Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 01:12:15 EST
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: Sea Fever

				 SEA FEVER
			   By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
		      WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM

     [NOTE: The evolutionary theory espoused in this story is quite
legitimate. I personally think the evidence for it is pretty slim, but it
is NOT something I made up.]

     There is a primal fever that burns within when a man looks at the
ocean. There is something that is--kindred--about the waves, the smell of
the salty swells, the way the roaring of the waves and the whistle of the
wind tell secrets directly to your innermost soul. You listen to the waves,
you feel the spray on your cheeks, you walk upon decks that are moved by
the water beneath you...and you are lost. Land can never again totally own
you, your heart belongs to another medium, and it must share you, a
joint-custody arrangement.
     At the time this began, I was looking at the water, the way the blue
waves were a slightly-darker shade of blue than the rest of the water, and
the waves darkened more as they approached land, to suddenly blossom with
white and jump down onto themselves. Every fourth or fifth wave was a bit
larger than the others, I noticed; funny how it works that way, you'd think
all the waves would be the same size. That's what I was doing, musing on
the mystery of the waves.
     Well, actually, I was getting a drink at the tavern near the
dock. When, in response to a question from the bartender, I replied that I
was planning to head my sailboat out to Tarbor Cove, it seemed to stir one
old geezer's innards, for he sat up, stung, and said, "Tarbor Cove! Why in
tarnation would you want to head out to Tarbor Cove?"
     Tarbor Cove is a small, bay-shaped piece of land, but it has a barrier
reef at its mouth and no decent place to land anywhere around it; it is a
nearly landlocked (but not quite) piece of water where nobody ever goes,
and for damned good reason. A boat smaller than mine usually doesn't have a
sail (and it's too far from civilization to row there) and a boat much
larger than mine wouldn't be able to make it through the barrier reef. So
it was pretty much no-man's-land, and I was determined to seize it as a
place to be alone for a time, just me and the water.
     I shrugged. "I'm on vacation. It's private and quiet. Looks like a
good place to put down anchor for a while, and just fish and swim and take
it easy." Away from everybody, too, though I didn't say that.
     "Fellow, you don't want to go out to Tarbor Cove!" the old man said.
     "Aw, come on, Zeke, nobody here wants to hear about your mermaid."
     "Merman!" Zeke snarled. "This one wasn't a girl, I keep telling you!"
     I perked up, intrigued despite myself. As I said, there's something
about the sea that gets into your blood. You want to be with it and live
with it. Trouble is, if it gets too deep into your blood, you go bonkers
like old Zeke seemed to be, and start seeing sea serpents and mermaids and
Bermuda-Triangle-type stuff. "What's this about a merman?" I asked.
     "Don't get him started." someone said.
     "Too late, he's already going." another one said.
     "There goes the next half hour, shot to shit!" a third bewailed. But
nobody left, I noticed.
     "It's just a story." the bartender said.
     "It is not!" Zeke said. "I've seen it on one of those nature
documentaries. The merpeople are real!"
     "Barnum's fake monkey-fish doesn't count." scoffed someone.
     "This wasn't Barnum, it's a real scientific fact. The merpeople are
our ancestors. We crawled up on the land, they stayed behind in the sea."
     "What's this?" I asked.
     "Aw, don't encourage him!" that third guy said.
     "Ever wondered why we're the hairless ape?" Zeke said.
     I shrugged. "Because we're born without a lot of hair?" I
ventured. That got a laugh.
     "No, because our ancestors spent some time back in the ocean. However
long ago it happened, our ape ancestors chose to get back into the
ocean. First they were just swimming around in it, but after a while, they
actually began to live in it, for oh, probably hundreds of thousands of
years. During that time, we lost our hair, because hair soaks up water and
weighs us down; slows us up. Our legs straightened out and got bigger and
stronger, to help propel us through the water. Then we crawled back onto
land again and used our legs to run instead of swim. We even still have
vestigial webbing between the fingers of our hands."
     I looked at my hand, spread my fingers. "I don't see it."
     "That little flap between your fingers." Zeke insisted. "It's bigger
between your index finger and thumb. Look at it!"
     I stretched out my hand. "Well, I see a tiny ridge if I hold my thumb
right."
     "That's it!" Zeke crowed. "Used to be our fingers were connected with
webs just like a duck's toes. We got back on land and it got in our way, so
it went away. But we kept the wider hand and the opposable thumb. Helped us
become intelligent, having a hand that can actually hold on to things
well. If it wasn't that we used to need that web for swimming, our thumb
would'a stayed up next to the other four fingers, the way a chimp's does."
     "I guess so." I didn't feel like arguing with him.
     "So you agree that mankind spent some time on land, went back to the
ocean, and then came back onto the land and got intelligent?"
     "If you say so."
     "Well, the merpeople are the apes that didn't get back out of the
water again. They stayed in there, got better at being swimmers. I met one
at Tarbor's Cove over fifty years ago. He came up to me right at
sunset. They like sunset, the sun doesn't dry out their skin so
quickly. Somehow or other, he had learned English, spoke a real old version
of it, like they would have spoken at Plymouth Rock, full of 'thee's' and
'thou's'. But I understood him, and we talked every day for the two weeks I
was there. He helped chase fish into my fishing net and we became good
friends. But they're shy around strangers."
     "Then why did he come up and start jabbering to you?" someone asked.
     Zeke flushed. "If you're all going to poke fun at me, I'm not going to
say anything else."
     "I have to go anyway." I said, getting up and dropping a five on the
bar for my two drinks and not waiting for change. "I need to set sail if
I'm going to catch the tide."
     "Mind you keep away from Tarbor's Cove!" Zeke warned me.
     I ignored him. He probably wanted to keep all the fish there for
himself.
     I scraped the hull of my boat getting inside Tarbor Cove, a bigger
boat or one with a fragile keel would have been in real trouble. And it was
too far for any kind of rowboat to get out to here. Which was the point, of
course; this cove was unused because nobody could get into it unless they
had a boat just my size. I got inside it and looked at the sun. Only about
a half hour until setting. Enough time to do a bit of quick fishing; I
could spear a fresh fish for supper and then settle in for the night.
     I got on my scuba gear and my spear-gun and dove down. The water
wasn't as clear underneath as I had thought; I had only seen Tarbor Cove
from a distance. It wasn't dirty or murky, but I could only see about
twenty feet ahead of me before it blurred out to blobs. Probably how old
Zeke saw a merman, he had seen a dolphin (they look a lot like people in
the water) or a manatee (the front-runner for the spark of the mermaid
legends) in this murk and decided it was human.
     Like that over there, some sort of seal, or dolphin or...I
looked. Damn, I owed Zeke an apology. That looked just like a person!
Before I could see anything else, though, it was gone into the blurred void
beyond. I shook my head--shouldn't listen to the old salts, they're half
crazy from all the sun hitting them while out on the water day after day,
they spend too long at sea at a time, trying to catch fish, and get to
imagining things. The sea is full of life; it's easy to let a piece of
seaweed turn itself into a sea serpent, or a blob of coral become a sunken
pirate ship.
     I looked about, a sea bass wasn't very far away. Smaller than I
preferred, but it would do, and I needed to get back above-water; I shot it
clean and hauled it, still wiggling feebly, back to the boat. Yeah, this
was going to be a good vacation. So long as I didn't start imagining things
in the water.
     I saw that whatever-it-was twice more the next morning while diving
and exploring the area; never as clearly as I did that first day, but
enough that I convinced myself it was a dolphin, playing around with me. I
never saw it surface, but then wild dolphins aren't as chummy with people
as everyone wants you to believe; they keep a safe distance.
     About eleven o'clock in the morning, I decided to take in the
combination of tide and rock at low tide to get in a little time on some
dry land; the bob of a sailboat can wear on you after a time, and you yearn
for solid earth. There was a small sort of wave-smoothed rock-shelf there,
big enough to let me stretch out and lie comfortable. The rising water of
high tide would come around sunset, so if I fell asleep, it would waken me
in time to swim back to my ship. I'm a light sleeper; I didn't expect to
get into trouble by trusting the tide to awaken me before drowning me.
     I moved my ship over as close as I dared (the sea was quite shallow
there, I had to stop nearly a hundred feet away from my chosen sunbathing
place, and I swam over and stretched out on the level area as well as I
could, wishing I'd thought to bring over a towel in a Baggie. But the rock
was dry and washed smooth by the waves, I'd manage. I used the bottle of
fresh water I'd brought with me to rinse the worst of the salt from my
body, then lay down, and tried to get comfortable. I was fine, except that
the wet swimsuit bugged me, and itched too. Too much salt water trapped in
it.
     I decided to say to hell with it, stripped it off and tossed it up on
the highest point around. I'd count on a wave not washing it away before I
woke up. It did feel better without the swimsuit on me. I squeezed a little
water out of my drinking bottle which I'd also brought to rinse my groin
and buttocks, and then lay back down. The sun dried me off and I felt good,
warm, drowsy and pleasantly tired. As I expected, I fell asleep.
     I awoke to the sound of laughter. One voice, a bit high-pitched, at
first I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, and it was more like a
giggle. I jerked awake and looked up. A man was in the water, looking at
me, laughing. His hair was long and white, but he wasn't old. It didn't
look dyed that color, either, too many subtle tones in it for a bleach job
gone awry. My first thought was that he was an albino, except in that case
he'd have very pale skin and avoid the sun like the plague, and his skin
was as deep brown as my own. He was standing in the water near me (the
water around this spot wasn't at all deep), visible from the waist up, and
I saw a well-muscled body, totally hairless, his body glistening with the
beads of water. How had he splashed over to me without me hearing him? I'm
a light sleeper, as I said!
     "Hello!" he said. Yes, his voice was pretty high-pitched, like a boy
whose voice hadn't changed. Just like his hair, it was something odd about
him.
     "Hello." I said.
     "Asleep?" he asked.
     "Uh, yeah." I said. "I was getting some sun." I noticed that the water
was climbing; high tide was nearly upon us and the sun near to
setting. "What are you doing out here?"
     He made a nod of his head. "I live here."
     "I didn't think anybody lived here." I said.
     "I live here."
     Some beach bum, I supposed, had built a shack on the rocks and I
hadn't seen it. No matter.
     He dove back into the water and I saw he had some kind of gear on his
back, but I didn't get a good look at it. The rock had a rather steep
drop-off at this point, he was still up to his knees in the water though
only a few feet away now. And now I could see everything, like, that he was
as naked as I was!
     I smiled. Comrades in our pursuit of the natural lifestyle. "You
decided to go naked, too, I see." I said.
     "Yes." he smiled.
     "Where are your clothes?" I asked him, curious.
     He gave that funny nod again, and said, "I don't wear clothes."
     "Oh." I said, smiled. "Well, they are a nuisance, aren't they?"
     "I never wear clothes." he said firmly.
     "No reason to." I agreed. I was checking out his cock, of course, who
wouldn't in a situation like this? He had a nice piece of meat there, and
it was rising up as he noticed my looking at it.
     He was walking up to me all the time he was talking. I stayed where I
was, noticing that his cock was beginning to become less a dangling blob of
flesh and more of a waving pole in front of him, pointing and questing
about as if sniffing for something to plug into.
     So I wasn't surprised when he made it up next to me, reached out and
simply grabbed my cock. I would have been more surprised if he hadn't!
     "Nice." he said as he pumped it from semi-rigidity to full
tumescence. "Feels good."
     "Yeah, it sure does." I sighed. I'd wanted to be alone, but if you had
to have someone with you, this was the kind of someone to have! I hunched
up with my hips and threw my head back, showing this nature-boy that I
appreciated his attentions.
     His lips almost caught me off-guard, suddenly my cock, totally dried
out by the sun and not even bearing the slight wetness it gains from being
trapped in cotton underclothing, was engulfed in warm moisture, and a tight
grip of velvet-soft lips were ringing it, sliding up and down upon it,
sending thrills of joy through my body.
     I groaned at this sudden influx of pleasure and rolled my head forward
to watch this child of the beach at his work, and gasped.
     The "gear" I had seen on his back, which I had taken for diving
equipment of some kind at my first glance, was a part of his body, a dorsal
fin! Rising up from, and a part of, the muscles on his back, it stood
upright and rippled in its own independently muscled exhortation of
happiness as this white-haired, sturdy, beautiful...creature nursed at my
manhood and slobbered plentifully upon my cock, lubricating it, inciting it
to waves of excitement.
     "What...who?" I gasped out.
     He looked up at me with mostly his eyes, his mouth still clamped onto
my cock and continuing to bob up and down up on it, and my appellation of
"creature" to him vanished. This was no monster; this was a human being,
despite his odd-colored hair and his dorsal fin and...his hand came up to
clasp my breast, and I saw the web between his fingers, his hand wider by
far than mine as it stretched out, and the web slackened and fattened up
again as he closed his fingers, and used them to rub the button of my left
nipple. His skin was soft and supple though very damp with the ocean water.
     What was he? Who was he? "Merman" was the only word I had, and it came
to my lips unbidden. "Are you a merman?"
     He released my pud only long enough to say, "Yes." and he went back to
work on it, giggling as he did so. This was not a demented sound, it was
more like the chuckles of dolphins laughing, a joy de vivre that exuded
from every pore of his being.
     He must have been out of the water too long, for he released me,
dunked back under the water and stayed for about five seconds, long enough
for me to begin to rise up, and then he burst back out of the water, which
flung from his long hair with careless strings of white pearls as he tossed
his head and his smile caught the setting sun which had not yet turned the
world red with its departure, still showing him gleaming white, white from
a thousand diamonds of beaded water upon his remoistened body.
     He fastened once again upon my cock, and I felt again the sense of
pervading warmth his mouth imparted to my cock, wrapping it up, warming it,
loving it. I was now in a semi-sitting position, and my legs lowered down
to splash into the water. It was like I was sitting in a bench that was up
to just below the seat in water, for the tide was coming in rapidly now. I
let my legs wrap around my cock's benefactor, and he chuckled without
letting go of my cock, then reached out and tucked his arms in between my
legs and then grabbed and lifted them out, and I was back prone again, this
time with his arms holding my legs upwards, and I was dragged outwards and
my buttocks impacted the water, cold, to touch his body, warm, so warm!
     His cock was the hottest part of his body, it felt wonderful as it
slipped between the crevice of my buttocks, and his cockhead touching my
anus was the meeting of warmth to warmth. I felt his arms become more
insistent now, his body more aggressive, and now the back of my legs were
pressed against his chest and I was folded in half like that, and I went
into the water more, so that only a grab by me to the shelf of rock kept me
from sliding all the way in, and I felt his cockhead push its way into my
body in a rush of cold sea-water preceding it. Now only my head, shoulders
and arms were out of the water, the rest of me was below the rising tidal
waters.
     The water lubricated my skin, only to have it stretched out by his
cock; it seemed like a live thing worming its way into my body, he took
advantage of a small swell that came our way and which washed up onto the
shelf, and he plunged into my ass. The water crashed around me, a miniature
tidal wave, splashing around the rocks, and I was impaled, and I lost my
hold on the rock, and with my merman, I slid totally into the water.
     Around and around in a tumult I swirled with him, our bodies locked
together, joined at the hips, I clung to him as the only stationary object
in a swirling, wet universe, and he laughed, there, under the water, he
laughed and that laugh carried to my ears. Then he pressed his lips to
mine, and blew into me.
     Air! He breathed in water and breathed out air! A few of his
life-bearing breaths into my lungs, and I was ready to hold my breath
again, and he took advantage of that time to fuck me lustily, sending the
water around us into a swirling maelstrom of bubbles that danced and clung
all around us, his breaths out, and my own. Then he kissed me, and turned
the sea water that entered his nostrils into air for me, and I breathed it
out, the two of us in a chain of life from the water to him to me and back
to the water again.
     I couldn't conceive of how he did this; when he wasn't deliberately
breathing for me, he exuded no bubbles of his own, the bubbles that swarmed
around us once again were from my own flailing lungs. He somehow could
choose how he breathed, air or water, and he used that talent to prolong my
stay underwater with him.
     With his aid, he kept me there for as long as he wanted to, he humped
me frenetically but for a very long time, as if he could keep this up all
day and night, and his thrusts into my body thrilled my prostate and send
shudders into my brain, I was his love-slave from that moment on, he could
fuck me as he would; I was willing.
     Some unknown time later, with the waters darkening around us into an
inky blackness--sunset--he threw some quick breaths into me, and then his
body thrashed in my arms in abandon, and he grunted, and I felt a new
warmth assault my bowels, his orgasm. Done, he sank down, and I had to
reach for his lips to gain some air from him, which he gave me feebly. Then
he pulled his flaccid cock from my body and his legs came out to wrap
around my body; he was presenting himself to me.
     A good thing, I was trembling with the need to blast my nuts clear; I
reached for his lips and he fed me air once more, this time the passive
recipient as I hunched into his body now nearly invisible in the dark
waters around us, and I sent my cock, raging with heat and lust, into his
bowels and there I shuddered, the heat around my prick was intense, and I
fucked at him desperately, a few moments of rapid thrusts, and I was
groaning my lust into his life-giving mouth, I sucked the air from his
lungs and he let me, I needed it all, and he gave it to me, and I flooded
his ass with my jism, let my joy-wracked body sag against his, and we two
floated in the darkness, not touching anything but the cool water, a pool
of sated lust within the larger pool of water around us.
     Some time later, we broke the top of the water, and I emerged into air
astride his body, looked around as the sky was now deep, deep blue, and
stars glinted here and there like small fireflies of the night.
     My boat, where was my boat? Way over there, a black oblong upon the
water and a lance of bare mast for the sail was furled. I looked down at
him, still submerged beneath the water, and I wanted to stay as I was, but
it was like he saw me get my bearings and knew I was safe, for he suddenly
and without warning gave a kick with his legs, he slipped from beneath me
and was gone in a slight ridge of water that was just disturbed by his body
moving just below the surface, and this ridge suddenly played out and was
gone.
     I swam back to my boat, for I had drifted a good ways away from it,
and finally made it back onto the deck, clambered naked onto the deck, and
lay there, sobbing out my weariness. What a hell of an experience! I'd
never forget it! Nor be able to tell it and be believed!
     I hadn't expected to see him again, but the very next day, when I was
out again underwater, this time with tanks strapped to my back and goggles
on my eyes and spear-gun in my hand, I saw again the form in the distance,
but this time it turned and swam toward me, and I saw him again.
     Hell, and I was beginning to think you were a dream! I thought to
myself. He smiled at me broadly, and I smiled back around the mouthpiece,
and he darted above me and I waited for him to reappear, but instead my
swimtrunks were grasped and he was tugging them off from me.
     A larger, baggier pair than the ones which I had left on the rock and
which were now gone, washed away by the tide; he pulled these baggier
trunks easily from my body, and I turned over only to have him swim up atop
me and clasp me tightly, and his legs were between mine.
     You're ready to go again, I see! I thought to myself, but now with the
air supply strapped to my back and the mouthpiece firmly in my lips, there
was no hurry, I let him take his time, for he seemed to understand that
this time he did not need to hurry, and he played my body with his warm,
stroking hands, feeling me over and over again as if he would never tire of
the touch of my body, and I did the same to him, marveling at how alike our
bodies were, his skin was a good deal thicker than my own, probably to
conserve heat in the cold water of the ocean, but it was just as soft and
pliable as my own. Even that dorsal fin, save for the spines that held it
erect, was soft, and even the spines were more like the cartilage in the
ear than actual scales or bony protrusions.
     So while the mouthpiece kept us from kissing, we enjoyed all the other
games of slow lovemaking, until at last his body reached toward mine and he
pressed his manhood into my body, and I sighed, arced backwards into his
holding hands at the small of my back, and he again slid in to possess me
utterly.
     Now the urgency of the night before was gone, he fucked me languidly,
for so long that my air began to play out, until at last, driven on partly
by my urging to his body in those small ways you let your lover know to
speed things up--come on, faster, faster!--he groaned a verbal sound into
the water--he could talk underwater! What lungs he must have!--and his eyes
flung open maniacally wide and his jism was a spear of hotness into my very
self, and I clung to him, and then reluctantly, flippered my way back up to
the surface, for my air was practically gone.
     And he took my cock beneath the water, me bobbing with my head and
shoulders above water, and his lips nursed my cock below, so that I clung
to my boat's ladder and just hung there, dangling down into the water, the
water that held his warm mouth and his talented lips, clutching and kissing
the rough rope of the ladder while my passion built within me and I shot my
wad into his milking mouth.
     He didn't leave me all the time I was there, he was always nearby. I
would nap on the deck of my own boat, to find him venturing onto the alien
craft, walking awkwardly but walking upright, his hips leaning him somewhat
forward so that he moved almost like a gorilla or chimpanzee would, and he
would take me there on my blanket, soaking the cloth and myself with his
ocean water, hunching at me rapidly, reaching his climax, and then diving
back into the water. He couldn't stay long out of the water, he could
breathe air for quite some time, but it seemed to lack some ultimate
nutrient he needed, he had to return to the water once more and I noticed
during one such period his eyes glazing and I interrupted our lovemaking to
force him back into the water, and I joined him there, holding with one
hand onto the end of the ladder to return to the surface for quick breaths,
but remaining the rest of the time underwater so he could finish his
lust-driven plunges into my ass.
     The days of course moved by too quickly, as they always do when a
vacation is shared in this way, so soon I had to leave him, realizing that
I knew little about him despite the long times we had spent together. I
never saw him using the smallest or crudest tool or wearing anything upon
his body at all; I had no idea what or how he ate; I knew little more than
that he was a horny cock attached to a beautiful body, and that he craved
me at every opportunity.
     But I made shift to spend a moment talking with him, insisting upon
it, and made it clear that I was leaving him now but would return. He
understood, but it seemed to matter very little to him, or perhaps I
misread our friendship as something deeper or, which I think is most
likely, he was not from a gregarious race like our own, he was quite
content to be alone beneath the waves except for when he needed sex, then
he would seek me out and if I wasn't around, well, so be it.
     So his heart seemed untroubled, but mine was heavy as I wended my way
back to the wharf, docked and ventured once again into the tavern. I found
the old guy again and I approached him, made it clear I wanted to speak
privately. We found a table away from the others and I leaned over.
     "Zeke, I just want to say that I met up with your merman at Tarbor
Cove." I said.
     He smiled almost sadly. "Yes, I figured he'd still be there. I think
he's lived there a very long time."
     "Will he still be there when I come back next year? Or maybe sooner?"
I couldn't keep the eagerness out of my voice, and Zeke smiled, kindly but
also somehow sadly.
     "He'll be there, like he always is." Zeke said. "He always was there,
from the time I was young, your age or even younger. He stays there, never
changing. I don't know how old he is, but when he started talking to me, he
spoke a very old form of English. I think he learned it from the first
white explorers to this land."
     He reached out and took my arm with a surprisingly firm grip. "He'll
be there, but he won't always welcome you. You see, he doesn't understand
about growing old. To him, you just get uglier and uglier with the
years. He'll reject you one day, turn away from you, just like he did me."
     "Next time you see him." He clenched my arm for emphasis. "Tell
him...tell him that Zeke remembers."
     And wiping away a tear from the corner of his age-lined face, he
stumbled to his feet and back to the bar, ordered a drink with a loud,
harsh voice. I turned and looked out at the waves, rolling in an azure
splendor, looking the same as they had before, and always had, and always
would.
     There is a fever that gets into your blood when you first become
acquainted with the sea. It's like the sea knows your very soul, that it's
a part of you awakened once again.
     And now, I knew why.

				  THE END
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