Kingdom Hearts fic: Scales

Scales on AO3
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: T
Pairing: Sora/Riku/Kairi by the end, but mostly Riku/Sora throughout, with hints of past Riku/Kairi
Length: 5344 words, complete
[Originally posted 07/02/2020 - but I want a link to it on my Dreamwidth]

Riku was the first to see the mermaid. Just a flash of scales, out between the waves, there and gone in less than a breath. Easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for, and most people didn’t.

So Riku was the only one to see the mermaid, and he was terrified.

(In which Riku is a merman who chose to shift to a two-legged form to live as a human with a human love, but is terrified that the merfolk he left behind will try to force him to return to them. Or perhaps he simply wasn't the only one wanting to escape.)

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This was written for my SoRiKai discord's Summer Event last year. I utilized the prompts "Mermaid," "Storm," "Drowning," and to a lesser extent "Scars" and "Separation."

The moodboard/cover was made at the time I posted it, though I changed a couple things about it recently, mostly just tweaking some color choices.
I reused a few of the same images for the moodboard/cover for Step Right Up, which was on purpose, since that fic is an AU of this one.