The Crocodile God

Part 1.

Mirasol finds a man at the beach one morning, but not in the "went swimming and had fun" way: It's a drizzly Nor-Cal autumn, and he's gone through a meat-grinder.

He's half-buried in the sand, lean muscle under deep-brown burned skin, with a shredded filmy cloth tied around his legs--too fine and delicate for swim trunks. The salt and sun have reduced it to blotchy orange scabs, but there are hints of red left. His shirt's been long destroyed.

She kneels. "Hey. Are you okay?"

He scrabbles, attempting to swim through the driftwood, but he only digs farther in.

"Yay, nothing's broken." She sizes him up to see if she can get him to the car; she's used to everyone being taller than her five-foot-even frame, but those muscles don't weigh five or ten pounds. "Let's see if I can move you--"

An engine sound deep from his chest, and his bloodshot eyes snap open. He pushes up with his hands, sand falling off like water--

Oh, his tattoos.

A net of scales explodes from his shoulder all the way down to his wrist, and rich black crocodile ridges streak down his back when he twists to look around. He must be Samoan.

"Ssss--" he coughs and wheezes out: "Saan ako?"

"You're Filipino?!"

He squints at her and says something else, but with his voice almost gone, she only catches dagat for the sea.

Damn it, what if he can't speak English? Most Filipinos are passable in English, but if he's a new immigrant, he'll have to put up with her mangled toddler's Tagalog. "Uh... Salita ka... Ingles?"

"Fuck." He laughs, splintering like the driftwood. "I'm sorry, where am I?"

And he's British. Lovely, he was probably on vacation when the sea tried to eat him. "You're in California. The United States. Let's go to my car, I'll take you to the hospital." She gets her keys.

He doesn't move, staring with terrified dark eyes. Then he blunders down the empty stretch of beach, and she follows him with a sinking feeling.

"Don't go back in the water!" She tries to grab him, but he's too fast for her, even half-dead.

"Is anyone here?!" He lunges back for her and she knows he's upset, but she can't help a small jolt of terror when his hands clamp down like a crocodile. "Are they looking for me?!"

"I only found you." Too tight, too tight--she squirms. "There's no one else."

"Sorry." He realizes he's hurting her and he lets go.

"It's okay--"

"I'm sorry." His voice is crumbling again, and he falls back down into the seafoam.

This time he howls.

---

She takes him to the emergency room where he's officially diagnosed with heat stroke, unholy sunburn, and dehydration. He's dunked in ice-water (his hiss of relief is as good as steam), and given half a dozen bags of IV fluids.

His name is Haik (two syllables, Ha-eek), and unless it's for medical needs, he will not talk further. He's like a black hole of sadness against the whites of the hospital room.

In a few days, he's deemed fine to send home--well, physically fine, and to Mirasol's place.

"Try to get something out of him," Dr. Hideki says in her office. "Don't force him to talk, but legal information would be nice when he's a little less traumatized."