As promised, here are the better photos from Causeacon of my Leia cosplay. It was really fun getting the chance to work with a professional photographer.
Warnings/Tags: Mermaids, the day after a storm/hurricane, injuries (but they’re not described in great detail), a shark bite, reader should be quite gender neutral and isn’t described (but I’m a white cis girl so I could have missed something!)
Rating: General
At night, the Forget-Me-Not Valley ocean is beautiful. The light from the moon reflects off of the water. The beach is quiet. Most people here go to bed early, and you revel in the serenity of the ocean. It’s summer, and it’s humid, but at least the air has cooled off from the day.
Last night, there was a storm. It was too dangerous to venture outside, but tonight, things are calm. Fishing is a good way to earn money to supplement what you earn on the farm, and it’s a relaxing way to wind down at night. You carry your implements with you to the water and place some bait on your hook. Just as you’re about to cast your line, you notice something floating in the water. There, bobbing in the waves, is something big. At first, you assume it’s some trash that was brought in by the storm, but after watching it for a few cycles of waves, you think that… it’s a person.
Your stomach jumps. Are you watching a body wash up on the beach of your sleepy little town? The person’s arms flail, waving above the water, and a mix of panic and relief floods though you. They’re not dead… yet.
You drop your fishing pole and jump into the ocean, swimming out to the person in the water. The water is cool against your skin, and your overalls are heavy when they’re wet.
The person is a young woman, with short green hair. Her hair is adorned with pink seashells, and she wears a blue bikini halter top. She struggles to keep her head above the water, and her arms are covered in dark purple bruises. You grab her, and her arms are so cold that you worry that she might not be alive. But her eyelashes flutter and she struggles against the water. You swim back to the shore and pull her up onto the land.
To your surprise, the lower half of her body is actually a tail. It is yellow at the top, transitions to orange, and finally ends in a purple fin at the end. It seems that her tail is just as bruised and beaten up as the top half of her body. It also looks like something big bit her, judging from the teeth puncture marks around her left hip. She groans and reaches for you, but she seems so weak.
This girl is a mermaid, and she was probably injured in the storm last night.
“Hey, stay here. I’m going to go get the doctor – “ you say, standing from the sandy beach, ready to run.
“No!” she cries, face contorted in pain and fear. “You can’t! Nobody can – nobody can know about me!”
You kneel beside her again. “Oh – okay. Let me – let me get my horse, just… stay here.”
She nods, closing her eyes. You stand and sprint to your stable, waking your horse up. He’s not very happy, but he plods out of the stable all the same.
It’s late at night, and you’re sweating. The humid air is now oppressive, weighing down on you like the secret you’ve been saddled with.
You lead your horse to the shore, where the cool waves lap at the mermaid’s sunset tail. Somehow, you get your horse to kneel, and with your help, the mermaid drags herself onto the horse’s back. You coax your horse back to your farm. It’s late enough that you only have to worry about being seen by drunk people stumbling home from the bar, and they come up with some wild sighting every week.
There’s a pond on your farm, meant for the ducks. But it’s a safe place for the mermaid to heal, you think, as you encourage your horse to kneel again and help her into the water. She lays on her back, fin waving back and forth in the water. Her eyes open. She still looks sleepy, but she is much more alert than when she washed up on the shore.
“Thank you,” she says, feeling the water with her fingertips. “I’m Leia.”
You tell her your name, and she repeats it, looking a little excited when she gets it right.
“Leia, how can I help you? Can we patch up your tail?”
Leia explains to you what you’ll need to protect the bite marks on her tail, and you rush off to find what she mentions – seaweed, a small fish, and a bucket of salty water. When you return, you follow the directions that she gives you in her weak, tired voice.
Some of the color has returned to her face, but she’s still in no shape to return to the ocean.
“Is it alright… if I stay here for a while?” she asks, resting her head on her folded arms, which sit on the edge of your pond.
You agree to let her stay. Her face lights up. She is excited to learn more about the human world, and to share information about the mermaid world with you.
Your farm is quiet, and you think that having a mermaid living in your pond will bring some excitement – so why not?
You can’t help but think that you’ll miss her when she goes back to the ocean, though.
