Life's a Beach and Then...

Jessica was sitting on the beach in an isolated cove, sunbathing in the nude, when a man walked out of the sea.

That's odd, she thought, because she knew she'd seen nobody enter the water since she'd arrived a couple of hours ago.

The man was about six feet tall, with long, wavy blond hair, and a physique that screamed gym addict.

But who was he? Where had he come from? And how had he been underwater for so long?

That was when she noticed the webbing between his fingers and toes.

Well, what do you know? Is this the actual man from Atlantis?

No, don't be silly. There's no such place.

But the presence of the man said otherwise.

"Hello. May I help you?"

He stared at her but said nothing.

Of course, why would he speak English?

She pointed at herself and said, "Jessica".

He looked at her, bemused.

Jessica repeated her actions two or three more times.

Eventually, the man seemed to grasp what she was doing. He pointed at his chest and said something she didn't understand.

Not sure how to proceed, she got up, ignoring her nakedness, since the man was too, and went to shake his hand.

At first, he was reticent, but she continued anyway and, as she grasped it, said "Hello" again.

He tried to repeat the word, but what came out was garbled.

She felt at ease with him nonetheless and smiled.

That he could do. His smile was huge, and his teeth were pearly white. Literally - made of pearls as best as she could tell.

Now what?

She took him by the hand to where she'd been lying, and when she sat down, he followed suit.

The man, surprisingly, barely glanced at her, even though she was shapely in all the right places.

Maybe women were different where they came from. Or maybe the males weren't such animals and treated their women with more respect.

Well, he was definitely the strong silent type.

They lay there for another hour or so when Jessica heard her phone beep.

The noise startled him, presumably because he'd never seen or heard anything like a phone before.

Jessica retrieved her phone from her beach bag and glanced at the screen. Damn! She had an appointment to get to and had to leave.

"I need to leave now. Do you want to come with me?" She tried to turn her words into gestures, but nothing registered with the man.

Reluctantly, she reached into her bag and put some clothes back on before shaking his hand once more.

"I need to go. It was nice to meet you. Goodbye."

She waved as she turned to leave. He smiled and copied her gesture, although he had no idea what it meant.

Left to his own devices, the man continued to lie on the sand, staring at the horizon.

Although he didn't speak any land language, having come from an undersea nation, he had his thoughts.

And they were ones of confusion.

How had he managed to escape the confines of his underwater city? That wasn't suppose to be possible.

And how was he going to get back again? The barrier that mimicked the seabed was meant to isolate all external life from the city. It had certainly done its job when he'd immediately tried to re-enter.

And what had that strange woman been doing and saying? He had seen her lips move and heard the sounds she was making, but it all meant nothing to him.

The tide slowly came in, but he let it wash over him since he was used to being below the water. Actually, it was refreshing because he'd found his breathing to be laboured when on dry land.

The temperature was dropping too, and that bothered him. His home under the dome was deep below the surface, but it was heated by thermal vents on the ocean floor.

And he had no clothes. Nobody wore them back home because there was no need to.

Sex wasn't really a thing at all for his people. Men and women deposited their sperm and eggs individually in special receptacles. Then, after a few months, new life arose.

Sexual attraction meant nothing either. There was no point since their reproduction was asexual in nature. Why bother being the most beautiful or handsome when you never had to choose a mate in the first place?

He saw some large leaves on the ground behind the beach, presumably having fallen from the trees. He gathered a few and tried to cover himself up, but it wasn't really working.

He also noticed it was growing darker - something else he'd never witnessed before because their light came from a plethora of bioluminescent creatures that swam around in the dome.

What would happen when that orange ball in the sky disappeared? Where was it going? And would it ever return?

So many questions, and no means of asking them out loud, and nobody to ask them of.

He was still recovering from his long and tiring swim. He wasn't even sure he could find his way back there.

On the positive side, he could breathe underwater. Still, none of his fellow inhabitants was used to going anywhere over a long distance. There was no need inside their city, which contained enough food to sustain them, even though there were thousands and thousands of people there. And for water, they had a purification system that took in seawater and made it drinkable.

As night fell, he had to make a decision. Should he try to return to his city now, or should he rest for a while and hope that the light would return again soon?

With the sun gone, he noticed a different light in the sky. Well, several, actually. There was one large one, all silvery yellow, except it wasn't a complete circle like the orange one had been.

And then he saw hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny pinpricks of light dotted all over the blackness of the sky.

It was beautiful, even though he had no concept of what any of it was.

All he knew was that he was both anxious and contented. Anxious about returning to his home as soon as possible, because he didn't know how long he could survive here on land.

And contented because he felt so at peace. For the first time in his life, he was all alone since their city did not allow for much personal space at all. And it was quiet, so quiet.

Then there were those beautiful twinkling lights in the sky. Barely enough to see by, but enough to make it possible to see something. The last sight he saw was the reflection of the moon rippling on the water as he fell asleep - for the final time.