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One

The water comes down on her hard. The drops are large and warm, and all she can think about is the rain. It comes down in a torrent, a river sliding down her neck and over her throat and around her eyes and in her hair, and there is water in her eyelashes and it shimmers like silver and her face is flushed and blue, like she is gliding in the ocean, and she slides through smoothly and her scales shimmer. Her hands are cold but she holds them out and the rain runs down them, too. It is warm and it doesn’t hurt her. She is swimming through, tendrils of hair and seaweed circling like fish, her face is pink and her mouth is open and the water is murky and it surrounds her.

Two

When she closes her eyes she likes to imagine that she is a fish. She will dart through deep green arms and nestle into a cold rock, and she will swim not swim with the others.

Three

She does not know it, but there is someone who watches her. He watches and he can see her underwater, he can see her violently struggling against the tides. He can see her, but he is far away, surrounded by mountains and dry grasslands and trees. He watches her swimming but she is too far away for him to reach. Even if he were to outstretch his hand all the way across the fields and past the trees and over the mountains all the way into the depths of her ocean, he knew he would not reach her. He is too grounded. He holds his arms out into the sunlight and things grow from them and his roots are too deep for him to budge. He wishes he could live in her ocean paradise, but he cannot swim.

Four

He has been wrenched from his ground. He is ripped from it, a castaway, dying even as he moves, tries to protect himself. At first, he writhes and shakes like a dying animal. All his leaves fall off and his bark starts to peel and his limbs begin to fall off and he knows that he is going to die, so he curls up and waits for his uncovered skin to dry and shrivel. He waits. Then he realizes that he is fine.

Five

Why did he need those unsightly layers, scars, bindings that kept him from moving? Now he is smooth and he has nothing to veil himself except maybe the cover of the other trees, and he is light and able to visit things he has never seen before. He walks the few miles to the water’s edge and dips in. As expected, it doesn’t hurt him. It slides off of him like it was never there, and he can swim.

Six
He thinks that kissing is rather like swallowing another’s tongue, but more satisfying.