Are you looking closely?

"Yes!" cried Emmerine, "It is confusing. But you will get there, Aradius, you will get there."
"Is that a mocking tone?" Aradius called out, huffing after her in a mild sweat.
"Well it isn't not a mocking tone, so who's to say?" Emmerine shrugged, facing forward, her long legs striding fast and elegant in the sand, and if Aradius hadn't been sweating out his toxins and heaving great mouthfuls of oxygen just to stay alive, he might have stopped to admire this walk.
He ignored her insulting comments and called out, "I agree with you!- oh, wait, oh please, Emmerine!" and he stopped suddenly, heaving like he had never heaved before.
Emmerine glanced over her shoulder (she was a head taller than him) and rolled her eyes.
"Oh, Aradius. You are so frail and wonton."
Aradius frowned, "Wonton? Are you admiring me?"
"It's a human word, yes?" Emmerine swayed her hips and her long silk skirt swayed with them.
"I am not frail just because I can't keep up with you!" he cried out in anguish and with hurt feelings and a sore head, as he was bald up top and not wearing a hat. The sun was extremely vivid today. "I am not frail at all, I am large and in charge!"
Emmerine smiled, "You are actually large. I have just realised."
Aradius was not large, nor was he 'in charge'. He was thin and small and his head had sported thick, shiny, floppy dark hair before this little trip. He eyed Emmerine's teal-coloured hair falling down her back to her hips, and felt a mad urge to run her down. It was probably all that swaying. (Perhaps it made him a tad sea-sick).
"Anyhow, Aradius, we must move. The sun is wilting my good vibes."
"Yes," Aradius nodded, hands on his knees. He took a few deep breaths, straightened up and started walking alongside Emmerine, sneaking a glance every now and then at her hair. Was that wilting, too? Could he possibly help it along on its wilting way?
"So, EmmieLine, I have a suggestion. A sort of fanciful fun-time activity we could take part in."
There was no pause or slow in Emmerine's stride as he talked. Aradius felt unheard and unappreciated. "I'm thinking, a sort of PARTY GAME!" He tried again.
"Why are you yelling?" Emmerine asked as they came to a wide stairway of stone steps set deep into the sandy bank. They started climbing up.
"Oh!" Aradius attempted to laugh in a carefree, accidental way. "Was I- OW!"
"Yes," Emmerine remarked grimly, "the contrast is not alluring to me at all. Neither is it pleasant. Let's hurry."
They were both halfway up the steps when Aradius screamed. Emmerine jerked to the side as if an invisible ghost had pushed past her.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "What is it!"
"I do not know!" Aradius cried out in reply, hopping from foot to foot as he leaped up the steps.
Emmerine copied him. "It is painful! And it's getting worse!"
"IT IS!"
"Is this normal for humans?!"
"I CANNOT SAY!"
"HURRY!"
And together they hopped, pranced, and twirled up the scorching hot steps and raced straight onto a patch of grass that framed the road.
"Oh the grass is cool!" Aradius moaned. He closed his eyes.
"We're babies," Emmerine scowled at the yellow and purple flowers around them. "We are not one with the elements. Aradius, this has to change."
"Can it wait until my feet stop steaming?"
Emmerine said, "No," in a forceful way that was encouraged by her aggressive stomping on the grass. Aradius thought this trip was most uncomfortable and made up his mind, right here, with his feet cooling and his head burning, that he would never do this again.
"We must take up action against this attack!" Emmerine was saying, "What was that party game? Quick! We have to beat this!"
"Don't bother with that! It was a l-" but Emmerine took hold of Aradius's emerald vest and was shaking him with such extravagance that he thought the gold buttons would fly off.
"Hold up!" he yelled with a voice full of anxiety, "these buttons are capital elegance. They are ELEGANCE!"
"Tell me the fun-fi-"
"I ONLY HAVE FOUR LEFT!" Aradius pulled himself away, tripped on the rocks and steadied himself against a wooden railing, and he turned to glare at Emmerine. This outing had changed her. "It is not my doing if your hair is losing it's shade and your leg-scales are falling off!"
"You have a whole cupboard full of vests!"
Aradius blushed because it was true; he did have a substantial amount of vests, all in emerald green and purple and teal blue.
Emmerine waved her hand and seemed to compose herself. "Ok. Yes, my scales are leaving." She lifted up her skirt, stretched out one leg and they both looked. Translucent, silvery scales the size of a fingernail were scattered up and down her legs from her hips to her toes, like a full-length, ripped-up stocking.
"I'm sorry," said Aradius solemnly.
"Thank you."
They admired the sparklyness of the scales. Aradius tried to stick a fallen one back on using his spit and Emmerine shrieked about hygiene and the process of reattachment and the red patch coming up on his scalp. Then they stopped and stared about.
"Have you noticed any sound at all, Aradius?" Emmerine questioned, looking up and down the street.
"I haven't. Aren't the birds supposed to sing and the people supposed to shout at one another?"
Emmerine said, "Yes. The singing. But, more so, the cars are not moving and there are no people." They looked at the three cars standing still in the road. The doors had been left wide open, exposing towels and bags and baby capsules. All the houses and shops along the street, they observed, were also quiet, dark and seemed eerily empty, as if everyone had decided to get up and leave at the same time.
"Well, how boring is this!" Aradius exclaimed. "A trip to where the Air Dwellers roam, and they are not roaming, or dwelling, or running naked with ice cream!"
"It is frightful."
"It's disagreeable," Aradius corrected, eyeing the small, square toilet building to their left. Then he said, "EmmieLine, could we go somewhere without the sun? Just for a change, you know... heat and skin, heads without hair, such a bother..."
Emmerine turned to Aradius in excitement, unaware that a few scales detached themselves from her legs. "This is the adventure! We will find them!"
"Do you feel so?" asked Aradius as he inched closer to the toilet block.
"Don't you think we'd know if all the humans suddenly disappeared?"
"I probably feel that."
Emmerine nodded furiously and looked out at the ocean. "So we help," she murmured. Aradius thought she looked quite up-herself standing at the wooden railing, staring like a Sea King, muttering about saving the world and flipping her long, thick hair. Thank god she didn't have a trident, he thought to himself. She would have probably raised it in some gesture, and then a bolt of lighting would have no doubt come flashing down from some enchanted cloud to touch the trident tip and cause a scene. He pushed open the closest toilet door and positively slid down the wall in a slow form of gratitude.
"Oh this feels... I'm not sure... not sure if I ever have... but the feel..."
Emmerine appeared at the doorway clad in a shadow of determination. "This isn't time to feel! It's time to fight! First! We get an ice cream. That it where the fun-filled times are. Then!... Well...," she paused and looked down, so her shadowed head seemed to shrink and make Aradius squint, which hurt his eyes and forehead and peeling scalp. "...I hadn't got that far. Maybe we will watch a movie, as that is also where the times are at. But after! We will find the humans!"
Aradius said, "I hear butterscotch ice cream is a flavour to be had."
Emmerine said, "I think you are so wrong you may be going backwards," and two little silvery scales fell from her thigh, catching the sunlight and glittering in a determined sort of fashion as they drifted away.