Her face was alight with freckles like little constellations going every which way. And peeking out just behind her cheeks, like hair tucked behind her ear, were three dark pink, a couple shades light than hot pink coral like gills feathering out on each side of her face. Down her body glimmering like pink gold were scales, the top part of them started right underneath her collar and circled around her chest and back until scales dipped down into a long tail, feathering out ever so slightly with a couple lower fins, as well as a fin that rested about at her mid back.
She's beautiful with her crimson hair, quite a few shades darker than her external gills and many, many shades darker than her light pink scales.
Her eyes are a beautiful violet that somehow offsets all the pinks and red of most of her.
She's an Axolotl version of a mermaid, beautiful in a way that Kija finds hard to say. Instead, he's spellbound. If he could paint well at all, he'd paint her, beautifully relaxed within the sea.
Kija's throat is dry, and no words come to mind at all to break their rather awkward silence.
"What are you doing here?" She looks nervous, fidgeting in the water, twisting her tail one way then the other and back again, a slow circuit.
Does she need to keep moving like a shark to stay alive? Kija doubts the answer to that question, as soon as his thoughts catch up to him.
"I - err - was making sure there was no threat in the area?" His insistence on paying back his village for everything by protecting them really is what brought him to the water here, not too far from his home. Just today was shaping up to be quite interesting.
"I don't mean any harm." She answered, moving her tail back and forth, just enough to stay steady despite the ever arriving waves. She isn't threatening Kija in any way, and Kija feels like a fool to be so stunned by her beauty. She looks like no one he's ever seen before.
"I know." Kija answers before realizing how strange that sounds; she doesn't feel like she's going to be a danger to his village and to him.
"You know?" She placed a hand against her own lips to muffle the beautiful sound of her nearly quiet laughter.
"I guess so?" Kija couldn't help but chuckle right alongside her.
"Okay." She breaks the silence after their laughter with such a simple word.
"Are you a mermaid?" Kija's curiosity gets the better of him now.
"Sort of?" She laughs lightly, as if her own answer feels a little strange to her as well. "We're a bit more like amphibians?"
"Amphibians?" Kija asks; he sees no snake like quality to her, and she doesn't look like a frog either.
"Yeah." And she swims to the edge of the beach, "Do you have something that I could wear?"
"Like a coat?" Kija asks, already grabbing one.
"Sure." She smiles as she slips it over her arms, and Kija is both surprised at how long her body is with that massive tail, and how short the rest of her seems.
As she moves a tad out of the water, something interesting happens, she seems to glow like her scales are millions of little suns, and then, she has legs.
Hints of scales glimmer across her skin at spots that Kija's coat doesn't cover. What she had in tail length is now gone, and she's suddenly shorter than Kija.
Her crimson hair stands out against Kija's blue and white coat, and he realizes that despite her human likeness, she still has gills, right by her ears.
She really looks at Kija now standing across from him, as if he's underneath a microscope or that he's the focus of a zoomed in camera.
"Is that a claw?" She looks so curious, and Kija realizes belatedly that none of them look completely human.
"Yeah." Kija admits, face pinking all over, "Like a dragon; some of my village are born with one."
"You're the lucky one then!" Her smile is wide, almost childlike, and Kija's heart warms at the sight.
"I guess so." He smiles. Their old legends are not so well preserved, though now he wishes he knew more than fragments of them just the same.
"I'm wearing your coat, and I don't even know your name." She sits down on the beach, comfortable even in legs. She must have shifted to her human like form before, probably many times, because she seems so comfortable with legs.
"I'm Kija." He answers her unspoken question, and finally sits down beside her.
"I'm Yona." She responds, looking up at the sky. "It's nice to meet you."
"It's a pleasure to meet you." Kija replies, though that word doesn't feel like it captures all of the wonder and awe of meeting Yona at all.
"I don't know many people that aren't mers." Yona admits, as if it's a thought worth speculation.
"Mers?" Kija feels particularly slow today, especially as he slowly realizes that there must be mermen of some sort and not just mermaids.
"Yeah." Yona gets up, "I can't stay long; Father will worry."
"Will I see you again?" Kija's throat goes dry yet again, this time though with worry.
"I hope so." Yona's smile is beautiful Kija notes, though it feels like his millionth discovery of her beauty.
"Me too." Kija answers straight from his heart, already wishing that their day together would be never ending.
Next time though maybe they can talk for longer and perhaps this feeling budding in his chest will come full bloom. Maybe Yona even feels it too.