Shiro let the man leave the shell behind before he carefully picked it up and drew it close to him, accepting the gift calmly and formally, by holding it below his heart and nodding to the man. He felt a spark in the pit of his stomach and was unsure whether it was excitement or something more. He hadn’t met anyone calm and intentionally harmless for months and the last trinket he had received had been from Adam. He gripped the shell and let the ridges sink into his hand, imprinting their patterns along his palm slowly.

The rest of his arm tingled slightly from where it had touched the land man and where he had brushed against him. He had never touched anything living above water, let alone something living and dry and the friction that accompanied the movement was tantalising. He felt a strong urge to hold him again, to reach out and touch the smooth skin and soft hairs covering it, but he knew that customs and traditions would frown upon him. Instead he watched and listened.

Shiro had no real way of knowing what the man was saying but he did his best to listen. The man’s manner of speaking was so different to that of the merfolk and they used such different movements to communicate. He found himself relying on the pattern of emotion; the only thing he could recognise.

His voice was gentle and calming. Against his better judgement, Shiro was drawn to him, drawn to his dark eyes and the hair that curled at the ends around his cheeks and his neck. Shiro swam closer again and touched the dock. He lifted himself more, his shoulders and gills completely exposed and the old wounds stinging lightly in the breeze as the salt was exposed to them. He couldn’t push himself any higher without his tail fin or the strength from his shoulder, but he felt close enough to the man now.

He had so many questions, so many curious thoughts, but communicating them felt impossible so instead he drew attention to the fact that he had no idea what to name this man. He placed a hand on his chest and slowly, carefully willed his name into the sounds he uttered. The distant relative of sirens, merfolk such as Shiro had a sort of telepathy in their language. It wasn’t something that came strongly naturally and instead it was something that had to be learned. Shiro brought back those lessons and murmured his name once again to the man, wondering how it would sound from the man’a mouth should he understand, “My name, it is Shiro. What may I call you?”