They come to me sometimes, from the great salted hall where they gather, and they walk down to my edge still wearing their bright second skins. Fur that is not fur, dyed the colors of no creature I have ever drowned. Long snouts that do not breathe. Paws that hold their small glowing rectangles above the foam so I will not take them.
Under the false pelts they are only what everyone is: warm water walking, a little salt, a little tide, borrowed from me and going nowhere I will not eventually collect. I taste them through the sweat that beads at their collars in the heat of their coverings. The same salt as my own body. The same salt as the first shallow warm sea their kind crawled out of, still carrying me inside them, still carrying me now.
One of them takes off the great grinning head and holds it under one arm and lets the wind touch its actual face, and the face is younger than I expected, and it is laughing, and its eyes shine wet. Salt water, welling up. Even weeping, they give a little of me back.
I do not know why this one hides in the shape of a beast. I do not know what it hides from. I know only that the disguise is water and the creature beneath is water and the tears are water, and all of it is mine on loan.
They will fold their bright pelts into bags and go back to their dry rooms. That is fine. I am patient.
Every drop of them walks a little closer to my edge each year, and I have never once had to reach.