<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #4080FF">"Ya like my hair? In a mess like this?"</span> Alannah was honestly surprised. It was just hair. She hadn't even had time to brush it that morning. She finally managed to tie her ponytail, mostly due to the fact that he had gone behind her to shield her from the wind. His warm, gentle hands on her face weren't helping, in fact they proved to be even more distracting than the gales. <br/><br/>Surprised at first, she found it more difficult than it should be to let him go as he hugged her. The odd, misplaced feeling of community had only intensified the longer they had been together. She was positive that she would never be able to replicate this magical chance meeting with a stranger ever again, and his beaming smile only confirmed this sad thought. She watched him turn away, turn his back on her and leave her to the rocks and the gulls, and it felt like she had lost a very dear friend even though she didn't even know his last name, his favorite color, or where he came from except that it was probably somewhere down south.<br/><br/>A particularly loud shriek from a bunch of birds, who apparently had found something edible, shook Alannah out of her trance. Making sure he was still just a dot at the edge of her vision, and checking there were no other dots around, she ran up the rusting metal stairs and into the park. She checked the time on her phone. 17:32. Good. Plenty of time to get home and get some food and sleep tomorrow. Once more looking around to make sure absolutely no one was near, she pushed some bushes aside and quickly stripped down. Turning off her phone as the last thing, she flew down the stairs again and straight into the water.<br/><br/>As soon as the choppy waves closed above her, the familiar sensation of her legs snapping together and growing into a long, grey shark tail hit her. The first breath of salty water through her freshly developed gills behind her ears felt like getting drunk for the first time; so invigorating and stimulating. She couldn't resist practicing a leap, cutting through the air in an elegant circle. As she calmed down, she couldn't prevent her thoughts from returning to Dimitri. How far away had he gone? Had he already made it up to Crescent Ave? She began swimming along the coastline, for no other reason than that she might get a last glimpse of this mysterious person in a blue shirt, who had given her this strange sense of belonging without doing anything at all.</div>