Mikano held out the device to Fian.The man was what you’d expect of a surfer, hair that blond tone it got from sun and saltwater in some humans, skin tan and smooth, a big smile on his face.If there were any shark bites on him, Fian didn’t see them, but then again, the photo was a selfie with him and Mikano both smiling, a gorgeous sunset behind them.It was cute and absolutely kitschy.
“He looks nice,” Fian said.
“You will get along well,” Mikano said, stressing the words this time by showing his shark teeth.
“Sure, sure.Humans love, you know, suckers.”
Mikano laughed.He laughed and laughed.When he was done, they spent the rest of the Ferris wheel ride talking about the Human Liaisons Unit and how awesome it was.Mostly, Mikano did the talking, but Fian didn’t mind.It gave him the time to savor his gooey skewer in peace.
After the meeting, they had hugged and Mikano had ruffled Fian’s hair until Fian’s color got all spotty and confused.His head itching from the abuse, Fian wandered away from the Carnival, past the ever-winding waterslide and the paddleboat lake in which there were no paddles because the boats were alive, their figureheads taking directions and conversing about nonsense or metaphysics, no one was quite sure which.
Once the Carnival was behind him, Fian headed toward the ocean, wide and beautiful, the waves and seafoam ever beckoning and calming in their steadiness.
Fian looked out over the sparkling ocean that sat like a bowl of diamonds beyond the shores of the Morpheusrealm.He listened to the waves come crashing in and recede like an eternal, rhythmic drumbeat.Though the ocean was the border between the Morpheusrealm and the human world, the sound and salt being carried to shore was the same in both.Fian reached for a smooth teal rock the surf had dragged in and tossed it toward the lapping water.It fell short.
“Fuck’s sake,” Fian said.He could feel the anger shift his skin color—undercooked and boring—to vibrant blues and greens.“He’s showing me up.He thinks I cannot handle a human.”Fian snorted.“He thinks I make phalli to keep me company.”
Fian didn’t even want to entertain the idea of spending that beachside wedding with some agent.Oh, wait.Does he want to put an agent next to me so that this agent can watch me and make sure I don’t…don’t what exactly?Drop a piece of battered and fried mushroom?
With that thought settling, determination rose in Fian.I am not Mikano to make a surfer like me, but I’ve interacted with humans.They’re fun.How hard can it be to befriend one?
Fian took a deep breath and told the ocean his truth.“Fuck it.I need a plus one, and I’ll find one in the human realm.”
Fian liked the Morpheusrealm.It made sense in the sense that it didn’t.The human realm was just monstrous.
Firstly, the colors were all wrong, and Fian’s kraken nature never helped him just fade into the background.Secondly, there were people.People, while not intrinsically monstrous, often wanted conversation.Sometimes it was simply that there were a lot of them, and if Fian’s skin misbehaved, they stared, something that they never did in the Morpheusrealm.
Fian shifted into his cecaelian kraken form so he could make his way from shore to water on strong tentacles, tasting salt and silt under his suckers as he went.He could become a full kraken too, but only in the Morpheusrealm.That shift he did rarely.As a kraken, his eyesight was poor, and he liked to see things, their shapes and colors, liked how movement could inspire him to carve driftwood art.
With his lower part mighty tentacles and his upper body roughly human-shaped, Fian took the ocean route to the human realm.It was nice to swim in his kraken form, to taste the salt and feel the cold of the deep on his skin.He swam upward to where light echoed below from the surface.
Fian had no plan beyond going to the human realm and… In all honesty, Fian had no plan.But if a shark demon managed to charm the board shorts off some surfer, then I can find someone to go to a wedding with me.Food is free at these events, and I’m sure they’ll serve mushroom in a nice, gooey sauce.
Fian moved up and up, closer to the beach, still in his kraken form.When he shifted back to his human shape, he was in waist-deep water and walked up to the beach with a leaden sigh clasped between his lips.
A breeze from inland swept toward him, and Fian froze.Strong magic made his skin tingle and his eyes water.How strange.I thought humans focused on science these days.
Fian continued shoreward.Perhaps a human witch would eagerly attend a demon wedding?Fian could hope.
2
Sometimesinlife,relationshipsbroke like jam jars, and while Kai had cut himself on the shards of those more than he liked to admit, it was fine.You bandaged those cuts and let them heal.You got over it and moved on.
It was the way Nick had chosen to actively break what they had that irked Kai, making his skin and eyes itch in ways other breakups never had before, and he had no idea why, this time, everything felt different.A part of him wanted to just run, run and run, and never stop, never look back.
Another part wanted to kill something.Kai longed to close the store and run upstairs, exchange his clothes for pajamas, and spend the rest of the evening and a good chunk of the night in front of his console to shoot and slice and hack away at zombies and assassins and ugly nightmare creatures.Gaming was his comfort, a safe space, and it totally beat ice cream and moping over the degree of assholery Nick had committed.
“Fuck you,” Kai muttered.Incidentally, since he was stacking rosehip jam, he was muttering at the jam, which was probably too tart to care much.Kai put the jar down and stopped his task to look around the store.
It was a small place, though bigger than his first apartment in the city had been.He’d built the shelves that lined the walls, dark, grainy wood, and he was glad about that, because if Nick had done it, Kai would have needed to take an ax to them.
For reasons he could no longer quite recall, he had also made the jams and even some of the teas.He’d researched how to do all of that, had spent hours upon hours on YouTube and on blogs that talked about water temperature appropriate for each tea blend.As if all of that weren’t enough, Kai had enthusiastically penned the cute-ish cursive labels and tied them to the jars with the cute-ish bows he’d ordered off the Internet.In that first apartment of his, nothing but some of the art prints from his favorite games would have qualified as cute-ish.
And then there was Kai’s first job and borderline passion, the game coding he had given up entirely since moving here.I gave it all up…I gave it all up after meeting Nick and after…wasn’t there something…
Kai shook his head, a sudden, stabbing pain in his temple muddying his thoughts.Yes, he’d made small business ownership his thing.No more long hours in an office, no more crunch time.Nick certainly had liked that.And it’s good to do things for the man you love.You want the man you love to be happy, don’t you?DON’T YOU?!
The headache turned into loud ringing in his ears and a dizzy spell.Kai sagged to his knees on the floor, right next to the jam, the cute-ish labels he’d written himself only the night before blurring in his suddenly watery vision.
