Work Text:
The sea always consoles.
You return to it a forlorn bride - cheeks streaked heavy with salt and a mouth like a storm, your tongue thick with promise - and it swallows you down. Beneath the waves, you pull the small blue flowers from your veil and let them wash into deeper, darker waters. The sea shrouds you with thick ribbons of kelp, and you wait.
Sometimes, there is a woman in the deep with you. She darts to and fro like a minnow, sprightly despite her size. She peers at you through the murk of the sea, her eyes a pale yellow gleam in the twilight of the ocean, her knifed teeth snapping together like an echo of a laugh.
Queen Conch watches you, but you pay her no mind. She is not capable of love. Not the way you are.
You wait.
You know the sea always provides.
The moon swells, heavy with light. As it rises over the thin line of the horizon, the tenderhearted touch of the rays illuminate the gathering swells. You can taste the storm coming.
You have cradled yourself in a hollowed out divot of a seaside boulder, far past the edges of the tidal pools. The sea water is flowing thicker now, swirling at the base of the boulder, a hulking mass of stone cushioned with soft beds of plush, verdant green algae. It is slick beneath you. You curl your fingers into it and it squelches. You draw in a sobbing breath.
You pillow your cheek on your arm and nestle down into the hollow of the stone. The waves crash upon it, their pattern edging towards frantic, and the kiss of the salt spray makes your lips sting. It is the most faithful lover you’ve ever had.
Water gurgles around you, the deluge of the rising tide.
The moon climbs higher into the night sky, drowning out the stars in a steady halo of light. The sea sings to you, the chill water flowing around your fingertips.
You are half in dreams (juice bursting across your tongue as you bite into the fruit’s flesh, dripping down your chin, a thumb nudging at your lips as it wipes the residue away - a choked off breath - the golden glow of a summertime smile - slender fingers tracing soft lines of fire up your thigh - skin slippery with blood and quickly cooling) when the ship slices through the last dregs of moonlight to cast a shadow upon the horizon. It sways with the rolling sea. Pinpricks of light flicker on the deck.
You prop yourself up on your elbows.
For a moment, you watch as the ship passes, the white sails full-bellied with wind, gleaming starkly against the void of the sea. It’s a fast-moving vessel despite its size.
The sea roils beneath your perch, ever-hungry.
You sing.
The notes pour out of you like warm honey, each one flickering like a homecoming lantern, dancing across the water to reach the deckhands. The hush falls over them quickly. You sing, you sing, you sing, you call your suitors home to you with the melody embossed on your very bones.
They answer - they always do, you always become their Polaris, their magnetic north - and the ship starts to turn.
You croon to them, spilling your aching heart into the ocean’s depths. It spreads to them like oil, glistening black on the backs of the waves. Please, you beg them, heat gathering at your cheeks as your vision blurs with tears. Please, won’t you love me? Won’t you let me love you?
There’s fire spreading in your lungs, but you’ve felt it before, this wildfire of pain licking through your chest, and you’ve yet to succumb to it. The sound of your song does not break; it falls from your lips like pearls, plinking into the ocean.
The ship creaks as it draws near. The deckhands shower you with affection, and you drink it in, letting their words soak into your skin and your poor, poor, aching heart.
Somewhere, just under the blindfold of your song, you hear a woman’s voice snap out a command.
The ship drifts closer, and your eyes flicker to the shadowed sea where the gravemaker rocks wait. Their mother the sea has whittled the gravemakers into a fine weapon, one that feeds the sea’s endless hunger. The deckhands have grown quiet, something like horror slithering across their faces.
The spell ends, and you know they will never truly love you.
You hide your face in a pillow of algae as your song twists into a wail. The fury of your tongue has the bitter taste of a curse, and the gravemaker rocks oblige. The ship tears open against them, the barnacled stones spearing deep through the hull.
That voice - her voice - comes again, and this time, it carries over the water.
It rumbles like thunder, growled low over the ship’s groaning aria of shattering bones. The ocean sinks its teeth into the ship, sinks them in deep, deep, deep.
But you see her and you remember love.
Her hair is the color of sunshine but her eyes are the darker blue of a glacier. Blue like cornflowers, blue like the sea on a midsummer’s day, but with unmistakable ice. She moves like an ocean’s riptide, pulling people into the wake of her stride, her sword clinking at her side, and you have never wanted so much in your life. She has a mouth that you are made to drink from, you are sure of it.
And like so many before her, you know that you will lose her.
You love like waves against the sand: greedy, grasping, slinking higher against a heated body and dragging them into the salt cradle of your mouth, eroding them with your undulating kisses. You love, you love, you love, but they always seem to slip through your fingers like seafoam, to break apart in your arms like a ship succumbing to a storm.
Her ship yields to the sea.
It takes her with it.
You vomit up a hurricane of sound, the jagged notes of the song smashing against the sea. You scream until it feels like your throat will never work again, scream until your shaking legs can’t support you. You tangle your fingers in the fishtail hem of your gown as you curse the ocean’s greedy mouth. The sea laps at your ankles as you wade back towards the shore as the sun rises, the orange glow of it reflecting in the outgoing tide.
The barnacles cut into the tender soles of your feet as you pick your way through the tide pool. It hurts, you suppose. She has washed up on the far side of the beach. You leave a meandering trail of bloodied footsteps through the sand.
It takes you a long, long time to process that she is breathing.
Fuck, you gasp, hands fluttering against the faint rise of her chest.
It can’t be that bad, she says. Her long legs shift in the sand; a low groan issues from her throat. Feels that bad, though.
You hum, the notes rising in your throat unbidden, your fingernails cutting into your palms.
She blinks. She closes her eyes for a moment to listen, but she doesn’t fall under the spell. You swallow.
She opens her eyes and smiles at you - golden, gleaming, just a hint of pain tightening the edge of those lips - and you choke on air.
Let me help, you say, scrambling towards as she attempts to sit up. You catch her as she collapses. She is warm and damp against you, her strong back against your soft chest, and you can feel the heat rising in your cheeks.
Thanks, she murmurs, bracing herself on you and leaning forward to rest her forehead against her knees. There was a ship - I need to -
Rest first, you plead. Just for a bit. I can help.
Just for a bit, she says weakly. I’m Rum.
Surströmming.
Surströmming, she says, her lips shaping your name like she’s tasting it. How lovely.
Her voice is soft, and the sodden ropes of her hair are color of fresh butter in the light of the rising sun, and you know you will love her.