Chapter Text
The storm season hadn’t been kind to the city of Blackwater.
Once a thriving port with a beautiful sea, turned in time into a meager sandy point on the map. Once famous and proud for breeding valiant explorers and scientists, affluent and abundant in both riches and wonders. Now left to abandon due to the hard conditions the gods ended up bestowing upon its beaches like an ailment.
Some said it was due to a curse; after all, the people from Blackwater had only ever taken from the sea and never given back, eating and gobbling on what they could put their hands on, selling whatever they could find, and never respecting the land or the original inhabitants of it. The proof of it was proudly sitting on its flag, a stricken mermaid ready to be fetched, bloody and screaming in ugly shapes. The city had once been proud, grown both in voracious demands and easy trade, comfortable with the gifts of the land, and perhaps too greedy.
Legends talk about sirens being the ones behind what became of this cursed city, perhaps in the shape of a curse, insulted by humans and hunted for sport and pleasure. Legends talk about war, humans decimating populations until sirens became a rare breed, now almost akin to myth. Known well to cause disasters to whoever might fall near their territories or sight, lured by beautiful songs, sights, and memories, swallowing the daring into the deepest parts of the sea, never to be seen again, exactly in the same way, this village is now a bare footprint on the maps. A sad point where only hard waters and storms await, where fish and treasure are now scarce.
Just like kindness is.
And kindness… kindness is not something Suguru has experienced much in his thirteen years of life.
“Don’t come back if you have your hands empty, Suguru”
His older brother had said with a silent bite as he pushed the old, fragile rowboat that was given to him for his tasks, right into the mouth of moving waters.
The severity of Kenjaku’s voice was hidden in the calm of his composure.
Kenjaku had never been one for games or plays. Surviving was hard as it was, and Suguru could feel the tightness in his chest as much as he felt the uselessness of his tired hands whenever something was asked of him, whenever his skills weren’t enough.
His older brother’s sharp eyes were too similar to his; the people said they looked alike. Suguru wondered if he would grow to be the spitting image of his older brother, a knot making its way towards his throat as an unsettling feeling pooled at the thought.
His brother rarely reprimanded him. But his words were enough to make the weight of his words felt. He didn’t like how easily they picked at his desperation to comply. To be useful for once.
That’s why he made sure to find every trick, made sure to make every lure with his own hands, to know every fish, if not by name, by nature, to know how to find and hunt any creature around.
Being skilled and dexterous with his fingers was enough.
He always made sure it was enough.
Except for this season, where the gods had decided to curse Blackwater yet again with an impossible dance of storms, one after the other, as if they were summoned by cruel fairies stomping on and on, and dancing over simple plains while laughing.
You see, storms meant fewer fish, which meant Suguru had nothing to show for it. His traps had all been broken, and his hands were tired and calloused from searching, fixing them in place and rewiring them. He went deep, he went shallow, but nothing could be found anywhere.
Useless, so useless.
Kenjaku is going to be silent for days again and pretend he’s a ghost like he deserves.
Suguru looked towards the sea and watched the horizon meet the sky in its reflection. Perhaps if the sea decided to be unkind today, he could turn to the forest and hunt whatever else that might appear there, but he was too tired and hungry to make such a trip.
His stomach growled, and he sighed, eyes fixed on the calm horizon that seemed to mock him now with its silence. He turned his head, his eyes following the ragged shoreline from beginning to end. Suguru thought, even if battered, Blackwater wasn’t stingy with its views, at least.
And then he saw.
The black cliffs.
Were the waves are anything but predictable, and they crash angrily onto the rocks. The one place not many have bothered to discover.
Suguru found himself steering towards the caves. The cliffs near the north that nobody ever cared for. The ones he hadn’t had the luxury of avoiding. He almost forgot.
He’d only ever set traps there twice in his life. And even then, he’d pulled them up almost empty. Nobody fished there. Not for food. Not for luck. But even if he wasn’t a person of luck. You can’t beg the gods with a prayer if you don’t first work for what you want yourself.
Maybe this time it would work. It’s not like he has any other choice.
If nothing else worked, it’d be the last chance he had, or else he’d have to steal again, and he wants to avoid that, if possible. It isn’t something that he feels good doing. But he can’t fail again. His older brother will be disappointed, and he’d rather not be alone for days again, wandering, whistling to nobody as punishment.
His dear older brother is all he has after all.
The only one who has taken care of him since he’s known reason. He can’t keep on disappointing him.
Suguru swallowed.
Sometimes, Kenjaku’s silent stares were somehow worse than being hit. Too much silence, as if he didn’t even exist, just like the sea today. Silence that often made him restless.
But something told him that today was different.
The storms had waned after all.
It was as if the sky itself had tired of so much war and trashing. Relinquishing for a few moments of peace to take a breath. The narrow opening of the caves was hard to spot, and almost impossible to get by on foot, all hidden beneath the ways of stony, eerie formations of jagged rock.
Suguru sighed, but he kept going.
The air smelled different under the slight shimmer of wet sand, like cold metal and thick fresh mud. The cave’s mouth was slick with moss, the tide lapping at his ankles as he tied his boat and waded inside.
The deeper he went, the more the cave would swallow outside sound. For some reason, here inside, the weight of the air and the depth of the silence calmed his ragged heart, and the lump on his stomach was lessened by the serene peace resonating emptily through the walls. Somehow, inside was different. The sound of the faraway waves was soothing like a caress rather than the clashing of the harsh waves he was so familiar with.
Here, silence wasn’t as deafening.
The light from outside narrowed to a thin silver ribbon, glinting off the still surface of the pool deeper in. Water was particularly light-green here, shining with faint tints of jade.
His soft steps took him towards where he remembered the last trap he’d set. Behind the bigger rocks at the front, where a pool would give in to a giant water formation that resembled an open lake, one that was thinly connected back to the sea.
That’s when he saw.
The net was heavy—way too heavy.
Suguru held his breath with a gasp.
When he hauled the net toward him, the water shimmered with the flash of silver scales. Fish. Dozens of them, fat and gleaming. A bounty so unnatural his breath caught twice. Plenty of fish were all tangled, trying to escape, meshed into an amount Suguru could have only dreamt of finding in such conditions.
And then his breath was cut short again.
It wasn’t just fish.
There, just at the center of the messed net, was a small pale body.
A thin arm, limp among the writhing bodies of fish. Fingers long and delicate, skin whiter than moonlight. Suguru’s stomach dropped, and before his mind caught up, he was in the water, yanking the net toward the rocks. A nape entangled with seaweed, head turned to face the water.
The body rolled toward him as he pulled.
Strange white hair fanned out like foam in the water, catching the light in strands that glowed faintly blue and white, glistening like threads made of pearl. He yanked the other’s chest upright, cutting part of the net with his loyal knife, his mouth trembling, mumbling prayers.
His heart stopped at what he saw.
It was just a boy, younger than him, maybe, or perhaps his same age. Skin pale and the coldest he had ever touched. White long lashes over soft features adorned closed lids and—
Blue.
For a heartbeat, he allowed himself to get lost in the glimmer of them. And in that moment, it was like he understood something he couldn’t quite put a name on yet.
Suguru saw a thousand blues, living blues, deep dark blues, richer than the sky tales of blue. A blue so bright, like nothing the sea had ever in its piety shown to the common of his eyes. As if the entirety of the ocean had chosen the pools of these eyes to lie in secret.
It was inhuman. Breathtaking.
Suddenly, the same bravery of sharp corals adorned the eyes he was looking at, they screamed a feral emotion back at his very soul. They made his throat close, his mouth dry, and a weight sank deep inside his chest at the sight.
—Impossible. Impossible.
It rooted him to the spot, making his hold falter and his lungs scream for air before he saw something serpentine twitch near the body of the boy, right at the corner of his eyes —he couldn’t look away after all—. The sound it made was nothing human; a sharp, guttural hiss that prickled the back of Suguru’s neck like wildfire.
And before he felt ringing in his ears, his eyes blackened just like when a savage, angry wave hits you with anger, and ducks your head towards the depths with violence and short notice.
The blow pushed him underwater, his body tensing as a helpless gull, a strength so harsh as if a whole storm had decided to punch him and forced him to dive. His throat opened in pain, and he gulped water rather than air, foam dissipating as he saw a giant tail flipping underwater, still fighting to free itself from the rest of the net and tangling itself further.
Suguru desperately swam upwards. His lungs ached for the surface as his eyes searched for whatever the heck that had been.
The boy —or was it a creature?— trashed, hissing and growling as if it were being attacked, frantically flipping its arms and tail. The movements growing in speed and desperation, Suguru held his knife tightly in his hands. Not being able to process anything but his breathing, ringing inside his ears.
Almost impossible to find.
Almost.
He just stood there with his quickened breaths. Not being able to believe what he was seeing or hearing. A spawn of the sea, a human with a fishtail, a creature known to bring demise and death.
A siren.
It was a siren, a dangerous one at that—He’d thought as he gripped his knife harder.
That, he thought, before he heard the growls turn into whines and human-like sobs, the tail tangling into the net more and more, and something tugged at his chest at the sight.
Suguru was never cruel to nature.
He respected it, liked it, and cared for it.
Much like a scared animal, the creature grew anxious and hurt itself in its poor attempts at escaping. It was tragic. And Suguru couldn’t help it.
His heart grew pliant at the sight. Something at the back of his head told him to not defend himself, to not hurt this strange creature.
“Wait."
He said, and the word echoed inside the cave.
He didn’t know if this creature could be reasoned with.
But pointy ears flickered to attention, much like a bird tilts its head, and the body tensed in a frozen stance, tail curling wide and tense in a show of danger, flexing the lean muscles underneath shiny scales.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said as he came closer, hands trying to signal the creature to ease its stance.
“I can free you. Please, just let me free you, you are hurting yourself!”
Suguru motioned the knife towards the net, carefully, and the creature growled low in distrust, its chest vibrating dangerously much like the sound coming from a rattlesnake.
He stopped breathing, or tried to slow his breathing. He took a deep breath and showed the creature how the knife could help. Cutting a little of the net and letting it see how the tail would easily untangle if he kept going. The creature never stopped growling, His pale face looking at him with anger and distrust.
Suguru honestly couldn’t blame it. He was a human after all. And this was… a feral creature.
A siren.
Suguru couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Almost pinching himself at the sight.
Sirens and humans had never had good stories to tell about each other. The back of his hand went to stories of war and sea and blood, but he didn’t pay them any mind. It’s not like he knows anything too specific to make useful here. Sirens are known to kill humans, but this siren, this small child-like siren, doesn’t look like it wants to hurt him.
It looks scared.
At the most tangled points, Suguru had to press onto the muscle of the tail, pressing his hand on cold, smooth scales he didn’t think would be so soft and sleek to the touch. His eyes expanded in admiration. Lightblue shimmers and silver-white scales adorned its owner, ending on fair skin towards the navel. Suguru couldn’t believe what he was seeing; the belly of the creature was tensing strongly under his hand.
He didn’t count the seconds that passed, too fixed in both his racing heart and careful touch, on not making the creature more scared, more wild.
Soon, the creature’s eyes grew less venomous, and the growling subsided into a softer threatening sound as it watched his body become free from the clutches of the net, the last knot a difficult one that freed him completely with a click.
Something about it made Suguru feel satisfied.
He looked at the creature and smiled. Perhaps he had gained the creature's trust.
“See? There you—“
*WHACK*—
—Or not.
His victory was cut short by a slap to the face that sent his whole body towards a pointy rock, hitting his head, —“Fuck— Oww!”— not enough to bleed but to terribly hurt.
He recovered quickly, but the creature had taken the chance to dive, this time at a distance that was deemed safe enough, —or so it seemed— its head peering from under the water, a tiny tailfin pointing violently behind as well, much like the stance of an angry cat ready to pounce.
“Good gracious sea! I said I won’t hurt you already!”
What an ungrateful—
He said angrily, and he could swear he heard the siren scoff underwater. Little bubbles popping like boiling water under its nose. Still watching him with disdain.
“Fine, you are not my problem…”
All he could do was gather the fish that remained on land.
At least he had gotten himself something to eat. He cried internally at all the fish that had managed to escape.
But at least Kenjaku wouldn’t be mad. Suguru smiled to himself as he grabbed all the fish he could onto another net and got ready to carry them. The creature never leaving him from its sight.
“You know, I know people don’t like your kind because we have a… very bad history… and I know you hate humans… But as a thanks… I won’t sell you out, and you’ll let me take your fish? Do you think that’s fair?” He said.
As if the creature could understand him.
He did feel guilty about it. Was he stealing from the siren?
He kinda felt guilty about it now.
“Let’s just share.” He sighed. Drawing his net and slicing a few of the fattest fish he could find so they wouldn’t escape, killing them instantly.
Of course, the siren kept watch and stayed eerily still. If Suguru’s heart wasn’t so adrenalized, he would have stayed to look at those eyes for longer. There was something so strange about them that dazed him.
“It's not fair if I take all of them I know, I know… It’s not like you have to look at me like that.”
Something inside of him stirred in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend. Suguru considered himself to be curious in nature, prodding and learning from the wild was what he loved most after all.
But this… this was different.
He left the fish near the shoreline of the lake.
Motioning to the siren to come get them.
He decided that was enough. Nature should be left alone too, and the poor thing has to be tired like he is —he bets.
Suguru decided today had been an eventful day after all.
Both of them should rest. It’s only fair. The siren does look very tired too.
So, he gave his back to the creature, walking towards the exit to retake his boat. But not before he heard the creature on the other side, munching desperately on the fish he left for it, as if the creature had never eaten a sole thing in its life before this. The noises it made were loud and obscene, and Suguru swallowed his laugh as he turned his head to watch in complete awe.
He had seen animals feed before, but nothing so similar and yet so far away from humans. It was as if a human had merged with a hungry cat and had grown the tail of a fish. Suguru’s heart raced in prickled awareness of how mythical it was.
The siren hungrily delved into the meat, tainting his cheeks with wild red strikes of blood. Suguru was amazed at the sight, if he could compare, this was something akin to a shark encounter —no, a divine encounter, or maybe something bigger, flashier, like— like— there’s really nothing he can compare this to. Sharks and sea snakes have forever lowered their standing on his list of amazing creatures. He really can’t find any words for this one.
Sirens are said to be dangerous, able to kill at will with a song, but this one seems somehow lost. Young. It reminds Suguru of himself and how useless he’d be without Kenjaku taking care of him. Does that mean there are more near? Could it be that it's alone?
It makes something in his chest drop, his smile faltering as he watches the Siren finish the last fish just like he would imagine a wild tiger would lick his paws, the siren licking his long fingers, its powerful tail dragging happily in swings once in a while —or so, suguru wants to think, not that he knows if sirens feel like humans do.
Then, the blue eyes are directed at him again, as if they were calling to him, but at the same time, as if they don’t want to admit it. Red strikes of blood running down it’s eerily pretty face. It’s uncanny, how beautiful it is. How wild the blood breaks the spell and yet adds to it and calls to Suguru like the sun calls the bird into a sky dive.
Suguru realizes he’s been standing still all this time, looking in awe at it when he should have been gone.
Do sirens really eat humans?
A prickle of hidden fear stirs in his chest, one that he now allows himself to feel. Suguru shakes his head, but he decides not to focus on it.
He needs to recall what the old wives of the shore used to tell him.
He doesn’t remember well, but he does know, however, of the beauty they said they hold. He believes now. He believes in how easy sailors would drown just to get a glimpse of them.
It’s… understandable… he thinks as he shakes his head again and grows out of his stupor. To be able to marvel at such a strange creature…
But things like these are better left alone.
Suguru respects that…
Alone.
What would happen if someone else found it?
Suguru doesn’t want to think about that. He just decides to take one last look at the siren’s face, drenched in fish-blood, big blue pools eerily watching him as if expecting something from him from afar.
It’s like the eyes are calling to him. Tugging his very soul.
Suguru just weakly murmurs under his breath and gives a little wave without thinking.
“See you…”
His eyes turn towards the exit again.
He doesn’t want to think that much.
He has enough on his plate already.
By the time he returns, the baskets they kept for fish are filled to the brim. Suguru feels pride in what he's found.
“You've done well, Suguru” Kenjaku says in a melodic voice that lifts Suguru’s heart. Even if Kenjaku’s smile hadn’t reached his eyes, even if his eyes hadn’t turned to look at him.
“I'm happy you like them, brother,” Suguru chirped.
Kenjaku’s gaze flickered over them for a slight second. “They will fetch a good price. You should try to set more traps wherever you found them… maybe you’ll find something even better.”
Suguru’s throat suddenly felt a little dry. He thinks of the Siren and how scared it seemed, so he fakes a smile.
“Yeah… I’ll keep that in mind.”
But he wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t want to find the siren hurt between his nets again.
He would rather lie to his brother and hide it forever. He prefers to never tell of this to anyone. To be alone in his madness than to betray the creature.
Suguru will treasure this day forever.
Would treasure the chance he had to such a noble sight, a tale for only his soul to remember. Eyes that he could still see, painting the back of his eyelids blue every time he closed them.
He sighed.
He knew sleep wouldn’t be easy to come by tonight. It was the same every time he was excited or every time he felt sad. This feeling, however, was something of both worlds.
Suguru’s body refused to listen.
Every time he would close his eyes and tried to make his mind go quiet, he would relive the moments filled with adrenaline, and his heartbeat would spike, just as if he were transported right back there to those impossible, sharp, glistening eyes and that soft, wet white hair.
And its eyes. He’d never seen eyes like that —not ever— a color that was alive, rich in fury like the stubbornness of the sun rising back from the sea, but proud too, letting the waves kiss its feet as when it rises like a royal onto the skies.
He told himself that he should rest at peace, be relieved.
Relieved that the creature had been fine, that it was probably back at the open sea now, never to be seen again, free, alive, wild. The sea was cruel to send something so untouchable to him and to take it so fast, but it was kind enough to let him watch as it retrieved its present in its wilderness.
But still…
Suguru’s heart couldn’t settle.
His hand curled into his blanket. The light from the moon illuminating the ceiling of his room. Shadows playing with dark shapes that only made him think of the unnatural movements of its tail.
Suguru looked to the side and saw his brother sleeping peacefully on the bed next to him.
He wondered if Sirens had family, too.
Some animals have family, right?
The siren seemed to be just a kid. But maybe that’s just how sirens are. He doesn’t know what to think. But he wishes he knew more.
There was… something starting in his chest, a kind of unease, of defeat, low, insistent. Pulling and luring at him at the same time— like a tide that seems shallow at first but isn’t, one that hides a scary depth when you leave your body entangle itself in it.
He didn’t even know if the siren could speak.
If those growls were just a facade and the creature could really communicate, with how similar it was to a human.
It might be the case… it might be…
He didn’t know what it was that made him so restless. Why had he left so frantically? was he afraid? Perhaps it was the fear he had felt alongside the frantic movements it made, as it was trying to free itself from his nets. Perhaps it was guilt. Perhaps the cries and the whines that had tugged at his heart were too human to pretend the creature to be only akin to an animal of the sea.
Or maybe… it was in the eyes.
He had seen them, angry and filled with emotion and fear.
He found himself aching to see them again.
Not to catch it, or keep it, or sell it. Or whatever someone else would have wanted.
Just to observe it again, to prove to himself that it had really been real and not something out of a fever dream. To plaster more of those addictive movements into his memory.
His mind kept going back to the way the net pressed against strong muscle. Fingers palming smooth iridescent scales, panic and foam running in the water, and how for one single minuscule moment. They had locked eyes the first time. The air had suspended then, and it had been like thunder and lightning had split his whole body into light and pain and awe and smoke.
The creature snatched something from him that took his breath away, and left him feeling like his breath had never returned whole, not in its entirety.
Or maybe it feels as if he has been the one freed from something tangling him. Maybe this is why people are said to follow them to the depths when they see them. Maybe they get drowned in their eyes, and maybe they are glad they were able to do so.
A heavy gust of wind passed through the window, carrying the smell of saltwater and the shore.
And Suguru finally gives in to dreams of the sea.
Dreams where the creature could perhaps swim freely under the moonlight. Maybe a smile forming between soft features, and eyes happy, but wild still.
Suguru hoped the creature had gone away, and he also hoped it hadn’t.
It was better if it were already gone. Safer.
He still couldn’t help but fervently wish to see it with his own eyes.
Just one more time.