Madi giggled at the idea. "Are there more like you, in the sea?"
Celian's grin fell as his gaze swept out over the water. "If there are," he admitted, "I have not met them—or I could have, in another form, without realizing it." He looked down at the girl's face. She gazed up at him with wide, enchanted eyes.
"You mean, there could actually be more?" She gasped.
Celian bobbed his head. "Sometimes, when I am in my regular form, I have memories of a whole pod of Leonies, swimming together."
"Do you have different memories, then, when you're a different creature?" Madi asked, tracing in the sand a loose sketch of the way she thought Leonies ought to look.
Celian nodded. "Each psyche comes with its own instincts, and some of the memories." His lips twisted into a half-smile. "I am able to speak and reason as a human thanks to the memories I received from you."
Madi gave a little gasp as the tide rolled over her drawing and nipped at her toes. Standing up, she waded a little deeper, so the water rolled up around her ankle.
"Is the water always so cold?" She squinted against the salty wind and the bright sun as she looked over her shoulder at Celian.
He smiled and joined her, taking care to hold her hand. "Not everywhere," he answered. "In the southern parts, way out in the middle of the ocean, there are spots of warm water that feel just like a bath to you."
"Ooh!"
Together the two friends walked in the surf, Celian rambling on about the amazing sights deep below the surface: the underwater castles made entirely of coral, exploring a shipwreck and nearly getting caught by the shark who had claimed it first, swimming with whales bigger than houses.
After she had exhausted him of all the stories he could think of, Madi proposed, "Let's play a game!"
Celian pursed his lips and tilted his head. "What game would you suggest?"
No sooner had the words left his mouth, then the young girl grinned and slipped her hand out of his. "Tag!" She called over her shoulder, scrambling over the beach. "You're it!"
Celian's confusion melted as her touch left the game imprinted on his memory. With long strides, he took off after her.
Madi heard the swish of his trousers, felt his touch on her back, and heard him call, "Tag!"
But when she turned around, Celian had vanished.
Madi stopped short in astonishment, but when she spotted a knot of crabs scuttling across the sand, she remembered Celian's ability and smiled. Crouching down, Madi watched the crabs closely, till she distinguished one that wasn't quite walking in the same manner of the others. Gently lifting the creature in her hands, she could see the faint outline of a symbol on its back—the same symbol Celian bore on his shoulder.
"Tag!" She announced, setting the crab on the sand. It instantly burrowed, and moments later, Celian burst from the sand with a laugh.
"Tag!" He told the surprised Madi, and ran past her toward the top of the dunes.
Celian took many forms after that. Sometimes he was a gull that happened to land on the beach; sometimes a rocky cliff, and sometimes even a tuft of grass. But Madi learned that whenever he took another form, it always had that same mark upon it. All she had to do was look for the mark, and she would find him. Each time, he would plunge deep into the sand and emerge in his trousers.
Madi grinned at him. "Can't you change with your trousers on?" She asked.
Celian shook his head. "No; I cannot change these coverings you humans wear—but I know that you have never seen a man uncovered, so I assume it must be proper."
Madi frowned as she realized what he told her.
"Do you read my thoughts?" She sat on the sand and crossed her legs.
Celian lowered himself in a copy of her posture. "Not anymore; it is part of a creature's psyche, some memories. When I touched you, that first day," he reached down and began picking at something in the sand, "I received some of your memories, to help me understand my new form."
Madi watched the small twitches of his lips, the nervous darting of his eyes. "What sort of memories?" She asked.
Celian bobbed his head, squinting at the cool breeze wafting across his face. "Oh, the usual things humans do: how to walk, talk, use my hands, what it feels like to touch my hair and sit at a table." He ran his lanky fingers through his tousled brown mop in demonstration. He looked down at Madi. "There were others I didn't understand, though." He traced a series of numbers in the sand.
Madi recognized them immediately. "Oh! That must be maths class at school."
"School," Celian murmured, already deeply absorbed in the creation of another drawing, this one far more intricate than the others.
Madi stared at the face he had sketched with his fingers in the sand.
"This person was with your father, and you both loved her dearly," Celian winced and grabbed his own chest as the foreign, intense emotion overtook him yet again. "Yet she is not with you now; who is she?"
Madi took a very long time to remember how her voice worked.
"That was my mother."
Her voice came hollow and dead-flat. Celian's instincts told him that his young friend was in pain, and he reached out to her. Clasping her small hand in his long, pale fingers, he asked. "Where is she now?"
The tears stung, but Madi bravely swallowed back the sob. "Mummy's in... She's in Heaven... Now."
Celian knelt so that his face was level with hers, keeping his hands on her arms. "I don't know that word," he admitted softly to the girl whose eyes brimmed with tears. "What is Heaven?"
"It's where humans go when they die!" Madi struggled, but it was a losing battle. The tears just kept coming, though she fought
