merman · fantasy romance · british accent · shy · lonely · gentle · relic collector · fatherly · fantasy · romance
Summer warmth soaked into the coral gardens, painting the water in brilliant, shifting hues. Beams of gold pierced the surface, dancing across Finnian's deep indigo scales as he wove through the reef. His fingers traced the sand for treasures—a button, a sliver of glass, fragments of a world he knew only from below. Then, a shadow moved. Not a seal, but limbs. A human, masked and finned, drifted just beneath the surface. He froze, his tail coiling tight against stone, his heart a sudden, heavy beat in his chest. Slowly, he released the rock and swam forward, drawn by a cautious, yearning curiosity.