In which two friends are out walking, one's eating, and the other's reminiscing.
or: 1k words fic in which we get a glimpse of the life of Steph , and a little into what it means for her to have someone so different (a mermaid) as a friend
Takes place in the same universe as this other ficlet.
(@the-nerdy-libra hi hello I don't know if you still want to be tagged but I did just in case, tell me if not !)
Saying the way Cass functions is different is barely scratching the surface. It’s laughably weak of a term. Sometimes, though, she forgets.
Steph has been getting used to it, in the past months she got to spend with the woman. Seeing the glistening of her skin very quickly got far from disturbing. Of her teeth, too. The sharp glint in front of the slanted pupil’s not something she minds either.
The way she absolutely destroy heaps of livings bodies, though? It’s. It’s.
“Cass! That’s ... literally disgusting, aeurgh-”
Crouching in the middle of the sidewalk, Cass barely looks up. Or well, maybe she does. Steph is a bit too busy turning around— in order not to see the slaughter— to notice.
“You do the same. With pizza.” the mermaid says, unimpressed, uncaring, unmoved about Steph’s apparent utter disgust.
“I don’t. Do you see me decapitating my food before I eat it?”
“You can’t. Your food has no head”, Cass says. And then one of the last fishes she had caught earlier is immediately torn between her canines, again.
There’s something a bit captivating, about the way she tears at it seamlessly, leaving not a single bone behind. It’s just Steph’s consciousness 's being glad she doesn’t have to see the water turning red, like it's some sort of horror movie, she tells herself.
“And I eat the head, also”, Cass precises . Because of course she does. "So it's not decapitating."
“Yeah, that doesn’t make it better.”
It doesn't. Simultaneously, though, the random banter does make it more normal.
The first time Steph got to see Cass eating non-human made food was… A bit of a shock. A surprise, definitely. She should have excepted it, really : the wildness of it, the strength held in her jaw, her dentition. But domesticity had a way of making her forget all about their differences, forget some parts of the nature that made her her, up until she was confronted with said differences by an entirely unbothered Cass.
One evening, early enough that Steph could still see entirely fine when outside, Cass had came to her house, like usual. They sat outside, because the sunset was always more than worth it, and it was really nice. Steph thinks she was ranting about the increase of prices of the local market.
She knows for a fact Cass was sitting next to her, listening, until she had suddenly moved, quicker than Steph really processed. Steph knows she had definitely noticed the frog that Cass was holding, because she distinctly remembers thinking that it was adorable. Then Cass had snapped its head without a second thought.
As odd as it was, she had only felt horror for a little while. The big, oblivious eyes turning toward her when Steph's jaw unhinged from her face kind of distracted her from doing anything like screaming her shock out.
Now, well. She’s not shocked anymore whenever that happens. Just slightly jumpscared each time because Cass isn't going to stop jumping on whatever small creature has the stupid idea to pass by her.
At least she warns Steph she’s "going to be destroying her snack" before she does it, now. (Steph’s words, not hers.)
So here is now Steph, judging every single one of the cracks in the fucked up wall, the one not too far off into her vision.
“Are you done soon?”, she asks, tracking the path of a random stray cat that choses this moment to walk on the wall “Because we’re in the middle of the street, there could be people out walking their-”
Dogs.
The thought that maybe she should warn Cass against lunching on just any random creature hits Steph’s brain very suddenly.
Dogs. Stray cats.
Rabid wild animals, too. Maybe. Those would be less of a problem, morally-wise, because rabid animals don't usually have people caring about them. But Steph has no clue how eating one could affect someone.
Can sea creatures become rabid? Do mermaids ever get sick? Steph has no clue and no answers to any of these questions, and she doesn't want to imagine how Cass would look, in the splendor of all of her wildness. Really, she doesn't.
The point is: Steph has always been pretty fond of animals, as long as she remembers. She liked observing them, be it on her Youtube account or through the windows of her house.
She's also always hated seeing them suffering unnecessarily. Once, she saw a bird getting its wings clipped: and it was unnecessary, and it was violence, and it was something Steph never managed to forget. That was one of the first time violence marked her mind, and that was when she told herself she'd remember all those time, would do her best to remember all that was unfair to never one day do the same.
But it's in her nature, in Cass's nature, to eat and catch the ones — birds, toads, lizards, any creatures— she can.
And she's been doing it less than Steph is convinced she usually does, when she's out of her waters.
And maybe she doesn't consider it as a sacrifice, and maybe what Steph has to offer instead is enough.
Still, she feels felonious in a way, when she tells her her request.
"Hey, Cass? Could you try avoiding eating cats and dogs?"
Cass's answers come easily, more easily than any sacrifice ought to be. "Yes." Maybe this is a confirmation it isn't one, then.
She doesn't ask for precisions, doesn't ask for compromises. She just say yes, and she adds "I can", and this is where it stops.
Steph is grateful. She wonders if things were always meant to be as easy as that. If things will always be. If, really, the normal she's feeling has always meant to be with someone so out of the norms.
She doesn't think she cares, entirely.
She looks back, toward the girl and the carcass she's holding within her hands, and she smiles.
Cass smiles back, blood on her teeth, and the blood isn't disturbing her, this once, this time. Steph's glad, really.
