The water sings when he moves. Not in the way of soft tides lapping at the shore, but in the deep, resonant way that makes the ocean itself feel alive all at once. Like the hum of a storm beneath the surface, feeling lightning between skin, the low, shuddering reverberation of something ancient turning in its sleep.

He moves through currents without resistance, trailing bioluminescent ribbons of light in his wake, delicate fins around sharp hips, silvered scales of his tail catching the glow of the seabed, peppering pale shoulders of a mature merman, white tufts of hair swinging with the tide.

The ocean knows his name.

It hums it in the North currents, whispers it through the corals, sings it in the distant wail of whales breaching the surface each time they dip and dive for another breathe of air. Beneath the reef, creatures scatter, feeling the shift of the tide, the pull of something greater; he was born by it, and the ocean bows in his presence. It cannot help but make room for him.