Mermaid AU, HaruMina goodness...a pic years in the making (been sitting in my HD for YEARS, then I started sketching it a year ago, then FINALLY did the rest this year!)

Story by kourabiedes:

She came to slowly.  The sand under her cheek was cool and yielding.  Her fingers dug into it reflexively.  Something teased at her memory, a faint sense of wrongness  --  but it flitted away.  She lay still, trying to recapture the thought.  Where was she?  The breeze whistling over her body chilled her right to the bone.  She could taste salt water, dripping from wet hair that was sticking to her face and shoulders unpleasantly.  Salt water...  It seemed like there was something she should remember, something about the sea  --

Her memory kicked, suddenly, a confused impression of splintering wood and screams.  Haruka gasped, pushing herself up to her elbows.  The ship!  What had happened to the ship?!

Moving was a mistake.  She doubled over, racked by deep, body-wrenching coughs.  The sand around her was soon spattered with sea water, joining the damp patch that was forming off her sodden dress and hair.  In the aftermath of the fit, Haruka stayed bent over, holding her midsection.  Memory was coming back in jagged fragments  --  sailors running in all directions, a shattering crash, water sloshing around first her ankles, then her knees, as she scrambled for the deck...

Did it... sink?  Her thoughts struggled upstream against an overwhelming fog.  Where am I?

The breeze picked up abruptly.  There was a sound behind her, a splashing like something moving in the surf.  Haruka's head snapped around.  Something?  Someone?  Another survivor, perhaps?

There was someone there, all right.  In the light of the full moon, she was clearly visible  --  a slender, feminine, humanoid torso, and a shining fish's tail.  A mermaid.  That was all Haruka had time to register at first, as the moment the mermaid saw her turn, she whirled away, diving into the surf.  She was still visible for a moment in the clear ocean waters, a streak of jewel-bright blue.

"No, wait!" Haruka called, far too late.  "Don't go!"  She watched the blue tail vanish behind some nearby stones.  A real mermaid?

She hadn't hallucinated that, right?  Haruka reached over and pinched her arm, yelping as pain shot through it.  Well, that certainly proved she was awake, at least...  She gazed out at the place where she had last seen the mermaid.  She was here, for a moment... did she save me?