A/N: it’s Sanemi’s turn to be the monsterfucker, y’all.
CW: the tiniest bit suggestive but be warned: this story will be hella NSFW. MDNI. Sanemi gets a taste of mermussy later
There, amidst the cragged adamant, is a flash of blue. Not the blue of the ocean, with its subtle greens that shift in and out of the sun’s punishing rays. It was the blue of jewels; of precious sapphires and tourmalines like those he’d seen hanging from ropes of silver the nobles wore around their necks. Indigo, too, like the watery trail left behind by the moon when it hung fat and silver in the night sky.
The very precise shade of blue Douma had described.
Sanemi squints harder as the blue shifts and sways atop the rocks. The sun glitters off the whorls of color, blending them together just as much as it pulls them apart. A sudden wave knocks harshly up the side of the ship, spraying his face with sea water. When he finishes wiping the salt from his eyes, the ship has moved a little closer into shore, and Sanemi can finally make out the source of the blue.
A woman. No, he shakes his head as he wipes the back of his hand again across his eyes. Not a woman — not fully. True, she bears all the upper attributes of a woman: two arms, pretty hands, and human breasts bared toward the sun. Her face too, is human, even if her beauty is otherworldly. But, as Sanemi tracks his eyes down the length of her form, he sees that her humanity stops right below her navel. Where her hips should give way to two legs — and the paradise he knows, as a man, must lie between them — there are only scales. Rich, cobalt scales, untinteruppted as they stretch down down down the side of the rock.
Drifting lazily in the surf is the tip of her great tail.
A mermaid.
Sanemi’s jaw slackens. A swear creeps up his throat, but it dies on his tongue, now too dry, too swollen to force it out.
A charter could undertake a thousand different expeditions to seek out a mermaid only to return empty handed — if it returned at all. Yet, here he was, stranded on a ship that managed to come across one on her maiden voyage. Even if Sanemi had been a betting man, this is the sort of odd he’d never have the stones to wager. Not if his life depended on it.
He thinks he should count his lucky stars he doesn’t have such vices. Otherwise, he would’ve been deprived of this — of her and her enchanting beauty — if he had.
Silently, he watches the mermaid in awe until the ship has nearly passed the rock upon which she suns.
Her eyes flash to his.
Sanemi dares not blink; neither does she. Even the call seagulls fades beneath the gentle crash of the waves lapping against the ship’s hull.
A mermaid is the price to gain back what we lost, boy. Douma had boasted with his too sharp smile and too sharp teeth. Perhaps you’ll win your freedom by helping us gain ours.
He thinks of his mother; of his sisters and their frightened faces and rigid shoulders as Douma’s men leered and taunted them; of the gash his brother now bears across his cheek.
He thinks of the beautiful creature watching him warily from her sanctuary among the lodestone, her tail dragging slowly through the water.
Fuck ‘em. He won’t say a damn word.
“Boy!”
On reflex, Sanemi whips around. Scanning the deck, he finds the irritated mug of Kyogai, snarling and sneering at him from the quarter deck. A quick glance overboard and Sanemi holds up two fingers; two meters between the rocks and the ship’s starboard side.
Kyogai scoffs and turns away. The rest of the crew ignore him, too busy throwing rope and drawing in the sails as they prepare to anchor. For a long moment he remains frozen, feet cemented to the forecastle with no memory of how to move. Only when he feels the familiar shudder shake below the keel is he able to move his tight limbs.
He does not hear the faint splash of water over the pounding of his heart in his ears.
Breathe, idiot. He commands himself. In, one, two, three through his nose; let the salt ignite his blood, creep up the back of his tongue, before he lets it out in the same count. Repeat. Repeat again, until his errant pulse calms. Then he will look.
When Sanemi finally turns back, the mermaid is gone.
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