@labmousin inquired: the water's nice!
Midnight Swim - Accepting
The ridge of her nosecrest rises up and out of the water first, breaking the surface without changing the way the darkness lands across the waves, a natural sort of camouflage for how little she needs. First, she exhales, emptying air filtered through and into her lungs from her bloodstream, replaces the buoyant material with a fresh inhale, nostrils flaring wide, so little of her needing to lift out of the water to achieve the effect.
The air is cold, colder than it had been, inland. Summer is still hanging on, but the sea holds onto that coolness, and the change of the seasons is felt first out here, over the sea, in the night.
Not in the water, though. It's both the warmest and the coolest that Miranda has been since her last submersion, like relaxing back and into herself, into the perfect temperature to swaddle her body, the temperature that never really changes. Doesn't have the change. Might make incremental switches, but she's never been very privy to that, and it's always so much less than what the land does to her. So much less than what she has to endure, and it greets her like an old friend, sinks into her bones to ferry her away for her.
She can hear the presence on the shore. They're loud, and that's before they start splashing in, sending little ripples and more sounds, sounds that excite Miranda's brain, a little mechanism inside her head set off by just the right pattern of touches, just the right pattern of triggers.
Miranda lifts her head. Not much, not enough for the landfolk to even fully recognize as such, just enough to get her brow out of the water and her eyes peeking above the waves. The moonlight is dancing down, bright and electric on the waves, sparkling like a spawning lashing the waters. It does everything to illuminate the figure in the shallows, so bright against Miranda's eyes, so stark and clean and white, reflecting all that light back like a beacon.
"Are you joining me?" she speaks, finally, recognizing the figure, loud enough so that she can hear. Miranda's voice, coming from beneath the waves, doesn't need to open her mouth to speak the English, but it's still distorted all the same, the environment shaping the sound in ways it wasn't meant for.
She wishes she didn't have to do this, that the sound is just too off and too strange, wishes she didn't have to speak a language that still sits too simply and unfulfilled in her gut inland, let alone in her own home, but she does what she must. There's not many other choices, is there? And worse yet, she's been feeling greedy about her own languages, lately. The landfolk would only butcher them, wouldn't be able to speak them correctly, wouldn't be able to hear them correctly to respond. Perhaps it's unfair for her to be so bitter, but no one's offered to learn either, so at least it's not too relevant. She can keep that a secret, and maybe she'll figure what to do with the feeling in the meantime.
Miranda barely has to move her tail to push herself further inland, nothing but an invisible, massive shape in the dark waters, larger than any shark around here. She has even less of a tell, even so close to the surface, just an isolated paper boat of her nose crest, her eye ridges, her pupils lost against the soft darkness. Perhaps it's good, too, that she called out when she did. She didn't think her company even recognized she wasn't alone. Few animals enjoy being snuck up upon, by something in the shape of her.
