Chapter Text
Jay wakes up, and promptly turns to cough up what’s left of his stomach.
The wonderfully rude awakening is accented by the full light of the midday sun piercing his eyes as he blearily opens them. The bright light is the first thing that Jay takes into account, and he takes it with a loud groan and a grimace as he wipes off the sides of his mouth.
Then the events of the night prior come rushing back to him, and he sits up so quickly that he almost falls back down in the process.
Wait. Where is he?
He looks around as his eyes finally start to adjust to the light, and he finds himself sitting on the sandy shore of an unknown land. The sheathed sword he was gifted on the ship lies innocently in the sand next to him.
Craggy rocks and stones dot the shoreline as far as the eye can see, and as he turns to look further inland Jay sees a rocky yet lush landscape, the stones and mounds of earth eventually reaching up to meet a large mountain, almost like a procession of stone men worshipping a lost god.
Surprisingly, besides having an overall feeling of queasiness and general frustration, he feels…fine.
He lifts up what remains of his shirt to find absolutely no traces of any wound in his side, despite the blood that still stains the ripped fabric. As he runs his hand over the exposed skin, he finds that not even a ghostly imprint of a scar remains.
With his mysteriously newfound health giving him some semblance of hope, Jay slowly gets up to try and find out how exactly he got from being knocked out on an enemy ship to waking up on a presumably abandoned island.
He gets up after picking up the discarded sword before he remembers to check under his shirt collar. He quickly clutches at an old locket, holding the familiar item almost desperately as it faintly pulses with magic. Help should be on the way, all he has to do now is survive. And hopefully get some more assistance from an elusive Mer.
-
Cole is sunbathing on a rock.
It’s not really an activity he enjoys, but it’s an excuse for him to linger here more than the rational part of his mind wants him to. Despite being practically comatose on the surface of a large stone, the Mer is tense as he rests, listening for a potential ambush from a stranger. He knows he’s trespassing on another Mer’s territory, and he’s pretty sure he saw them darting behind some rocks while he was dragging that human to the shore.
Speaking of humans, he wasn’t aware that they couldn’t breathe underwater.
After nearly getting skinned alive by the nasty loud humans on the wooden vessel, Cole had quickly dived into the depths below, unconscious human in tow. It was only after he saw the bubbles rising out of the human’s mouth that he panicked again.
Thinking that it had something to do with his wounds, Cole had used some of his magic to heal the human, but the bubbles had kept on rising.
The resulting solution had been to carry the human half-out of water, and slowly propel them both to the first stretch of dry land Cole had been able to find.
He’d left the human on that shore with every intention of swimming away from a potentially dangerous area, but here he is. Sunbathing on a rock.
Cole isn’t fully sure why he seems to like his new companion, the human. He doesn’t know why else he would still be here when it’s unsafe. He knows what’s keeping him on the shore, but he doesn’t fully understand the reason why yet.
Of almost all the Mer in the ocean, Cole should know best just how dangerous and scary humans can be.
And yet, Spots had made no moves to harm him on the ship, and had even gone as far as to help Cole escape, despite the fact that the Mer and the human are still practically strangers to one another.
Cole had thought of leaving the human behind, but then he had thought more of Spots being all alone and helpless in the middle of nowhere, and his judgment had wavered.
Now, in an attempt to avoid making a decision, he’s sunbathing.
Despite all his internal turmoil, he does find it rather relaxing. He purrs contentedly to himself for a few more minutes until he hears the sound of something moving across the sand.
He quickly reaches up before he realizes what he’s doing, grabbing onto what he thinks is an arm. He looks up at the arm’s owner and realizes he’s been found.
“…Spots?”
So much for avoidance.
The human looks slightly different under the sun. His brown hair is messy and glows auburn red under the sun, the shade mirrored somewhat by the complexion of his dotted face. Strange.
Spots yanks his arm out of Cole’s grasp with a shout, and Cole puts his face back down on the warm stone with a frustrated grunt, already preparing himself for a tirade.
Lo and behold, Spots starts screeching that beautiful human gibberish at him again. When he pauses his rant to take a breath, Cole speaks.
“How can you still expect me to understand you?”
The human angrily gestures at the beach, then at the rock Cole is currently lying on.
“Uhhh…you’re welcome?” Cole says.
Apparently that’s the wrong answer, because Spots suddenly makes a full one-eighty, angrily stomping away from Cole to follow a nearby stream, fuming all the while. Cole pauses before he decides to jump into the water and follow him.
As he swims further inland, the water gets warmer. He briefly loses the human through the foliage when he dives down to traverse the depths of the large stream, and when he swims back up near the tail end of the current he finds Spots within a small, open cave.
The clear water stretches out to fill the semi-darkness, the soft light of the sun bouncing off the surface of the pool and onto the walls in glowing, wavy patterns. Cole realizes that while the chamber is big and open, it’s too small to be called a proper cave. The rock doesn’t curve in farther than the sun can reach, save for an upwards slope that shelters the inside of the chamber from the elements.
He also realizes that Spots is more focused on what exactly this small cavern shelters, up on its rocky shores.
As Cole resurfaces, he’s greeted by the sight of the human rifling through a meager pile of old crates and barrels with an emotion that can only be described as glee, his previous altercation with the Mer all but forgotten.
Cole takes one look at some of the strange items already being happily sorted by the pirate, and immediately decides to explore something else.
The local Mer must’ve dragged this stuff here from a nearby wreck, he thinks. Sure enough, a quick dive below the surface of the pool reveals a huge wooden beam, green cords of algae binding it in a watery prison. He swims a quick circle around it, inspecting the remenants of an older human vessel with an almost reverence.
He decides to dive further down, curious to know what kinds of fish might be hiding deep within the crevices of the rotting wood.
-
Jay hasn’t quite hit the jackpot, but he’d like to think that he’s come pretty close.
Laid out neatly on the damp stone before him is an old dark grey shirt, four large pieces of frayed rope, a couple empty bottles, and a beat-up lantern. He’d also found some money, but had left it untouched after realizing just how useless it was to him on an abandoned island.
He quickly strips off his blood-stained shirt in favor of the musty (yet still intact) grey one. Jay hadn’t anticipated finding shipwreck material so quickly, and it gives him more hope for survival as he waits for his crew to eventually find him.
“The winds have to be in their favor,” he mutters to himself in reassurance as he tucks grey fabric into his pants. He’s got an idea as to why the crates were sitting in the cave when he found them, and he’s not sure if any other Mer possibly inhabiting the waters surrounding the island will be as merciful as Sharky has been to him so far.
And it has to be mercy, he thinks. Sharky’s actions have done nothing but confuse him so far, though.
Jay wonders if the Mer had dragged him to the shores of the island out of pity. If Sharky still pitied him, though, why was he still following Jay around? Jay doesn’t look that helpless, does he? It frustrates him, not knowing the Mer’s intentions.
Besides, what little he had heard about Mer from Kai doesn’t seem to apply to Sharky. This Mer hasn’t gone off to reunite with a family or pack of any kind, and Jay is pretty sure nobody Sharky knows lives near the island. Jay wonders if the Mer even has a place to call home.
His thoughts are sharply interrupted by a ray of sun hitting his eyes. Jay squints at the horizon, noting just how quickly the sun has started to lower in the sky. He makes his way out of the cavern, and dives under the cover of the trees to try and find dry sticks for a small fire.