Stormkissed

The sea had never sounded like this. Not even during the blood moon tide, or the Year of Splitting Currents. The water didn't sing tonight-it screamed. High-pitched and guttural, like an old wound torn open. Even the coral wept. I could feel it in the pressure of the currents, the whispers that clung to my skin like dying foam.

The storm above raged without mercy. I hovered just beneath the surface, hidden behind a curtain of kelp and memory. My tail-silver with pale opal tips-flicked once, twice, anchoring me in place. Lightning shattered the sky again, and I flinched. Not because of fear but because of recognition.

The storm wasn't natural. It was alive and it was waking something buried deep in the ocean's bones.

For hours, I'd listened to the echoes. Broken melodies rising from ancient currents. Fragments of the prophecy tangled in the waves like shattered glass. I'd been singing them softly to the reef, coaxing pieces of the past back into shape. But tonight, they trembled and scattered like they were afraid.

Afraid of whatever now stirred above. I pressed my palm to the water's surface and reached-not with my fingers, but with the part of me that hears what others cannot. The tide of memory answered me.

Images bloomed behind my eyes.

A sky torn apart.

A creature of air and fury, shaped like a man but wrapped in lightning and a boy. No-a fairy.

Wings black and silver like a storm's eye, fighting the wind as if it had betrayed him. My breath caught.

What was he doing here? Fairies didn't come this far north, especially not near the Shattered Reaches. My kind-the Maelora, guardians of the ocean's memory had lived here in silence for generations. Unseen. Undisturbed.

Until now.

Another flash of lightning cut across the sea, illuminating him clearly this time. His face was bloodied, jaw clenched, one hand raised like he was trying to command the heavens to obey him. They didn't.

The wind knocked him sideways, and I saw his wings crumple like torn sails.

He was losing and I should not have cared but something inside me whispered otherwise. His energy... it pulsed like an echo. Familiar. Not to me-but to the sea.

I drifted closer.

I knew the stories. Of the shattered prophecy, of the balance that once held the world together. Fire, water, earth, air... and the fifth: memory. Spirit. Song.

The Harmony of the Elements had broken before I was born. No one remembered why.

Except me because the sea remembers everything. My voice-a gift I had never wanted-could summon those memories. Not always clearly, not always kindly. But they came and for the past mooncycle, they'd been changing.

Growing sharper. More desperate.

Last night, the waves whispered of wings and warnings.

Tonight, they screamed his name.

Aeron.

I didn't know how I knew it. It wasn't in the wind or in the lightning. It was in the current, the melody of the tide wrapping itself around his broken flight.

Aeron.

He crashed against the cliff, his body bouncing hard off the rocks before sliding into a ledge barely above water. I flinched.

He didn't move.

The storm elemental hovered above, massive and pulsing with untamed power. I felt the reef below me curl in fear. The water darkened, afraid to rise. Even the sharks had fled and then, just like that, the elemental stilled.

It turned, and like mist retreating from the morning sun, it faded into the sky.

Gone.

I didn't move for several moments. I should have returned to the deep. Let the air-folk bleed and die and scream and curse above the waves like they always had. It wasn't our war. Not anymore but I was still staring at him.

He was crumpled and bleeding, yet the storm had left him alive.

Why?

Why him?

And why did the sea keep whispering his name?

I rose toward the surface, just enough for my eyes to break through. The air was cold and stung my skin. I hated being above water-it felt too sharp, too loud. But I needed to see him.

He was looking at me.

Just barely, his gaze locked with mine. His face was pale, eyes ringed in silver-blue glow. He looked... lost. Not just in place, but in time. Like something ancient and forgotten had clawed its way back to life inside him, and he didn't know how to bear the weight.

Neither did I.

I sank back under before he could speak-if he even could.

The sea folded around me like a blanket, muffling the noise. But it couldn't quiet my thoughts.

Why would the sea lead me here?

Why him?

The prophecy had warned us of many things-rage, fire, storms, betrayal. But also... love. Forbidden and powerful.

The last time a fairy and a mermaid walked the path of the prophecy together, the world fractured.

My people had sworn to never repeat it but the sea was changing. The past was surfacing again. And that boy...That boy was in the center of it all.

I swam downward, the reef opening before me like a yawning mouth. The melody of the water pressed into my chest.

Not a warning.

A call.

The prophecy wasn't done with us yet.