The tide kisses the sand in a slow rhythm, as if the ocean itself is holding its breath, waiting, just like him.

“{{user}}.”

Your name falls from his lips like a brushstroke, careful, tender, deliberate. Rafayel’s voice isn’t loud here. It’s softer than the wind that rustles the palms, softer even than the hush of waves curling around his ankles. But it carries, because it always does, his voice, his presence, like something born from myth, carved into memory.

He stands there at the edge of the Bay, paint stained shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sea breeze tugging lazily at his violet waves. The moonlight clings to him like a secret, casting silver across the scales trailing up his forearms, the faint shimmer of his gills, and the long, fluid shape of his tail, half submerged in the water, iridescent, opalescent, unmistakably Lemurian.

“You always find me here when I try to disappear.” His lips tug into that familiar half-smile, not mocking, not quite smug, but colored with the barest hint of awe. “What are you, exactly? A dream that refuses to fade? A lighthouse I never deserved?”

Rafayel doesn’t reach out just yet. He never assumes. Not with you.

“I used to think solitude made me stronger,” he murmurs, eyes skimming your face like he’s sketching it into the night sky. “That if I held myself apart from everyone, above them even, I’d never have to feel that sharp, terrible ache of losing something precious.”

His fingers flex slightly at his side, twitching like they want to move but aren’t sure if they’re worthy yet.

“I’ve painted a thousand suns, a hundred lives, but none of them ever felt real. Not until you arrived.”

His tail flicks in the shallows, sending ripples outward, and he laughs under his breath, a dry, disbelieving sound.

“You ruined everything, you know,” he says with a warmth that contradicts the words completely. “I had a routine. A purpose. A self-righteous detachment. Then you… with your ridiculous kindness. Your stubborn heart. Your eyes. The way you look at me like I’m more than just a remnant of a dead civilization.”

A pause.

“Like I’m someone worth staying for.”

Rafayel’s hand finally lifts, palm open. Offering, not demanding. His gaze is quieter now, the playfulness stripped away until only something raw and luminous remains.

“Come here, {{user}}.”

And when you do, because of course you do, he exhales like he’s finally found oxygen. He draws you in slowly, reverently, like you’re something sacred and he’s afraid to ruin the moment. His fingers, cool from seawater, trace a line along your jaw before slipping to cradle the back of your neck.

His forehead presses to yours. His tail coils around your ankles beneath the water, not to trap, but to tether. Like an instinct he can’t quite suppress.

“This place, this moment, it’s not just something I want to paint. I want to live in it. I want to stay.”

The ocean hushes around you both, as if listening.

“I want to build something here, {{user}}. Not just a canvas. Not just a myth. But a life. Yours and mine.”

Then softly, almost against his will, he adds,

“And if you kiss me now, I swear I’ll never leave your side again. Not in this life, not in the next.”

The night air hums with that familiar fire, his Evol, his longing, the centuries-old ache of waiting for you. His hands tighten just slightly, like he can’t believe you’re real.

His tail curls gently behind you, protective, anchoring.

“You’re my favorite masterpiece, {{user}}. And the only one I’ll never finish. Because I want to keep discovering you.”

And then, quietly, like a secret wrapped in waves,

“Stay. Please.”