mother of pearl and red hot iron

[righteousindignation]

curious, that's what she was. a troubleseeker, needing to be entertained, who dove down to the depths as much as she would the surface to watch the ships. even before she shed her first scales, she laughed the hardest when the tales were dramatic. curiosity left her with faint scars from the more nasty fish and knowledge of the best places to hide things you don't want others in the pack touching. and curiosity sent her to the surface that one evening to see the latest ship. perhaps she should try her luck, she thinks, and she inhales to sing, the way that acted like a lure for prey as opposed to the rest.

she thinks she has the man with the messy hair, the pretty one with dark eyes who's the closest, before instead of jumping over the rail he leans against it and grins. "neat trick."

it's not a trick, she wants to say, but has to translate it first to their language.

she looks so annoyed at being bested that he laughs, an unmusical sound that almost doesn't fit him.

--

"thought i chased you off the other day, when you swam away."

"you didn't chase me anywhere. but how did you know to resist the song?"

"let's just say i know much more than i appear to."

a few careful questions later, and he's telling her about being a boy of fifteen finding the king's own diary in the library by accident and the adventures that followed.

she is, as it turns out, an excellent listener, and when he looks down to see her reaction, she's gone still, only swaying just a bit with the water.

--

"you know, i don't think we ever introduced ourselves."

"you first."

"i'm cyril."

"i'm..." a pause, as she changes the sounds to what he would get. he's growing used to giving her the seconds she needs. "grell. i'm grell."

--

they meet more and more frequently, and he spins fantastic tales every time. she nods her head, tells him to go on even when they both know it's nothing but lies. always at night, so the crew doesn't try to dive in after her and die, so he has the space to make up the worlds of his stories.

some of them he sounds a slight bit more invested in, and those are the ones that she thinks could actually be true. a warlock, after all, must have an interesting life.

--

"mermaids? they'll drown you if you aren't careful. that's if they don't eat you first."

--

when he docks, he expects she'll swim back to her pack, disappointed he never gave in. a pretty face and a nice singing voice wasn't worth dying over, and he's got more important things to think about, like getting back his freedom. actually, he already knows how to do that, if the same guys are around that he can put the right pressure on, and funds wouldn't be hard. anything would be better than a cold prison cell, and even his one on the boat had been for show only -- he got a bed out of the government's eye.

time passes, he walks the streets again, and life goes on. he rebuilds his money, he picks up and discards hearts, he sometimes takes walks in the evenings when he can't find it in him to sit still.

one time, the wind picks up, blowing in air off the sea. a bit chilly, but more interesting than the weather is the faint, faint bit of song he can hear. he knows that voice, has heard it months back. this is no lure, this is a question, a song that could (should) be ignored. still, it can't hurt to go down to the water, to convince himself he's just hearing things, that she's not going to be sitting on a rock singing-

except she is, and when she sees him, the song ends, and she smiles.

she'd sung for him for three days.

--

"you should come out with me sometime."

"i'd love to, if you have a good excuse lined up for why i have a tail."

"we can fix that."

later, it's like a baby deer getting onto its legs as she tries to adjust to walking, if the baby deer was accompanied by someone who could barely breathe from laughing but still managed a "my god, you're worse than i thought you'd be" in the middle of it.

--

they had their own lives -- cyril had his affairs of business and cover to maintain and various things to keep up with, grell had her pack and her restless nature. it wasn't unusual for them to be separated for days, even weeks, until they found each other again. she would sing for him until he came, he would give her legs, they could spend time together on land. or she would keep her tail and they'd go back to telling stories, all with appropriate applause and head nodding and saying "no, really?" always teasing each other, and sometimes to get him back she would creep up and grab him to be pulled into the water, for she laughed when he came up spitting salt water and making a face about his wet clothes.

it happens gradually enough that they don't notice it until they're in the middle of it -- she's made a home closer to the coastline than before, he's telling her some stories that are true, she teaches him phrases in her native tongue and he lets her take hold of his arm when she stumbles on their dates. over months, instead of weeks. they can afford all the time.

still, when they kiss, grell thinks that she's been waiting for it since the day they met.

--

she's jealous, it turns out, when she stays away for two weeks and when she returns seems rather more frosty than the water could make her, and he laughs when he figures it out. it wasn't as though he'd promised himself to her and only her, so her feeling any touch of being possessive was rather ridiculous. he'd go out with whomever he pleased, even if he did see her on a regular basis.

she softens just a bit when he tells her that the pretty little human with the blonde hair had turned out to be the most boring conversationalist he'd ever met in his life, and actually, that reminds him of a story about the time he had to suffer through a guy who bored him to tears but who had a really gorgeous daughter...

by the time he's halfway through she's got her arms propped up on a rock and she's giving him all her attention again.

--

they don't age like humans is what does it. she'd stay around enough to make such an investment worthwhile, and when he asks her to be his wife, she almost falls down in surprise. she blames it on the road, however, even if by the time all those years have gone by she's mastered walking. grell does say yes, to be clear, and yes her people knew what marriage was, and absolutely some of them would come to congratulate them on their union. there were a few pieces of tradition to follow, and even if he couldn't reciprocate or grasp the meaning, she'd honor them anyway, as much as she'd honor him in her vows.

true to her word, there's a day when three merpeople he doesn't know are there with her, all staring at cyril as if he's the one with a tail. he thinks maybe they're going to interrogate him, but when one of the two mermen breaks out in a grin, he knows he's in the clear. they just wanted to meet the one who took the heart of one of their own, after all, he must be an extraordinary man to be a land-dweller as well as convincing grell to let him live.

he wants to protest and say he didn't convince her of anything, but she shushes him with a finger to his lips and tells him that they would be attending the wedding, if it wasn't too much trouble. also he would have to let her place a garland of seaweed around his neck to prove his committment.

the stranger merwoman--ys, she would introduce herself as--bursts into laughter when she sees cyril's expression at the idea, and is the one to break the news that his bride-to-be is just joking with him, again.

the benefit to having merpeople at your wedding, cyril learns, is that you get a far better musical backdrop than any church could provide.

--

time is flexible. sometimes they parted and sometimes they wouldn't leave each other's sides, some years they absolutely wrecked where they were and others they let be peaceful. never had they tried their hands at being utterly domestic, however, and so ritual hill would be an experiment. a few years, maybe, before finding somewhere new.

maybe, she hopes, they'll get a boat, and they can just travel that way to seas they've never seen.