Tonight Beneath the Stars: An Ocean Girl Fan Fic

The coolness of the night was beginning to sting my cheeks. It was late, much later than I was used to being out. Around me the trees of this miniature rainforest protected me somewhat from the islands nightlife. Above me there was nothing but the stars and the moon. My companion had disappeared off somewhere in the dense greenery, leaving me alone to my thoughts.

It was five years ago that I first came to this island, when I was only sixteen. To the rest of the world it is uninhabited, but to the select few of us that know the secret it is the home to a beautiful girl of the sea. She is similar to a mermaid, able to breathe underwater for long periods of time, swim faster than fish, and can communicate with sea life. The only difference is that where a tail should be she has legs like a human. Not long after I met her I discovered she was alone; no family, no friends other than a whale named Charley, no acquaintances. How she got there was a mystery to her. Her name is Neri.

The island she lives on has no infrastructure, other than the minor things, like shelter, that I’ve helped her to build, but somehow she survives.

I’m here on the island tonight for a casual visit – it’s been so long since Neri and I have seen each other – but most of our overnighters have been the result of serious trouble in our search to find out about her past. As I lay down against the makeshift bed of palm leaves Neri has created for me – we chose not to sleep in the hut tonight – and look up to the stars above, the memories come back. Neri came from the sky. One of those silver specks that so many people look up to every night, completely oblivious, is her world, with her people.

I remember the day we found out she was alien. A few months beforehand my mother, a marine biologist residing on ORCA, and her colleague Winston Seth, had confirmed Neri’s DNA was not of human origin. It led to us, my immediate family and my closest friends, scouring the internet and Neri’s island for evidence of her arrival. We had found some clues, but nothing concrete. But out of nowhere, two strangers, dressed in a style that we had never seen before, arrived on the island. They explained Neri’s heritage to her, and we, my mother, brother, and I, watched on.

Neri’s world was one of oceans, where people spent their days swimming and monitoring the marine life. Their purpose was to ensure the protection of the sea’s creatures as the sea provided themselves with life. Some of Neri’s people, including her parents, had travelled to Earth to study the oceans here and to protect them just like they did on their own planet, but problems with the spacecraft’s hardware had caused them to hurtle to Earth, landing on the island that Neri has since called home.

“We have come to take Neri back to our world now that we know she is safe,” one of the strangers, the eldest looking of the two, had said.

That night I had stayed on the Island with Neri, just like I am now. I looked up to the stars then, too, and together we reminisced about our times together. ‘I do not wish to leave’, she had told me while we laid there together, the moon and stars shining brightly above us. We both knew, though, that she had duties to return to on her own planet. My family had not wanted her to leave because she, in the two years that she had spent with us, had become part of our family. I on the other hand, had not wanted her to leave because she was special to me – I had feelings for her – although I never told her that. When it was time to leave with the people from the Ocean Planet, she found she couldn’t do it, that her duty was to the seas here on Earth because it had been her father’s mission, and that the family she had made here were too important. Part of me had hoped then that it was because of me. Part of me now still hopes that it was because of me that she stayed. I wanted her to feel the same.

I shake the memories and feelings away now that Neri has rejoined me by the fire. The rich smell of burning wood fills the air and the light it gives off casts an amber glow across the forest floor and reflects on the surface of the lake beside us. I breathe in the scent; it somehow relaxes me.

“What you think of?” Neri asks me in her broken English, a result from living on an island by herself for so long.

I turn on to my side to face her. She looks so radiant in the lights of the fire and the moon. I reply, “Just how peaceful it is out here.” It’s slightly untrue, but I’d rather say that than disclose my real thoughts.

We retreat back into our silence. Soon she does what I have and reclines back onto the padded ground. I watch her watch the sky above, and I know that she is making pictures in the sky out of the stars. Her eyebrows furrow as she concentrates and occasionally I see her eyes squint, as if she’s trying to make out something above. While she is entranced I let my eyes wander the length of her figure, from her wavy brown hair down to her bare legs. I take in the flatness of her tummy, the slight curve of breasts, her long, swan-like neck, the fullness of her lips, her nose, those big, curious brown eyes... every inch of her is beautiful.

“Jason, what do you see in the stars?” Her innocent voice cuts into the silence. My eyes quickly dart up to the sky at the sound.

I can feel her eyes on me; she’s waiting for an answer. I let my imagination run wild and I voice to her what my eyes are seeing. Some of the things I say she sees, too, and it makes me smile knowing that despite all our differences we are somehow on the same wavelength.

Her fingers touch my arm lightly; a tingling sensation courses through my skin. I avert my eyes from the stars and return them to her. She is still looking at me with those big eyes. It’s as if they can bore into my soul and see the things I am too shy, too scared, to tell her.

And then she smiles at me.

“What?” I ask her, barely a whisper, as I’m too captivated by her to come up with anything more intelligent to say.

“I am glad you here tonight, Jason,” she says. Her eyes then return to the stars, but her hand remains on my arm.

I think about her words, and it doesn’t take me long to realise they mean what I am too afraid to say. Like Neri, I turn my attention back to the sky, the stars. Each night they sparkle amongst the darkness and brighten people’s worlds. The people in Neri’s world see the same stars that we see here from Earth. A galaxy away and yet we share the same beauty each night. Earth and the Ocean Planet are not that different. Neri and I are from two different worlds, but we share the same thoughts. Maybe we aren’t all that different, either.

I think when tomorrow night comes I might stay here again. When the stars come out and Neri is lying next to me, I don’t think I’ll be too shy, too scared, too afraid to tell her what I feel. I’ll let the stars bridge the gap between our worlds.