The Riders

The water didn't move like it had before. It wasn't a surface anymore, not a line between worlds. It breathed. The whole tide inhaled, slow and deep, and he felt it in his chest — the pull of it, syncing with his heartbeat until he couldn't tell which rhythm belonged to him.

The shapes under the surface drifted closer. Not fast, not circling. Just present. Shadows with intention. Patient in a way that predated the ocean.

Miles crouched, camera pressed against his sternum, lens fogged from the mist. He should have been terrified. He should have run the math on escape routes or shouted for help, even though he knew no one could hear him. But there was no panic left to spend. Only curiosity.

He pressed his hand into the shallows. The water rose to meet him, cool at first, then almost warm — like breath against skin. The moment it touched his wrist, a vibration ran through him. Not a sound, but a frequency, low and bone-deep. Something inside him answered.

He pulled back on instinct. His skin clung to the water, reluctant to separate. The stretch shimmered with thin threads of silver before it snapped free. He stared, breath caught halfway. His fingers tingled. The space between them prickled and tightened, as though invisible threads were drawing closer. Not webbing. Not yet. Just the idea of it.

He laughed once, softly. "Okay. Not normal."

He raised the camera again. The lens struggled to focus — every shot blurred, as if the light refused to stay still for him. He could see them now, the shapes in the water, clear enough that he could sense their outline. He didn't want to name them. Naming something made it smaller. These weren't meant to be small.

They hovered just below the surface, pale and fluid, their movements too precise for fish and too graceful for people. He felt their attention like magnetism—a pull without hooks.

The air had gone heavy. It tasted like metal and salt and something faintly sweet, like the inside of a shell. He tried to swallow, and the motion felt wrong. His throat fluttered, a new rhythm opening just behind the skin. His lungs seized once, twice — then steadied, slower, pulling in less air but somehow more oxygen.

He should've been choking. Instead, he was breathing better than ever.

"My lungs are changing dialects," he murmured, half a joke, half a prayer. The sound of his voice startled him. Lower. Thicker. Like it had traveled through the tide before reaching his ears.

The Riders — that word surfaced in his mind without permission — drifted closer. He could feel the water's temperature shift with them, a gradient of warmth spiraling around his knees. It felt like being studied by something that understood the blueprint of his body better than he did.

He took another photo. The flash burst white, reflected off the water like lightning trapped mid-breath. For a split second, one of them surfaced — a slick curve of flesh, skin the color of fog, eyes like pieces of storm light. It didn't lunge. It only watched him, head tilted, as if confirming an experiment's progress.

Miles lowered the camera. "You're not waiting to hurt me," he said, the realization landing calm and complete. "You're waiting for me."

The sea exhaled. Foam swirled around his ankles. His skin buzzed with energy — not electric, but cellular, as though his blood had learned a new current. The sand beneath him shifted, softening. He realized he was sinking, but the thought didn't alarm him.

He stood, slow, feeling the pull of gravity split between two worlds. The Riders moved with him, shadows aligning like a mirrored pulse. The light fractured across the surface, blinding and beautiful.

He wasn't sure which side of it he belonged to anymore.

He looked down at his reflection. The face that looked back was still his, but not perfectly. The eyes caught more light than they used to. The skin across his collarbone gleamed faintly, like something smooth was trying to push through.

Miles lifted the camera one last time. Focused. Clicked.

A perfect shot — even if it didn't make sense anymore.

The Riders waited, patient as tide. And for the first time, he understood what they were waiting for.

The horizon had blurred into color by the time he noticed the light had changed. Evening, maybe. The kind of light that doesn't belong to day or night, just the space between.

The Riders had settled near the drop-off, their outlines folding and refolding in the dim water. Miles waded closer. Every motion felt deliberate. The sea pressed against him like a second pulse.

When he inhaled, the muscles between his ribs fluttered—a flicker, then a rhythm. He looked down. The skin along his sides shimmered faintly. Fine lines traced the curve of his ribs, soft as scars. He touched them, and they pulsed—small, opening movements, like gills learning how to breathe.

A wave broke against him. He gasped. Water filled his mouth, and instinct screamed—spit it out, breathe air, surface! But his lungs didn't panic. They shifted. He coughed once, swallowed, and the reflex changed. The water moved through him like air, leaving cold behind. Then warmth. Then calm.

When he opened his eyes again, the world was sharper. The surface light fractured into prisms. The Riders glowed faintly below, their bodies carving silver trails through the current. They circled him now, closer than ever, and he realized the sound he'd thought was the tide was them. Low, melodic. Almost language.

He sank to his knees. The sand accepted his weight without collapsing.

"This is it," he whispered. Not fear. Just fact.

One of the Riders rose beside him, breaking the surface in a smooth arc. Up close, it wasn't monstrous. Its eyes were vast and calm, a color that refused to exist on land—half pearl, half thundercloud. The creature leaned close enough that Miles could see his reflection warping across its skin.

He reached out. His hand didn't shake. Their skin met—cool against cool. For a heartbeat, he felt everything: the weight of currents, the hum of pressure, the depth pulling downward like gravity with intention.

It was an invitation.

He took it.

He slid deeper, step by step, until water covered his chest. The gills at his ribs fluttered open fully, drawing in the sea with a rhythm he couldn't control and didn't want to. His skin had lost the roughness of air—slick now, faintly scaled, light catching across his shoulders like wet stone.

He thought of his father then, just for a moment—how he'd look out from the shore when Miles was younger, warning him not to go too far. You can't fight the tide forever, his dad used to say. Maybe he'd been right. Maybe he'd meant this.

The Riders moved around him in a slow orbit. He felt their current in his bones, guiding him deeper. The air above was a memory now—thin and far and unimportant. The light below was richer. More complete.

Miles raised the camera one last time, even as water lapped at his chin. He pressed the shutter without aiming, without checking focus. Just documenting the moment of surrender. The sound was a soft click swallowed by the ocean.

When he lowered it, the Riders sang—a low vibration he felt more than heard. It resonated through him, through the sandbar, through everything still human.

For the first time all day, he didn't need to measure anything.

He let go.

The first sound that broke the quiet was a motor. Faint at first, like a memory trying to wake. He turned toward it, squinting against the horizon's glare.

A boat — small, white, cutting through the last light of evening. He could see a figure waving, a voice carried thin over the water. His name, maybe. Hard to tell through the hum.

For a second, he remembered the world above the surface: his room, the smell of photo chemicals, his father's voice on the other side of a wall. Things that belonged to air.

He rose from the shallows. Water streamed from his arms in sheets. His skin gleamed like brushed metal in the sunset, every breath a ripple against the quiet air. The gills along his ribs fluttered in protest, wanting the sea back. Air scratched at them like sandpaper.

He could breathe it, but it hurt. It felt wrong.

The Riders stayed below, silhouettes just under the skin of the water. Waiting—always waiting. He understood them now. They weren't jailers or spirits or explanations. They were what came next.

He looked at the boat again. Closer now. He could make out the shape of the rescuer — a man leaning forward, reaching out, shouting for him to stay still. The man's voice was full of relief. Hope. It might have been his father. It might not have mattered.

Miles took one step toward the shore, and his lungs burned. Not from lack of air, but from too much of it. The pressure of the open world pressing inward, demanding the old rules.

Another step. Pain sharpened under his ribs, gills spasming closed. His eyes stung in the dry light. The noise of the motor scraped across his hearing, shrill, unnatural.

He stopped.

The realization came without drama, like the end of a sentence. He wasn't meant to be rescued.

He turned back toward the sea. The water shivered around his ankles, cool and certain. The Riders surfaced in greeting — pale arcs of light bending toward him.

Miles smiled, just once. The smallest, calmest smile of his life.

He thought of his camera lying somewhere behind him in the sand, its lens fogged with salt, memory card full of impossible evidence. Someone would find it. They'd see the last photo: the sandbar, the light, the line where the sea began. They'd call it beautiful, maybe. Or eerie. Or staged.

But he would know the truth: it was an invitation.

The man on the boat shouted again, louder now, closer. Miles lifted a hand in acknowledgment — not a wave goodbye, just a gesture of understanding. Then he stepped backward into the tide.

The water met him like it had been waiting for the signal. Cool around his knees. His waist. His chest. The pain faded with each inch. Air fell away. The weight lifted.

When the surface closed over his head, everything went silent except the low hum that had been there since the beginning — the Riders' song. It wrapped around him, warm and deep, a sound too wide for lungs.

He opened his eyes underwater. The world was color and movement and pulse. His skin caught the light; his hands webbed cleanly now, fingers slicing through current like they belonged there.

Above, the boat drifted closer to the empty sandbar. Below, the Riders swam in slow spirals, and Miles moved with them — not observing, not photographing, but part of the frame.

For a final moment, he thought of words — something clinical, like a note to end the experiment. Transformation complete. Subject adapted to new environment.

But he didn't need to say it. The sea already knew.

He followed the Riders into the deep, and the tide closed behind him.