The twilight sky spread around the earth in a fiery blanket, throwing a warm glow onto everything it touched.  A mild breeze threw Luke’s curly hair into his face, salt and sea breeze leaving light kisses as he lay down on the sandbar, careful to keep his left hand in the water.  The cliff’s reflection rippled in the mirror-like water, the clouds rolled across the horizon lazily.  A sight straight out of his childhood, he thought, when he was still able to cling to his mother’s back while his father swam beside them like a dart, going out to sea and back in again.  He himself always got restless soon enough, and he’d scramble down his mother’s back to join his father, shoving water at her.  They’d all leave drenched, laughing and happy.

        The small smile that had creeped onto Luke’s face quickly dissolved when he dragged his mind back to the present.  It had been too long, and too much had changed.

        To Luke’s right, just a little further inland, sat Aaron.  Luke could see that his ribs no longer jutted out from his body as painfully as they once had, like knives on a rack; his skin was pulled just a little more taut with muscle, like he wouldn’t get blown away by a gentle current anymore.  A bubble of pride swelled in Luke’s chest; Aaron had come a long way from the frightened, gaunt thing that had come tearing through the city, screaming for asylum, for solitude, for help, for death.

        Yet he still sat hunched, the ridges of his spine and bumps of his ribs still countable.  If he turned around, Luke could still see his sharp collarbone and sunken eyes, even three years later.

        “I had doubted that there would be anything of value on the Surface,” Aaron said.  His voice sounded dry in the air and the breeze rustled his long, golden hair, brushing the drier parts against his back.

        “And…?”

        “I suppose I was wrong.”

        Luke shifted the hand with the bracelet (the leash, he always thought to himself) deeper into the water and grinned.  “You all may think that humans are the scourge of the great Mother Gaya, but you have to admit, we have our perks.”

        Aaron threw a glance over to Luke.  “You still consider yourself a human, even after all this time?”

        It was an open, honest question, with none of the spite Natalie might have thrust at him, or any of the pity he’d have received from Petra, or anything from anyone else, for that matter.  Luke’s heart flipped in his chest as he answered.

        “How could I not, mi vida?”  The pet name had slipped out, but, Luke reminded himself, they were alone, and other Mermish wouldn’t know what it meant- what he meant- anyway.  “It’s as much a part of me as the part you see now, the Mermish part.”

        “It’s been six years.”

        “And my mother is still my mother, even if she’s taken by death.  Not to mention my father, either.  Did having a human wife make him any less Mermish?  Does it make the Mermish part of me any less Mermish?”

        “You and I both know that some would say- some have said- yes.”

        “Kivash to them.  What would you say?”

        Aaron didn’t say anything right away.

        There were trees on top of the cliff, just barely visible, and a small house.  The family who lived there would probably be settling down for the night, maybe watching a movie, maybe reading.  He’d seen the kids running around the area during the day and he’d envied their joyous shouts and screams, their enthusiasm for life and everything that came along with it.

        His little sister had been that way.  He wondered if that was still the case.

        The sun was now just beginning to dip into the ground, and a thin peach line appeared near the horizon.  The wind had died down a little, and Luke could see the cliff’s reflection more clearly, with all its rough edges and sharp cuts in its face.  He shifted onto his back.

        “I do not buy into the prejudices as deeply as some of our kind do,” Aaron finally said, choosing his words carefully, and it took Luke a moment to remember what he was talking about.  “Nor do I think less of you for your birth.  You had no control over the actions of your parents.”

        “There’s a ‘but’ in there.”

        “Our population is dying, Luke.  I do not believe the humans are wholly responsible, but enough of the ocean’s become wasteland because of them that we have a right to be wary. We should be wary.”

        “Not every human’s like that, Aaron.  We Mermish are no saints, either.”

        “There are fewer of us to damage the world like they do.  The damage we do is out of of necessity; it’s to survive.”

        Aaron bit the last word out, and he had turned his back to Luke completely.  There was just enough venom that Luke knew Aaron couldn’t bring himself to really believe that.  He recognized that bite – Natalie could sound just like that.  Not for the first time, Luke was hit with just how much time he hadn’t had with Aaron that his cousin had had.  His heart ached, and he wondered if he hadn’t been born to a human mother, if he’d grown up with him and Natalie and Petra and everyone else from that village, if it would still be aching the way it was now.

        Aaron shifted back and spun his body in Luke’s direction, enough so that Luke could see his face if he looked up at him.  Their hands were close, less than an inch apart, but they didn’t close the distance, as much as Luke wanted to.

        “You know the punishment for people like you and I,” Luke said.  “You saw it with your own eyes.  That’s not survival.”

        “They want to keep… keep our disease from spreading, so that other people are safe from it.  They think it’s survival, and they can and will kill for the supposed greater good.”

        “We can’t help it any more than I can help my parentage.”

        “They don’t know that,”  Aaron’s voice was tight.

        Luke let out a long, deep breath and looked back towards the cliffs.

        “You could always do what my father did when everything blows over.  If I can ever win back my freedom.”

        “And give up everything that I’ve ever known?”

        “How much do you have to lose?”

        There was no response.

        “… You envy me, don’t you?”

        Aaron jerked his head back toward Luke, but jerked it back again just as quickly.

        “You can fit anywhere if you try hard enough,” Aaron said.

        Luke laughed bitterly. “I’ve always felt as though I can’t fit in anywhere; stuck between everything.”

        “And that’s a curse?”

        “Would I have this-” Luke jerked his head towards his bracelet. “-if it wasn’t?”

        “A blessing in disguise, then, because they way I see it, you have still have options.”

        “If I had options, we wouldn’t be here right now, talking on this beach, moaning about our miserable lives and hiding from, quite literally, everyone down there.”

        Luke didn’t mean for his voice to sound so sharp.

        “You know you have more than me to lose, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It means you have something to fight for; a reason to live and keep on living.  You have family up here; you wouldn’t fight so valiantly if you didn’t.  Me?  My family died long ago, and I can’t even remember the last time I really talked with either Natalie or Petra.  And then- oh Gods- and then we have to find mates soon- I don’t know if I can do- I can’t do that.  I can’t feel anything for a woman, not like you.”

        “Aaron-”

        “And even if you couldn’t, you’d still be okay, because the humans have the population to spare.  What’s one rutter when you have billions of other people who aren’t?”

        “Aaron, please-”

        “I don’t just envy you, either; as scummy as they can be, I envy the entire human race.  People like us could love in public and be supported, we’re all alone-”

        “Aaron-”

        “-like those two men, the ones I told you about, you don’t want to end up like them, do you?  Everyone laughing and jeering over a period of hours, sometimes even days, while your hands are tied to the axe, just waiting to swing down- just save yourself, find some girl, start a family, do your duty-”

        “Aaron!”

        Luke had sat up at this point, his hand laid on Aaron’s back.  Aaron’s eyes glistened, his breathing heavy, and ran a hand down his face.

        “I just… I don’t want to lose you, Luke.”

        “You won’t.”

Luke moved his hand down into Aaron’s and squeezed it long and hard.

        “We each have our own burdens to bear, I know, and it’s not easy.  Whatever happens, though, I will be there at your side, ready to support you, to shoulder a burden… whatever life throws at us.  We’ll make it through together.”

        The sky still burned in front of their eyes.  The faint sound of shrieking laughter carried through the air.  One of the children must have worked up the energy to go running around again.

“I would live my life for you, mi vida.  You know that.”

Aaron leaned over and touched shoulders with Luke.  Their eyes met briefly.

“I…”

Whatever Aaron had been about to say died in his throat.  He let out a shaky sigh and pressed his shoulder closer against Luke’s.

        They turned back toward the horizon.  The waves gently crested and pushed against the sand, and the cliff was almost pitch black against the blazing backdrop of the sky, the jagged faces just barely visible if one squinted.  The two young mermen stayed there on the beach, locked hand-in-hand and shoulder to shoulder until the sun had long since disappeared.