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awkwardlyplacedknives · 1 year

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He Called Her Lyra

(Happy Mermay! I haven't drawn nearly enough this year, so have a short story, instead. Originally was written by mashing together the prompt "Celestial" with the prompt "Underwater Creepies".)

The stars were bright that night. Even from her perch on her favorite rock, far below the surface of the water, she could see them. She stared up at the pinpricks of light, tendrils of hair swirling around her head as the currents shifted lazily around her. She was indecisive. She could go up to the surface, watch the stars more clearly, ruminate over the constellations taught to her by her great grandmother when she was just a wide-eyed guppy. Or, she could make her way back towards the colony, where the others were enjoying the distant lullaby of passing Wail song. Or, she could make her way to the deeper waters and dig for tasty mollusks hiding in the silty bottoms.

So many options to choose from, and not nearly enough urgency to make a choice. So she sat, unblinking, tail occasionally flipping this way and that as she soaked in the silence.

She felt the dull thud rippling through the water before she heard it. A murky shadow had blotted out part of the starlight. Something had been drifting along on the waves only to bump into the top of the ruin a few tail flips away. It was an ancient structure the origins of which none of their shared memories could recall. Perhaps it had been housing for one of the previous colonies, the ones that had tried to mimic the lifestyles seen on distant shores centuries ago. Maybe it was one of the many ships brought down by a storm or a beast sent from the gods. Whatever it had been, she only knew it as the ruin, and now it acted as an anchor for the thing on the surface.

Well, that was something. It felt like a choice had been made for her. Maybe the thing caught on the ruin would have something she could scavenge and bring back to the colony. Who was she to question the call of fate? She stretched languidly, letting the great length of her tail unfurl. Then, with the speed her ancestors had evolved over eons to hunt and avoid predators, she turned and zipped through the water towards the ruin.

She slowed when she reached the structure, spiraling around it towards the surface. She trailed a webbed hand along it as she climbed, liking how it felt simultaneously rough and smooth under her fingers. As she drew nearer and the shape above became clearer, she recognized it as a smaller version of the ships littering the seabed. There was a specific word for it…what was it again? Ah, yes, boat. A boat had collided with the outstretched arm of the ruin, some sort of net tangling around the structure, holding vessel in place.

The shadow of the boat swallowed her as she came to a stop beneath it. The material was…strange, that awkward, tough, fibrous material that the ships were made of. She’d never understood it; with how it swelled and rotted beneath the waves, it didn’t seem like a practical building material to her. Even now, she could see cracks forming along the boat’s underside, a few of the pesky mites that infected one’s tail and left it itching and oozing and raw burrowing into them. She wondered if it felt spongey, like some of the newer wrecks did. She pushed her palm up against it.

The weight of the boat shifted. She darted away, eyes wide. There was something in the boat, something alive. What a treat! She’d heard tales of land beasts being sent out into the sea as gifts for the gods. Perhaps this was one such offering. Already, she could feel her pulse rising, her throat tingling at the thought of warm, fresh meat sliding down into her stomach.

Her tongue slid across the sharp points of her teeth. Even better than trinkets for the colony, she could bring them a meal. Land beast meat, Wail song, starlight—a night could hardly get closer to perfection than that.

Right, then. First things first, she needed to size up her prey. She prided herself in her strength, but she was no fool. If it was too large for her to drag from the boat herself, she would have to make sure the vessel was truly anchored in place before fetching help from the colony. An easier task if she didn’t spook the beast inside. She swam away from the boat. When she was satisfied with the distance, she made her way to the surface until the top of her head broke through with hardly a ripple, eyes blinking only once as they were exposed to the dry air.

The stars really were bright that night. They swirled through the sky above, white specks in a fog of pinks and purples. When she was young, she’d imagined swimming through those clouds, festooning her scales with glittering stardust. She paused for just a moment to admire them, to savor the sweetness of those memories. When she’d had her fill, she let her eyes roll back towards the boat. It looked empty at first, bobbing silently in the water. But if she looked closely she could see a mass inside, moving slowly to its own rhythm.

Something was there. Something breathing.

The ruffled edges of her gills fluttered along her hips. How exciting! She couldn’t see the whole beast yet, but from even this glance she could tell it was just the right size. Large enough to give everyone a hearty mouthful or two, yet small enough that she could handle it on her own. If she was mistaken, no matter. The boat was unwieldy; she could overturn it easily and dump her prey into the water. She felt a shiver of delight run down her spine. Slowly, she stalked towards the boat.

The anticipation grew as she drew nearer. She opened her mouth and let out a series of soft clicks. This hunting tactic didn’t work as well above the surface, where the vibrations reacted differently to the air than the water. But at the very least they could give her some idea of the beast’s true size. She hoped it was one of those things with six legs and a too-long neck. Every now and then, a colony that dwelled closer to the shore would travel out to their territory, hunting seasonal fish, and would bring scraps of meals as signs of peace. Of all the delicacies they had provided, the six-legged beast meat was her favorite.

The boat was cutting off her clicks, making it tricky for her to read the vibrations. She made them louder. Having a good reading on her prey beforehand would help her guesstimate how long she would have to hold it under. She was so absorbed in translating that she didn’t realize just how loud her clicks had gotten until the beast shot up into full view.

She jolted away from the sudden movement on instinct, but then froze. This was not the type of beast she’d been expecting. It looked familiar. It looked like her kin, but…wrong. Where there should have been scales was only squishy, pink flesh. The eyes were too small, white where yellows were supposed to be, the pupils tiny and surrounded by a ring of green. Its hair was cropped close to its head, shorter than she’d ever seen on any of her people.

The beast had its hands—The right size and shape, she mused, but where are its webbings?—wrapped tightly around a long pole that was broken and jagged on one end. Its mouth was open so it could bare teeth that were rounded off, so dull and useless that they made her own teeth ache. She could smell hormones coming off of it, stronger than if they’d been underwater, clogged with the scents of the sea. It reeked of fear.

“Wh-what?” it said quietly. Its voice was raspy. The sounds it made didn’t make sense to her but tickled something in the back of her mind. She knew that language. Or, at least, the colony did, and had passed it on to her along with all the other knowledge gathered through the generations. She thought hard, remembering drinking greedily from a small wound on her great grandmother’s palm, the information taken into her along with the taste of blood.

The language was connected to the memory of an ancient ancestor. That made it fuzzier, harder to recall. Her tail flicked in irritation as she stared at the beast, trying to remember. She knew it was the same language that had provided her with words like “ship”, “anchor”, and “boat”…was there anything else?

The beast, seeing only her head bobbing tranquilly in the water, slowly lowered its pole.

“Are you…a mermaid?”

Mermaid. That sound, that word, was what she needed to make the connection. That was the name given to her kind by these beasts. They called themselves “humans”. She’d never seen one. She wasn’t sure anyone alive in her colony had. All they’d known was stories from the shallow-dwelling colonies, and the knowledge from the ancestors.

The humans were new to the planet. Her great grandmother’s own great grandfather had been a guppy when they’d arrived in strange, shiny vessels that had fallen from the sky. The humans rarely left the shores, unable to survive the ocean’s temperament. When they did attempt to venture out, it was in those great ships made of the fibrous material that inevitably joined their kin beneath the waves. It was thanks to one of those ships that someone had managed to find a single human in the distant past and steal their language with a kiss, sharing it with the colony through the ritual bloodletting. She called that old knowledge up as she lifted her head farther from the water.

“Yes,” she said. Her throat constricted and itched, vocal chords unused to moving like this. The human jumped. It stared at her, mouth hanging open like a dying fish’s.

“…I’ve gone mad,” it said. “That’s it. I’ve gone mad.”

She didn’t answer. She glanced at the pole, then back at the human. Its grip relaxed ever so slightly.

What was it the humans said of “mermaids”? She wracked her brain. Beautiful creatures, they said, half human and half fish…Bah. Now, the beautiful part, she could work with that. Many were the foolish creatures that had been hypnotized by beauty only to realize too late that they’d fallen into a clever trap. Given how it stared at her, this human was no different.

She approached the boat, taking her time, eyes flicking every now and then back to the pole. She didn’t know how dumb these humans were, but if they were clever enough to build ships (structural integrity not withstanding), then they were clever enough to use a weapon. She needed to stay out of reach of that pole.

As she approached, the human pulled back, edging towards the opposite side of the boat. It couldn’t go far. Its back hit the opposite side, and it glanced over its shoulder, towards the water. She took the chance to propel herself faster. When it turned to spot her again, she could smell the fear spiking. She paused.

The two stared at each other for a long time. She waited patiently. It was not the first time she’d played the long game during a hunt. She thought she could hear a heartbeat pounding somewhere beneath the layers of material wrapped around its body. Why on earth would it be wearing all that? The material would only drag it down should it get in the water. Land beasts had less instinct for self-preservation than she thought.

The pink and purple clouds swirled and shifted, making the stars shimmer. The human glanced up at them, hesitating. She waited. The human sighed and then coughed.

“To hell with it,” it said. “If I’m going to die out here, at least I’ll have some company.”

The human sat down hard, making the boat rock back and forth. The pole vanished. She knew it could easily be summoned again, but in the time it would take for the human to draw it forth she could dive underneath the boat and flip it. Feeling a surge of confidence wash over her, she closed the last bit of distance between the two of them. The long arm of the old ruin jutted up from the water just enough that she could grab it and lift herself higher, to peer into the boat.

What a strange creature. Yet still with that same sense of familiarity. Now that she was closer, she could see it looked vaguely like the men of the colony, though maybe half their size in length. Where she would normally fine a tail she saw two long legs, also wrapped in baggy material. The hands—she thought they were hands, but it was hard to tell—at the end of the legs were bare and red, peeling badly. He wasn’t sick, was he? She couldn’t bring tainted meat home.

“You look…different than I expected,” he said. He’d been watching her watch him. The fear still lingered, but it was dulling slowly, replaced with exhaustion. She could use this to her advantage.

“So do you,” she said.

“Oh? What were you expecting, then?”

“Something like me.” It was true. The flashes of information from the collective consciousness had brought to mind a human that, dragged underwater and colored with the shadows of the sea, looked far more like one of her kin than the human in the boat did.

“That makes two of us, then.” He laughed. It sounded painful.

She was getting anxious again. The urge to grab the human and pull him into the water was strong, but she could see his hand was still gripping the pole, however loosely. Even if she could dodge it, she didn’t want to deal with the extra exertion. She would need to be patient until he dropped his guard. To settle herself, she slipped back into the water and circled the boat a few times, getting familiar with its diameters, planning.

She could feel the human watching her as she swam. When she surfaced again, a sense of wonder had filled his eyes.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

“What are you?” he replied. She blinked. Maybe he was more stupid than she gave him credit for.

“This is my colony’s territory,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Colony? There’s more of you out there?” The human sat up straighter, head swiveling back and forth, as if expecting an army to close in on him. He would find nothing. The colony didn’t really come out to the ruin unless new parents wanted to let their hyper guppies tire themselves out, and breeding season was still several moons away. It was just the two of them.

“What are you doing out here?” she repeated. She turned to float on her back, lounging. “Human ships give this area a wide berth.”

“I know. Mine sank miles from here. Must’ve been miles, anyway, I haven’t seen anything to suggest otherwise.” The human sighed and raked his fingers through what was left of his hair. “I’ve been out here for three days now. Luckily the boat had some water stashed aboard, but a fat lotta luck that’ll do me if I’m stuck in the middle of the ocean.”

Three days. She wondered how skinny he was getting beneath his coverings. Maybe there would be less of him to go around than she thought. That wouldn’t do. If she was going to bring meat home, she wanted enough for everyone.

She rolled over and dove into the water again, ignoring the human’s startled cry. Thankfully it didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. She knew the area well and knew exactly where the edibles hid. She managed to find a couple of oysters and a long, thick eel that she dispatched with a quick bite. The human was surprised when she returned and deposited her catch into the boat. He was a jumpy thing.

“Eat,” she said, when he only stared at the gifts.

“I…I’m not sure I can,” he said.

“Why?”

“Well, usually, fish like these have to be cooked.”

“What’s “cooked”?”

“What’s…right. It where you heat up the food to make sure it won’t make you sick.”

She cocked her head. She reached into the boat, rolling her eyes when he shied away from her scaly arm, and took hold of the eel. She opened her mouth wide and bit off the head, her favorite part, crunching on the skull and licking at the blood that dribbled out between her lips. The human stared at her, aghast, as she swallowed hard.

“It’s fine,” she said, dropping the eel back into the boat.

The human opened and shut its mouth again and again. His eyes slid towards the eel. She waited. He gingerly picked up the carcass and eyed it, watching the bodily fluids drip into the bottom of the boat.

“I’m only doing this because I’m desperate,” he said.

“Eat,” she said.

He hesitated. She lay back in the water. Another sigh, and then, screwing his eyes shut, he bit into the end of the eel and ripped a chunk of flesh away. He grimaced, shuddered, chewing first slowly, then quickly. He swallowed hard and gave her a disgusted look. Satisfied, she dove again, on the hunt for more snacks.

* * * * * * * * * *

The human had begged her to stay when she’d made to leave him and his boat the following morning.

“Who knows what’s out there?” he’d pleaded. “Something could knock me out of the boat while I sleep!”

“I know what’s out there,” she’d assured him. “You’ll be fine.”

She’d decided not to tell the colony about her little find yet. She wanted to fatten him up first, and make sure he wasn’t sick. That peeling on his leg-hands had her worried. The last thing she wanted was to infect everyone with some kind of fin rot.

She was admittedly worried that he would not be there when she arrived. Despite her words, the human had had a point. There was no telling if a lone predator would wander by, catch sight of the boat, and become curious. If not that, then there was a chance that he could have untangled the net and drifted away. But her fears were for naught. The boat was just where she’d left it, and so was her human.

“What’s your name?” he asked as soon as she surfaced. She paused, arms full of more oysters (he seemed to have an easier time stomaching those).

“What?” she asked.

“Your name,” he repeated. “What do I call you?”

She dumped her catch into the boat and let her arms hand over the side, floating beside him.

“I don’t have one,” she said. “Not one you could pronounce, at least.”

He frowned. She watched him go to work cracking the oysters open on the ruin as she’d shown him. It was much easier to do with a knife, but she wasn’t stupid enough to provide her prey with a weapon. She still had that pole to worry about.

“What’s your name?” she asked. He slurped at the contents of an oyster, smacking his lips in appreciation. It made her stomach growl.

“Frederick,” he said.

“Frederick,” she repeated, slowly, letting it fall from her mouth like rain. “Fred-er-ick.”

“Yup. Just like my grandfather, and his grandfather before him.”

“You have the same names?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s the only heirloom we had.”

“What’s an “heirloom”?”

“It’s a special treasure that you keep in the family. You pass it down from one generation to the next. You know, a keepsake.” Frederick cracked open another oyster and glanced at her. “Do mermaids have things like that?”

“We have trinkets,” she said, shrugging. “Little toys and such. But we tend to tire of them quickly.”

“That’s sad. You don’t want to keep the memories around?”

“Why would we need a trinket to keep a memory? We keep those in our blood.”

“Huh. That’s one way of looking at it. Like they become a part of you. Sounds romantic.” Frederick smiled at her. It was the first time he’d expressed any emotion besides fear or exhaustion. The sight surprised her.

Frederick pulled apart the oyster shell. He paused, then held the shell halves out to her.

“Want some?” he offered. She waved him off.

“It’s yours,” she said. “You need it more than me.”

“I insist. It’s the least I can do, since you’re the one finding them all.” He moved the shells closer, balancing them next to her elbow. “Besides, food tastes better when you have someone to eat with.”

She stared at the offering, then at Frederick. He made no move to take it back. She huffed. Whatever it took to get him to eat, she supposed. She took the oyster and brought it up to her mouth, her teeth digging into its squelchy flesh, scraping against the shell lining as she pulled the meat away. When she looked up, Frederick was smiling again.

The rest of the day passed slowly. She would fetch Frederick more oysters and the occasional small fish he could eat in one go without thinking about it. While he ate, she would swim in lazy circuits around the boat. In between trips, they would talk.

“How does a human get fin rot?” she finally asked, pointing at his leg-hands.

“What? Oh, that! That’s sunburn,” he explained. “Happens when you’re out in the sun for too long without protection. I’m surprised the rest of me hasn’t gotten that bad.”

“Protection?”

“Yeah. Like clothes.” He tugged at the material encasing his legs. “You need to take some extra measures when you’re used to dry land.”

“Hm.” She looked at the “clothes”, at the peeling leg-hands. She supposed it was like her kind’s need to spend more time in the water than on the surface. She had heard the story of a cousin who had fallen asleep while sunbathing one day. His brother was supposed to come wake him but ended up joining a hunting party and forgetting. The cousin’s skin had dried out so much that when he awoke on his own, he couldn’t move for the pain, even to roll back into the water. She wondered if these “clothes” could have saved him.

“You know, I’ve heard stories about mermaids before,” Frederick told her after the next meal. “I knew there were a few that live near the shore back home, but I’ve never seen one. My grandfather swore up and down that he did, though.” He smirked. “You know what he told me? He said I was part mermaid.”

“What?” she asked, pausing from where she’d been picking at a knot in her hair.

“Yeah. There’s this old myth that if you find a mermaid, you can get her to promise you anything. Supposedly, my Great-Grandfather caught one in his fishing net. In exchange for letting her go, he made her promise to come visit him once a week.

“She made good on her promise. Showed up at his boat every seven days on the dot. Supposedly they fell in love and had my grandfather. She stopped visiting after he was born, went back to the ocean for good, but he swears that he’ll still see her out on the ocean every now and then, like she’s checking up on him.”

“That’s quite a story,” she said.

“Isn’t it? I wonder if it’s true.” Frederick laughed. It sounded sad. “Maybe then I could just…swim away from all of this mess.”

“Why haven’t you just taken your boat back home?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know where I was going. Besides, I lost an oar somehow and this damn thing snapped the end off the other one.” He tugged at the part of the net that was still in the boat. She could see a heavy object tied to the end. Her mind wanted to call it a “weight”.

“Couldn’t you use your hands?” she asked.

“Ha! Not if I don’t want them bitten off! Besides, I don’t think I’m as well-equipped for it as you are.” Frederick held up his hand and wiggled his fingers, showing off the distinct lack of webbing between them.

Wait, no, there it was! It was the smallest amount, barely enough to be seen, but she could see it right at the base of his fingers. Her hand darted out to grab his, holding it close to her face.

She didn’t hide her disappointment when she discovered his “webbing” was little more than extra skin, not the translucent, flexible but strong stuff she was used to. But something else caught her attention now. Up to this point, she had never touched Frederick, never felt his strange, pink flesh. She was surprised by how soft it felt, like her own belly.

She ran her fingertips over his palm, up his fingers, across his knuckles. All smooth and soft, not even a hint of scales anywhere. But there, on the back, she found the thinnest layer of hair. How strange. She stroked it, mesmerized. The only hair she had was on her head, and it was long and thick, used for picking up disturbances in the water the rest of her senses might miss.

How did he do it? If all humans were like him, and she had no reason to believe they weren’t, how could they survive being so tender and delicate as this? She turned his hand this way and that, watching the skin shift and fold as it moved. She pressed her palm to his, lining up their fingers, spreading them wide. His hand felt like hers.

Frederick made some kind of noise. It broke her out of her trance. The human’s face looked as if it had changed color, his cheeks a darker pink than they normally were. He pulled his hand away when her eyes caught his, clearing his throat.

“Sorry,” he muttered, thumping his hand against his chest. “Oyster caught in my throat.”

“Hm.” She floated there, watching him. Thoughts were tumbling through her mind, so many of them that she couldn’t focus on any of them. Her tail swished quizzically beneath her.

“You know,” Frederick said after a long silence. “I really think you should have a name.” He drummed his fingers on the edge of the boat, thinking. She resisted the urge to snatch them up again. “How about Lyra?” he suggested.

“Lyra?” she repeated.

“Yeah. This planet is in the Lyra constellation. I always thought it was a pretty name. It suits you.” He glanced towards her again. Something in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine.

“Lyra,” she said, testing it out. It felt like a smooth pebble rolling around in her mouth. She smiled.

When she returned with the spoils of another hunting trip, Frederick had fallen quiet, staring pensively out towards the horizon. He jerked as if she’d stabbed him when she plopped the oysters into his lap.

“Oh! Hey! Sorry, I was just…” He dragged his eyes from her face to the pile of oysters, then back to the horizon. “…Lyra, can I ask you something?”

“Hm?”

“Is it true…that mermaids will keep their promises with you? Like in Grandpa’s story?”

When he turned back to her, the human once again looked exhausted. But this was deeper than exhaustion, something more cutting.

“Can you promise me…that I won’t die out here on this little boat?” he asked, his voice hardly audible. His eyes grew wet, sparkling in the sunlight. Like the ocean, like the stars in their pink and purple sea. They delighted her. She hauled herself up onto the ruin to look more closely at them. When the water dribbled down his face, she caught the droplet on her finger and licked it.

It tasted like home.

“I promise,” she said.

* * * * * * * * * *

Days passed. Lyra spent each waking moment at the ruin with Frederick. Her hunting trips became less frequent. She left only when he mentioned getting hungry, spending her time talking to him, instead. They exchanged stories from their lives. He told her of growing up an orphan in the care of his grandfather, of the devastation he’d felt when the old man had died of something called a “heart attack”. He described the constant state of fear he’d found himself in since sneaking onto a merchant ship to start a new life, only to be caught in a storm that would prove fatal to everyone but him.

He told her about the human world, too, how they’d developed technology to leave their own territory and set up colonies on distant planets like this one, how their societies had shifted so much from what his history textbooks had told him. How they had great plans to one day make it across the sea at last to whatever other shorelines there were to explore. In turn, she told him what she knew from her own experiences and the colony’s shared consciousness. She told him stories of the gods and their many beasts, the names of the stars, the legends of the land dwellers that had lived and died out long before the coming of the humans. Frederick was fascinated, clinging to every word she spoke, and she had to admit that she felt the same about his tales. She was quickly developing a craving for them.

She knew next to nothing about the land her colony kept so far away from. Hearing about it from someone that had walked its shores felt different than the stories from her shallow-dwelling cousins. She got into the habit of leaving the colony long before the others woke up and heading straight for the ruin. Sometimes when she got there, Frederick would still be sleeping fitfully in the bottom of the boat, and she would bob there, clinging to the boat’s edge for what felt like ages, watching him.

One day, Lyra felt a change. She wasn’t sure what it was, at first. She was gnawing on an oyster shell when she happened to realize Frederick was staring at her.

“Do you know what love is?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

The corner of Frederick’s mouth twitched like he was fighting back a smile. Was she seeing things, or was his face changing colors again?

The human reached out and took a strand of her hair between his fingers, toying with it. The sensation made her head buzz. The smell of fear had died out long ago, but now Lyra caught the scent of something else. It reminded her of the pheromones the colony’s coupled pairs let off during the breeding season. But, like everything else about the land beast, these were different from the pheromones she was used to. They were more delicate, yet more robust, somehow. She liked it.

When night fell, the two of them lay on their backs to watch the dancing stars, side by side with only the boat between them. The ocean had been relatively calm since Frederick’s arrival. Now small waves buffeted them gently against the ruin. When she dipped her head under the water, Lyra could hear another distant pod of Wails singing to one another.

“Hey, Lyra?” said Frederick.

“Hm?”

She heard him release a breath, a sound she’d grown accustomed to hearing before he spoke, but no words followed. Lyra blinked and lifted her head. Frederick was peering over the edge of the boat at her. She could smell that strange pheromone again, and his face had definitely changed color, this time she was sure of it. She moved to perch on the side of the boat, keeping her face close to his. He smiled, ran a hand through her hair, making her shiver again.

Then, all at once, he was kissing her. In a flash, her mind was flooded with images of another life, one where she had legs instead of a tail, where she wore silly “clothes” and had to worry about things like sunburn and cooking her food, and where she stood on the shoreline with Frederick cradling her face, just like he was now.

Lyra’s tail flicked under the water. Her pulse raced. When Frederick pulled away from her, her mouth ached. They were both breathless. She felt hot and greedy.

Frederick looked dazed. He was laughing to himself.

“This…feels like a fairytale,” he mumbled. “I’ve fallen in love with a mermaid.”

Lyra bobbed in the water, staring at him. During their days at the ruin, Frederick’s face had been changing, a prickly layer of hair slowly sprouting along his jaws. He called it a beard. She reached up now and stroked it, fascinated with how it scratched at her fingers. The sensation made her hand tremble. Frederick reached up to hold it still, pressing his cheek into her palm. When he looked at her, his eyes were half-lidded, unreadable.

“Will you make me another promise?” he asked. “Am I allowed to do that?”

“Yes,” she said, because she had no reason to say otherwise.

“If—no, when—I get out of this, get back home…will you come with me? I-I don’t know how that would be possible, but just…say you will?”

The pheromone smell was getting stronger. Lyra drank it in. It made her head swim.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I will.”

Frederick grinned. Lyra could feel his yearning as he leaned out over the waves, trying to get closer to her. His arms dipped into the water, and she felt his hands grasp at her, just above her gills, trying to lift her up and into the boat. She was certain he could hear her heart hammering in her chest as clearly as she could hear his. She reached up to wrap her arms around him as he kissed her again, melting against her.

She pulled.

With a splash, they were gone.

* * * * * * * * * *

Theirs was a small colony, only a couple dozen in total, but they had the collective appetite of one a thousand strong. They gathered together at the edge of the territory, frenzying where they knew the blood would be far enough away to keep any scavengers at a safe distance. The pod of Wails continued to sing, serenading them as they feasted. They stayed near the surface, where the starlight could bleed through the waves and mottle the cloud of red. Starlight, Wail song, and land beast meat…a perfect night, indeed.

They scavenged from the body, of course, leaving nothing to waste. Bones were pulled apart and kept to fashion into weapons and other tools. The clothes proved to be just as useless as expected when wet, but they could be torn to ribbons and used to patch wounds. Her younger kin particularly delighted over the boat. They took turns hauling themselves into it, nearly capsizing it, marveling at how comfortably it cradled them before leaping back into the water, giggling all the while.

“You found quite the catch,” her great grandmother declared, patting her shoulder. They sat together on her rock, watching the others circling the distant ruin, playing with their new toys. “We’ll have to see if we can draw more of them out here. I don’t think we’ve had such a good meal since your brother found that dead Deathmaw.”

She hummed. Her great grandmother smiled.

“You’ve done well, little granddaughter,” Great grandmother said, planting a kiss on the younger mermaid’s head. “You will have to teach us your ways. I see many stories about you being passed on to the next generations.”

Her great grandmother squeezed her shoulder before swimming off to join the others at the ruin. She watched the elder leave. She ran her tongue over her teeth. She could still taste the human there. She already wanted more. Her great grandmother was right; they would have to find a way to hunt more humans, perhaps moving closer to their cousins in the shallows to have ready access.

As she sat licking at the bloodstains on her teeth, her thoughts wandered back to those last moments on the boat, to kissing Frederick just before she’d drowned him. He’d given her more visions of that alternate world, where she played in the sand instead of the currents. Dreams of that life where he whispered the name “Lyra” to her beneath the bright night sky.

#my writing #mermay 2023 #mermaid #Couldn't think of a better name for eels in space #Or oysters for that matter #celestial #aquatic

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sagesilentfire · 1 year

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First Chapter of Four Stories I'd Like to Tell

A/N: Writing for my college's literary journal! Just some stories I'd like to tell someday.

Author's Note: As a chronic overwriter, I am incapable of writing stories short enough to fit in a journal. So here's the beginnings of four stories I'd like to tell someday. Enjoy.

It was morning. Very early morning. Too early morning. It was very early morning, and the sky was screaming.

Evelyn, as one would suppose, woke up because of the screaming. They groaned, trying to pull moss over their ears as heavenly shouts of "TETHALAOS! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" rattled their house to its foundations.

Nope, it was not going away. This seemed like a bad one, they might as well go downstairs to see what had happened while they had been asleep.

They rubbed their nose spike. Ew, this moss made their nose itchy. They'd have to ask the almighty Sílthéy to create some new bedding that didn't make them want to die. They'd have to be careful, though, considering where she pulled all her other magic tricks from, bedding that literally made you want to die was entirely within the realm of possibility.

They made their way downstairs and found their parent in the kitchen. "What happened this time?" they groaned.

"Oh, Tethalaos drenched the entire west side of the city in slime that makes your thoughts rearrange themselves into fractals. Do not know how that works, but apparently it was painful."

"Good thing it's not us this time, right?" Evelyn said, rubbing the scales under their eye as they looked in the time-freeze box. They didn't have enough energy to lift their wings, so they just let them drag across the floor. Oh, one thing you should know: these guys are dragons. Just thought I should tell you that.

"After Lilithéy turned all our souls into time crystals, I think we deserve a break."

"No kidding."

"Though some of the northern side of the west city also were hit with that, and Sílthéy was still getting them sorted, so..."

"Jeez. Would not want to be them right now." Evelyn sighed. "Why don't we have juice?"

"Juice? Oh, the fruit trees formed a union and are striking for better pay. Sílthéy still hasn't agreed to turn them back to regular, non-sapient trees, says they're 'better to talk to this way'. She is trying to do something about the capitalism, though."

"Ugh, I am so mad at Délines for inventing that," Evelyn said, shaking her head. "Fruit trees should just have to worry about growing more fruit and existing, not paying the bills." She sighed. "But all of this happened while I was asleep?"

"Time vortex."

"Oh," Evelyn said. "Figures."

The city of Eden was not actually called Eden, and the dragons there did not operate three-dimensionally and did not have foods or bodies or names that you would be familiar with. This is an old story, even in my time, and much of the things you humans take for granted just hadn't shown up yet, like gravity, or less than five dimensions, or consistently linear time. There was time, and space, and the general sense of things moving down, but they had little to do with the laws and rules and theorems you are familiar with. It's hard to translate into a language you will understand, and it is a very old story.

But it is one I have to tell somehow. It's the beginning of everything that was like you.

If the magic was truly fading, Princess Iako was proof of it. Born with nine tails – a true sign of an impressive spellcaster-to-be – but no magic to show for them. Born to the greatest and most magical kitsune royal family in the isles (according to the greatest and most magical royal family in the isles), she should have had magic. Magic was hereditary, or at least transferable by blood sacrifice. But no matter how many innocent peasants bled their last on the castle steps, Iako remained stubbornly magic-less. Magic was taking more sacrifices to work as of late, and it was getting fainter and fainter each year, so Iako's nine tails should have meant deliverance.

But they did not.

Everyone wondered why. Maybe it was because she was born missing an eye, and that was stopping her magic somehow. Maybe it was because she was deathly afraid of the blood and death that came with a transfer of power, screaming at every little cut and injury she encountered. Maybe, whispered some when they thought Iako could not hear them, she was a deliverance from the curses that plagued all who could do magic, which could only be forestalled by yet more blood sacrifice.

But Iako's family weren't about to let the fact that their daughter couldn't do magic stop them from proclaiming their nine-tailed princess to be the savior who was going to bring magic back. They paraded her out in front of the peasants they ruled and other kingdoms regularly, having one of her brothers hide in whatever carriage she was in and cast spells for her. The princess born with nine tails; the product of hundreds of years of power.

It was always a huge spectacle whenever Iako left the castle. But when those spectacles were over and Iako went back to the castle, things were different. She had two options: train to fight to 'overcome' her lack of magic, or sit alone in her room, scorned by her family for her uncontrollable failure.

Iako trained, at first. But her training ended up looking more like abuse after a few sessions, so she sat alone. Which became boring fast, so she snuck to the old, disused library at the edge of the castle and, conveniently, near her room. Not that anyone would look for her if it was on the other side of the castle; no one who knew the truth liked the magicless princess. Which was why, at the ripe old age of eight, Iako found a secret treasury.

She was in the dustiest corner, hoping that the thick film of disuse would keep everyone else away. The castle hadn't even hired a new librarian since the old one died long before Iako was born, and all the really interesting books were locked in her parents' private study. So it was reasonable to assume she was alone. A reasonable assumption that was correct. But the assumption that all the interesting books were locked away was a faulty one. Or, I tell a lie. The interesting book in the library is locked away, but with a far easier lock to break, that didn't involve potentially incurring her parent's wrath. One that could be broken with an eye for detail and arcane knowledge... or an eight year old's blind luck.

Iako had been reading a random volume – Theories on the Origin of Magic by some stuffy, hundred-year-old academic – when a glitter in her periphery immediately caused her to jump back, trying to hide. But it wasn't... it wasn't someone else. It wasn't the shining armor of knights coming to drag her back to training, or, even worse, the glimmer of the thin circlets her parents wore around the castle. It was the glitter of a small metal key, illuminated by the small, weak light filtering through a dirty window.

Well, she wasn't about to leave this key lying here, was she? Someone (her) could surely look at it, and perhaps someone (her) would want to find out what it unlocked! And it wasn't like anyone was looking for it; no one had been in this dusty old library for a long time. She walked over, picking it up, and looked at it.

It was not, as quickly seen, a normal key. Instead of a simple circle, the bow contained a compass. Looking further, the compass did not have normal directions. Iako was very well-read for an eight-year-old; she hung out in a library all the time, after all. While she’d never actually used the knowledge of the cardinal directions before, she was pretty sure S, D, L, and T were not what was typically carved on a compass. And, as she looked at it, it got stranger. The points on the compass rose rotated constantly and independently of each other, but they... they were still at right angles to each other at all times. That was weird.

But, as eight-year-olds are wont to do, Iako put it out of her mind, and started looking for something the key would open. She did her best, as she always did, to make it seem like she'd never been in the library, but in her search she was disturbing a lot of dust. She sneezed, and was about to give up, when she noticed one of the needles on the compass was moving as she walked in a straight line. She walked around it, and saw that it pointed to a section of the wall, no matter where she was. She grinned and jumped up and down as soundlessly as possible, then she rubbed dust off the wall. A tiny, imperceptible crack, just big enough for a key. She stuck it in the lock, and turned.

The wall opened. Inside was a tiny room with three items. A staff with pretty crystals on it, a weird glittery orb, and a dusty old book with a leather cover and gold detail. "Wow!" she gasped. She quickly grabbed every item, stopping only to make sure she also grabbed the key from the door, and ran for her room.

A loud shout, from one of the knights in the courtyard. He was pointing at her. She ran faster.

She reached her room, and stuffed her loot under the fancy four-poster bed. As she kicked the book out of sight, the door slammed open.

"Iako!" her mother shouted. "What are you doing out?"

"...bathroom?" Iako said. There was the tip of a crystal staff poking out from under her bed. "I – uh, I was using the toilet."

Her mother, a stately red fox with a slender snout, just sighed. "Iako you have a toilet here. And, my dearest, you know you cannot go out unless you're training. We cannot let anyone catch you vulnerable. If word got out that our nine-tailed daughter is in fact powerless, we would be ruined, and you would be seen as an abomination. I wouldn't be able to protect you, and unless you train hard, you would never stand a chance against anyone who would seek to hurt you."

"I know, Mom," Iako said. "I get it." She used a few of her nine tails to nudge the staff farther under her bed.

But her mother, ever watchful, frowned. "What are you doing with your tails? It's unladylike to fidget the way you do. Hasn't your etiquette teacher taught you anything?"

"Nothing! I'm not doing anything!"

Her mother looked under the bed, growling something about how unladylike it was for Iako to make her do something like this.

Iako sighed, and resigned herself to her new treasures being taken away. Maybe her older brother Mawo would get them. He was nice to her, maybe he'd let her look at them.

But her mother just stood up, and sighed, and looked at Iako with that disappointed look. "Stop fidgeting, and no more running around doing nothing. Come to training a little more often, yes?"

Iako nodded. As soon as her mother closed the door, and she heard the click of her fancy shoes fade, she bolted down under the bed. Her treasures were still there. Her mother had somehow not seen them. They were hers, and hers alone.

She opened the book. Maybe it would explain to her what the staff and orb were. Unfortunately, it was in a strange alphabet she couldn't read. But then – there was a bookmark that fell out of the book, attached by thread. Written on it was a small note:

"Hello, you who would seek to end the curse. Here is your first clue: the star staff here is magic, blessed with the ability to move its wielder anywhere they point to with it. Now, keep your key and keep your other treasures. They will never be taken from you by anyone you can trust, and may you use them well.

Iako looked at her new star staff. She grabbed a sheet off her bed, placed the book and the orb inside, and tied it up. She grabbed another sheet and wrapped it around her waist, hoping to hide her tails. Then she hefted up the staff. It was much too big for her, but that didn't matter. She would grow up big and strong enough to use it, far, far away from here.

And then she aimed it out the window, and she was gone.

It was the twenty-first century, and magic was here.

Well, it was twenty-one years after the beginning of the twenty-first century. And the veil between the worlds of the magic and the not-magic had disappeared nine years ago, so not at the beginning of the twenty-first century either. Magic hadn't been here for even the majority of the twenty-first century. But it was here now, and had been for nine years, and now the world was slowly beginning to adjust. It would be a long, painful process, one that I'm sure most people would focus on.

But I am not most people, because the story I want to tell is not about that. It’s about a mundane love story, a small coffee shop, and the kindness of strangers. I want to tell you a story about me, and a wonderful, endlessly fascinating woman who appeared in my life.

It starts with a foggy afternoon in my preferred coffee shop, and I was doing quite well for myself. I lived with a family of werewolves, who, despite me not being a werewolf, accepted me as one of their own. Werewolves will do that. Wolves are very much wild creatures, but there's a reason that if you mix wolves and humans together long enough you get dogs. Perhaps that could be my major, studying parapsychology; my awesome thesis would be on shapeshifters and how their common forms shape their personality. Speaking of which, I was attending a local college, and I needed to decide on my major. My... unique condition allowed me to do as much work as I could convince my counselors to give me, so I could do anything I really wanted to. I could multi-major in all the subjects that caught my interest if I so chose. But I wanted to find out what to do after college, and I felt that seeming all over the place like that would put potential careers out of reach. Or maybe they'd like it more; it was impossible to predict the strange whims of the job market, even for me.

I sighed, staring at the list of options and justifications I had written on my computer. It was several miles long, if printed on standard office paper. Of course, that might be because of the long thoughts, reasoning, and weight I'd given to each possibility, but a lot of it was also because in the wake of everything changing, a lot of new fields in science and technology had opened wide and began collecting students. With entire schools of thought that few knew about and fewer knew how to study, I had many different possibilities. And it was nice to go to a school where they acknowledged those possibilities, not just lumping them all together under "Magic Studies" and calling it a day. And these new fields would help disguise the fact that I knew it all already. I could just say it was just a hypothesis to be tested, and everyone would assume I had absorbed some knowledge somewhere that indicated the hypothesis was true. So what would I do?

Sigils. I've always liked to draw things, but I'd have to draw very specific things with no room for error or something would blow up in my face. Demonology. It would be objectively hilarious, but coasting by on a joke would be dumb. Creative Writing. Definitely minoring in that, but I wanted to experience the world with my degree, and I couldn't imagine Creative Writing taking me very far, physically. Better to be stuck in this world than stuck in my head, dreaming of other worlds. Alchemy. I'd probably thoughtlessly ingest something that should've killed me, and I'd have a host of questions to answer. Blowing stuff up with magic ingredients would be fun, though, and I'd always loved chemistry. Magidynamics. As fun as exploring magical energy would be, I would need to be very careful to squash myself small enough to avoid their doubtlessly very sensitive detectors. Astronomy? No, everything interesting was right here on this planet and other planets I already knew about. Why look to the sky when you can look at all the weird and wonderful beings right here on Earth?

Really, there were two categories. Either I dismissed them for personal reasons, or I dismissed them because there was too large a chance that I'd mess up and accidentally expose my more... cosmic side. Either way, they all seemed at least somewhat interesting, and they all seemed at least somewhat dangerous.

I sighed, and stopped trying. It had been a while since I'd bought something from the coffee shop, and perhaps they'd want to kick me out if I didn't buy anything. So I left my computer at its seat, and walked over to the counter.

The barista, a tall (but not taller than me!) man with a pained expression on, sighed. "Hello, Stella. How can I take your order?"

"Oh, you remembered my name!" I gasped. "Okay. I'd like a vanilla latte with three extra shots of coffee, five ice cubes, a pump of marshmallow, pomegranate, and butterscotch, and lemon juice. Then stir it in your fancy stirring machine, please. Also those little hard scones in the bakery display look delicious, please put them in the drink too. ...I'll pay whatever it costs."

"I swear you come up with a different uniquely horrible combination every time you're here," the barista, whose name was Kennedy, said.

"I just like new things," I said, shrugging.

"That's one way to put it," Kennedy said, thinking about how at least I wasn't rude, even if he did have to smell whatever he made for me.

It was at that moment, when I was decoding Kennedy's thoughts, that the door opened and the grumpiest woman I have encountered in quite a while shoved past me. "Barista! Black coffee with a shot of espresso, now!"

Kennedy sighed as he pumped marshmallow syrup into my coffee. "I'm dealing with another customer's order now, I'll see you in a minute! Thank you for coming!"

"Well you'd better hurry up on that customer's long-ass order, or I'll –"

I snorted. "That's rude."

I took a glance at her. Tall, but again not taller than me. Asian, in sports gear, likely Chinese but she didn't even know that, adopted. Her name was Phoenix Clarke, she was a football player at my college, she was another undecided major. Parents were wealthy, vampires, and expecting her to become one too, and soon.

Well, another undecided major. She wouldn't help me in my quest; how was she supposed to help me find my major if she couldn't find her own? Also, she was being rude to poor Kennedy, who was doing his best to finish my order before hers, like a polite barista. I had a dilemma: would I speak up, and risk having to speak to her, or would I let her keep pushing poor Kennedy around? Kennedy was contractually obligated to say nice things to customers no matter their rudeness, but I was a customer, so I could be as rude as I wanted.

"You'd better hurry your ass up, I need this caffeine right fucking now and –"

"Hey," I said, deciding to intervene. "You're being rude. I ordered something long and complex, and Kennedy is making sure it is perfect. You should be quiet and wait your turn."

Phoenix turned to look at me, and oh no. I was the prettiest person she had met. Tall – taller than her, how rare was that? – the darkest skin she'd ever seen, darker hair that swirled in a halo around my head like a cloud at night. Wearing a vivid indigo sundress with a sparkly rhinestone cat on it. Phoenix loved cats. Even though she couldn't see my eyes – I was wearing a blindfold – she could see the curves of my face and my high cheekbones. And I was looking at her with an increasingly disgruntled face that was really hot. Boy, if she could meet people this pretty every bad day, that would make life way more bearable –

Okay, I'm done. I shoved my sibling's influence away. No more reading people's thoughts for me today. At least I knew she liked me, even if her fluffy thoughts had been annoying. She would listen better if she thought I was pretty. Humans were stupid like that. "On second thought, don't be quiet. Go apologize to Kennedy."

"Uh – I – I... I'm sorry... I – I don't know what came over me, I'm not normally this rude, I swear, I'm just running really late on no sleep and –"

"Then sleep," I said, shrugging. I didn't see what the problem was.

"I can't, I'm running late I –"

"Uh, Stella, your... your order is ready. I, uh, I hope it's to your liking."

I nodded and grabbed it. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at Phoenix and took a sip. The wonderfully clashing flavors overwhelmed my human body's senses, and I smiled. "Oh, that's terrible! I love it, it makes so much more sense than it should." I tossed Kennedy a twenty dollar bill. As I understand it, that's a good way to make humans know you appreciate them, give them money.

"Glad you like it," Kennedy said, and went to make Phoenix's order.

Phoenix looked at my drink. "...what is in that? It smells... interesting."

"Oh, coffee and some other stuff," I said. "Uh... marshmallow, butterscotch, and pomegranate. And lemon juice. And a scone. And other stuff."

Phoenix frowned. "...okay. Uh, what..."

I raised my eyebrows, expectantly. Phoenix's face went alarmingly red. "Nothing. I, uh, I'd better get my drink."

Phoenix got her drink and left. I went back to the table. And that was the end of it, or so I thought at the time.

I'd see her again, though.

When Jengu's family would try to broach the subject of leaving to her, she always refused. Sure, the Merfalania were important and special and all that, and it was customary for the oldest and strongest Merkit in any family group to leave and join them in the deep, open sea, but she couldn't just leave them in the reef alone. They were important and special too.

"Really, Jengu, you should go to the cities. We'll be fine," her siblings would say. "We're old enough to fend for ourselves, and we live in a nice place in this reef. We're Merkit, not helpless."

"We both know that's not why I want to stay," Jengu would always say, no matter who she was talking to. "I don't want to leave you behind. I would miss you little goobers!" And then, usually, she would grab the sibling by their dorsal fin and bap them right on their melon. "I don't care how cool the Merfalania cities are," Jengu would finish. "I want to stay right here with you."

It was a routine they carried out, Jengu and her six siblings. Well, eight, but two had died before they could grow up. Every time they got home after foraging, Altie would ask, "When are you leaving?" and the routine would happen again.

"When are you leaving?" Lusca would ask while they broke down the food they'd hunted or gathered.

"When are you leaving?" Marag would ask when they settled down to sleep.

"Never. I'm never leaving. I'm best here with you."

Well. That would last for a while. But soon they learned that if Jengu wouldn't come to the Merfalania, the Merfalania would come to her.

#weird mermaids start a revolution #coffee shop au 150k words donut steal #wacky sibling shenanigans! thousands dead millions injured #i steal the premise of lightlark and add cosmic horror and blood sacrifice #those are the tags :)#kitsune #fox #dragon #mermaid #space dragon #ops #other people's stories #sílthéy vibes #(because she is in it)#if you want to see the hero forge models of some of these guys just ask #original writing #original fiction #writeblr #queue queue

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space-mermaid-writing · 1 year

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Stark Tailoring Inc. [IronStrange]

Summary: After his accident Stephen sold almost everything. But for his new job he needs a suit. So he goes to the place his friend recommended to him: Stark Tailoring.

Relationship: Tony Stark/Stephen Strange

Tags: IronStrange, Tailor AU, fluff, insecure Stephen Strange, no powers, just the regular flirting of Tony Stark, different first meetings

Ko-fi | Read it on AO3 | Masterlist | Word count: 1.8k | Next (soon)

Author’s note: This was inevitable. I knew I would write it one day. You know I’m something of a professional fabric wielder myself. So of course, I put a lot of myself into this Tony.

Chapter 1: I need a suit

The bell at the shop door chirped up with a new customer entering. Tony raised his head and noticed with a glance that it was not his typical client.

See, his typical clients were rich and beautiful. Although, it was possible that this unknown man hid a handsome face under his scruffy appearance. And that blue Balenciaga coat was certainly not cheap. The pants and shoes seemed old. Maybe he was rocking that hobo chic style that had been in fashion like eight years ago. (The man did seem to be too old for that)

And his vibes weren’t right for that either. He wrung his hands, uncertain, as if he felt out of place.

Maybe he was just lost.

The man let his gaze wander briefly around the store before it lingered on Tony, who was behind the counter sorting cufflinks. “Hello, I’m looking for Tony? Colonel Rhodes told me to ask for him.”

“Ciao. You found me. How can I help you?”

“I need a suit.”

Okay, not lost after all, then.

Tony just barely suppressed a, ‘Well, that’s obvious’, before the words left his mouth. “Sure. Any specifics?” he asked instead. “Occasion? Color? Two or three piece?”

“Two piece. Something simple will do. I have an event in two months.”

Tony set the cufflinks aside and picked up a tablet to take notes. “That’s plenty of time. I could probably make you two whole suits in that time.”

The man looked irritated. “I just need one.”

Tough crowd. Tony, however, wasn’t fazed by it. At least the man seemed to have basic knowledge of suits. Or at least of what he wanted. Tony could work with that. “You have a name, gorgeous?”

The first answer he got was a snort. And, yeah sure, his appearance didn’t make the prettiest impression. He was aware of that.

But Tony hadn't sounded sarcastic, so a second answer followed.

“It’s Doctor Stephen Strange.”

Well, apparently the man wasn’t a hobo but a doctor. Tony still had a lot of opinions about his style choices though. Especially about that fuzzy animal that apparently died on his face and was now called beard.

“Alright, Stephen. I’m gonna take your measurements and then we’ll talk about the details. Cut, collar style…”

Stephen didn’t even have to think about it. He knew he wanted something simple and he had bought enough suits in the past, to know his stuff. “Single-breasted suit, two buttons, common lapel.“

“We’ll see about that.” Tony didn't even bother to look up from his tablet, where he was adding the notes in the newly created file for his strange customer. Then he reached for his tape measure, which he hung around his neck. “Strip.”

“Pardon?” Strange blinked at him dumbfounded. There might be a slight blush creeping on his cheek but it could also be a trick of the light.

“I can’t take your measurements with that airbag around you.”

“Oh.” Embarrassed, the doctor shed his coat. “Yes, of course.” Despite his words, he hesitated and played with the sleeve hem of the next layer. “The sweater too?”

“This will do. Step over here and relax. I’ll be gentle.” Tony always had customers who were a bit embarrassed. Sometimes it had to do with his person. Understandable, considering that every now and then he made an international hit in the fashion industry and branded all fashion magazine covers. Some also simply had difficulties with his personality. Tony flirted naturally and some men felt uncomfortable with that. Sometimes he notched it down a bit. Sometimes he simply blamed it on him being Italian.

He put on his reading glasses and with the tape measure in hand, he went to work. Strange posture was tense. Most people tried to stand as straight as possible when measuring – and never as they usually stood in their daily life. But the longer they had to stand there, waiting, the more they shifted back to their natural posture. And Tony could pass the time very well by talking.

“What color did you have in mind?” Tony asked off-handed.

Strange answered without missing a beat, “Black.”

Tony huffed. “Are you going to attend a black tie event?” He put the tape measure around Strange's chest. “Don’t raise your arms.”

Despite his flirting and outgoing nature, Tony was always professional in taking measurements. His touches didn’t linger longer than necessary, because he wasn’t a creep.

With practiced movements, he took the measurement, then stepped aside to record the number in his tablet and was back in his customer's personal space to take the next number.

“It’s not black tie,” Strange answered Tony's last question after a short pause. It sounded pressed, as if unwillingly.

Tony didn't let that faze him. “You want dark blue. It will make your eyes pop.” He glanced up briefly and winked at him, before turning back to his tablet. “Your date will thank me. Believe me.”

The doctor’s answer was quiet as if he didn’t want Tony to actually hear it. “I’ve got no date.”

“There’s still enough time to solve that problem. Angle your arm like this.” Tony put his one hand on Strange's elbow, the other on his wrist, to move the doctor’s arm as he needed to measure it. But as soon as he touched him, the doctor flinched and jerked his hand away.

The next moment Strange was blushing and forcing himself to stay in pose. "Sorry." He cleared his throat. “Like this?”

Tony nodded, but did not comment on his behavior, instead calmly measured the length of the sleeve from the shoulder to the back of his hand. As he did so, he noticed the trembling of the doctor’s hands and the scars that ran across his skin. No wonder that he had reacted strangely. He was probably pretty sensitive about that.

When Tony walked over to the table to write down the number, Strange immediately hid his hands from further view by pulling the sleeves of his sweater over them.

The rest of the measurements Tony needed for the jacket he got mostly from Strange’s back anyway. Then he moved on to the pants. The doctor was tall enough that he didn't even have to put him on a podium for that.

"Alright, I got everything I need," Tony announced afterwards. "Let's talk about colors. I've got some nice dark blues over here." He walked over to a shelf on the wall where rolls of fabric in various colors were stored. Most of them weren't too exciting – most custom suits that were commissioned remained classics.

Stephen was persisting with his previous opinion. "Black."

Tony looked at himself over the rim of his reading glasses. "Bellino, if you insist, well, it’s your money. But if you wanna show your best side…” He slapped the rolls of fabrics that could fit so many shades of blue in them.

Tony was a tailor first and a salesman second; if he believed in his product. And, oh – Tony believed in every single piece in this shop.

“Apropos money: as long as you’re no regular yet, I’ll need you to pay fifty percent up front and the rest when you pick the suit up.”

Strange paused for a moment. "I can't pay until next month." His words were softly spoken, as if they caused him personal discomfort.

Tony raised his eyebrows. He wouldn’t start working for a new customer before he had seen some money. But if he only started next month, there wouldn't be enough time with making the patterns, the fittings and everything. If he had made something for the doctor before and had a pattern that he knew fit him, it wouldn't be a problem. But for a stranger...

Strange looked visibly uncomfortable. Understandably so, because the prices at Stark's weren't exactly cheap. Only those who could afford it came to him.

"How did you say you knew Rhodey?" Tony asked.

"From rehab."

The tailor tilted his head. “He’s working with Doctor Stanfill.” He knew that because his friend often talked about it and he had already picked him up from there. And Tony didn't know anything about changing doctors.

Strange shook his head.“I’m a patient myself. Because of my hands.”

Tony's eyes automatically slid down to Strange's fingers, which the man nervously hid at the side of his body. He looked away immediately. His mama taught him better than to stare.

“We met at the East Coast Center For Nursing And Rehabilitation,“ Strange continued his explanation, in a way as if he just wanted to say something to avoid silence. “When I told him about the event, he said I should go to Stark‘s for a suit.“

It was rare for Rhodey to recommend anyone, at least so to Tony personally. He trusted his platypus. Tony also knew that the ECC was a place for the more difficult cases.

“Alright, maybe I can make an exception,” he decided. Strange's head shot up. “You pay that first rate as soon as you can by next month. And not a day later, capisce?”

Relieved, Strange nodded.

“I also need you to leave your phone number with me. And don’t think I will hesitate to tell Rhodey if you bail.”

“I will pay you as soon as I can. Thank you.” The doctor remembered one more thing. “Will that be fine with the owner?”

Tony realized that the man was clueless who he was. He suppressed a smirk, but did not enlighten him. “I can handle the owner just fine”, he reassured him instead. “I will accept donuts as a form of bribery though. Oh, and you will happily decide for a blue fabric.” Satisfied that he had had his way, Tony pulled the blue fabric from the shelf.

“I really don’t have a choice on that now, do I?” Strange sounded rather amused.

“You can always buy off the peg at Hammer’s if you insist on black.”

Strange grimaced. “Blue it is.”

Tony beamed at him. “Excellent. Let’s talk about collars.”

Somehow he liked this weird stray who stumbled in his shop. As they talked about the details, he realized that beneath all the layers of scrubby and intermittent insecurity was hidden a sharp mind and that the man was quite capable of keeping up with his wit.

If Tony had to guess, he’d say that life hadn’t been kind to the doctor recently.

The rehab center Rhodey attended was for exceptionally serious accidents. His best friend had crashed a plane while on a military mission. And from what he had seen, the doctor’s hands were a mess and Strange was obviously insecure about them.

Tony took his notes while they talked. Strange had good taste and turned out to be willing to cooperate. It was as if the ice had been broken after Tony's agreement to a later payment.

Twenty minutes later, Strange left the shop in a better mood than when he entered. He was still looking like a hobo but with a small smile on his lips.

#ironstrange #Tony Stark / Stephen Strange #Tailor Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Doctor Strange #stephen strange #doctor strange #marvel #mcu #tony stark #space mermaid writing #Tony the tailor #Stark Tailoring Inc

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alvojake · 26 days

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How about pirate! Jungwon and mermaid! Reader? You can make it dark and stuff. Up to you 😘

「notes」 : bless you and your thinking anony, this is such a *chefs kiss* idea, I actually had a lot of fun writing it!! also, I would like to dedicate this to two of my lovely moots hehe, @yeonzzzn & @wondipity. I hope this feeds into your jungwon brain rot

Midnight Lagoon | Y.JW

「paring」 : pirate!jungwon x mermaid!reader 「word count」 : 1.9k

「synopsis」 : what you and jungwon had was nothing short of unethical, if you were to ask your people, that is. neither of you cared, though, which is how you find yourself waiting for the said man in the very cavern that had started everything, relishing in each other's company.

「genre」 : smut

「warning」 : unprotected sex (just don't), slight manhandling, teasing, cussing, making out, petnames (baby, princess...), praising, rough sex, mentions of marking, creampie, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, lmk if I missed anything!

The cavern was silent, save for the waves splashing against the shore. It had to have been late into the night. The only source of light was the bioluminescent algae that littered the cavern walls and ceiling. The algae illuminated the space in a soft blue, and the water almost glowed along with it. You lay out on the rocks, crimson tail dipping into the water, enjoying the feeling of the waves cascading across your scales.

Despite knowing the time, you knew that he would be here at any moment. You knew that as soon as his crew was all asleep, he would sneak away to come see you. It has become a routine since Jungwon first found you.

It’s a funny story, really. You had gotten caught in one of their nets when they were anchored in this very cavern. The string was far too tight for you to just rip away from, so you were stuck, fearing that your life was going to come to an end. You had heard the stories from your parents and the elders of the shoal. Pirates were not to be messed with; they would kill you on sight and take your scales to pawn off for a pretty penny.

So to say you were surprised when Jungwon found you and just cut you free would be an understatement. His hands were steady but careful as he wedged his blade between your tail and the net, slicing the dreadful contraption off of you. Even his voice was soft as to not alert those that were on the ship with him. His kind eyes and gentle hands intrigued you and you knew it was wrong, hell it was probably one of the worst things you could do in your life. But god, if you didn’t enjoy the thrill of it all.

After those events, you stayed behind a cluster of rocks, watching and studying what they were doing. Your family had been worried sick about you all night long, but that was the least of your concerns right now. No, you wanted to actually talk to this man, even if it was the dumbest thing you’ve done. Curiosity has gotten the best of you.

So you waited… and waited… and waited. Finally, you saw Jungwon climbing off of the boat.

You tried to sneak up behind him, but for some miraculous reason, he sensed you there. His head turned, and his eyes bore into yours, peeking from the top of the water.

“I didn’t think a pretty thing like you would hang out around here.” His once soft voice now held a more sinister tone, but instead of getting scared… you were intrigued. Something pulling you towards him, like an angler fish going after the little light antenna on their heads.

That desire only grew from that night when he lured you out of the waters, watching as your tail morphed into human legs, leaving your bottom half completely bare to him. The complete ecstasy that his fingertips brought you left you gasping and begging for more. His dick reaching the most inner parts of your body that you hadn’t even known existed. By the time he was done with you, you had become addicted, wanting nothing more than to be in his embrace once more.

Thus began the little rendezvous, meeting in the very place where he first made love to you, much like what was happening now.

When Jungwon made it into the cavern, he wasn’t surprised at all to find you lying halfway in the water, your tail swishing softly under the surface. Your head was tilted back, eyes closed, enjoying the tranquility that this space brought you. He stopped once he was close enough to fully see you. Watching the way your damp hair cascaded down your back, small droplets of water still falling from the ends. His eyes trailed the length of your body, taking in your chest that was hardly covered due to the shell top you were wearing. Jungwon could feel his dick chub up at the sight alone.

Jungwon’s footsteps were careful and quiet, but you could still feel the vibrations under your fingertips. Your head turned slightly to look over at him, and the corner of your eyes crinkled slightly as a smirk spread across your lips.

“It took you long enough,” you teased the male as you pulled yourself further from the sparkling water. Your fingers wrapped around the pendant that lay between your collarbones, whispering a few soft words, allowing your tail to morph into human legs. Jungwon’s eyes stayed glued to your body, taking in the new skin that had just been revealed to him.

“I had to wait for everyone to fall asleep.” His voice was soft, unlike the dark look that glazed over his eyes. You carefully stood to your feet, but seeing as it's been a little bit since the last time you had to use your legs, your knees buckled, and you tumbled forward right into Jungwon's arms. “Even the sight of me has your legs weak, huh? I'm flattered.”

“Oh, hush.” You rolled your eyes before fixing your posture to wrap your arms around his neck, fingers playing with the ends of his hair. His face was merely inches away from yours, eyes boring into your own. He could smell the sea salt on your skin as he leaned closer to you, sealing your lips in a gentle kiss.

“God, I've missed your lips so much.” He groaned against your lips, “... I missed you.” He sighed before letting his lips trail from yours to your cheek, down your jaw and neck, before finding purchase on one particular spot right below your ear. A soft sigh fell from your lips as you pulled his body flush against yours, leaving little to no room between the two of you. He continued to press open-mouth kisses along your jugular until he was sure there would be marks left behind, not caring for the consequences you might face once you were home.

“Won…” You whine when his hands traveled down to the fat of your ass, squeezing harshly. He licked a long stipe up your neck before roughly kissing you. His lips moved fervently against yours as he swiftly picked you up off of your feet.

Jungwon wasted no time in laying your body flat on the flat rocks that sat next to the lagoon. His body slotted against yours, allowing you to feel his bulge against your bare pussy. Your small whines and whimpers were swallowed by Jungwon’s mouth as his fingers brushed along the inside of your thigh.

Your body felt like it was on fire under his touch, his fingers leaving tingles in their wake. But it wasn’t enough; no, you wanted more, and you didn’t want to wait. Noticing the impatiens in your eyes, Jungwon chuckled, pressing his thumb firmly against your clit, making your hips buck and a broken cry fall from your lips.

“Do you really want my cock that bad baby? You’re dripping on my fingers.” He teased, his fingertips tracing your slit, collecting your slick.

“Wonnie, please, I don’t wanna wait. Just fuck me, please.” You pleaded in a meek voice, and Jungwon smirked against your skin.

Who was he to deny you what you were asking so nicely for? So he pressed one last kiss against your forehead before pulling back to rid himself of his clothing. Your mouth watered at the sight of his cock springing free from his trousers. Catching your gaze, he put on a bit of a show, pumping his cock a few times, hissing through his teeth at the sensation. Impatience grew in your chest as you watched him pleasure himself. A whine fell from your lips when he denied your motion for him to move towards you.

Eyes rolling, you moved your hand down to your cunt using your fingers to spread your pussy lips, “Just fuck me already, Won, please.”

He chuckled once more before finally giving in and moving closer to your body, grabbing your plush thigh. Leaning over your body, he captured your lips in another heated kiss as he lined his cock with your entrance. In one swift motion, he buried himself in your warm heat, swallowing all of the moans that slipped past your lips.

“Fuck you’re so fucking tight, baby,” He groaned, biting down on your bottom lip. It had been far too long since he was last able to bury himself in your wet cavern, the crew and missions taking up a majority of his time. So he wasn’t going to hold back; no, he had a lot of lost time to make up for.

He gave you a split second to adjust before his hips were snapping into yours in such a rough manner you were sure there would be bruises. The sounds of your skin hitting his and moans bounced off of the cavern walls. Jungwon couldn’t hold back; his hips were pistoned into your, trying to get as deep as he could, throwing your legs over his shoulders, pushing even deeper. Deep enough to have the head of his cock kissing your cervix.

Wonton moans fell from your lips as you tried your best to stay up with his pace, but as soon as his tip brushed over that sweet spot deep in your pussy you were putty in his hands. Stars clouded your vision, your orgasm already on the tip of your tongue.

“Fuck- Won, I’m- shit, I’m close.” Tears brimmed in your eyes at the sudden overwhelming pleasure. Jungwon leaned down, kissing over the few tears that had fallen from your eyes, whispering sweet praises against your skin while his hip snapped brutally into yours.

“You’re such a good girl, aren’t you?” He groaned when your cunt squeezed around him, “fuck princess, you keep doing that, and I won’t last.” His hands trailed from your thigh to your hands, intertwining your fingers when your high washed over you. His pace slowed just a little to help you ride out your orgasm, but his movements never stopped.

“Won-” “Just a little longer, baby, I’m almost there.” He groaned before picking up the pace once more, letting go of one of your hands to rub his thumb against your clit, relishing in the feeling of your walls fluttering around him.

Your head fell back at the overstimulation, all words but his name leaving your brain. Jungwon loved when he got you like this, so fucked out that his name was the only thing you could remember. Chuckling, he pressed a kiss against your plush thigh before a choked groan tore through his lips when he felt you cum for a second time. The tightness around his sensitive cock was enough to finally push him over the edge, painting your velvet walls white.

“Shit…” He groaned into your neck as he leaned over you, hips rocking softly against yours. Taking in your scent, memorizing it once more for he wasn’t sure when he would be able to see you again.

“Won,” you breathed out, running your shaky fingers through his hair. "You’re still hard.”

Jungwon couldn’t help but chuckle before rolling his hips deeply into yours, pushing his cum further into your womb, “You drive me insane, baby, and I want to fill you so full of my cum.”

A whine slipped past your swollen lips as his pace picked up a little, but your grip on his body didn’t let up. No, your lips found his, kissing him deeply, telling him that you would love nothing more.

@alvojake | Do not steal, plagiarise, translate, or repost any of my work

𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖗 : ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ɴᴏ ᴡᴀʏ ᴀ ᴛʀᴜᴇ ʀᴇᴘʀᴇꜱᴇɴᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏꜰ ᴀɴʏ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀꜱ. ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ᴘᴜʀᴇʟʏ ꜰɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴀɴᴅ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴛᴀᴋᴇɴ ꜱᴇʀɪᴏᴜꜱʟʏ.

𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙 : @heesitation @riftanswhore @yeonzzznn @yzzyhee @skzenhalove @seuomo @moonchus @enha-stars @ikeuverse @ilovesubbymenn @ro-diaries @yeonjunsfox

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bloomlily101 · 1 year

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An Astrobiologist was a job created with the boom of space travel. They were the first set of people to enter a new planet and in some unfortunate cases, the last to leave.

Their primary role was to determine whether a planet was suitable for human life. Their secondary role was that of exploration, documenting the Flora, fauna and natural systems of the planet.

It is a job many young people aspire to.

However, in recent times, most particularly with the Martian genocide and the Wrasse Siren incident, the term astrobiologist has become an omen of doom for any extraterrestrial life.

Once the astrobiologist arrive, it was only a matter of time until the plague known as Human Greed overtook them.

#mermaid #fantasy #space australia #original writing #lore #scififantasy #scifi #astrobiology #humans are weird #space and aliens

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raeofgayshine · 2 years

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Reasons BATM is a masterpiece, even if I never finish it:

There is an arc spanning all four books where Mason Grace (and eventually Blaine) on and off keeps trying to get Connor to realize that he’s non-binary/trans. But Connor is so so far in his egg that he refuses to even entertain the idea for the longest time, and every time he briefly does it leads to such a crisis he slams the walls right back up and ignores it.

It’s only towards the end of Book 4 that Con is finally going to start accepting that yeah okay, maybe Mason Grace and Blaine were right. But it’s such a journey to get there, and Connor’s constant refusal of the idea that he is trans/nb while Mason and Grace and Blaine keeping pointing out the ways he definitely might be and trying to convince him of such is one of the top things I think about and giggle over often.

It’s right up there with “I’m Kissable” and “wow they’re such good friends. They’re dating?!?!”

#ravenpuff writes #beauty and the mermaid #Mason Grace and Blaine lovingly bullying Connor over not understanding he’s trans/nb #is definitely partially me lovingly bullying a younger Elliot who did not pick up the signs that are now very on y #Also I keep saying trans/nb specifically because I’m not quite sure where Connor is headed gender wise #definitely not cis but I don’t know what word he’s going to ultimately land on and I want to leave space to decide as I write #anyways like I said this is right up there in my favorite BATM moments #nothing beats my running joke of Blaine kissing his friends or saying ‘I’m kissable’ as an answer to stuff #and of course you know I adore a himbo Leo who bless his heart cannot recognize relationships for the life of him #every couple that appears Leo goes ‘wow I want a friendship like that’ even when he’s watching them kiss #not maliciously he’s just an idiot.#he didn’t realize Eli had a crush on him and it’s the most obvious thing ever #Leo being oblivious is top five best parts of the series for sure

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priyajoyyy · 2 months

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Rough waters

Literally what is that name?

Clarisse la rue x mermaid!fem!reader

Very certain the perspectives makes sense, but may not.

It switches between what reader and what Clarisse are thinking and doing but is always in readers perspective, if parts are wrong, don’t be afraid to let me know.

Sorry about the ending I think it’s kinda shit.

Warnings:

Mentions of past trauma, protective siblings, eventually protective!Clarisse, poor writing, drowning, cannon typical violence, Clarisse isn’t toxic to reader for once 🥰🤩, implied nudity (the mermaids become human at one point and don’t really have clothing but it’s normal to them, they don’t expect any humans to actually see them and I’m not describing anything), mentions of anxiety and loneliness

Clarisse knew there were plenty of mythical creatures living in the forest and waters surrounding camp halfblood, but she had never realised the lake also habituated mermaids, and especially not pretty ones…

Clarisse hadn’t properly seen all of the creatures in the forest surrounding camp half blood drying her stay, mainly because a lot wouldn’t be very favourable to half bloods invading their space.

But she believed she at least knew of most of the other inhabitants of the camp, Chiron made sure to make all the campers aware of which to avoid and which would be keeping and eye on them and stopping them from misbehaving, so she assumed he wouldn’t miss any out.

It wasn’t till the middle of summer she learnt that mermaids lived in the camp lake, hiding away from the halfbloods and only surfacing when they knew nobody was about.

It had been hot the day she’s first seen them, she noticed someone swimming near the rocks while they were meant to be training.

Clarisses younger sister had gone to the toilet half an hour ago and hadn’t been seen since and she thought that it must be her in the waters, skiving to have fun instead of her punishment for their recent loss in capture the flag.

She stormed over towards the figure, expecting her sister to appear clearer as she got closer, only to realise it wasn’t her sister at all, and this person didn’t appear to have legs.

She watched from afar at first, listening and looking to see if she could approach any further.

She had seen you, laying by the side of the beach, your tail laid in the water while the top half of you lounged in the sun on the rock side.

Your eyes were shut, sun bathing and relaxing while what looked like your brother, sat on the rock to your side, watching over the lot of you.

Your sisters were through the bushes, chatting and dancing around, their tails now gone and replaced with legs, and carrying them through the small area of forest they dared venture in.

She watched you for a while, standing hidden behind the trees, looking at your face which rested on your hands and shifted every-once in a while, watching your tail flicker and flow around in the water.

She wasn’t sure how long she was there, observing and waiting for you to do something, but she was shaken out of her thoughts when she heard your sister shouting your name. Waking you up and telling you that they were all leaving.

“Come on y/n” your brother told you as you woke up, “we’re going back”

“I’ll stay a little longer” you responded in a mumble groggily, resting your head back down on your arms again and turning away from your siblings.

Your sister dived into the water then, swimming back up to the surface to splash you with water, laughing, “come on, you’ve done enough sunbathing for today”

You splashed your tail in the water in response, hitting her with water and causing her to swim backwards and grumble.

“I don’t want to, I’ll leave later” you responded rolling your eyes and then closing them.

“We’re not leaving you out here alone” your brother stated simply, raising his eyebrows at you as you ignored him.

“I’ll be fine, promise” you stated, before pushing yourself up and around to face him in annoyance, “I swear, I’ll be fine, I’m sitting by the water, if anyone comes by I can just swim off”

Clarisse knew then it would be a bad idea to try talk to you. But she couldn’t help but want to, she hadn’t felt this way about anyone before, especially not by just looking at them.

She thought about it, and she wondered if maybe it was because you were a mermaid, like how the Aphrodite girls could make people fall in love with them with their charmspeak, perhaps you had a natural version of that?

She had heard of sirens before, tempting people to their deaths with their voices, making people fall so deeply in love with them they loose their senses.

Perhaps you were one of those. Well perhaps not a siren, while there were some dangerous creatures when provoked in the forest, Chiron would never allow sirens to lure campers to their deaths.

But a mermaid that made people fall in love with them? She supposed that made sense.

Yes, that had to be it, it was the only reason why she felt so compelled to watch you, to have the need to speak, to you to kiss you.

“Honest, I’ll be fine” you reassured again, one of the girls in the water, rolling their eyes and finally swimming off.

“Scream if you need help” the boy said in full seriousness, causing you to laugh at his behaviour.

“Oh stop being so dramatic” your sister spoke laughing, giving you a quick grin and diving into the lake.

“I will” you responded as you turned back around to go back to resting, ignoring your brothers overprotectiveness and letting him swim off.

You knew he had reason to be worried, all of you had a distaste for humans and halfbloods, but he knew you particularly had a big fear of them.

You had good reason to be, humans could be cruel, halfbloods in particular, some of them were bitter and hateful, their parents habits reflecting on children they hardly raised.

You’d experienced this cruelty first hand, and ever since, your siblings had been more protective over you, especially when you ventured to the shores of the lake you lived in.

Of course, not all halfbloods were like this, but it didn’t make you any less cautious, hiding in the hidden parts of the shore and avoiding them like the plague.

The only time you voluntarily spent time near halfbloods was when you were trying to save them. Being the one out of your siblings that tended to save the younger children from drowning the most.

You found when they couldn’t breathe, they were much nicer to be around.

You had calmed down again on your rock, relaxing under the sun on such a nice day, you stayed still there for quite a while before you heard a noise.

Clarisse hadn’t meant to step on anything, infact she was normally quite agile.

She had deciding to leave, realising it was beyond creepy that she had been staring at you in silence for as long as she had and that her siblings would be waiting for her, but stepped on a twig as she took her first step.

You jumped up quickly, turning to look around you in fear, noticing her in the trees, frozen with a pained expression on her face.

You went to jump away, flinching as she turned to face you beginning to apologise.

“W-wait stop, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to do that” Clarisse stuttered out, she didn’t know what was wrong with her, she never stuttered.

“I swear I’m not gonna hurt you…I just saw you in the distance and decided to see who was by the lake during training.

Against your better judgement, you stayed for a moment, watching and listening to her with wide eyes.

Clarisse could tell you were scared, despite the warmth you shook, and your hands clenched together onto one rock.

“I didn’t mean to scare you” Clarisse gently told you, “my names Clarisse…what’s your name?”

“I know what your name is” you mumbled, watching the girl like a hawk.

“You do?”

“You make the children do pushups by the lake” you stated quietly like it was obvious as to why she knew of you.

She looked confused at that, how many things must you have seen and she didn’t even know you were there for.

“You were there last week too” you told her, “you screamed”

Clarisse certainly didn’t need help to work out what the girl meant, everyone in camp had heard her scream, and everyone had been receiving the brunt of her anger since her spear had been broken by the new son of Poseidon.

After a long pause, you finally told her your name, Clarisse could tell you had relaxed a little, inching back to where you had originally sat rather than the edge of the rock as far as you could get from her.

You both chatted for a while, Clarisse with lots of questions and explanations, and you with short answers that slowly got a little longer.

You opened up as the time went on, still cautious but somewhat excited to have a friend that wasn’t one of your brothers or sisters.

Eventually you both decide it was time for you to go, both needing to get back to your siblings waiting on you, but Clarisse, not wanting to never see you again after this point, asked to meet again the next day.

Neither of you told anyone about your daily meet ups, you knew your siblings wouldn’t approve, stopping you from going up to the surface for a long time.

Clarisse knew she’d never tell anyone else, word would reach everyone in camp about a family of mermaids living in the lake in a matter of hours.

She also knew you had a large fear of other people. It was clear something had happened to you, and she had a feeling it had something to do with the camper that washed up to shore last summer.

She’d not gotten specifics from you, she always tried not to push you too far but she was so curious. She just put two and two together. The boy was horrid, rude to girls and she even had a couple of her younger sisters complain to her about him in the past, he wasn’t exactly missed by anyone when they found out he had drowned.

Of course she didn’t think you had done anything to him, not intentionally at least. you didn’t seem like you could even touch a half blood without trying to swim as far as you could.

However after observing your siblings around you for only a few minutes, she got the feeling they could certainly have been apart of it.

She knew she couldn’t let any of them know about you, they’d only hurt you and then all the progress you’d both made on her fear of half bloods would be for nothing.

So they continued to meet up on the daily. Sometimes you would wait until your siblings had left to transform your tail into legs, and meet with Clarisse slightly deeper into the woods.

Other times, she’d meet you by the shore, sneaking away after dinner and before bed, even letting you teach her how to swim.

It was a perfect summer, and it certainly helped Clarisse with dealing with the arrival and quick departure of Percy Jackson. And you with your loneliness and anxiety.

Now you just had to tell your siblings…

Ending is kinda shit but I didn’t know how to end it lol, Let me know if you’d like a part 2!! Feel like I have some more ideas but I have a series in the works so may focus on that instead

Taglist:

@slaggylemon @yourmom-25s-blog

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