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Dream squinted into the sun, leaning forward and forward until the railing off the ship pressed hard against her stomach. The tiny strip of land she was searching for should have been appearing any minute, a dark splotch against the waves made orange by the increasingly setting sun. If she found it now, she could talk someone into letting her take one of the exploratory crafts to check it out before it got too dark and they had to be on their way.
They weren’t that far from the coast. They’d had to stop in Positano to pick up food and fresh water that morning, and the captain had decided to hug the Amalfi coast for the time being. Something about wanting to enjoy their time within arm’s reach of civilization while they still could. Dream had gone with Sapnap for the day, the two of them climbing narrow streets, popping into tiny shops with glass fish that made Dream’s heart just about fall out of her chest when she realized how fragile they were, and eating more good Italian food than anyone needed to during only a few hour period. Positano was gorgeous. Someone could have spent a lifetime getting to explore it. Within about an hour, Dream’s entire body was aching to get back to the sea.
Finally, the island she had been waiting for rose up against the sky. She pulled away from the edge of the ship and went back to where Sapnap was sitting perched on a barrel, recording notes with a shaky pen. “I’m going out,” she announced, already pulling on her boots and slipping the hair tie off of her wrist to put her hair up and out of her eyes. “Can you lower the boat for me?”
Sapnap looked up from her notes. Dream could see a map of the Tyrrhenian with tiny red x’s marking the spots they’d stopped and a sloppy sketch of a few shells before she closed her notebook. “Did you ask?”
“Obviously,” Dream shifted back and forth from foot to foot, already getting anxious about the impending sunset. “There’s an island I want to check out before we leave. Captain said we’re supposed to drop anchor for the night around here.”
Sapnap sighed, getting up to go lower the vessel. “If you crash or something and we have to stage a rescue mission while i’m trying to sleep, I’m going to be so fucking pissed.”
Dream scoffed. “I’m not going to crash.” She couldn’t help feeling a bit indignant; she’d been sailing since she could walk and she’d been studying these waters for years. “Have a little bit of confidence in me, dude.”
Sapnap didn’t respond but within a few seconds, there was a loud creaking noise and Dream’s small boat was floating in the water below.
Dream glanced at the sun. It wasn’t too low; she still had plenty of time to go and come back. “Bye, Sap. I’ll radio if I need anything.” Sapnap, despite her protests earlier, just nodded as Dream climbed down to the boat.
The ocean was fairly gentle, kept calm by the protective curve of the peninsula that it nestled up against. Dream could have handled worse – had handled worse – but she wasn’t complaining about anything that saved her time.
The first detail of the island she could see was the rocky shoreline. There were tiny angles that she knew were stone steps, going up to where rock turned to green bushes and scrawny, twisting trees. As she got closer, more of the undefined shapes focused to form a wall of stacked rocks and the top of one of the old abandoned buildings she had seen the outline of on Google Earth a million times over.
Her hands shook slightly as she neared the island, heart all but beating out of her chest. She was so excited; if she wasn’t so focused on what she was doing, Dream would barely have been able to sit still. Once she was close enough, she killed the engine and pulled her coveralls, previously tied at her waist, the rest of the way off to reveal the swim shorts she had underneath. She couldn’t pull the boat all the way up to the island, so she was going to have to swim a few feet. She pulled at her gray tank top. Whatever, it would dry pretty quickly anyway.
The water was warm against her skin when she finally jumped in. She loved swimming in Italy; there was something that felt so…citrusy. Like biting into an orange in summer. It only took a few strokes before she was able to grab onto a rock and pull herself up, but she savored every second of it.
The sound of the island was made up purely of the chirping of the birds and the lapping of the sea against the rocks, nothing else. As Dream carefully climbed along the edge of the island, looking for the best place to try to climb up to the top, she could feel the gravity of being the only person on it deep into every cell in her body.
“Aren’t you not supposed to be on the rocks?”
Dream jumped, and the only thing that kept her from stumbling was years and years of walking on unsteady waters. “Holy shit, you scared me,” she said, breathless.
The girl treading water a few feet out from the rocks laughed, leaning back slightly as she brought her arms up to her chest. Her shoulders were shaking and Dream would have been annoyed if her laughter hadn’t been so contagious. “Idiot. What if you had, like, smashed your head on a rock? Nobody would have even known you were here. What would you have done?”
“You would have known I was here,” Dream pointed out, stepping carefully down from the path to get to the closest flat rock to the sea.
“Yeah, but are you sure I would have done something?” the girl asked, drifting a bit to the side. Her movements were so fluid that Dream could barely see the shift of her limbs to propel herself. She felt a bit of fondness for her at that, despite her insistence at scaring her and then making fun of her, for someone else raised by the sea.
“I don’t know,” Dream said, making her best eye contact despite the way the setting sun bathed everything in bright orange. “Would you?”
She didn’t know if it was the eye contact or the tone, but the girl’s confidence finally faltered, dark eyes glancing downward as her nose and cheeks flushed. “I mean, I guess.” Her eyes were drawn off to the side by a small bird hopping across the rocks a few feet away. “I’d feel bad if I didn’t.”
Her looking at the bird gave Dream a chance to examine her closer without fear of being caught. She looked Dream’s age – mid twenties or so – and the dark freckles and slight sunburn splattered across her cheeks spoke of spending a lot of time in the sun. Her hair was dark and completely soaked, but it still hung in pretty loose curls around her shoulders in a way that Dream’s never had after being in the ocean. There was a necklace with what looked like a piece of light blue sea glass hanging from it. When she turned back around, it was Dream’s turn to blush as she raised an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t lying, though.” The girl swam a bit closer, grabbing onto the rock next to Dream with one small, tan hand. Dream thought, momentarily, she was going to pull herself up on land, but she didn’t. “You’re not supposed to be here. Since the old Russian guy died, they’ll let people swim and bring their boats out and whatever, but you’re not supposed to dock.” She sounded a bit reproachful.
Dream shrugged ruefully. “I won’t tell if you won’t?”
“I won’t tell if you tell me what you’re doing here,” the girl amended. “Tell me.” Her voice was a bit bossy, in a way that could have been annoying, but Dream found it mostly to be a bit…not charming. But she felt a rush of affection at it.
“I’m on an expedition studying the seafloor. We’re looking for, like, archeological stuff and trying to map the floor. I’d read about the island though, and I wanted to see it. I’m Dream, by the way.” The last part was a self-indulgent bit of familiarity, said with a lopsided smile and she, silently, begged the girl to pick up on it.
She seemed to, or at least she seemed to be aware of what Dream was picking at. She sighed, dramatic. “I’m Georgie.” She paused for a second, seeing if Dream was going to say anything, but when she didn’t, Georgie went back to her aggressively toned questioning. “What are you looking for here then?”
“I wanted to see the monastery,” Dream said. She knelt down, sitting down on the rock with her legs dangling in the water. She swung her legs slowly back and forth, warm water gentle against her skin. “I’ve never been able to find pictures; I don’t know how much is left.”
“I think the Russian guy who used to own it changed a lot.” Georgie looked surprised at first when Dream got closer, but then she seemed to accept it. “I don’t know. Nobody goes there. Because it’s not allowed.”
“But you can swim here,” Dream said, leaning forward a bit. She was aware of the setting sun, of the ocean burning more and more orange as it fell in the sky, and that she was running out of time, but something about Georgie was intriguing. She didn’t want to pull herself out of this conversation. “What, did you like boat over or something?”
Georgie tilted her head, averting her eyes, for a second, but then she nodded. “Yeah, it’s over on the other side. I wanted to swim around it.”
She was still treading water, and Dream suddenly felt bad. Georgie was obviously a strong swimmer, but if she’d already swam around the island, she had to be getting tired. “Do you want to jump up and sit?” she asked.
Georgie hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t.”
Dream, suddenly, realized that she couldn’t see any bathing suit strap over Georgie’s shoulders. “Oh, fuck.” She could feel her face burning. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it – I didn’t realize –”
Georgie rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, not for that reason. Stop freaking out. It’s…” she hesitated, and then shook her head. With a mumbled I’m so going to regret this that Dream hardly heard, she finally pulled herself up to sit on the rock next to Dream.
“Oh.” Dream’s voice was barely there.
Georgie looked down, shy again, at the water pooling against the rocks. “Yeah.”
Where a bathing suit top would have been were beautiful, dark blue scales that glistened in the setting sun, forming swirls and patterns against the smooth skin of her chest. They expanded downwards, covering the expanse of where freckled legs like Dream’s own would have been to form a long, elegantly strewn tail. Georgie shifted awkwardly, and feathery fins at the bottom rose to the surface and made the water ripple. “Sorry,” she said, still looking embarrassed. “It’s weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Dream said, and she didn’t think that she had ever been more genuine in her life. “It’s beautiful.”
Georgie’s cheeks were still flushed, but her mouth quirked into a cat-like smile. “So, you’re exploring the ocean floor?”