The Nanase River lent its name to the lake it had once fed. Cut off by a landslide several years back, the lake's expansion had halted. Now a few brooks and springs kept the lake brimming with its famously tranquil waters. Like a mirror, the lake's surface was smooth, unmarred by ripples. Unlike a mirror, it concealed instead of reflected.

Families visited Lake Nanase for its uncommonly calm, clear waters and its equally placid atmosphere. The spirits that visited the lake each summer would've argued a much more primal motive: magic.

June hung over the lake that year like a particularly thick, muggy blanket. Lake-dwellers unearthed long-forgotten fans, steeling themselves for the remaining months of summer. The drone of cicadas became the summer's official anthem, harmonizing with incessantly complaining birds and backed by a chorus of grumbling vacationers.

Tachibana Makoto, an annual resident by the lake, had taken to bringing a beach chair to the pebble-strewn shore every day, its waters being one of the few ways to escape the heat. The breezes that played in his honey-brown hair provided scant relief. He caught sight of the familiar fishermen's boats drifting out on the water like oversized water striders, their helmsmen working to haul in the day's catch. All gave a small island in the middle of the lake a wide berth.

Makoto's parents had taken him to that island several times in his childhood, though as he'd grown older they saw less and less need to pray for his safety at the shrine there. As time passed, residents had stopped going there altogether. People no longer spoke of taking a visit to the shrine for this daughter's birthday, or praying for that full-grown son's job interview. It was like the kami had ceased to exist.

Matsuoka Rin and his sister Gou still found the time to go, though. That wasn't surprising, considering Gou had become the shrine maiden and Rin had inherited the position of chief—and only—priest from his father, long since passed. Makoto had been friends with Rin since childhood, being one of the only boys his age on the island. Now they were closer to acquaintances than close friends.

Idly, Makoto glanced up, finding to his dismay that clouds had begun to gather. Sky-covering, thunder-grey clouds, the kind that heralded summer storms. He cast a glance back to the boardwalk, debating whether to head in. The choice was made for him when the rain came down all at once, like a thousand tiny bullets. He ducked underneath the dock, leaving the beach chair to its storm-soaked fate. If he knew the weather around here as well as he thought he did, it would only be a short shower.

However, hours passed and Makoto was still huddled beneath the dock. The wood of his sanctuary was slick with rain, thunder drowned out by the slapping of the lake's waves. Dusk had fallen and with it Makoto's spirits. Even the fishermen had long since hauled their boats to shore. With the sort of luck he seemed to have that day, Makoto would get home after everyone had gone to bed. Or worse, when everyone was getting up the next morning. The storms of Lake Nanase were notoriously temperamental.

Makoto sighed, curling up on the least drenched rock. As the sound of the waves began to fade into the background, his eyes drifted shut. He dozed there for a while, content to listen to the pounding rain on the pier above. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Makoto knew he should brave the storm. A nice hot shower and a change of clothes would make up for the brief discomfort of being soaked to the skin. But the water was just so soothing…

The rain had stopped. Makoto's eyes cracked open, met with the silver wash of moonlight over the lake. It was beautiful in a way that staring out from his bedroom's window couldn't measure up to, the way he usually saw the lake at night. Standing on the shore made it all the more immediate. He sat up, wincing at the protest of stiff muscles used to one position for far too long.

Something moved at the edge of his vision, something in the water. Makoto jerked, whirling towards it. A ghost? Or worse, a kappa?

A person, he saw as the dark figure rose from the water. But who would be crazy enough to swim at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm no less?

Moonlight spilled across the person's form, revealing a man's torso. His hair, plastered to his scalp, was so black it was nearly blue. The water clung to his lower half like hakama, seeming to wrap itself around his waist. Makoto stared incredulously as the man advanced and the water showed no signs of releasing its hold on him. At last the man's bare feet met pebbles. The water clung to him for a step more before falling away, leaving a wrap behind, not hakama as he'd initially thought. The man turned, striding down the beach, away from Makoto. He walked like the water he'd come out of, fluid as the waves that lapped at the shore. Makoto's gaze followed the man until he was out of sight, swallowed up by the misty night.

He stayed there beneath the dock, the man long gone, for a few more minutes before shaking himself. If he was already hallucinating random men, the cold rain had clearly given him hypothermia. He ducked out from under the dock, deciding at that moment to head home. A good night's rest and some warmth would make him feel better and banish whatever spirits were giving him visions of strange men. Makoto slipped and slid over the rocks, back to the boardwalk.

Only Makoto's mother was still up when he made it through the front door, puttering about and setting the kitchen in order. She greeted him in the vaguely worried way of mothers with sons out after curfew, but it was too late to make a deal out of it. Instead she let him off with a promise to tell his father tomorrow and a goodnight.

One shower and a change of clothes later, his head hit the pillow.

Makoto dreamed that night of strange men who wore water as though it were cloth.

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't been posting stuff recently. I've been working on my art more than writing now. Anyway, this story came about floating on a body of water, though the sea not the lake. StrangerInAStrangeWorld had brought up a topic about personifications of places and then ideas were being bounced off the wall until a few stuck. The main one being Haru's undying love for water and the only way he could be truly one with water was if he WERE it. She actually hasn't really seen Free! yet (I'm working on it).
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Greetings, faithful (hopefully!) readers, I'm your friendly coauthor, StrangerInAStrangeWorld. Though I'm not very familiar with Free!, as Fox said, I know enough to come up with AU ideas for it. Bear with us here- my specialty is Bleach and I don't always succeed at restraining a certain coauthor's visions for the story (mostly Haru, because... Haru.) I'm shameless enough to plug my other Bleach fanfics, so check them out if you're implausibly a fan of both.