, blue, green–I couldn’t tell you what. He’d stopped singing. I noticed, right in the middle of his bare chest was a large, shiny black pearl buried halfway in. There were blue veins around it. It looked like, maybe, it hurt, but it was still as beautiful as the rest of him.

He didn’t speak to me. He just held his arms out, like he wanted to be carried. It started raining. It was pouring down on us.

And so carry him I did. He was heavy, like a sack of flour. I resisted the urge to toss him over my shoulder.

But I carried him, him and his warbling little tune, to the shore.