He stared at her. Sentences flashed behind his mind's eye, spilling his heart out in a dozen flower-tipped phrases. Poetry. Lyrics. Prose. In his head he gave her the moon and the stars. Laid the earth at her feet and named it heaven. The only heaven he needed to know; the heaven that existed for no one but him.

His mouth opened and closed like a fish. The bubble rose in his throat. Panic wanted to settle in; to take control from within. The little mermaid’s predicament, being voiceless, had nothing on the clawing silence. No sea witch could reason it away.

A small bubble gave way in his throat and he pushed words out as fast as he could, anything and everything that gave voice to his heart… “I like your butt."

Anything.

But that.