There's a point in life, a place, where you may just be more rejected, more 'outcast' than any other point. He loves the sea, longs to feel cool water brush against him, the bitterness of salt on his tongue, or even warm water surrounding him, but it isn't enough. Adrien loves the land, the freedom, the mobility, the languages that flow around him and catch his ears and eyes.
Reading what he can of signs or trying to anyway has became a fun, wonderful past time of his, and yet even when he stumbles, and his father tries to correct him on this language or not in broken Adlandic, Adrien listens. He speaks French, semi-fluently or at least pretends that he does when he stays with his father.
Living on land though lacks the good humor and fast quality to the sea, the brushing past any obstacles, stumbling in an attempt to keep up with his mother. Actually, he's probably not perfect at either walking or running though Adrien's father keeps a brisk walk which isn't impossible to keep up with, and he's not the fastest swimmer around either. His mother could probably do five mile laps around him and still cover more ground which was rather sad, actually.
He loved the bright colors of the sea that spilled forth from nature, but the bright neon lights of the city still caught his eye and made him gaze up at them. Sometimes, it was harder than not to find joy in every little thing that made land so interesting, so vast, so cool.
Adrien figured that he liked the people that he met too, had a few different kinds of friends: Alix was fast under water, probably the fastest, and she liked a good prank or game or two. No mer could ever challenge her nearly enough, and even if she didn't speak your language, she'll still challenge you to a race or ten. Ondine was her fast 'cousin' that only hung around her, because she believed herself to be the better swimmer of the two of them though was a diver at heart. She'll go so deep in the oceans that others will look on in disbelief and worry.
He had friends on land too. Kim was a lot like Alix as far as challenging anyone to any type of competition went, and Alix and Ondine had met him first. Both liked him despite being human and them being mers, but Adrien had tried telling them once that their kids would be a lot like Adrien was, a wanderer with no real home.
Adrien had just never figured out if he were more man or more merman, and he knew that he was on a timer, a time limit, as he couldn't spend his whole life indecisive and back and forth. One day, he'll likely have a wife that he loves; some woman that he'd be able to devote himself to in the perfect way that his parents never could. His mom could stay on land with feet for a half an hour at most, and his father was a decent swimmer, but no where near fast enough to keep up with Adrien's mom.
Adrien still wasn't quite sure how his parents had met or whether if he did stay on land, his father would force him to take over the fashion business or not. It used to be full of more mer inspired designs but it had now faded to what was now just normalcy. Adrien wasn't sure what he preferred though he didn't care much for clothes either way or rather didn't love them like his dad did.
She was half positive that her wings might as well not work, that she was basically a land dweller.a 'rootican,' as they'd taken to calling them some time ago. Someone stationary as a rock or a tree, someone that could only bumble along with their legs, inferior as she'd heard so often.
Marinette or Ladybug on the few brave days that she felt confident and dawned a mask the same shade that her wings hit after being in the sun too long, felt like she just wasn't the perfect person for Airden, her home that she'd always known. It may have came from the fact that she'd been raised temporarily with humans when her father and mother decided to disguise themselves among them and live as bakers for five years. They loved the work, but being too long on land made their wings feel weak and made them anxious. At five years old, Marinette had been introduced to her 'true home' as many people referred to it for her. She'd had to learn from scratch that the wings on her back meant something far more than decoration.
She wasn't necessarily good on her feet, but on her wings, she faltered too. Half the time, she wondered if she could drench herself in water and pretend to be a fish and get away with it. Marinette was half positive that she'd somehow fail at swimming as well. She was not all that graceful at all.
Her blue eyes that sparkled like the night's gems caught on to the warmth of sunshine just a little away, the cover of clouds keeping her cool before she decided to take off for a quick flight and see what all she could do to keep her going, may be get a little 'practice' in with flying, so that she won't be as bad at it later, and if she was lucky, she'd spot humans wearing their style of fashion which always caught her eye as something different. Birdwoman wear was loose fitting and robe like; humans had much more variety which caught the young woman that always dreamed of being a fashion designer's attention. She guessed that it ran in her family to be more interested in human culture than they rightly should be.
Adrien sat down outside, watching the sky, just savoring how close it felt on land and so distant too. Farm houses just beyond him obscured some of his vision. He thrilled over whatever trips that he could go on on land, because of the diversity of land, the different places that you could find if only you walked just a little farther, if only you took a train or a car or a horse or whatever, you'd find the rest of the world so different and so stunning.
His eyes caught something that flew just differently than a plane and looked to be like a bird but the wrong color and much too big. Adrien's green eyes went wide when he realized that it was a person wearing a mask with feathery, black spotted scarlet wings above him, like a life sized ladybug, some kind of bug pattern on a human bird.
Adrien couldn't help his startled noise, and his surprise grew when she landed not too far away from him. Wings closing in at her back, hiding from sight despite how obvious they'd just been. Tied back hair in pigtails with bright red ribbons caught in the wind.
"H-Hi?" He wasn't sure if that even came out in French or if it became Adlandic in his haste to say something to the strange woman, the beautiful creature before him that he couldn't keep his eyes from searching for her wings again. She was so, so beautiful. This woman had the best parts of being human added in with a few graceful, beautiful aspects of being a bird. Adrien half wondered if he knew what attraction was before, because surely, no mermaid or human woman had caught his attention like this woman did.
"Hello?" French probably was the language that he'd spoken as he heard her speak in it, voice just accented enough that he figured that she'd had to have started learning it when she was much younger.
"H-Who are you?" Adrien finally managed to work up the nerve to say; he had to know a name for her.
Her eyes glanced down as she fluttered her scarlet and black wings, and she smiled, "Right now, I'm Ladybug."
"Ladybug?" No name had ever tasted sweeter on Adrien's lips, and he realized that he was smitten. Just, he wasn't sure what this at all meant for his life when he still wasn't sure whether land or sea was his home; he didn't have wings, he couldn't fly, and nerves lit him up at the thought of somehow missing this much, much later on. He couldn't just live in the sky or wherever this beautiful woman lived; he simply couldn't travel there. Adrien wasn't stupid enough to try to jump there out of an airplane; he'd probably die on his first try anyway.
"Yeah, and you are, human?" Her voice accented human in its own way, made it pretty, and exotic. Adrien figured though that honesty was a pretty important start anyway.
"Half human, half mer. I'm Adrien." He introduced with a bright smile and really hoped that it wasn't weird to correct her.
"I'm a birdwoman." Ladybug answered, "Lived among humans when I was a kid, but don't have a trace of it in my blood."
As far as beginnings go to anything, theirs was probably the weirdest and least concrete, but Adrien would take it gladly a hunred times over. He still wasn't quite sure what he'd do in the future about where he'd live, but he wouldn't mind if he could spend every day talking to Ladybug though she only came out the day after a really sunny day.