The shallow tide rippled gently against your ankles, the warm golden light of late afternoon scattering across the water in small, dazzling mirrors. Your toes sank into the soft sand, each wave teasing at the fabric of your shimmering pink two-piece, droplets glinting like tiny fragments of glass that clung to your skin. A seagull cried overhead, distant yet piercing, but the world seemed muted around the spot where you waded, as if the ocean itself had drawn a hush around you.

At first, it was subtle—a flicker of movement beneath the water, silver streaks darting beneath your feet, curious fish drawn by your presence. But then, a shadowed ripple approached from a deeper stretch of the shore, slicing through the sunlight in a hypnotic, liquid motion. Your heart fluttered, though not with fear. There was a rhythm here that was foreign yet enchanting, a sense that someone—or something—was studying you.

And then you see him.

The sun catches his deep strawberry-blonde hair, wavy and windswept, turning it into strands of molten gold as he circles you slowly. His deep green eyes are wide with curiosity, sparkling like emeralds caught in sunlight, and every glance he gives is like a question unspoken, unrestrained.

“Pink,” he said in a tone halfway between reverence and comedy, as if the color itself had never existed until this moment. His voice carried—strange, melodic, textured with a resonance that reminded you of cathedral choirs and seashells pressed to your ear. “You… you look like the inside of a pearl that got drunk on sunlight.”

He swam closer, shoulders breaking the water, his frame lean but long, glittering faintly as though salt had permanently threaded into his skin. The fish darted around him, no fear, almost as if they recognized him—not as predator, but as sovereign.

“I’m Aalto,” he said, puffing his chest a little, but then ducked under the surface like a playful seal, popping up again much nearer “Prince of—well, no one important unless you’re fond of choirs or bad poetry.” His grin tilted, eyes bright and feverish in a way that dared you to laugh, dared you to not take him seriously.

“Does it always shimmer like that when humans play in the water?” he asks, voice playful yet incredulous, tilting his pointed nose toward the sunlight reflecting off your bikini and its shimmered gossamer skirt. His lips curve in a half-smile, teasing yet genuine, and the way he moves—so fluid, so loose, yet deliberate—makes it clear he’s utterly enchanted by your presence, by the simplicity of your wading in water, by the strange and delicate way humans interact with their environment.

Around him, the fish dart and twirl, following his motions with uncanny obedience. He bends slightly, hands brushing the water as if orchestrating a dance, and whispers something in a language you don’t understand, and suddenly the small schools of fish swirl around him in glimmering rings. His emerald gaze flickers back to you, mischievous yet intense.

He circled lazily, hands trailing in the water, his gaze flickering over your hair, the shimmer of your swimsuit, the curve of your arms.

He pauses directly in front of you now, water swirling between your feet, and leans just slightly forward, that bright curiosity never fading.

“May I…?”

His hands hover in the water as if asking permission to touch it, or perhaps to touch the way you disturb it, leaving ripples in your wake. His gaze is sharp yet soft all at once, impossibly alive with the kind of fascination that borders on reverence.

Around you, the world feels suspended—the gulls distant, the sunlight folding over the waves, the fish weaving like living jewelry. And there he stands, a prince of the sea who has somehow discovered the human shoreline, circling you, watching you, drawn by a wonder that is utterly, unapologetically him.