The cool waves rush against my side, nearly tucking me under, and I savor the way that it takes me over and leaves me here. It's the only chance to escape as my eyes flicker towards the noise that always manages to pull me outside of myself. The steady creak of footsteps over fallen leaves, and yet, this time it smells different. It's dark and musky, but it's not unusual; it's human, and yet I almost wish it wasn't.
My escape is the lapping waves, pushed forward by the river's harsh current as it drags quicker and quicker to the harsh rocks, less than fifty feet away from me. I duck under, let the waves soothe me, where most people would feel that as agitation, as a push to get them to fight the harsh current.
"Hello? Is anyone there?" It's a man's voice; something kind of deep, not unlike the muskiness of his smell.
The footsteps stop by the rushing stream, and I know that he's looking for something human. Too bad, that I'm not quite human.
He stops, and I try to shimmy a little further down the small river, as feet sink in next to me. For some strange reason, the man gives up on his search for the human that he thought he heard, and I just wait, knowing that leaving the water is not worthwhile, when someone just might see me. The waterfall is too shallow to swim towards without being seen, and I know that whether he'd see little flashes of dark green or a whole human girl, he'd know something was wrong.
The man continues to dip his feet into the water, just enough to move against and with the current, not really fighting, and not really needing to. If he'd been entirely in the water, he'd probably drown. It isn't gentle with those few that end up within the current.
His feet brushes up against my wet scales, and he pulls back, as if disgusted by their near sliminess, as if he wasn't expecting that. I don't move; he's alert once again, and if I were to move, he'd surely see me. He must assume that I was a dead fish, and so he shouldn't reach out for me again.
Yet, he isn't like most humans, as his hand reaches gingerly into the water, finding the scales by my hip, and I struggle to escape from his grip, but he's stronger than I expect. I flail as he finally pulls me out of the river; it took more strength out of him than I'd first realized. His hand's soaked, and he's panting.
"Wha-Who are you?" He catches his sentence before it would be rude, but I glare anyway. I know what he was going to say. Any human probably would say that too. I'm just not sure if there is any word that defines just what I am well, at all. I guess, I'd rather stick with the awkwardly thrown together phrase: river wolf. I am a wolf, but I am a mer as well. Neither completely define my identity or completely destroy it.
He collects himself, holding me in the way a mother might hold her newborn baby, "Who are you?" The question comes out more refined, or at least without that vicious edge that had clung to it before.
He won't give up really, "I am Yuki." Named for the snow that falls so gingerly during the Winter, the brush of reality meeting the frigid cold. All I've known is a life mostly outside of humanity, the claim of humans grouping together. Mythological creatures don't fit into those categories, no matter how hard we can try to.
"I-I'm Souhei." He sets me down, almost gently, and I wish that he didn't see my mer self, so that I could perhaps scare him off; maybe he'd never want to see any such creature again.