Indigo at the Edge

An expanded members-only version of this story is available here: Where the Pool Meets the Sea

The crystalline pool sat right against the beach. On one side, it was all pristine white tile. There were two bars and lounge chairs peppered everywhere, arranged without order but always occupied.

Colorful drinks in careless hands sweated against the heat, condensation slipping down glass and dripping onto sun-warmed stone.

The other side opened straight to the ocean. Nothing significant stood between the sea and the pool. Just a small slope of sand that connected the tile with the beachline.

People loved that part. They drifted between the two parts all day, reveling in the shift from chlorine to saltwater.

I saw him pop up in the sea water on the second night.

Just enough of a silhouette breaking the surface before disappearing again, like the ocean itself had blinked.

He’d come closer to shore before.

Close enough to watch the spring breakers.

I think he thought humans were frightening, in the best of ways. The women, especially.

We glittered and shone in ways he didn’t understand—sunlight on skin, iridescent jewelry catching light, laughter sharp and sudden.

He told me later that he liked watching us. It didn't feel predatory or creepy, but curious. Like we were something he wasn't allowed to have an opinion about.

I stepped into the pool water the next day but didn’t rush in like the others.

From the corner of my eye, I saw his fin break against the sea waves. I knew it was only meant for me.

When I finished my swim, I approached the tide.

The water shifted beneath my feet, grains of sand pulling away and settling again, the boundary between pool and ocean dissolving with every step.

His upper body popped up occasionally from the deeper end of the sea.

Indigo.

That was the name he gave me.

His scales caught the light in fragments like mirrors shattered and reassembled along his skin.

He was stunning in a way that didn’t ask to be admired.

And his hands—not hands, exactly.

Gentle, when he wanted them to be.

But they were lined with claws that could tear through skin and shadows alike.

I advanced further into the sea.

He hovered in front of me, just watching.

We would exchange a few words, soft and uncertain, and then he would disappear again, slipping beneath the surface like he had never been there at all.

By the third night, I started coming back late.

He told me things about his world then. That he wasn’t supposed to come this close but chose to anyway.

By the fourth night, I knew where to stand to meet him.

I never touched him. Just once maybe—the tips of my fingers meeting the surface where his shoulder might have been.

It was like touching cool glass.

I think I made him upset. He swam away slowly, like I had done something irreversible. So I didn't do it again.

On the fifth night, I woke up at 4 in the morning.

The pool area was bathed in a low, blue light that gave everything a dreamlike quality, as if the entire hotel had sunk quietly beneath the ocean while everyone slept.

I didn’t think too much, I just went.

The pool was empty. Spring break week was coming to a close, and it wasn't surprising. Especially at the break of morning.

And there—in the deep end—he was inside the pool.

Bobbing slightly, experimental and childlike. I'd like to think he was trying to understand what it meant to be held by water that wasn’t endless.

Indigo looked out of place there. His glowing scales caught the artificial pool lights differently, breaking it into colder fragments.

“Hi,” I whispered, though it felt unnecessary.

He tilted his head, studying me the way he always did—like I was something he hadn’t finished learning yet.

“You left the sea,” I said, softer now.

A pause.

Then, quietly—

“Wanted to be closer.”

Something in my chest tightened.

I moved toward him, stopping just before the depth dropped, close enough to see the fine edges of his darkened claws and the shifting reflections across his throat.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said.

He didn’t deny it.

Then—voices.

Laughter, distant but getting closer.

A couple of drunk spring breakers rounded the corner, their footsteps uneven, silhouettes cutting through the blue light, their shrill voices too loud for the hour.

Indigo’s entire body shifted instantly, instinct threading through every movement.

He moved towards the sea in a serpentine motion.

Before he reached the sea water, he looked at me once more—more aware of what he was.

Then he was gone.

The water smoothed over itself like he had never been there.

The voices came closer, then passed, dissolving into the morning like everything else.

The sky began to lighten slowly, the horizon pulling itself into morning.

I stepped out of the pool and stood in front of the sea, watching the water like it might give him back to me if I was patient enough.

Just for me.

And when I went home tomorrow, it would still be this same coastline, this same ocean.

You’ve reached the end of this story.

But not the end of the world it belongs to.

New stories appear regularly.

Stay curious.

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