She had never had much sense.

That was what she'd always been told growing up, by Aunty and her teachers alike. Silly Christine, no sense, always with her head in the clouds. Pretty, yes. Talented - to be sure!

But not a lick of sense in her head, and as she shivered in the cold on the rocks, waiting for a mysterious voice to rise up from the water, she was inclined to agree.

It had been several months since she'd emptied her bank account and walked away from her life. Several months of living in the little cottage, of learning to haul wood for her fire and pump her own water; of giving piano and voice lessons in the nearby town during the day, earning enough to keep herself fed. Several months of waking with empty arms that had never ached to hold so desperately.

Several months of spending her evenings sitting on the rocks, singing with him.

The sea had always called to her, she rationalized, hunching her shoulders and tugging her sleeves down around her wrists. Had called to her since she was a little girl, listening rapt at her father's feet as he told her another tale of the beautiful sirens who protected sailors from dangers on the open sea; since she had discovered her own connection to the icy waters.

After all, hadn't she been singing to the sea, to beg for guidance? It was a small wonder that it had finally decided to answer back.

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~Älskling, I hope this place brings you as much joy as it brought to me once~

The tiny cottage had been left to her by her father, an unexpected inheritance which had shocked her almost as much as his death.

The harsh winter had made the winding coastal roads nearly impassable in the following months, and it wasn't until the last snows had fallen before she'd been able to make the journey, to see what her bequeathment consisted of.

Years of disconnected utilities and free school lunches and he'd been sitting on beach front property all along?!

She'd heard the whispers from relatives at his small funeral, sentiments she couldn't necessarily disagree with, despite her anger at having to hear them voiced, no matter how quietly.

He had raised her alone, after all, on odd jobs that paid poorly, an occasional lucrative position he could never seem to hold onto, and on the strength of his fiddle. She had turned out just fine. It hadn't mattered that there was never extra money for luxuries and vacations-they had stories and music and each other.

Music flowed through her father's veins, as it did hers, although whenever well-meaning strangers commented on her voice- your must have got that from your Papa! -he would get a faraway look in his eye, and murmur that it came from her mother as well.

The beach was windswept and secluded, a tiny cove formed by craggy cliffs, and a line of smooth rocks that jutted out into the cold, blue water. The cottage itself was small and battered. It's barn-red paint was salt-worn and chipped, the shutters clattered in the wind, and the proportions positively lilliputian. A narrow twin bed and chest of drawers were all that fit in the single, tiny bedroom. The small kitchen boasted an ancient Aga and water that needed to be pumped from a cistern, the tiny pot-bellied stove the cottage's only source of heat. It was worn down and isolated and all hers.

It was perfect, and for the first time in her life, from the instant she stepped through the door, creaking on its rusted hinges, Christine knew she was home.

Hopefully we can sell it off for the land, I'm sure it has to be valuable.

She hadn't argued with her fiancé when he'd made his pronouncement, hands on his hips as he surveyed the cottage -her cottage!- with a confident smile, had gone along with whatever he said. A lifetime of pretending, of smiling empty smiles, of living a life she didn't feel was hers. Not a lick of sense in her head.

Better to be thought of as stupid, than for anyone to know the truth.

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From her earliest memory, stories of Nordic folklore swirled with events her father insisted were true: of the ship that had burned, that he'd jumped from as a young man; of the beautiful woman in the water who'd saved him from the churning, black abyss, and the sweetness of her kiss.

Her father told the story with that same faraway look in his eye, and a whiff of akvavit on his breath, a familiar smell she'd know all her life, though she hadn't been able to name it until she was away at University.

She had never told him her secret.

It would have made him worse, she'd known, even from a young age. He was already stuck in the churning waters of the past, to tell him would have been to sacrifice him to the abyss.

It had first happened when she was very young, on a holiday to the seashore. Papa had called it a holiday, at least. They'd been living inland for several years, since she was a baby, and it was her first time vacationing at the shore, the first time she could remember diving into the sparkling ocean. There had been a festival taking place in the little seaside resort town, and her father had gone to fiddle at the fairgrounds, at the tavern and the bandstand. She'd been left to to her own devices, to play on the beach, and play she had.

She'd been in the water, playing with a little boy she'd met, when her attention had been caught by something shiny down below. They had been playing in the shallows, but the drop-off was steep and the sandy bottom of the ocean floor was a good fifteen feet down, just a short distance from where they splashed in the waves.

She'd already earned the boy's ire when she was able to open her eyes in the salty water without the aid of the cumbersome goggles he wore, was annoyed that she had tried talking to him under the water.

The allure of the glimmering something in the sand below had been too great to ignore, and she'd dove down to the sea bed to retrieve it. The necklace had been caught in a tangle of kelp and seaweed, and it had taken her small, uncoordinated hands a good bit of effort to unwind it before swimming to the surface.

Eight minutes. She'd been under the waves for eight long minutes, she realized, when the crying little boy's mother had scolded her for running off and frightening them into thinking she'd drowned. They'd been searching for her for eight minutes, she was obviously a very naughty girl, and where were her parents?

Where indeed, she'd thought to herself, once the deed to the little cottage was placed in her hands, after Papa's death.

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When she'd risen early the next morning to see the sun rise over the water, careful not to wake her fiancé, she'd begun to sing. The wind whipped her hair, the salty air cutting through her, and she'd almost broken down at how right it felt to be there, to have the water lapping at her ankles while she sang a song into the wind.

She couldn't give up this place.

They'd driven home that day, back to their modern apartment in the city, hours away. Two weeks later, when he'd left to report to his naval post, she had cried as she kissed him goodbye. She loved him, she did...he was a good man, a kind man. Brave and sweet, self-assured where she was timid, he would be a good, considerate husband...but she was tired of living a lie, of living a life that wasn't hers. Despite the fact that he'd assured her that he'd be able to Skype her soon, Christine knew in her heart that her goodbye was final.

She had her few belongings cleared out of the apartment by that evening, a letter addressed to him left on the table where it was sure to be found. His haughty older brother would come by to check in on her within the week, she knew.

She would drive to the cottage, would try to decide what she needed to do with her life to feel whole, and if she couldn't, she would walk into the sea and be done with the whole confusing business of living.

She saved me, älskling. Pulled me from the water and saved my life. When I woke up on the beach, she was there, and she came back every night for almost two weeks. She was more beautiful than anything else on earth...and then, one summer day, there you were! So tiny, but already so beautiful...she gave you back to me, to live a better life here.

Some tavern whore, no doubt. That's what Aunty said about her mother, a mother she'd never known, but it didn't matter. Her father and his tales had been enough when she was a child, but now she was a woman. A woman who didn't know where she belonged, and her father's stories were not enough.

Every afternoon, she would soak up the sun on the beach, and explore the shallows around her little cove. Each day, she stayed under a bit longer, dove a bit deeper, until twenty, thirty minutes were spent beneath the water with ease.

At night, as the sun sank in a puddle of red at the horizon, she would sit on the little jetty and sing.

Every song she'd been bottling up in her heart over the years came pouring out: every frustration and disappointment that she'd borne with a smile, every sling and barb she pretended she couldn't hear about the drunkard violinist, raving about mermaids. She sang for her father, for the grief she still felt at his absence, for the way both of their lives had turned out.

She had been there for two weeks before she'd heard the voice.

It was a man's voice, or least, man-like. Deep and resonant, rich and echoing, it was unlike anything she'd ever heard before. It had startled her, the first time it rose to sing with her, bouncing over the rocks. Startled her with its strangeness, with its inhuman beauty, and more than anything else, her reaction to it. She'd felt breathless with excitement, with familiarity.

When she'd started her song again, he joined her once more, softer that time, and an unnameable joy had filled her, rising like the tide. She was home, right where she belonged with that rich, rumbling sound. As their voices rose and crescendoed, wrapped around each other like lovers, Christine had stiffened as if she'd been struck by lightning, a current of ecstacy passing through her that left her weak and dizzy once the song was done.

It was several weeks more, several weeks of singing with him every night, before she saw him for the first time. She was fairly certain if it had been up to him, she never would have.

She'd been humming, letting the breeze lift her hair, the skirt of her dress whipping around her thighs. He was waiting for her to begin, she knew, but sometimes she liked to prolong the wait. She'd hum to herself and play with her hair, thinking about what to sing, extending the time he was there with her, before they tumbled together over the cliff of sparkling sound that enveloped the cove when their voices rose together.

She had stopped pretending that she didn't experience a primal physical reaction to singing with him.

Rolling her neck as she hummed, gliding through a scale, she was startled when a sea turtle popped its head above the water, a few yards away. She had laughed in shocked delight, watching as it paddled determinedly to the side of the rocky cliff.

There had been a soft splash, followed by what she could only describe as a growl of frustration, and she realized what was there in the shadow of the cliff, of who was there.

Her feet had never carried her more swiftly as she ran up the rocks to the sand, careening around the turn and splashing into the water, up to knees.

There, maybe fifteen feet away, paddled the intrepid turtle. A few feet further on was a dark, shadowed shape, about to disappear beneath the waves.

It took her a moment to discern that what she'd first assumed was shadow was actually the color of its skin, the color of the night sky, that the two pinpricks of light were its eyes, his eyes.

Christine had frozen, open-mouthed.

Her stomach bunched in nerves and excitement, even as she'd held her breath in surprise. She hadn't known what she'd been expecting, but that wasn't it. Too many stories, too many songs, since she was a little girl, convincing her of the ethereal beauty of the finfolk, they all crowded her and fell away, rendered obsolete by the thing in the water.

Not a thing, she'd corrected herself belatedly. Him.

If he swims away, you'll never see him again, he'll never come back. She'd instinctively known the little voice in her head was right, and the thought had sent a tremor of despair rippling through her.

He'd already left her once, and it had been unbearable.

It happened after the first and only time he'd sung to her. She'd been sitting in her customary spot on the rocks at sundown, waiting for the seabirds around her to abruptly fall silent. The cove would seem to hold its breath, the way it did before a powerful storm, a charge of energy weighting the atmosphere, alerting her that he was nearby.

Instead, the air had been split by the thunder of his voice. Christine had been pinioned to the rocks as he sang to her, the power and depth of his song washing over her like a wave, like the press of a body above her, and she gladly submitted. Her arms had reached out, trying to embrace the sound, to embrace him as the rockface quaked around her, sending the echoing reverberation of him back to her until she was completely enveloped in his song.

She'd been crying when the song ended, feeling an unshakable certainty that she knew his song, just as she knew his voice.

Her tears had continued to flow when he hadn't resumed, when he hadn't taken up with her when she'd begun to sing softly a short while later, and the thought that his song for her had been a goodbye had left her sobbing on the rocks.

Afterwards, a week of silence passed. The gulls overhead swooped and squawked, never falling silent, and the air stayed weightless and empty. Every night she sat in her spot to wait for him, would sing into the wind alone, and would cry.

She missed her father desperately, grieved his loss. The loss of the voice had been a different kind of grief.

Christine felt as if a part of her heart had been cleaved away, and the wound gaped, bleeding freely. She didn't know how she was meant to live without, now that she'd experienced what it felt like to fit wholly, to belong. She belonged to that voice, and it to her, and a life without it was not worth contemplating.

The night she'd planned on walking into the water for good had been the night he'd returned to her.

He remained silent, but she knew he was there, could feel his presence prickling at her neck. She'd sung the sweetest love song she could think of, had tailored her repertoire to be as soft and inviting as she could over the next few days when he listened to her silently.

On the fourth day, his voice had risen from the water, had wrapped around her like an embrace, and she'd nearly collapsed into it.

He'd been back every night since then, and she wasn't willing to risk him leaving her, knew she wouldn't survive being cut off from his voice again.

She'd stood in the shallows, watching the dark shape of him bob there, and did the only thing she could of to make him stay. Breathing in slowly, she let her voice carry over the water to him.

Come all you pretty fair maids

Whoever you may be

Who love a jolly sailor

That plows the raging sea

It...he had frozen at the sound of her voice. Christine shivered under the heavy weight of his gaze, feeling herself flush.

My heart is pierced by Cupid

I disdain all glittering gold

There is nothing can console me

But my jolly sailor bold

She never found out if he'd intended on joining his voice with hers, for the determined sea turtle had reappeared over his shoulder at that moment, its mouth latching on to a part of his head.

His...horn? It was difficult to tell, as he twisted beneath the turtle, a startled yelp rippling across the water. Christine staggered forward instinctively, thinking she'd be able to somehow assist, when he disappeared beneath the surface, flipping the turtle through the air in the process. It was her turn to cry out, as the wide, round shell crashed beneath the waves.

"Don't hurt it!"

A moment later, the turtle's head popped up several yards away and she released the breath she'd been holding as it swam off into the horizon, seemingly no worse for wear. Her laughter nearly took her off her feet as a wave rolled in, and, turning back to the beach, she staggered out of the water, holding her sides.

By the time she'd made it back to the end of jetty, he'd been treading water, several yards away, his head just barely visible. Sitting on the edge of the rocks, Christine had motioned him closer, before closing her eyes and starting the song anew.

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Glancing back over her shoulder as she finished her song, she shivered again. The light from her little cottage beckoned and she wondered if it was time to go in for the night. The wind was fierce, and her little tufted chair by the window was calling her name...a hot cup of tea, her turquoise afghan that Aunty had crocheted for her before she'd left for University, and the trashy romance novel she'd downloaded to her tablet. He clearly wasn't coming tonight.

One more song. One more song, and then she'd go in.

It had been three months since she'd arrived, three months since she'd run away from her life and reality. Three months, and as of yet, she had no desire to return. Closing her eyes briefly, she breathed in the salty air, letting it fill her before she opened her jaw and let the tone form before it flowed out over the waves that lapped at her feet.

Drøymde mik ein draum i nótt

um silki ok ærlig pell

um hægindi svá djupt ok mjott

His voice met hers on the next line, a wordless, round vowel that instinctively knew which way the melody would lift. Rich and echoing, he moved through her like a wave, and her head dropped back in bliss.

It didn't matter that she was freezing or that he was late. He was there, and she was home. When her eyes opened again, he was in his customary spot: elbows on the rocks, his long, webbed fingers wrapped around leanly muscled biceps, his glowing eyes trained up, gazing at her rapturously.

Christine had adored her father, had loved his stories with all her heart...but it was clear that his tales of the inhuman beauty of the finfolk had been an embellishment. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, älskling.

Her song partner was alien and strange to her eyes, and if she hadn't already decided that she couldn't live without his voice and the way it made her feel, she might have been terrified by his spiky fins, the glowing orbs, or the eel-like quality of his smooth, dark skin.

His body, or at least his mostly human-looking torso, was chiseled, she'd noticed immediately, roped in sinuous muscle, lean and hard...and covered in scars. Slashes and gashes, bite marks and gouges, and she burned with curiosity to know how each of them had come into existence.

She'd had a particularly vivid dream one night, that she'd lain with him in the shallow waters, had traced his scars with a caressing fingertip, learning each one's origin and story. She'd woken with a start, her body tingling, and wondered just how similar parts of his anatomy were to her own...

She had touched him once already, that first night she'd seen him, once she'd coaxed him over to the rocks where she perched. One of the horn-like protrusions on his head had been bleeding, she'd seen at once, and she'd been unable to prevent her little gasp of distress or the hand that reached out to gently touch the wound, the parting gift from the sea turtle.

"You're hurt!"

He'd quickly lowered himself down into the water, shying away from her touch, and she'd barely had a chance to graze him.

Blood, red and wet, had glimmered on her fingertips in the moonlight, and a shudder that started at her toes moved through her.

He bled, as she did. Not an it at all. It hadn't mattered that his appearance was bizarre and strange to her-she would get used to it. All that mattered was that his voice was the only thing that made her feel whole, that his quiet, protective presence in her cove made her feel safe, and that she didn't want him to go away.

"You're late," she chided gently as he gazed up at her from the water before sliding into another song. Their voices rose and fell together and if she had any worries or responsibilities that were attached to the daytime hours, they ceased to exist in this twilight world of sound and wholeness. There was only this, only him.

She'd begun to discover the unique beauty of him, as strange and frightening as he may have been at first glance. There was a lovely iridescence in the spiked fins at his back, and the glowing orbs on his head resembled tiny beams of moonlight in the water, every time his head dipped down to take a breath beneath the surface.

His head tipped back once more to watch her, his voice dropping away, letting her finish the song alone.

Christine reached out her hand and gently caressed the sharp angle of his jaw, her stomach bunching when he did not pull away. His starlight eyes never wavered from hers.

It didn't make any sense to have run away from her life, to have spent so much time singing to the sea, to be falling in love with a strange looking creature from the waters...but then again, she had never had much sense.

No matter where I may stray,

My dear, know this,

My love will be for you