fearlessly | mermaid: the squeakquel

mermaid: the squeakquel

[ things have not gone well for alisaie, since the day she saved the boy.

truthfully, things had not been going well for her before then, either, or for as long as she could remember. she did not fit in amongst her peoples, who hid deep beneath the waves. the surface was expressly, strictly forbidden, and for very good reason - the hyur who lived on the lands, the dominant species, are powerful, violent, and untrustworthy, vicious monsters that kill on sight.. or so the stories said. many thousands of years ago, long before the memories of even their most ancient elders, sahagin once thrived, spread across the seas, and the hyur were not unknown to them then. tales say that they once worked together, or at least tolerated one another, until the great hunt began, and while the two-leggeds were powerless in the water, they had great strength in their enormous wooden whales and weapons and vast, endless numbers.

no one can remember how it began, but nevertheless it was not a war, it was a massacre, and what was left of her people fled deep, deep beneath the waves where the weapons could not reach and the hyur could not swim, and it is here that they have remained ever since, rebuilding, surviving, yet still their numbers are so very few in comparison with the vast kingdoms they once kept. the hyur, it seems, have long forgotten them, and as far as her lord father is concerned, that is for the best. keeping away from the surface, away from the two-legged, was the only way to keep themselves safe. alisaie had disagreed.

she knows now that she had been foolish, and naive.

it is not so uncommon for rebellious youths to swim up to the sun, but even the most brazen of sahagin do not venture near to the shorelines. the hyur still swim, still sail in their great whales now built of unforgiving iron and steel, and the few sahagin who have swam higher have always been met with severe punishment. alisaie was a brazen youth, too, and far too stubborn and foolish for her own good. no threat or punishment could keep her away, and when her father found out that she had saved a young hyur boy from drowning, tangled in kelp, his wrath had been a terror to behold.

still she had not learned. she wishes now that she had. but the more they tried to to tighten their hold on her, the more they lost control, and alisaie's rebellious spirit had become her undoing. she had believed, truly believed that the stories could not be entirely true. so much drifts beneath the waves, little tokens of the civilization that they once knew, and so few of them are weapons, or danger. alisaie had found strange metal items, she had found adornments and pictures, bright toys, innumerable things she cannot know the use of, she has studied them, found fascination in them - surely like her own people, the hyur cannot all be so vicious. the drowning boy had looked so.. small, so soft, and afraid, and even these many years later she still remembers his eyes. they had not seemed so dangerous.

she was naive, her father said, before he trapped her in her chambers. she was a danger to all of them, revealing herself even to a child hyur, she puts them all in peril by drawing so near to she shores. she had hated him then, for his closed mind, for how he tried to control her.

now she wishes she had listened. the iron whales had coasted directly over their home that day, and brought with them a cacophany of great noise and flashing lights - the booming of cannons shook the firmament, and the fires rained bitter ash into the waters below. the hyur were fighting one another in a spectacular, horrifying display, and she had not been able to keep away. what a fool she had been. they caught her in their unforgiving nets, and since that day she has known only terror, and fury, and deep, full, unrelenting regret. her father had been right.

she cannot know how long they have kept her. many years, now. she is held somewhere dark, somewhere cold, and they are always watching her, studying her, scraping her scales and plucking her hairs and fins, stealing her blood. they speak to her, and for many years she does not understand, but in time their language becomes a puzzle for her to unravel, even if she does not understand the purpose of all of their words. what else does she have to do to keep herself occupied but to listen to them? there is nothing else to keep her mind from dissolving. when they discover that she can speak their words they are quick to teach her more, to share their language; they are cruel, but they are curious, and though she had been quite certain that they would take her life, they have not killed her.

sometimes she wishes they would. she has long ago lost all sense of the passage of time, and any hope that she would ever swim freely again. at first she would fight them with her teeth and claws and powerful tail, but soon they learned, tainting her waters with something that tasted sweet and sharp, that kept her drowsy. after a time, the hyur stop coming, only one or two remain to observe her, to keep her fed, and alive. she will die here, in this hole in the earth, in this cramped tank, in this water that tastes like rust. she should have listened to her family.

so it comes as a great surprise when more hyur come, one day, when they drag her from her pool and into a small, cramped tank that barely fits her, and haul her away from the hole in the ground and up to the bright, searing sun. alisaie hisses and spits, slamming her body against the glass walls, but the sweet, sharp taste comes again, she is sedated, and a dark cloth is draped over her tank.

she is groggy still when, many hours later, after a long rumbling and swaying, the cloth is swept away and the bright sunlight streams in again. alisaie cannot see clearly, but there is.. a man before her, a man she has never seen before, adorned in dark cloth, his eyes hard but not unkind, not critical like the eyes of the hyur who had kept her before, and when they sweep over her she feels.. seen in a strange way she cannot entirely parse. behind the man are four others, younger, and behind them a vast staircase leading to a great, shining building.

she's so tired..

through the thick glass their voices seem dull and distant, but she hears words - gift, and lucis, mermaid and peace and keep. she will look better soon, they say, she is dull from the stress of travel, and soon her pale scales will shine pearly white and lush pink again, her torn fins will mend, she will be beautiful, a sparkling, priceless gem worthy of a king. there is no other like her. her head pounds, and her eyes are bleary. in time, the man in dark cloth draws near to the glass, and his piercing eyes find her, see her again, and when he speaks she knows that he is speaking to her, and no one else.

You will be safe here. I will give you all that is in my power to give. I'm sorry.

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[ He always knew, deep in his heart, that she was real. But on the day that the Imperials bring the mermaid to the citadel, he never more wished he was wrong.

Even for all the years that have passed since that fateful day, the memory had never faded, and so he had been sure, so sure, that she had saved him. It was his first, and last, trip out to the beach with his parents, and the tide had been strong that day. Strong enough that while he collected sand dollars along the water's pull, it dragged him in before he knew what was happening, and he had never properly learned to swim. Much as he might flail and desperately try to propel himself upward again, panic took hold instead, as some kelp rooted him to the spot. Even then, the moment carried a weight of finality in it, as he became fully aware of his fate, his lungs burning. And then...

She had appeared. A girl, no older than himself, with fins and scales and a fish's tail, setting him free from the kelp, and ferrying him back towards land, far enough to where the tide could pull him back in. When he parents found him, barely conscious and raving about a fish-woman, they didn't take him seriously. Just the ramblings of a boy gone through a near-death experience. And even when he grew, and recounted the tale to his friends, they humored him, but teased him all the same. Sahagin were creatures of legend, and if they had ever lived on Eos, they had not lived for a very, very long time. They were extinct at best, a myth at worst. It's what everyone believed, except for him.

He doubted his own memories, too, but on that day when the Niffs delivered their "gift of peace" to King Regis himself, he knew he had been right all along.

...But what a thing to be right about, when the mermaid in the tank appears in the state that she does. She looks...worn down. Exhausted. Broken. She seems so unlike the one that Prompto had encountered all those years ago, even if...their resemblance is striking, right down to the color of her hair and scales. But perhaps that's just how all sahagin look. Regardless, the sight of her breaks his heart. He knows what it's like to feel alone and lost and afraid, and he can see that reflected in her eyes.

So after the king steps back, Prompto exchanges looks with Noctis, and the pair of them approach the tank while Gladio and Ignis hold back. Noctis examines the mermaid with thoughtful concern, while Prompto, his brow drawn tight, leans forward, pressing a hand against the glass his jaw dropping. ]

I knew I wasn't dreaming...

[ But maybe he wishes he had been. ]

[ i'm sorry.

the words of the crowned man resonate deeply. his face, unlike so many of the men who came before, does not seem cruel or unkind, and though still she does not trust it (how can she, when so many hyur have been so cruel?), it does not matter, for in his apology she knows the truth. her imprisonment shall continue on, here, in this new, different place. she will know neither the freedom of the open sea again, nor the sweet release of death. her heart sinks, heavy as a stone that drags her down, and alisaie's body succumbs to its weight, sinking more fully to the floor of the tank, her head rested against her folded arms, her dull eyes hooded, resolute, unfocused.

mayhaps they will not treat her cruelly or neglectfully here, or mayhaps they will, but still she will never feel the currents of the sea through her hair again, or ride the crashing waves of an ocean storm. she will continue on, like this, until these walls are truly all that she can remember.

the man withdraws, but alisaie does not look at him any longer, her gaze fixed instead on some distant and unknowable point, and when the two men approach she does not heed them, does not move at all to even register that she has acknowledged their presence. it does not matter. it isn't until she hears the gentle sound of a hand against the glass that she starts, her fins rustling in some age-old defiant reaction still hot in her blood to this day, though nevertheless a far weaker display that it once might have been thanks to too many long years of imprisonment, and the drowsing drug in her water.

the man with the fair hair, his hand is on the glass, and it takes only a few moments for her to understand that it was not a threat. still, her gaze is venomous when it finds him - briefly, at least, until the moment her eyes find his.

she.. does not know this face. she has never seen this man before. she has never seen his long freckled arms or his sweeping hair. but she has seen his eyes. they look gentle now, and calm, but she remembers them wide and panicked and afraid.. the boy tangled in the kelp, the boy who had been soft and terrified, weak and drowning and alone. the memory is like a crashing wave, and the venom in her expression gives way instead to muted, startled shock. he does not look like the boy she pulled from the waters, and how could he be? it has been so long, now, what are the chances that he should be here, in this place, beside this shining king? nevertheless, his eyes do not lie. alisaie lifts her hand and carefully, slowly, presses it to the glass across from his own. her hand is so different, clawed, webbed, scattered with white scales, and yet so alike in shape and purpose..

two hard thumps at either side of the tank startle her, and alisaie leaps back with a hiss, her fins raised, trembling threateningly. they men are moving in, readying to transport the tank.

no doubt you have no space suitable for her, we have brought a large tank along for your use, your majesty.

the king looks grim, but he nods nevertheless, his expression steely.

very well, you may place it in the hall, while i arrange further accommodations.

this man king does not seem pleased by this offer, by her, but he certainly cannot in good faith turn down a gift of peace from a powerful country with whom they have been at war, most especially when it is so clear that this specimen of theirs is, by their deeming, so very valuable. he cannot say no. ]

[ As down and defeated as the mermaid seems, Prompto is hardly expecting her to react to his presence at all. And it's...heartbreaking. He may have only encountered a creature like her once before, but even he can tell that this is not her natural state. That she is miserable, that she has been mistreated, that the Empire took her from her home and enslaved her to their perverted testing. It's a life he had been fortunate to escape himself, but it's hard to feel relieved by that fact when the horrors of the Empire are staring him right in the face. What have they done to her?

But no sooner does his hand touch the glass than does she react, a snarl upon her face, her hackles raised — for a moment, and then her expression shifts into something inexplicable. Something impossible, because for that moment, it sure looks like she...recognizes him.

But it...it can't be. Can it? Could it possibly...

What other explanation is there?

He gasps quietly, eyes widening, fingers trembling against the glass as she swims closer, and reaches out her webbed hand in the same manner. There's no way, and yet, her eyes seem as familiar to him as his does to her. He thinks to speak, to say something, to call out to Noctis, but not soon enough. Her handlers are moving in again, to transport her to a more permanent location, and it's all he can to do stumble back, numb, his eyes still locked on her. ]

N-no way...

[ He mumbles to himself, but knowing in his heart that it's absolutely true.

It is her. ]

[ the water begins to sway once more, the tank lifted, and the cloth sweeps down again - just as soon as the boy had appeared he is now gone again, and she is moving. the image of his face remains still emblazoned in her memory.

but she does not see him again. she hardly sees anyone. the crowned man - the king of the hyur, he visits once or twice to speak with her, or rather, to speak to her, apprising her of her new home's progress, and.. true to his word, it is done rather quickly. there is work done in the palace day and night, and in less than a fortnight she is moved again, into a larger space than she has ever known, since first she was plucked from the sea.

the tank itself is vast, deep and broad with a large open window on one side, and the three remaining walls hemmed in by stone and coral, kelp and thick fronds of sea plants and anemones. the floor is a lush, soft white sand so thick she could reach her entire arm through and not touch the tank's bottom, and all of it is arrayed with life. schools of fish swim freely, flashing silver in the filtered light, seastars cling to the algae-slick stones, snails and shrimp peer from crevices, and there is even a small colony of skittering crabs. there are several tubes for her to swim through and around that open up to smaller areas, and up at the tank's crest is a large, sprawling open air enclosure thick with draping willows and colorful flora, open to the air at the very cap of the palace, offering her an unparalleled view over the entire sprawling city, the open terrain beyond, and the sparkling sea.

well. nearly open air. even at the top, large, clear acrylic walls hem in the entire enclosure, though the slits in the plastic, at least, allow her to feel the wind on her face.

it is a prison still, but a lovely one, and a larger space than she has enjoyed in countles years. ]

[ Antsy as he is to visit her again, to learn more about her — who is she? Where did she come from? Could she understand him? — Prompto knows better than to get in the way while her tank is constructed. It takes some time, which only makes him more wound up and eager, but it will be better in the long run. So, so much better. She may still be kept apart from her home, stolen away from her world, but Regis is true to his word, and pulls out all the stops to make her as comfortable as possible. It's not the mercy she deserves, but it's all he can give her with political tensions being what they are, and...well, it's a shitty situation. One that Prompto understands, but one that his heart pulls against all the same. Even their best isn't what she deserves, and probably isn't what she wants.

But he is already presuming a lot about her, and there are answers that he can only get once he is able to confront her again. If...she even wants to see him. Maybe she associates him with her imprisonment here and wants nothing to do with him, and frankly, he wouldn't blame her. She had saved his life, and he can't even muster the courage to do the same?

Still, he will try to reach out to her, to understand, to form...something. He can't just leave things as they are, jarring and unfinished. He has a curious heart, and he needs answers, whatever ones she is willing and able to give.

Her tank is not open to the public — the King does not expect her to be a tourist attraction or an animal on display — but as one of the prince's retinue, Prompto is welcome to approach her tank, even if he doesn't really want company or attention while doing so. He had confided in Noctis and the others, told them of his assurance that she was the one who had saved him, but drawing too much attention to his connection to the mermaid seems tactless. Besides, their shared history is a private matter anyway, just between the two of them.

So it's early morning when he approaches her enclosure, ascending the rocky outcropping at the top of her pool and kneeling near the edge of the water. He...didn't really think this through, though. How is he planning to get her attention?

Uncertainly, he picks up a small stone from nearby and drops it into the water. If she's anywhere close by she'll hopefully notice the disturbance, but if she's far off...

Well, then, it'll be time to develop a plan B. ]

[ time has passed strangely for her, since the day she was captured - when you live in a box away from the sun, it becomes impossible for her to keep track track of the passage of days.

and so while she waits in the tank in the hall, time slows again and she very nearly forgets all about the boy.

.. nearly.

she cannot forget his eyes, how they widened in shock at the sight of her, their soft blue like the bright sky. she had never looked into the eyes of a hyur before that day, and though she has seen many since her capture she had always remembered his most clearly, for he had been the first, and truly, the only that she had connected with on a meaningful level. she could never forget them, their color, their shape, the dusting of freckles beneath them like a familiar constellation.

but truth be told all thought of him flies from her mind the moment she is moved to her new home. it is not freedom, and in time, even these wide walls shall chafe her, but for now it is the best thing she has known in years that felt too long. not only is it vast and beautifully lush, populated with huntable food and comfortable, familiar landscape, but the water tastes.. fresh, clean alive. she does not feel polluted, suffocated, or filthy. there is even a current, the water moves gently, circulating all around her. it feels alive here in a way none of her previous cramped and dirty fishbowls had ever felt.

for at least an hour's time she simply swims. she darts through the water like a bolt of lightning, cracking her tail and flipping high into the air above the surface, then diving deep in great, broad loops. it feels.. incredible.

but she is not as strong as she once was. little exercise and meager food has left her weak, and where she might have cavorted for hours it is not long before she slows, aching and tired but nevertheless exhilarated. it is not freedom, it is not what she most needs, but gods.. it still feels good. it feels like she can breathe again.

sound in water, however, travels fast, and alisaie does not miss the sound of the dropping pebble, even at this depth. her fins hackle, flaring wide, and she speeds to the surface like a bullet, toward the shadow of the man who dares intrude upon her space. she used to fight the men once, until she lost the spirit and will, but refreshed as she is now, rejuvenated and energetic, she finds that spirit again.

if he is looking closer he will see her, for the briefest of moments, her growing shadow, her fierce eyes, before she's shooting from the calm surface and slamming into him, pinning him back to the damp stones with her sharp claws sinking into his shoulders, pricking, her lips pulled back from sharp teeth.

but it is.. him, and recognition flashes again in her eyes, immediately. ]

[ ...Yeah, he definitely should have thought this through more first.

But it's too late for that now, and no sooner has he peered into the water to see if he can spot her than does he spot her swimming up towards him at full speed, then breaking through the water and pinning him to the ground, winding him as he gasps from pain and surprise both. On instinct, he attempts to scramble away, to separate from him, even if a moment later, she seems to recognize him. But still, he's panicked and afraid, and tries to put distance between them, if he can.

He may want to attempt to communicate with her, but not if she's going to try and kill him. ]

W-wait, pl-please, I-I don't mean any harm, I-I come in peace, I swear!

[ Gods, he doesn't even know if she will be able to understand him. ]

[ in her surprise her hold falters and he scurries away, and out of reach, for she is not so desperate enough to go flopping out of the water to claw at him. besides, he seems to bear no weapons or ill will toward her. at least not yet. she knows his eyes, remembers what he was, but that was a long time ago. she never knew him. she does not trust him.

peace, he says..

alisaie draws back, her hackled fins smoothing as she slips further into the water, still leaning over the smooth stones, her long tail curling beneath her. she shows no aggression, but she still looks.. careful, measuring him from a distance through narrowed eyes.

for some time, she does not answer.. but at last she speaks in a voice gone rough with disuse. it has been long since she last used it. ]

.. is it you?

[ ...So, she can speak. It comes as a surprise, for her kind, however many of them there are, must have some language of their own that is far different from his own, that has developed beneath the waves. But...she must have spent some time around the Niffs before they brought her here. Enough to learn some of their language, evidently.

Still, his eyes are wide with shock, both from her take-down and her spoken words. (And maybe her tiddies, but he isn't looking at those right now, even if he has definitely noticed them...it's hard not to!!!) It takes him a moment to catch his breath and find his voice, but even before then, he is nodding numbly. ]

Y-yeah. I-it's me. You...you saved me.

[ It doesn't seem any more possible than it did when he had recognized her, but there can be no denying it, now. She knows, as does he. ]

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