Chapter Text
The waves lapped at the shore with a laziness that nearly lulled Rumi to sleep.
They pulled back slowly, dragging like a heavy blanket over the warm soaked sand. It was evening already, and the fog had begun to gather.
Rumi took a deep breath, inhaling the salty wet air, it sits heavy in her lungs for a good few seconds before she is ready to let it go.
She has fished here for decades, recognizing the tides like her mentor's moods. Her life depended on it, so she had to learn it quickly.
Her calloused hands fidgeted with the rough chord of the net, todays catch sitting on it. Not much, the fish were small. Just enough to feed herself. A small huff left her mouth, the commercial ships have been moving closer by the day. They all knew it was unlawful, but who the fuck cares about the waters off the coast of a small, meaningless island? The population was mostly older folks and their lazy offspring who refused to move to larger cities for work. Elderly and drunks, that was all the was left here.
Well, them and the fish.
And her.
Regardless of the Islands state, she still had bills to pay.
The woman sighed, letting the scratch of rope between her fingers ground her. The last thing she needed was for these the tiny fry to squeeze between the gaps and ruin her chance at a decent dinner.
She could buy food, she knew that, but she'll be damned if she touches what was left of her inheritance. That money was to preserve the family shrine, not for her teobokki cravings.
Turning her meager catch into the cooler, she shuts the Styrofoam with more strength then she should've, cracking the edge and letting the mix of seawater and fish blood slosh out- hitting her freshly washed pants.
Alright. Okay.
She needed to wash some of her stuff anyway.
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The days passed in a blur, the fog becoming thicker as the humidity arose. KIt made it hard to see past a few feet in front of her, turning her daily trips into a fight against nature's clock. That is, if she wanted to dock before she lost track of which way was back to dry land.
God, even her compass was hard to see with the droplets gathering atop the glass.
A harsh wave rocked Romance- yes, that's the ships name, no, she didn't pick it- so hard she hit her hip on the flybridge. She braced where she could, a few fish flying off the cooler into the deck.
What the hell? There were no storms for miles, and the waters were calm. Then why-?
The horn of a large ship interrupted her thoughts, the resounding thrum so close to her it was more felt than heard. Every bone in her form vibrated, it was like hitting your elbow oddly, but through her entire body.
Oh, Goddamn it.
She was way too close to a Seiner.
Those fuckers knew this area was off limits, the purse net has been banned here, its where the mackerel come to spawn-
The honk sounded again, a wave coming to rock Romance as the Seiner moved closer. They must not see them. Or simply don't care. The fog made the perfect excuse to hit a small, insignificant ship.
Breaking out of her stupor, Rumi moved to the helm, doing her best not to collide with the walls and equipment.
There were echoes of shouting. Why did they have to be here? Why now? Haven't they had enough? They've been fishing non-stop for the past few weeks, if they don't end it soon there won't be anything left behind.
Soon, the ship turns back in the correct direction, heading towards the shore as she tries her best to get the hell out of there before the ships end up colliding-
A muffled thunk followed by a movement so harsh it takes all of Rumi's strength to hold on to the steer comes only seconds later.
"I can't believe this" she groans, leaning her forehead on her hands.
Now she'll have fix the goddamn boat.
Sighing, she tries to assess the damage without being able to see it.
Wasn't the Seiner, or she would have a halved boat and a broken spine. Maybe they dropped equipment? One of those large heavy coolers?
Probably.
How is she gonna get back to land if she doesn't know where that thing floated off to? What if she hits it again and ends up cracking the hull? Fuck.
She steered with all her might, fighting against the waves caused by the Seiner and the heavy fog that still blanketed the waters. Her breath came in short, exhausted huffs, sweat soaking into the already humid cloth of her vest. Her hands ached, some callouses cracking open with the effort. She needs out of this mess, and she needs it now. If she doesn't want to swim her way back home.
(As if she'd make it that far)
"Alright, just a little more. You can handle it, Romance." She pats the wall to her left like a dad would pet a dog, as if checking it's sturdiness.
She emerges from the worst of the current. Rumi wipes her brow, hands achy and muscles sore.
Before she can allow relief to flow through her body, something snags on the motor, the old thing sputtering.
"Fuck me"
She tries to push further for a while, giving up when it became clear that whatever it was, it wasn't going to let her move anytime soon.
Rumi fetches the swiss army knife from her pocket, moving to try and cut what was most likely a discarded net from her motor.
The culprit was covered in algae, and just as she guessed, had tangled itself so much nothing was moving at all.
Her cuts do nothing, the more she tears at it the more wedged it becomes. Frustrated, she stabs the knife into a particularly layered piece of net.
The resulting sound sent ice pouring down her spine.
Something screamed.
Screamed. Not yelped, or hissed or whatever other noise that she could have passed off for animal or machine. It yelled out like a person.
Her thoughts raced with a speed the fisherwoman herself failed to comprehend. Her hands shook, the knife trembling and carving deeper into what- whoever she just impaled.
Another scream, this one sounding angrier rather than afraid.
That was all the warning she got before a weight crashed down and her world flipped on its axis.
Cold water soaks her clothes, making the deck below her slippery as she fights for a grip. It feels like wrestling a wet eel, seawater isn't capable of making things so slick. She can barely see. The fog and the movement adding to her confusion.
After what felt like hours, the weight slides off her body. Leaving Rumi on the floor, wet and gasping for air.
In the corner of her sight, the person she's stabbed flails around in the tangle of nets. They grunt and yowl and Rumi desperately wants to shout that that only makes it worse.
She doesn't find her voice, however, when the being in front of her- bleeding all over her ship- has a tail instead of legs.
A tail.
A long, deep red appendage that moves with enough strength to rock the boat at every attempt at freedom. Its seeping blood, just as red, from the wound at the very end.
The knife responsible is still stuck to the net, just a few inches from that thing's body. Stained and glistening.
Fuck.
Slowly, her bruised legs move beneath her. She takes far too long to get up, trying and failing not to look weak in front of that thing. When she finally does, she takes a moment to regain her breath.
Assessing.
Between the gaps that creature is still grappling with, she can see human-like hands, with claws in place of fingertips. Wet skin that could pass for human, if it wasn't sickly pale. Strands of what could be hair obscuring it's face.
It sends a shiver down her spine, how closely its appearance could pass for one of her kind. Stories of sirens luring sailors into their deaths invading her mind. Beautiful women with beautiful voices making men jump down into the waves only to eat them alive.
For the longest time she had just figured the alcohol had gotten to them. That they had seen a shadow or hallucination, that something of the sort only happened to the stupid and the drunk.
Well, look at her now.
With a caught siren on her boat.
The thing hissed, though it quickly becomes a whine when more blood gushes from the gash.
Rumi winces, siren or not, that's gotta hurt.
She has two choices.
Kill it and maybe become the richest woman in the world- the first ever person to have caught a Siren. Making all others race to find them, creating a market for their meat or their ownership as pets. Making humans inevitably hunt them to extinction. Damning them to survive in zoos, depending on the goodness of their keepers to continue as a species. Behind thick, glass walls.
Or.
She sets it free.
Cut the net and pretend she never saw anything.
There is truly one choice. She doesn't need the money. She can figure it out just fine without damning an entire species- men eating or not.
She takes a step, then another. Trying to make her presence known.
It coils like a snake waiting to strike.
“I won't hurt you.” She says slowly, “ I just want to cut the net” her hands are raised.
She receives a growl in reply.
Still, the siren doesn't make a move. So she takes it as an ok.
Grabbing the emergency scissors from her vest pocket, trying to cut away at the rope as quickly as possible. It still takes a while, and the siren is still not happy about it, but at least Rumi has all her fingers intact when it's over.
The creature wiggles free, giving Rumi a better view of what the infamous men-eating monster looks like.
God.
She now understands why men have thrown themselves off ship for her kind.
Her skin is shiny and slick, limbs lithe and smooth. Her tail, mighty and muscular, looks more like an eel's than a traditional mermaid or siren from stories. Her face, fuck, her face. It's long and sharp, a deep scar slashing from her jaw to her scalp. Many more littering her body.
She doesn't look like a delicate maiden, she looks like a seabeast.
Golden eyes stare back with just as much intensity. Intelligent eyes, analyzing her every breath.
When they meet with hers. Rumi's heart squeezes. Her stomach fluttering.
Then, it downs on her. The net. It was the Seiner's.
They were hunting her.
She can't just let her back in the water, bleeding and weak. They'll catch her.
With all her courage and perhaps quite a bit of hopefulness, Rumi steps around the siren. Dumping the fish off the cooler and gesturing for the creature to get inside.
“You need to hide, now.”
—--------------------------
Mira was exhausted.
She had been swimming aimlessly for months now. Kicked out of her pod for refusing that goddam arranged mating. Why the fuck had it had to be her?
She had a perfectly good older brother that was more than capable of making an heir.
I mean, it was easy work. She would lay a brood and then watch it until it hatched. Her kind didn't do parenting anyway. Other Mer did, but not them. Not the fearsome Jaws of the Sea. As her father called them.
She only knew her parents because they were the strongest pod and wanted to keep a strong lineage, and that apparently meant picking who your offspring mates with.
Bulshit. If they were truly that strong then they were more than capable of choosing their own mates.
And now she's alone. Trying to find a safe, secluded enough place to hunt and live out her rest of her life.
Anywhere that isn't under her mother's controlling gaze.
And that's when that floating rock arrives.
She had found a decent enough spot, plenty of mackerel and other tasty fish. A little too close to the coast for her liking, but what was the problem with that? She liked her water a little warm.
Famous last words.
She gets caught in that thing's trap faster than she can blink. It hurts like a bitch.
It pulls her up and off the water, into what she would have assumed was it's mouth. That is, until she heard voices.
Creatures, ones that look like Mer but with no tails, flippers, or scales. Their bottoms seem to be changed flippers like the ones she's seen on Selkies. She was told they once walked on land and those tiny wiggly things at the end of their tails was what was left over after eons in the water.
Maybe these creatures had done the opposite. Moved from water to land and their flippers grew.
It… it looks really fucking weird.
Alas, weird or not, they clearly were trying to hunt for food and caught her instead.
Was there no food on land? Were they starving enough that they found a floating rock and jumped on it? And what the hell is this thing they have her in? It looks like a restraint they use for criminals sometimes back home. To make sure they don't escape until punished.
She tries to speak to them, let them know she got accidentally caught in their trap. To let her go and she'll leave them to their hunting.
That is not exactly what happens.
Two of them, then three, then four are atop her. Pinning her limbs to the ground, shouting words she cannot understand. She fights with all her might, scrapping like she used to do with other Mer. Scratching, biting, trashing like her life depended on it.
As soon as she felt the sting of something sharp and cold entering her flesh, she knew it did.
Falling back to the water felt like a blessing, it wasn't.
The restraint was still tangled, and guess what? Another floating rock. Smaller, but as it turns out, even more annoying.
Her tail caught the end of something that rumbled. And a few seconds later, another sharp thing sunk in.
God, that hurt so, so much.
Mira screamed, trying to reach for the weapon without any success. She had to force the creature atop this rock to remove it.
Seeing its silhouette, she aimed, then tackled it with all the strength she had left.
Was it a stupid call? Yes.
Did she have any other choice? Maybe. But she was never one to think too hard about choices.
When this one fought back, Mira realized she barely had the energy to keep going. She was going to die. On a rock, in the middle of nowhere, miles from home.
Alone.
Her brother would laugh if he knew, the siren thought hazyly. Eyes heavy from overexertion.
Then, it came closer.
Spoke to her.
She only managed a hiss back.
And the creature began to tear away at the restraints. One by one, until she was free.
Dizzy from bloodloss, she stared up at that thing. It was different from the others.
A bit smaller. It's arms were muscular, it was… imposing. In a strangely comforting way.
Must be the bloodloss making her think like that. It had no pretty colors for her to stare at, no long, graceful limbs. No battle scars. Only kind, tired eyes. And a long, woven braid.
It was a female of the species. She was..
She was beautiful.
Mira was completely ignoring what she was trying to say.
That was Mira's last thought before she passed out.