Fantasy ── .✦ azure seas [cealen & pluvian_penguin]

[Cealen]

hi im a temporary message because Cealen is too lazy to make this look all nice right now! but in this first post this will be a place to put important things so one can remember important plot things! yaaay!

 

[Cealen]

Waking from a dreamless sleep, the first thing Louis Carter felt was pain. It felt like the air had escaped from his lungs, leaving only shriveled husks in place. He instinctively gasped for breath, only for sputtered coughs to erupt from his body as his whole body heaved. His brain couldn’t process anything but baseline survival, his hands going to scratch at his throat in an effort to dislodge… something.

As he coughed up water and sand, Louis began to be able to process his surroundings more. He heard the familiar sounds of the ocean, felt the wind against his ears, listened to the seagulls cry out their song, felt the warm, hot sand on his skin, felt the water lap at his… wait. Why the hell does he feel sand? And water lapping at him? He forced his eyes open, saltwater burning the edges as his vision cleared to show a bright blue sky, the sun shining directly into his eyes. He raised his arm- it felt achy, like he went swimming earlier- to his eyes to block out the sun, letting out a groan as his head tried to process all of this.

Blinking his eyes underneath his arm rapidly a couple of times to clear up the bleariness, he lowered his arm and pried open his eyes again, being met with the same blue sky. He then turned his head to be greeted with a shoreline, which he realized he was passed out on. Well then. He figured he should sit up, pushing up his aching body, air finally being able to fill his lungs now that he spewed out all that water and sand. With a deep inhale, and exhale, he glanced around.

It was quite a beautiful place- the sand was soft underneath him, the water warm to the touch, and he thankfully was not lying on top of the rocky cliff sides that surrounded the shoreline. He also seemed surprisingly unharmed- he had a few bruises and scratches, but that’s it. He could see green trees and foliage further inland, and nothing but endless blue if he looked out to the ocean. This was lovely and all, but how exactly did he end up here? He tried to recall, but only fragmented memories came up. He was having a meal before going on his dog watch, and the crew were talking about apparently finding some weird fish woman thing, or something. He didn’t think much of it, and said he wanted to see it for himself before he believed anything they said, but… what then? Louis shook his head, as if he could clear the fog. Clearly something happened to the ship. Did it keel over? He remembers some fighting happened, then nothing.

Well… sitting around isn’t going to help me much… He reasoned some motivation to himself to get himself moving, rising up with wobbly feet. His boots let out an audible squish, and he bent down to take them off to pour the water out of them, glancing around his surroundings once more. The others most likely abandoned ship too, right? That’s his first order of business. Hopefully he could find the Captain first- the first time he ever actually wanted to see the man- or maybe… anyone. He felt a little unsettled, actually, by the fact he woke up here alone, with not a single soul in sight. In an effort to clear his anxiety about it, he made his presence known.

“ANYONEEEEE?” He shouted as loud as he could, startling some seagulls who were perched along the rocky crags who flew away with a hurry. His voice sounded foreign to him, raw and almost rusty sounding.

 

[pluvian_penguin]

Avarion hadn't intended to spend much more time thinking about the human ship. He'd helped bury his friend, where the sharks couldn't get her, and that was all he'd wanted to do. Mourn her, and move on. It was what they'd always done when someone died.

But one of the sailors had survived.

That had caused a stir within the pod. Some wanted to lure him to the shore, drown him, and leave his body to whatever scavengers wanted it. Others thought he'd been through enough with the loss of his ship, and would never be able to find another ship, meaning he could be left in peace. A third viewpoint was that he only posed a danger if he tried to leave the island.

He hadn't been sure what to think of it all, himself. Sure, the human ship had killed his sister, or taken her body, at the very least. That grated against him like a handful of sand. But that one life had been more than avenged. Was it really right to demand the total extermination of the ship's crew?

So, inspired by one school of thought, he'd gone to the shallow waters around the island. He was able to move easily in water that would be knee-deep to a human. His dorsal fin poked up above the water, but he was confident that he would be able to quickly wiggle off into deeper water if he needed to.

The shout of a human word sent him fleeing deeper into the water, only briefly breaching above the water to get a good look at what was around him. No humans in sight... the surviving sailor must be around the outcrop. It was heavily thicketed with brush, and from the sea, Avarion couldn't see what was on the other side.

He swam around and hauled himself up on the rocks, watching the beach and the human who was standing there. Well, he didn't seem dangerous, at least not from a distance...

So Avarion cupped his hands around his mouth and echoed the human's word.

“Anyoneee?” he shouted, the word not quite coming out the same. He knew something of a few human languages, but had never spoken them to another human before. But he was convinced that he coul mimic this specific human's language well enough to communicate.

A few of the startled seagulls settled on the rocks near him. They recognised him as a potential source of fishheads. He often shared the spare parts of his catches with them, when he was near shore. At the moment, he had nothing for them.

 

[Cealen]

Louis let out a loud groan, clearing his throat. It burned with saltwater and was parched, feeling as if it was in a million fragments. While catching his breath, he surveyed the ground below him- the sand had no footprints or anything of the sort, spare his own. No one probably was in this area… it would be useless to waste his energy and daylight hours on shouting when he could do some scouting. He bunched up his shirt and wrung the excess water out of it, formulating a plan in his head.

First order is to find what remains of the ship… I must’ve jumped overboard nearby if I got washed ashore here… His expression darkened. What could have caused this? Was the question that kept emerging in mind, and he had no answer to it. The only thing he could remember is that blighted fish woman- the corpse they fished up from the sea. He hadn’t even seen it, but he remembers the boys talking about how much profit they could get out of it. One of the older sailors warned them to throw it back, blabbering about mermaids being vengeful creatures. Louis said he wanted to see it himself, and he remembers walking to the deck when suddenly… fighting and shouting. Then panic. Then darkness. His head hurt. He didn’t understand anything about this, and he didn’t understand why his memories seemed to focus on the strange body they found.

Louis’s body jolted at actually getting a response back. Or… maybe it was more due to the odd tone the voice had. Glancing around quickly, his eyes fell upon the source of it- someone was looking straight at him, a ship length away, perched upon the rocks. Louis regained his composure quickly, not recognizing this person from amongst his crew mates. That explains the tone of voice… perhaps English wasn’t their native tongue. Captain Wain did make them take a different course from usual. It’s possible he could be on foreign territory now

Well, time to parley with the locals. “Ah… aye!” Louis smiled at the person, squinting his eyes against the sun to get a better look at them. The… man, yes, looked to be quite young, with a strange complexion about him. His black hair was slick with sea water, and Louis couldn’t help but wonder where the man even appeared from. “I mean no trouble.” He held up his arms and hands as a peace offering, to show he was unarmed. His gun was still holstered to his side, but in the state he’s in, it’s safe to assume the gunpowder has been rendered useless inside. As a further sign of non aggression, he unholstered it and flung it to the side of him. Make himself look as non threatening as possible. “Have you seen my crew? Or ship? We keeled over, I washed ashore here, and I’ve no clue where this is.”

Louis was acting friendly, but one could sense underneath the lazy smile was an ulterior motive- to lower the guard of who he was talking to. If the man saw his ship, it’d be all too clear it was a pirate’s vessel, not a merchant ship with cargo nor a naval ship. Louis was all too familiar with receiving hostile greetings at any port they landed on, and he wasn’t about to make enemies when he was alone and stranded. Even if the man hadn’t laid eyes on the ship, Louis is still a strange man who washed ashore. Fostering trust was paramount for his survival right now, Louis wagered.

 

[pluvian_penguin]

No trouble. That much, he understood. The man didn't want to be hurt, and didn't want to hurt anyone, either. Avarion was familiar enough with that kind of attitude. Most of his own kind were calm enough, when they met each other. There was no need to begin a fight, and no benefit for the winners. Pods usually only saw each other in passing, anyway. Share a few words, talk about predators and currents, and that was all that they needed to do.

The human threw something aside. Avarion raised his hand, shielding his eyes for a better look. With the sun behind him, he was able to get a better view of the human, than the human could get of him. Did the human even realise that he wasn't talking to another of his kind?

Avarion decided not to yell to ask about the thing thrown aside. The human wasn't reaching for it again, so it probably wasn't too important. Maybe it was even broken. One of Avarion's sisters was good at fixing things, but when she couldn't, the broken item was either dismantled for parts, or left where they'd snapped.

Humans could be different. They didn't even live in the water! Avarion found them to be very strange creatures indeed.

Seen the crew and the ship. Well, yes, he'd seen them both – but he didn't think that this human would very impressed with the knowledge Avarion had about their fates. And with those questions, the human must not realise that Avarion belonged to the pod that had sent his ship down. There must be many mermaids where he came from, if the thought didn't bother him.

“You ship is gone,” he called, unaware that his grammar was a bit off. He wouldn't have cared much if he did know. “The men are dead.”

Except one of them. One who was causing as much trouble as all the others combined, though he didn't seem to know it yet. Avarion still wasn't convince that the humans had killed his sister. Many things could harm a mermaid, after all, and he had seen coincidences before.

The ship going down had been something of an accident. They'd wanted their sister's body back, and the ship capsizing – that had sort of happened along the way, incidentally, like scaring fish when they harvested seagrass. Admittedly, killing the sailors had been on purpose, but they'd drawn their knives first.

“This is Jovarlyn,” he added. That was their name for the island, though he doubted that any human would recognise it. No human had ever heard mermaid tales of navigation. They didn't use maps or charts, like humans did. They remembered things.

 

[Cealen]

Louis only gave the man a funny look in response. “Huh? How do you know?” He asked incredulously. Realizing he was getting a bit on the defensive, he paused for a moment before speaking again. “…Hm. You confident?” The words came out of Louis’ mouth like he couldn’t even fathom the possibility. It wasn’t something of blind optimism behind this disbelief. He knew many other sailors who had been claimed by the sea, he wasn’t a naive idiot. But why would he have survived, and not someone like Captain Wain or the first mate? It didn’t make sense to him.

The man was trying to be helpful by providing him with a name of the island, but he didn’t recognize it. Was it even on any map? Louis seemed to be getting a little unsettled, glancing around. He was surrounded by rocky outcrops, the sea spanning out as far as the horizon, and an untamed cluster of forest was awaiting him if he ventured inland. He was… where exactly was he? He knows the man just told him he’s in Jorvalyn, but the information was useless to him if he didn’t have a reference.

“I’m not all familiar with that name.” Louis looked back at the man, squinting his eyes more. The man definitely had to be foreign, right? His odd tone of voice indicated it, but he couldn’t guess on where he hailed from. Besides… if he’s washed ashore on foreign territory, Louis is the foreigner in this situation, not the locals. He best show some respect. “Are there any… cities? Villages? Towns? Ports? Nearby?” Louis went down the list, hoping for any information. “If my ship is “gone”, I’d need some help getting back home.”


He paused for another moment before he said his next words. “You can come down, if ya like, you know. I took off my gun, see,” he said, gesturing towards the gun thrown in the sand abandoned. “No need to stay up on those rocks.” Louis was a little curious about what the man looked like more clearly, but really, his voice was getting tired of yelling.

 

[pluvian_penguin]

Avarion blinked at the question. Well, because he'd been born here, and lived here all his life. Maybe he didn't answer quickly enough, because the human had another question. That was one that was a little easier to answer. All he had to do was shout back,

“Yes!”

He'd learned how to navigate the local waters while he was young. The island was the only landmark around that could be seen from the surface. He'd been warned to never go so far from the island that its trees were smaller than his hand.

That rule had been relaxed as he got older, and became proficient at finding his way. Nobody had wanted a child to get lost. It had only happened once, when he was in his teens. He'd been part of the search parties that were sent out, searching night and day until the child was recovered. They'd been entirely unhurt, and only bothered to be pulled away from the colourful patch of starfish they'd discovered.

When the human looked around, Avarion tilted his head, watching the stranger's movements. Seemed like nervousness. Hadn't he known, when he came here on his boat, that he was going beyond the most common shipping lanes? It was no surprise that he didn't recognise the merfolk name for this place – Avarion doubted a human had ever heard it before – but surely he knew something about human maps, if he was a sailor.

He laughed when he was asked about towns and ports. No, nothing like that. But his laughter faded as he wondered if such news would make the human violent. He'd been warned of things like that. And while he'd never met a human up close before, to know if the stories were true, the recent loss of his sister seemed to be proof enough. Humans were dangerous. It was best not to provoke them.

It was also best not to stay out of the water for too long. He dove into the water, his tail flashing in the sun like a handful of jewels, before he disappeared into the waves. He didn't resurface, not wanting to be battered about by the rolling surf. Instead he shot out into deeper and calmer water, where the currents didn't pull at him so much.

He turned when he was about even with the human, swimming closer, his head above the water as he got nearer. He stayed in water deep enough for his tail to move freely, about ten or fifteen feet from the shore. A little more yelling would be required, but he was much closer than he was.

“You will need to stay on the beach, I think,” he said, “but the rocks aren't very comfortable.” He tilted his head, looking the stranger over, before asking, “Where do you think you are?” Maybe he could learn the humans' name for their island.

 

[Cealen]

Louis had come to the conclusion that he was going insane. Or dead. Or… something. He would say he was dreaming, but his body was aching too much for this to be a dream. It only took that flash of a tail to make Louis let out a despondent laugh, taking a seat in the sand with a plop. He didn’t even care at the moment that the sand was going to get even further embedded into his soaked pants. His mind was too preoccupied with images from the ship the night before, swirling and melting together until they were nothing but a blur of color and fragmented voices. But one thing was for certain it was that the fish woman the other sailors were chatting about was the reason he was in this situation in the first place.

Of course he knew about them. Mermaids. They were something born out of a sailor’s loneliness. When you’re on the seas for months at a time, with only a bunch of other men as company, stuffed in like sardines with only alcohol and salty meat to keep you fed, you would start wishing you would see beautiful women out in the sea too. At least, that’s how most people interpreted it, as stories that sailors told each other to keep the loneliness at bay. To Louis, he never heeded it more than some simple fairy tales. Maybe due to just being a little skeptical, or maybe Louis wasn’t feeling the same, ahem, loneliness that the other sailors felt. He always thought of it as a metaphor of some sort for the sea itself. If you respected her, she would give you the gift of returning to your family, represented as images of beautiful women. If not, then she would have her vengeance. In this case, if Louis’ interpretation was true, the sea absolutely despised him and his crew right now. So much so that everyone died except him, and the sea dumped him on what is starting to sound like an island. For what reason? Maybe because of that fish woman? And… why leave him alive, even?

Of course, that’s based on the story I have in my head… Louis snapped himself out of pursuing that line of thought by realizing this. If these… mermaids… actually exist, how different would they truly be from stories drunk sailors shared between pints? He watched as the man (?) approached him from the water, getting a much better look at him. His voice certainly sounded like a man speaking, and his face did look… wait, was he blue? Louis stared at him with a dumbfounded expression. You could see the gears turn in his head as his mind tried desperately to make sense of this. He was truly talking to a mermaid right now. Or… mer…man? It goes to show how you can’t always listen to the stories.


“Ahahah.” He let out that despondent laugh again in response to his question. “I think… I’m in Hell.” He looked down at his reflection in the water, seeing his bloodshot eyes and bewildered expression, his hair sticking up at all ends in a knotted fray and his clothes sticking to him like a rag. He looked the part to be in Hell right now. “You…” He looked up at the blue man again, his words trailing off. “Why…” He shook his head. “No… what did I do?” He sounded like he was pleading. “Does this have to do with that woman? I didn’t even see her with my own eyes before… I don’t know.”

Louis hated how he felt right now. He felt a disgust pointed at himself, urging him to get his shit together. Maybe it was just simple denial, but he couldn’t comprehend whatsoever what was happening to him. He should be happy he’s alive, shouldn’t he? He needs to get home, regardless of where he is and whatever images his brain is conjuring up right now. So… he forced himself to accept it, for now.

“Okay… okay… sorry. I won’t ask those sorts of questions.” It’s not like the answers to those questions matter anything to him right now. “I do.. want to know one thing though. Why are you… here? Talking to me? Do you want something from me?” If mermaids are truly real, which he is just going to accept right now and think about later, they must be… human-like, to an extent. As much as he’d like to believe in the kindness of other beings, it has been trained into him to doubt that. He didn’t think for a second this man was going to help him for no reason.

 

[pluvian_penguin]

The human was much different, when they were face to face. For a moment, Avarion wondered if the human really hadn't known who he was talking to. But hadn't he seen the mermaid pulled up on the deck of his ship? Hadn't he seen the attack that night? There had been lanterns strung from bow to stern, along the ships' railings, and more had been brought from belowdecks when the sailors rushed to their own defence. If he'd seen it all clearly from the water – surely the sailor had seen it all clearly from the deck.

Unfortunately, the human also didn't seem inclined to answer any questions. That didn't help much with Avarion's curiosity. But if this was in fact a shock to him, then his lack of response could be allowed, for now.

For now, Avarion waited to see what else the human had to say. He was a strange creature... Two legs, pale skin, those strange fabrics wrapped all around him. Merpeople weren't much for clothes. They were heavy in the water, often rough against their skin, and created unnecessary drag when trying to move quickly. The idea of wearing shoes was something that he wasn't likely to ever wrap his head around.

He simply blinked at the question. Did he not know what his crew had done? Did he not know what they'd discovered? Maybe not. But he'd gotten himself into trouble, all the same, and Avarion still wasn't sure if it was worth helping him.

No matter which side he chose, in the argument splitting his pod, he would be unpopular with some of them. He was all right with that. The real question was how to know if he was making the right choice. Nothing like this had ever faced him before, and admittedly, the novelty was part of the intrigue.

Still, he frowned at the next.

“She was my sister,” he said, decidedly disapproving of what he found to be a rather lackadaisical way of referring to her. They hadn't shared parents, but everyone in his extended family was a sibling to him. The fact that she'd actually been a distant cousin meant little to him. She'd been family, and he'd loved her as such.

The next question was the only one that he'd actually expected.

“We want to decide what to do with you,” he explained, keeping his words simple. He wasn't sure how much human language had changed since he'd learned it. “If killing the rest of your ship was good revenge, or if you need to die, too.”

Only one thing was universally agreed on – the human would never make it off the island. The shipping lanes were too far, and no human could swim to the land just barely visible on the horizon. One of Avarion's pod could make it in a day, maybe two, but they would never go that near the shore and all its boat traffic. Especially not for a stranger who'd wounded them all by taking one of their own.

“You have nothing I want to be given,” he added after a moment's thought. Besides, the man didn't seem to have anything besides his gun, knife, and clothes. There were some bits of debris washed up along the shore, but little of it would be salvageable, and even less of it immediately usable. Avarion had paid no attention to the ship's stores and crates that laid across the floor of the ocean. Whatever was useful to his kind, had already been scavenged by others. He had no interest in the wood, and no way to pry open the lids of cargo that was nailed shut.