Changling Seas

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. The Valley came and went, you see. It was a nebulous thing, as all of the deep ocean is. The area above the deep-sea trench known as the Valley wasn’t a valley as we know it on the land. Well, not until you sink deep beneath the waves, past schooling fish and flowing seagrass and banks of coral. There, the ocean floor descended into a deep crevasse, lower than anything else at that latitude. The Valley.

And the sea dragons came and went like the Valley, one day there and the next day gone elsewhere. They floated. They flowed. They swam briskly with powerful strokes of their tails. They were changeable.

Just like the ocean they claimed as their home.

***

Maya’s arms and face were definitely burning in the blazing sun. This had been a very bad idea. After the fight with her Dad, she’d grabbed the keys to the boat and ran down to the dock. The rental agreement for their summer house definitively stated that no one under the age of eighteen was supposed to take the boat out. Yet here she was. Fifteen years old, a stupid girl, alone in the middle of the ocean on a broken-down boat.

Maya’s temper had gotten the better of her once again.

She jabbed fruitlessly at the center console, trying to get the radio to work or the engine to restart. No luck. Wasn’t that always the way it went?

Things broke. People broke. And relationships splintered under the weight of misunderstandings and ignorance.

How did Mom do it? Manage Dad? Although her parents were divorced, they tried to co-parent for the sake of the kids. These "family vacations," renting adjoining condos so that both parents were close by throughout the long, hot days of summer, were supposed to help keep their family strong.

Yeah, right! Maya's thoughts were dark. Family vacations weren't all they were cracked up to be.

Maya’s father was old-school, a Neanderthal her Mom called him. Maybe it helped that Mom wasn’t around him much, traveling for her job six months out of the year, and living on the other side of the city when she was home. She could tolerate him, from a distance. Maya, however, lived with him year-round. The kids—Maya and her two little brothers—lived with Dad and his girlfriend, Mindy. But Maya’s mother still had to deal with Dad’s sexist beliefs about “a woman’s place” and his good ol’ boy attitudes, if she was going to spend time with her kids.

Maya had just as much difficulty dealing with Dad's attitudes sometimes. This morning had been one of those times. So maybe Maya should have gone next door to the adjoining condo they rented for their conjoined family vacay, to where her mom was staying. But in her rage at yet another stupid-ass remark about Maya's "choices," she’d stormed out. Down to the dock. And stolen the boat.

The boat that decided to flat-out stop working in the middle of the f***ing ocean.

At the sound of an approaching boat, Maya’s spirits lifted. She was saved! As the other boat drew closer, bouncing across the waves, Maya began jumping up and down and waving her arms frantically. “Hey! Hey! I need help!”

Powering down, the other boat slowed as it came closer. It was old, a wooden fishing boat in need of a new paint job. Now she could see the men crowding the deck, four of them. Maya’s arms dropped and instinctively she wrapped them around herself, unconsciously trying to hide from their leering gazes. Each of the men held a tall boy, and between gulps of beer they were passing around a joint. Stubbled faces and stained T-shirts told Maya that these were not the most reputable sort of people to deal with. But when in need—

“We-e-ell, little lady,” one of the men drawled, propping a foot up on the edge of their boat. “Whatcha matter?”

“The engine,” she started to say. “Just…stopped—”

The men shared disturbing grins around the fish-gut-stained deck they were standing on. Maya took note of their nasty-looking sneakers and dirty hands. They’d obviously spent the morning fishing. But not the way she’d grown up fishing.

Her dad always kept things pristine when he took his kids out on the water, insisting that Maya and his girlfriend, Mindy, clean the fish the boys caught immediately and pack them in the ice-filled coolers, then wash the deck off with buckets of water so the boat wouldn’t smell. Women's work, while the men caught the fish.

These guys obviously didn’t care that the smell of rotting fish guts was even stronger than the beer-belches they were letting rip.

Maya shuddered. They hadn’t made a move to help her—yet—and already she was wishing they’d go away and leave her alone. But as the two boats drew closer together, one of the men leaped over onto Maya’s deck with a line, whipping it around one of the cleats in a figure-eight to make it fast. Then two others jumped over, crowding the small deck.

Maya stepped back, trying to put some distance between her and the smelly, inebriated men.

“Well, I’s sure we can help you, ma’am,” one of the other men moved in along the rail, getting too close.

Why didn’t men know when they were being jerks? Why couldn’t they just f***ing back off and leave a girl alone? Maya’s rage returned in an instant. But it was directed at these overbearing, chauvinistic men instead of her dad. Really, though, they were all the same kind.

Men who thought a girl existed for one purpose. Even a fifteen-year-old girl alone on the ocean in a broken-down boat.

Maya held her hands out in front of her to block the man getting any closer. “Back off,” she said. “I appreciate your help, but you’re getting in my space.”

The men looked at each other, their leers growing sickeningly. Then, as one they all locked eyes on the girl. “Help ain’t free, little lady,” the one closest to her said.

“Gotta pay,” another agreed, as the fourth one stepped off their boat and onto Maya’s, making the deck rock.

But the rocking didn’t stop. It grew, the boat lurching back and forth atop the water, until Maya grabbed the back of a seat to keep herself from falling and the four drunken men all windmilled their arms. The rocking grew wilder and then—

With a tremendous explosion of saltwater, an enormous monster threw itself out of the water, scaled coils unfurling into the sky. As the monstrous body leapt from the water, a gigantic tail flipped across the boat’s deck and swept the men into the ocean. The sea dragon’s body thrashed around and crushed the men’s boat into the water, breaking through the hull and sending the sea inside. It quickly began to sink, listing to one side.

Maya was too stunned to scream. The drunken men were bobbing in the water, fighting to stay afloat. And then the sea dragon surfaced again, wrapping its coils around Maya’s stolen boat and pulling it away from the wreckage, leaving the men clinging to the remains of their own vessel.

***

The wrecked boat was far out of sight before the sea dragon stopped, gently unwrapping its coiled length from around Maya’s boat. She huddled between the electronic console and the driver’s seat, shaking. She’d been saved from a bad situation by the sea dragon’s attack. But now—

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The boat was bobbing up and down gently on the waves, lapping water against the hull the only sound she heard. Then the sea dragon raised its head above the side of her boat, peering at her through clear eyes, its gaze direct and curious. Ever so slowly, the monster slithered its length onto the deck, filling up the space. It lay coiled there for long moments, seeming to consider its next move.

And then it started to change.

***

Maya had read stories of magical beings before. Werewolves and were-rabbits and other were-beasts. But she had never thought that a dragon—especially a sea dragon—could be a were-creature.

A shapeshifter.

The sea dragon transformed like water flowing, the matter of its form morphing and shifting sinuously, until a person stood on the deck, its back to her. Its naked butt facing her. She threw a hand over her eyes. “Uhhh—” She felt around on the floor for a beach towel that had fallen off the passenger seat and threw it in the general direction of the naked shapeshifter. “If you don’t mind…”

She slowly opened her fingers to peek and saw that the…person, had wrapped the towel around itself. And then she looked closer.

She’d never seen a sea dragon, after all. And she certainly had no experience with shapeshifters. Her hand dropped and she stared, trying to put all the pieces of this weird experience together in her head.

A tiny thrill ran through her. This being was flat-out beautiful. A finely-shaped face with sharp cheekbones, surrounded by sea-blue-green dreadlocks woven with a cascade of seashells that tinkled in the still air like wind chimes. Pale skin that had never seen the light of the sun, almost opalescent. Arms and legs that were well-defined with shapely muscles and long fingers and toes. But underneath the beach towel—

Did the creature have the small breasts of a teenaged girl? Or just the natural curves of a boy’s body? It was impossible to tell. Whatever it was, Maya found herself feeling an odd attraction.

This is what Maya and her father were at odds over. What Maya flew into a rage about, before she stormed off and stole the boat to escape from her father’s judgmental attitude. She had told her dad that there was a girl she liked, who worked at the pier. A summer romance was all it would be if things progressed over the course of their family vacation. But Dad forbade her from seeing the girl again. He called it “perverted,” and “sick,” and “immoral.”

“No daughter of mine is going to be a fucking lesbo!” he screamed at Maya, when she was too young to even know what her sexual orientation was, or who she wanted to be with. Her father was acting like a dick, so Maya stormed off. Stole the boat.

And here she was. Maya might have ended up in a bad way, since while the sea dragon could drive the men in the other boat away easily with a slash of its claws and a slam of its tail and a mighty roar, it couldn’t do anything about fixing the engine. But the sea dragon had told her how to use the ship-to-shore radio to call the Coast Guard to come and rescue her, so all they had to do now was wait.

But while they waited, Maya wanted to talk. How often does a girl end up on a boat in the middle of the ocean with a shapeshifting sea dragon who was…

A boy? Or a girl?

And more importantly…

Who did Maya want it to be?

“Are you male or female?” Maya asked a short while later, after giving the sea dragon a can of Coke, and sinking down to sit side by side against the railing of the boat.

Maya was a naturally curious girl. She was curious about why people were the way they were. Why did they act thus-and-so. Why did they do this or that.

Why did they choose to do the things they did, and want the lives they wanted, and like the people they liked?

Her biggest wonderings were along romantic lines, though. She still didn’t know exactly who she was or what she wanted, so how could she know who she wanted?

And here she was sitting on the sea-washed deck of a boat that had just been saved from pirates (sort of)—a kind of romantic situation, if you believe all the movies—and she couldn’t tell if this shapeshifting sea dragon who had saved her life was an appropriate romantic interest.

Or not.

Because she couldn’t tell if this was a boy dragon or a girl dragon. But also because she couldn’t tell—yet—if she preferred girls or boys. This was so confusing!

“What do you want me to be?” the sea dragon asked, pushing its dreads out of its face and looking directly at her with its sea-dreaming eyes.

“I…I don’t…” Maya couldn’t figure out what to say. She couldn’t know how to answer that question when she hadn’t decided yet who she was. “I don’t know!”

“If I say that I’m one thing,” the sea dragon said, “you’ll either like me or you won’t, because you think you’re only allowed to choose one thing or another. Humans!” The sea dragon snorted through its delicate nostrils. Was that something a boy did, or would a girl do it, too? “You always think there’s only one choice. Ridiculous!”

Maya could see its point.

“I’m not exactly what you’d call experienced in this kind of thing,” she said, looking out over the empty expanse of gently swelling waves to the distant horizon. “My dad is all, ‘You can only love a boy,’ but his ideas about relationships are pretty sexist. He thinks women should serve men and keep their mouths shut and never have an opinion about anything. And my mom is like, ‘You can love anybody you love, and I won’t mind.’ Which is just as difficult.” Pfffft! Maya snorted. “Choosing is so damn hard!”

The sea dragon was nodding its finely-chiseled head in agreement, dreads swinging. The tiny shells woven into the braids clinked like bells with every movement. “My parents were the same way,” it said. “They were all, ‘You’re a magical being! You can be anyone you want to be!’ Some guidance would have been nice! I mean, what does a kid know about what they should want? We haven’t got any lived experience!”

Maya fell over laughing at the expression on the sea dragon’s face. He/she/it looked just like her therapist at that moment, and sounded like her, too.

“Right?!?” Maya pulled herself upright and realized there was a tear tracking along the curve of her cheek. Why was that there? “So, what did you decide?” she asked.

The sea dragon’s thin lips quirked up at the corners in a rueful—and maybe slightly embarrassed—smile. “I’m a rebel at heart, I suppose. I decided to not decide. Thus—” with a wave of their hand they indicated their human-seeming body.

The bumps that could have breasts, or maybe not. The fine facial features that could have been male or female. The long tapering fingers and graceful legs peeking out from under the beach towel and the smooth skin that there was just far too much of visible to Maya’s appreciative gaze.

“I can be a boy,” the sea dragon said, its muscles bulking up and its face darkening with the stubble of a beard. “Or a girl,” it went on, the muscles giving way to rounded breasts beneath the towel, and its lips becoming pouty and full. “Or I can be a sea dragon. I guess it depends on who I’m with and what they want me to be.”

Maya snorted. “My dad would love that! Somebody who can change to suit what somebody else wants. That’s how he wants me to be. To be what he wants and not who I really am.”

At that moment, they both heard the sound of an approaching engine across the ocean’s swells. The sea dragon turned to Maya and took her hand. They looked deep into the human girl’s eyes and then leaned in slowly until their lips met. The Coast Guard ship was nearly there when they parted reluctantly.

“When you decide what you do want,” the sea dragon said softly, “call me.”

With that, it transformed back into its accustomed form, all scaled coils and powerful tail and fringe-topped head, and slid over the side of the gently bobbing boat.

***

From that day forward, whenever Maya’s mom and dad took her to the beach during school breaks, she’d find time to slip away from the rest of the family and take long, slow walks on the beach. And when she called out to the waves, her sea dragon would slither up from the depths into the shallow water and shift into its human form, the one that Maya liked best. They would walk together, and talk about a million different things as they got to know each other better, their hopes and fears and dreams.

And they would kiss, of course, as people falling in love do.

But was the sea dragon Maya loved a boy? Or was it a girl?

Well, that’s their business and no business of ours.

They were in love. That’s all that really matters.

***

Thank you for reading! Likes, comments, shares, follows, and pledges are always cherished, like a dragon treasures a cavern filled with gold. And books.

Author's Note: I have to own the fact that I am not much good at writing romance. As an autistic person, relationships are strange mysteries to me, and I can't tell if this story works or if it's really lame. This story was even more difficult for me because my character is a girl just discovering who she is, and what she wants in a love relationship. Sexuality is an amorphous thing sometimes, for neurotypical and neurodivergent people alike, as feelings and desires shift and change unexpectedly. There is nothing static about people, or about their feelings for each other. And sometimes I think I'll never really understand them.

This story was written in honor of one young woman whom I know, whose journey to find her right path is just beginning. I hope that she will always be true to her own best choices, and enter any relationship with respect for both her own life and that of the person or people she loves.

***

I have challenged myself to write twenty-seven dragon prologues/stories for the Vocal.media Fantasy Prologue Challenge, one for each day the challenge runs. Here's a link to another of my entries: