Hey, thanks for checking this out! This is just a little CielxAlois story I'm in the middle of coming up with, inspired in part by Mermaid by Train and also somehow by Discord by Eurobeat Brony (Living Tombstone's Remix). Go on and read~!

Alois looked to the eastern horizon, where the sun was starting to peak gently over the line that separated the ocean and the sky. The wind ruffled his white shirt, which hung loosely off his thin body. His brown pants were rolled up to his knees, but still slightly wet from the ocean spray. His boots lay on the beach, drying off from his stumble into the tide.

He had officially been on this strange island for a year. It had been an entire year since he had been shipwrecked and stranded. He didn't mind living on the island so much anymore. It wasn't his fault he was on this island, but he had learned to make the most out of life.

Going back to his food collection farther up the beach, Alois started to wonder if he should keep counting how many days passed. He marked each sunrise with a scratch on his 'calendar', which was a large rock by the shore. "I guess I'll just keep counting until I forget to," Alois mumbled. He had taken up a habit of talking to himself.

After he collected, counted, and hid all his food under the sand, Alois lied down where he'd buried his food and decided to take a nap. While he slept, he had a peculiar dream.

He was in the ocean, it appeared, though he could breath just fine. Bubbles rose from his mouth as he looked around, then he spotted it. It was a dark figure, almost like the mermaids he'd read about as a child, but it was different. Alois realized it was too masculine to be a mermaid-but only just so. A merman, perhaps? A young one, about as old as Alois himself in appearances. The tail swished back and forth as the strange fish-man, though only a silhouette, seemed to examine Alois. Alois reached out to try and communicate with the creature, but he must have spooked it, as it swam away.

Alois woke up, startled. "That was some strange dream," he murmured, looking up and realizing that it was almost afternoon. Alois dug up some food and ate a small meal as he thought about this or that. He thought about the dream-what could it have meant?-but soon his thoughts wandered to the day his life had changed.

It had been a rainy day-though it was always rainy on his birthday, Alois had noticed. He had been on his way down to the rooms to sleep and celebrate his 14th birthday alone when he passed the captain's cabin, which was closed. He heard the captain and the top two crew members talking about leaving Alois at the next dock point as a 'gift' to the officials tracking them down. Alois had known what that meant-they were leaving him to die.

Hurt and angry, Alois had abandoned all thinking and rushed onto the rainy deck to steal one of the lifeboats. Once he lowered himself into the water, he had realized that the storm had made the sea so wild not even the most daring of boats dared to go too far. The storm had swept up Alois and his little boat, tossing him around and leaving Alois half-conscious. He had finally passed out when the boat crashed into the shore of the island and was destroyed.

Now Alois was stuck. Stuck, but not unhappily so.

Alois was finishing up his meal when he felt it. A stare, locked on his back. Not a hostile one, more curious than anything.

Turning, Alois was surprised to see something behind his callender rock. It looked like a boy around Alois's age, though only one of his ocean-deep blue eyes was visible, along with a pale, thin, slightly webbed hand, a sliver of a bare chest, the side of his face, and a hint of blue-black bangs. Everything else was hidden behind the rock. Alois stared at the boy, a bit confused. Brushing some of his somewhat long platinum bangs out of his own bright blue eyes, Alois stepped forward to try and talk to the boy.

The boy's eye widened with fear before Alois could even take a full step, and he dashed behind the rock, disappearing from sight.

Alois stood still, confused. What could the boy have been doing there? As he decided to walk away, somewhere in the back of his mind Alois realized how similar to his dream that had been.

Ciel peered at the strange human boy from behind the scratch-colored rock. He had never seen a human quite like this boy before-not that he'd seen many humans to begin with. For one thing, the boy had the palest hair Ciel had ever seen on a human-it was almost white, but with a touch of gold that prevented it from being so. For another, his eyes were an extremely pale blue-perhaps even paler than the sky! Ciel remembered his cousin talking about glaciers, that's what color this boy's eyes reminded him of. This boy was dressed strangely, more plain than the humans Ciel had seen before, both on this island and in the port cities.

There was also the fact that he was young. Ciel had never seen a human who looked so similar in body shape to his own.

The strange boy went to sleep for a while after being up before the sun, and when he woke up he looked a little confused and sad as he ate. There was a strange feeling building in Ciel's chest as he watched. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling really, but it wasn't exactly comfortable either, which left Ciel very confused.

Suddenly the boy spotted Ciel. Tense, Ciel watched and waited for the boy to do something. The blonde took a half-step forward, towards Ciel, which spooked Ciel, causing him to dart behind the rock and hide. Ciel wrapped his pale arms around his bare chest, his breathing heavy with fear and adrenaline. Not daring to peer back around the rock yet, Ciel tried to calm his speeding heart and weighted breaths. His shimmering blue tail still, Ciel wondered if perhaps he should take his father's advice and forget about humans. But that was impossible. The two-legged creatures, so similar yet so different from the merpeople Ciel had known all his life, were just too fascinating. So, he started to wonder if perhaps he shouldn't have hid from the boy. But, Ciel knew, his instincts to hide weren't that easy to repress.

There was just something different about this boy; almost pleasantly so, if Ciel had cared to examine his feelings more thoroughly. This boy caused unknown feelings to bubble up in Ciel's chest, strange, almost-but-not-quite pleasant feelings that left his body warm, especially his face. Ciel knew humans had a word for the feeling, but he had yet to learn it, only hearing about it in vague passing.

There was the sound of shifting sand and feet moving away slowly. Daring to peer around the rock, Ciel was somewhat saddened to see the boy had wandered off, leaving Ciel alone. Ciel didn't want to go home. Besides, if he went home now, his father and brothers would know where his island was. Ciel had claimed this island, erased it from the maps. People stumbled here occasionally, but Ciel sent them home almost instantly after erasing their memories of the place. They were all old sailors, people he'd studied before.

"Should I go look for that human boy?" Ciel whispered to himself, closing his blue eyes and hanging his head.

His head, and his common sense, told no him no, he should go home and leave the boy alone. But something else inside him-Ciel realized it must be his heart, told him yes. Yes, he should look for the boy. He should talk to the boy.

Following his heart, Ciel slid into the water and started to swim just under the surface, looking up for the boy and praying he hadn't gone inland.

Alois sat on the other side of the island, caught up in his thoughts about the boy he had seen behind the rock. Alois could just tell that the boy was beautiful, from an objective point of view. Silky hair, bright eyes, pale skin, slim figure. He could also tell the boy was different. Something about the way he had held himself, perhaps? "No, that's not it..." Alois mused, before sitting up straight with realization, "It was his eyes! His eyes were different! And those weird little webs between his fingers."

Could the boy have been like the figure in his dream? "No, he couldn't have!" Alois laughed, "Merpeople aren't real!"

A sudden splash in the water caught Alois's attention. He looked up, but saw no one. Deciding it was just a fish, he turned his attention back to his thoughts and the drawings he was doing in the sand. Had he cared to look closer, he would have noticed the dark blue eyes watching him from behind a rock once again.

What do you guys think? Please leave a review, I enjoy hearing from you! Follow and favorite if you liked it! Thanks for reading!-

Ciaran