Private ocean, take me away

It's been a few hours since Quincy realized that his mood had been dropping slowly in the past couple of weeks. At first, he was ignoring it, pretending everything was just fine. He even diverted the topic. But that was mostly because he didn't know why, so he just denied that fact to everyone. Everyone else seemed to be buying it as far as he knew, even his mom. Until dawned on him what month it was now, and he remembered just what was bugging him. His birthday was coming up soon. Or rather, the anniversary of the day he was found. He'd celebrated his faux birth day with his mom the last few years since then, but lately... he didn't feel like looking forward to it. For some reason, he wasn't feeling like celebrating it. Right now, it only made him wonder why he was even lost in the first place, only to be found by someone else who knew nothing about him. He's never told his guardian how that had started to weigh over him and he didn't actually want to let her know. Quincy decided to go out o the beach that evening. Or so he told his mom, but he had just decided to get a little farther than just the beach. He stepped into the water, not even caring how he's still dressed for the cool evening, and once he got far enough, he let himself be pulled into the waves. He knew enough there was no way he was going to sink and he would just be floating casually in the water anyway. He sighed, his back to the water and squinting into the dark night sky, wondering to himself what would have happened if he was never lost in the first place. He couldn't care to look how far he was from the shoreline, or if he was completely alone when he went into the water. All he was thinking about was letting the ocean waves do its thing and figure out how to get back later.

For a moment, Quincy drifted in silence with the water occassionally washing over him. Maybe it would be nice if he could just go underwater for... maybe forever? Nah, he had to go home sometime before sunrise. He wouldn't want to worry his guardian too much already. Except he wasn't feeling going home yet. As he let the his thoughts be carried off, he was startled by a voice that spoke over the waves. After splashing about for a bit he found the source and looked at them with relief. "Oh goodness gracious, you startled me!" he exclaimed, a slight flush of embarrassment on his face. Quincy looked around him, trying to find where he'd come from sure enough, he was farther off shore than he last checked. "Uh, I think I'm fine? I can swim back..." he lied, obvious in his unsure tone. He was decent at swimming, but not quite against a current. For a moment he wondered how he was going to go through with that little lie until he realized he wasn't the only one this far off shore. He'd have asked properly but the question seemed to have died when he turned and saw his new companion illuminated by the moonlight, leaving the younger teen speechless for a moment. Stunned, he forgot what he was even supposed to ask until he just ended up blurting out the first question he managed to string up together, "Wait, so how are you here then??"

"Ahhh, no, no, no, it's fine" Quincy scrambled to say, paddling about to stay afloat. "I'm just jumpy when I'm spacing out." Which was... fairly more often lately. He thought he'd grown out of it but it seemed like he was quite wrong about that. He was also quite wrong if he'd thought he was more observant than he thought. Looking at the other's tail, he could only utter an "Ah," with how he idea of merpeople around the the island even flew over his head. But also because he'd never seen any merfolk up close -- at least, in their aquatic form. He looked more than impressed, looking like he would have reached to touch their scales but hesitated, fully remembering they were having a conversation. "Oh, um. I can handle that," he tried to say, but considering how the other offered a second time, he would have guessed they weren't buying his lie. He sighed, defeated. "Okay, maybe I could use some help, actually." They were surrounded by mostly open water, and it didn't look like the current was going to make this easy for Quincy to swim back before sunrise on his own. "Were you just swimming alone out here?" he asked. Though the answer should have been obvious, Quincy thought it wasn't anything he couldn't ask. "I'm Quincy by the way."

Quincy managed to not get too startled when Jae had swam closer to him. Or rather, he managed to not show it as much, though he surely looked a slight bit flushed for a moment. He hesitated for a moment before following his instructions, but kept his gaze away. "I'm kind of the same. The water's usually calming," Quincy said, trying to keep up a conversation, followed by a weak laugh. He went to the beach to feel the waves, but letting himself get swept away by the water was not something he did. "Well... except I don't really go this far ahah... I wonder how that would have turned out if I just kept drifting off?"

Quincy was barely paying attention. Next to the flowing water beside them, he was maybe a bit distracted by his company. Maybe. He was trying not to think but that might have been potentially worse in this situation, especially since Jae was clearly warning him about the ocean. He wanted to say it didn't really concern him; for all he knew he was already dead. "Hey, so how far away have you swam from the shore?" Quincy asked, seemingly out of the blue. The idea occurred to him when Jae mentioned of the current, reminding him that something happened to the island earlier. He'd never noticed much difference after that long night but he'd heard people talking about it. "Sorry, that might have been out of nowhere," he apologized, drifting away from Jae now that they were closer to shore. Quincy smiled apologetically. "I was just curious. I've never been off the island at all and I was wondering what's out there."