The Beach

Caspian skipped through the trees. Even though things had worked out, they still needed to refresh after the wedding. They needed time to cleanse themself of their human nature.

Without telling Sylk or Amir, Caspian snuck away in the night to the ground floor of their apartment and left without a word. Through the streets they waltzed, with few people there to greet them because nobody really occupied the grounds of New York city. The lights lined on the bottom of the buildings were the only thing that lit Caspian’s path forward until they reached an old subway line. It still ran, though nobody used the subways much. The drivers of the subway trains were completely artificial intelligence because humans didn’t want to go down there anymore.

They got on and rode out of the city until they got to the final stop, and then Caspian wandered out and into a forest that was preserved by activists for decades.

Adorned with a long and pale dress and ghostly pale makeup, they skipped their way through the forest path. On some parts of their skin they had painted blue scales. They had on white ballet shoes, which were getting muddied from the dirt. They had blue hair that was long and flowing freely. Usually Caspian’s hair was short, but they needed to have long hair at the moment. They needed to feel that connection to femininity again.

Eventually, they found their way to the beach and stepped into the sand.

Caspian was a siren. A water spirit. Some ghastly and ghostly creature from the ocean. Neither man nor woman, let alone human.

They ran towards the water, to greet the ocean’s embrace and feel the touch of where the horizon kissed the world. Everything Caspian had done to get ready tonight was carefully planned. 

At first they thought they were going to become Cascadia, but Caspian called to them like a siren’s song. Who were they to ignore the call?

When they reached the water Caspian danced in sync to the waves. They kicked their feet into the air, their dress arching above their head in a crescent. Water splashed in all directions.

Their mom had let them take dance classes as a kid. Taekwondo as well. Then there was art, writer’s club, judo, sculpture, and piano. She wanted so badly for Caspian to find a calling, to experiment until they found something fulfilling. Caspian dissolved through hobbies like salt in the ocean.

Caspian began to sing. A moaning and mournful tune, something akin to a whale’s call or an ancient chant. They used the splashes of the waves to accentuate their music, and they danced to the rhythm of the resulting sound, slowly walking deeper and deeper into the ocean's endless pull.

It became hard to lift their legs and kick into the air, so they resorted to spinning instead. The dress was floating up around Caspian, on the surface of the water. They chose a dress like this on purpose so that the fabric didn’t stick to them that much. It needed to sit atop the water so that Caspian’s legs could feel the flow of the ocean without restrictions. The skirt of the dress was floating up like a tutu, then farther than that as Caspian went ever deeper.

Once the dress was up to their chest and the water made it impossible to move, Caspian sucked in a large breath and then ducked beneath the surface.

They pulled the dress down from the surface of the water and into the salt water with them. They opened their eyes, and it burned for a moment before Caspian was finally able to adjust. The rays of the full moon’s light peeked beneath the surface.

The dress around Caspian spread all around them, and they felt like a ghost floating in the waves. An undead and unliving thing.

This was where they were meant to be, in this moment. This was home.

Home.

Caspian didn’t know what it meant throughout their life. There was no safe harbor for them. There was no place to cast their anchor.

They thought they’d found it in Mina. Her pink and blonde hair, her faint scent of strawberry. The gold patterns strewn across her body. The way Caspian could trace them out and draw them by memory if asked.

There was Amir, who Caspian had saved and begrudgingly helped. It was against their nature, but they liked that Amir made them go against their nature like that. Every interaction with the android made Caspian become a little more empathetic, a little more human... At the moment, though, Caspian needed to separate from their flesh. They were Caspian, a watery ghost.

Then there was Sylk.

Caspian saw her swimming towards them. A shadow in the water, a construct reaching out her hand. 

Sylk was leaving Caspian anyway. They knew that Sylk couldn’t be their sanctuary. It would only pain them both when the inevitable happened.

It wasn’t just about Sylk leaving, though. Even if she stayed, Sylk would eventually expect the same thing that Mina expected. She’d want Caspian to love her. Caspian didn’t know the first thing about love. For that was a human emotion, and Caspian was no human. They were a spirit of the water. They were the foam on the surface and the sand below. They were the beholder of the creatures of the deep and they were the protector of the beach.

They spun in the water, in a perfect circle that made their dress fan out before them. Then they saw Sylk again, closer, her arms outstretched.

The apparition grabbed Caspian. Of course, it was only fair that the two spirits swam on the same plane of existence. Sylk pulled Caspian up and they broke the surface of the water.

Sylk began coughing, though Caspian remained unbothered. They looked at Sylk in confusion. She was real. Caspian had been pulled back into humanity.

Caspian looked out towards the beach and in the distance they saw a figure standing there pacing. It had to be Amir, based on the silhouette. Amir was here? Amir was out in the open?

“Don’t you! Ever! Scare me! Like that again!” Sylk said in between coughs.

“Sylk, I’m fine. What are you doing out here?”

“What am I doing out here? What are you doing out here?! Did the wedding really go that poorly? You could’ve told me. You didn’t have to lie.”

“I didn’t lie. The wedding really did go okay. Me and Mina talked afterwards, hashed some things out. It was… it was good. It was cathartic.”

“You idiot! I was worried about you!” Sylk lifted a hand and hit Caspian weakly. It was hard to tell from how wet they both already were, but Sylk’s voice was shaky and she kept sniffing her nose. She might’ve been crying.

It dawned on Caspian what this might look like from Sylk and Amir’s perspective.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. Sylk, I’m fine. I really am fine. I’m a good swimmer and I can hold my breath for a long time. I can’t imagine what it must’ve looked like… I just wanted to be Caspian for a little while, and let off some steam.”

“Caspian?” The name was unfamiliar to her for a moment, then her eyes lit up with recognition. “The water spirit, the one you became during that summer at the cabin. God, that must’ve been about two years ago. You haven’t been Caspian for a while.”

Caspian nodded. “Caspian is like a positive vent. Someone I dress up as to become one with nature for a bit and work through complicated revelations.”

“Complicated revelations?”

“Yeah, like… like dealing with the fact that I might be more emotional than I thought. I care about things. I care about people. It’s rare, but it does happen.”

Sylk smiled and gave Caspian a tight hug. “Do you need more time as Caspian?”

“No, I think I’m done with this character for a while. Just call me Cass.”

His roommate nodded and began to lead him towards shore.

Amir was waiting for them. He was wrapped up in a shawl fashioned to look like a hijab, and one of the outfits that Sylk had designed for a fashion event that was way too big for her to wear. Cass was surprised that she hadn’t given it away by now.

“Amir, what are you doing out here? Don’t you know how dangerous it is? What if you get caught?” Cass asked as soon as they made it to the shore and they were walking towards him, completely drenched.

“It is okay friend, for I am disguised by New York’s finest cosmetologist and fashionista.”

Sylk smiled and turned to Cass. “That’s actually something I wanna run by you. We can’t keep Amir locked up in our apartment forever. How about we start disguising him? The two of us together could completely transform him. With your makeup and hair skills, and my fashion sense and better hair skills, he could be able to explore the city.”

“Wait a minute, I heard that last part. Better hair? Since when? I style my own wigs by hand, and you rely on that enhancement tech.”

“Only for color purposes,” Sylk shrugged. “Gent bent, nerd.”

Amir interrupted what was surely growing into a silly argument. “I would very much like to try to college. I thoroughly enjoyed the classes in my brief stint there.”

Cass looked him up and down. “This will be my hardest transformation yet. It’s not just about disguising you, it’s about making you look human.”

“You don’t have to do it alone,” Sylk said.

“Hmm. Okay, we’re lucky that it’s almost winter. You can layer up and cover a lot of exposed metal areas. We can probably find a color match for your synthetic skin and buy some to go over your neck and ears. I’m gonna need a hair brush, hairspray, clay, and paint. Lots of it.”

Amir smiled. “Yes! I am excited. Let’s do it!”