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Again she screamed, and again Alden made as if to jump straight over the moon with the shock of the sudden interjection. So incredibly loud, these humans were; her especially, he was learning. He hadn’t yet finished recovering before she skittered back into the boxy phone booth. His hand half-extended to catch her, and a grimace of his own marred his tranquil face. It had not been his intention to be an instigator in any harm that befell her, but she was so unexpectedly skittish; he was having a difficult time predicting when or not she would react volatilely to her environment. This was not how he had planned for this to go. All the other girls he had seen were the epitome of warmth and bravery—this one seemed distant and suspicious. She was missing every step he had choreographed for them; if he were wearing a tie, he’d be anxiously pulling at it. 

“I’m terribly sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you.” His smile had dimmed, but a nervous chuckle was released from somewhere in his constricted throat nonetheless. A part of him weighed the option of politely excusing himself from her company, and sparing them both the rest of the calamity that was his miscalculation in their introductions. But he liked her; she was his very first human friend. He wanted to know her. 

They came to a silent impasse that made his skin itch under her probing gaze. The sounds of the night echoed in the air around them. Many of the people on the boardwalk had dissipated, off for their own adventures, but the few that remained, combined with those he could hear from the fair, created a low din of noise that he found to be pleasant. To the far right of him, car tires could be heard rasping against asphalt; below them, the water gently whispered; all around them crickets chirped and whip-poor-wills chanted. He liked the song that this new world of his sang, very much. Interrupting the continuous melody with a voice he found lyrical in its own special way, the girl mocked his wording. He squinted; it was hard to perfect the humans’ speech—it was so informal, lazy almost. 

Without warning, the girl lifted up her shirt, revealing her smooth, soft flesh underneath. Cheeks slightly warming, Alden politely averted his eyes. Nudity was commonplace to say the least in the forest, especially among the nymphs; in fact, sexuality was something very much embraced and manipulated in his world. His kind, the fay folk, frowned upon the other mythics’ ostentatious salaciousness, but even the fay could not be categorized under prude. More than a dozen times in the human world he had eavesdropped on talks of modesty—mostly mothers, fathers, and grandparents sharply scolding their kin for the amount of skin they revealed—and had concluded that the baring of flesh was not looked particularly fondly upon by many who inhabited the human world. The last thing he wanted was to offend his new friend by looking where his eyes were not welcomed. When his peripherals let him know that she was covered, he returned his gaze to her and smiled warmly; despite the bleak emotions that swirled in her eyes, he was bursting at the seams with hope for them. 

That hope hitched only briefly when she requested money from him. He should have been ready for it, especially given he knew that was solely what she was after. Pretending that he wasn’t sure, he proceeded to vainly dig through his pockets for the money she requested. When nothing was found as expected, he removed his hands and showed them to her with an apologetic shrug. 

“No, I guess I don’t.” A second passed before his eyes lit up with an idea. “I don’t have it, but I know someplace that might. The fair always has loose change on the ground. I would be more than happy to walk you there and look with you, if you’d let me.” There was nothing stopping her from telling him to get bent; in fact, that was probably the smart thing to do. She didn’t know him, and she certainly didn’t owe him the time of day. He had nothing to prove that he was the kindred spirit that he was, only the genuine smile that he offered her once more.