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Moonlight skims along the water’s surface, riding upon the waves that crash timidly against the great, beast-like structure. An odd few try to reach Koushirou, stretching beyond their means before crashing unproductively back to the sea. He wishes he could follow them.
Night had always been safest to travel. Daylight brought the beasts men had tamed to carry them across the sea, thieving it of its resources and life. But at night they slept along the shores, waiting once more for first light.
Tentomon had called them by name once. Ships, flashes through Koushirou’s mind, a sober memory between the panic-addled struggle. He thrashes against his bindings. Above him the mechanism whines, but refuses to give.
It is useless, Koushirou knows, but logic does not speak kindly to fear, and so he tries again , pressing all the weight he can manage with his tail against the further end of the net, bracing his back into the ropes behind him. All it earns him is a slap to his face with his own caudal fin when the bindings tighten, his stomach muscles crunching and churning.
He tries instead with his hands and teeth, sinking them into the rope, tugging with his fingers until they ache with the friction, his skin red and angry. When he slams his weight forward, the net sways, and soon he too crashes along the ship’s edge. Every bit of him throbs, from his tired limbs to the dryness in his gills, his scales, his throat. Air is sufficient for short visits, but it does not sustain his kind. It is not meant to.
Koushirou knows his struggles only serve to lessen his time, his energy. His life.
With this knowledge Koushirou takes a shallow breath in, leaning his head against the rope that keeps him, his eyes wistfully trained upon the sea. He hopes to catch something , some form of life that may assist him, but Koushirou knows none of his kind would dare come close to a contraption of men. Before they could swim on their own, all children were brought just close enough to witness entire families of fish being scooped from their home. It was meant to be a warning; it was law. Koushirou slumps further, his muscles tight and howling against the constriction.
Law.
For moons, his shoal had lived in these waters, the longest they had ever stayed in one place since Koushirou remembers. When he does not return, they will move on, find calmer waters. Neither his friends nor his parents will dare to search for him. It is one of their absolute laws, enforced by Gennai himself.
A smarting begins behind his eyes, and then slowly Koushirou feels a wetness along his cheeks, collecting beneath his chin. No, he thinks, wiping at them furiously. He does not have the privilege to lose anything further— he will only hasten the inevitable.
But still, the tears fall without his consent. He has never cried in the absence of the current, without the steadfast nature of the sea, and it is cruel, he thinks, that they should taste of the home he will never see again. When the waves touch along the ship again, it does not sound as if they are coming to his aid. It sounds as if they are mocking him. This time the sea swells high enough, lapping at his back as if in apology, but it is not sufficient.
Something on the ship rattles.
Koushirou perks up in his entrapment, scanning along the shadows of the ship. He does not need moonlight, or daylight, to see; his eyes were made to function in the absence of light. Koushirou settles his gaze on a single man and his blood feels heated.
There had been more, before the moon had reached its zenith, jeering and chattering amongst themselves in the odd language of men, swaying Koushirou’s prison until he had felt vertiguous. He did not need to understand them to know their intentions. Koushirou’s fate is the markets, and for a moment his heart prickles with more than loathing.
Once he had dreamt of being in attendance to one. Tentomon had regaled him in the human custom, weaving a tale of stoney streets and colorful shops. Koushirou had listened, his eyes closed, as he imagined what it would be like to walk among the people of the surface, to have a feast of items before him without the effort of catching his own meal. Oh, he had wanted to be a part of it in some way, but not as the menu. Not as one of it’s trinkets.
Oh Tentomon, he thinks for a moment. How long would he wait for Koushirou to return, before he, too, decamped?
His predator stalks closer. Instinctively Koushirou bares his teeth, narrowing his eyes, any and all ways he can think to keep this man from approaching further, but he is undaunted. Instead, his lips move lightly, bringing life to a sound akin to the waves that press upon the shore of the small, abandoned pocket of land he would meet Tentomon, where they kept a hoard of unsanctioned treasure stolen from the human lands. His heart prickles again. He would never return there.
The man holds one of his hands up, waving it minutely. It is not this hand that worries Koushirou. Moonlight belies his secret, glinting awfully from the sharp, polished rock just barely hidden under the odd material that drapes over his body. Koushirou thrashes against his bindings once he sees it, shivering involuntarily from more than just the cold that settles above the water’s surface. There is nothing quite like it in the sea, but Koushirou knows it’s intent. Tentomon had brought him one, just like it once. Koushirou had been hasty to divest the tool of it’s secrets, barely touching a hand to the jagged edge before it had bitten his skin so sorely it had drawn blood.
That had only been a mere graze.
Waves chatter below him, harsher now, more urgent. The ship rocks under the heavy weight of the sea, but even this does not deter Koushriou’s captor for long. His fingers grasp along the raised edge, steadying his body against the structure with, what Koushirou finds to be, an impudently relieved look. After a moment he reaches forward, fingers grasping at Koushirou’s bindings, tugging the ropes closer until Koushirou can feel the cold, rough grain of the ship’s composition.
He shudders; his body remembers the way the stone had cut. Koushirou's eyes, refusing to bear witness to his final moments, close tightly. He hopes that it is swift, that his parents do not cry, do not blame themselves, when he does not return. It was not their fault— they had done their best.
He can still hear the human, his odd timbre never ceasing. Koushirou feels him close, but his own body refuses to let, still prepared, still waiting—
Beneath him the ropes give way. Instinctively his fingers grasp for some purchase, his body tumbling against his control; down, down, and—
The sea welcomes him all at once, soothes the aches along his skin, the current slowly steadying the rhythm of his heartbeat. Koushirou gasps and breathes, calling water back into his lungs with a greed he has never known.
A weight breaches the surface above him, grazing past his tail. Panic returns to him, the net catching on the fin of his tail minutely. Koushirou jerks and it simply slides from his body, but it is not the only thing; the human from aboard the ship sinks past him, the ropes coiled about his limbs like living eels being pulled beneath his weight. One arm is raised, as if reaching for his own purchase, but the man does not struggle, does not even open his eyes as the sea swallows him deeper, toward the inky-black depths that even Koushirou’s kin rarely skim.
Koushirou watches, his finger twitching at his side. He should return home, before he is missed, allow the ocean to rid the world of one last foul human. Drowned men, after all, were not dangerous. It was the living who robbed Koushirou’s people of their lives; there were so few of them left now. He should—
Just before land, Koushirou finds purchase on a small cluster of rocks, urging the human to take hold. Koushirou knows the route to the island innately, his weary eyes searching it’s shore for nothing in particular. His head feels light with more than the exertion of struggling with another’s weight— it is the revelation that he is alive.
Beside Koushirou the human chokes and sputters, fingers digging into the unyielding stones. With a subdued strength he tears himself out of the sea, water cascading from his body to splash heavily on the stone surface, the ropes Koushirou had fastened and pulled all the way here trailing behind him. Koushirou slackens his grip, allowing it to be lifted fully from the sea. Best no one else below the surface becomes entangled by the human’s contraption.
A wave pushes up against Koushirou’s back, urgently, reminding him that he must leave. Every muscle in his body aches, needing rest, and so it is with that justification that Koushirou stays.
But when the human approaches him, Koushirou startles further away from the rock. The human makes an odd choking sound, something desperate that calls for Koushirou to remain there despite the protest of his logical mind. With only his eyes above the water, he watches the man inquisitively, waiting for the trick. The betrayal.
The human raises both of his hands, this time the both of them barren. Koushirou wonders if his weapon has been banished to the depths of the ocean, and hopes this is true.
Even in the dark, the human’s eyes are bright, as warm as the waters bathed under fierce daylight. It crosses Koushirou’s mind that this one may be a witch as his fingers once again touch the cool, craggy stone. Relief fills the other’s visage— at least that is what Koushirou thinks he’s reading in the human’s expression.
Slowly, the man comes to sit beside him with a desirable distance, dipping his odd limbs into the sea. Another wave laps against the stones, splashing up against the human as he makes a deep, melodious noise, a single note, in the deep of his throat. Koushirou narrows his eyes, waiting, but instead the human opens his mouth, meeting his gaze with his own, starring as if he, too, is waiting for something.
Koushirou shakes his head. It must mean something similar in their custom, because the human looks disappointed, and pensive. After a moment he lifts a hand up again, pointing to himself and producing a short noise. He repeats it, Koushirou recognizing the very same sound and—
Oh. His name. How odd, Koushirou thinks, that he had never considered humans might have special ways of calling each other as well. This time Koushirou nods, encouraging him to share it once more as he listens with rapt attention to the human’s name, “Taichi.”
Taichi, Koushirou repeats to himself internally. Shame rises to his cheeks a moment later. What purpose does it serve to keep the name of a land dweller?
After a length of silence, Taichi softly touches a finger to his mouth, then opens his palm towards Koushirou. Oh, he wants him to try it, Koushirou realizes. His tail twitches, excited. A chance to learn human language is rare in the sea. Tentomon knew very few borrowed words from his travels.
He lifts himself partially from the sea, resting his ear against the human’s chest. The other teeters back for a moment, the odd material over his skin damp and cold and welcoming on Koushirou’s cheek. He frowns when the human remains still, pressing minutely closer. Taichi seems to understand a moment later, the vibration of his own name reverberating into Koushirou’s ear. He speaks it slower, pulling the one word apart into even smaller ones, auditorily digestible.
It never helps.
Koushirou endeavours to speak it, even following the same pattern with his mouth he had witnessed from Taichi’s, but it is futile. His vocal chords are not made the same; noise drew attention in the sea. Attention was, generally, undesirable. His kind had adapted with very little need for it.
Frustrated, his caudal fin smacks across a small wave, splashing water along his back, along the skin of Taichi’s arm. Something deep and lyrical vibrates from the other’s chest. It does not sound like his name and Koushirou presses closer, wishing to hear more before the melody peeters out. He falls back into the sea when his arms refuse to keep him up, considering the human above him.
Koushirou wishes he could hear it once more.
Taichi watches him in kind. Light rarely breaches deep enough into the sea, but it shines contentedly in this man’s eyes, borrowed from moonbeams, and yet, Koushirou thinks, perhaps brighter. He has never seen a color quite like them in the sea, and so he commits Taichi’s gaze to memory, thinking perhaps he shall find something comparable among his personal treasures, for the sole purpose of just knowing.
That is all, Koushirou tells himself.
Taichi looks up briefly before extending his hand back towards Koushirou, then points it back towards himself. When Koushirou tilts his head, the human points at him once more, then taps at his own throat saying, "Taichi." It is a moment before Koushirou interprets his signals to mean, How would you say my name?
He considers this. His people were only vocal to call for danger, but Koushirou tries for a sound, Taichi on the tip of his tongue and gives two, short trills.
Koushirou had thought his eyes were bright already, but it is nothing compared to the way Taichi’s face illuminates from hearing the interpretation of his name. In all the tales Koushirou has ever consumed, human smiles are fearsome things, made of rows of sharp teeth made only with the intent to maim, to kill. They are nothing like that, Koushirou learns, watching the edges of Taichi’s lip pull upward, white, blunted teeth on display, his eyes shining like the gemstones Koushirou keeps amongst his trinkets.
His tail flickers again without his consent, breaching the surface behind him. Taichi follows the sight of it, his eyes wide and wondering. Moonlight sits brightest on his darker scales, barely noticeable upon the whites. Patches of red-orange scales are visible closest to his caudal fins and Koushirou frowns. Three scales colors are not desirable. They, too, attracted attention.
Koushirou smacks at the surface again, obscuring his tail beneath a wave— and the melody he had missed before returns unexpectedly. His ears perk up, eyes cutting over to watch Taichi throw his head back, mirth clearly written in his expression. When he catches Koushirou’s stare he tries to cover his mouth with the palm of his hand, muffling the noise. Without thought, Koushirou reaches out, beckoning him to lower the obstacle, to let him hear it, but the melody has all but vanished, leaving Taichi only smiling down on him.
But oh. Koushirou understands this emotion. In the sea it is always quiet, nothing more than a fluttering of bubbles. There had never been a sound to attribute to it, but it makes Koushirou's heart flutter, his lips raise on their own. How could such a cruel creature be capable of creating such an alluring sound?
A trick, perhaps, Koushirou has to remind himself. His heart wavers when he considers that it is not, that there may be more humans like this one.
Taichi’s gaze on him is soft, inquisitive. It feels odd to be on the receiving end of such a stare. Taichi moves his hands again, this time Koushirou thinks it is to ask for his name. He frowns. There is no equivalent way to share it and so he shakes his head.
Taichi smiles timourously.
Koushirou rests his arms along the stones, resting his cheeks upon them. Taichi takes the invitation to start in his human tongue, this time not to educate but to simply speak. His hands move with his every word, and Koushirou does his best to follow, and despite everything he knows, wonders if they had been born to each other’s world instead, to any other world, would they have come to be friends?
Sun stirs along the offing a time later and Koushirou startles, not knowing how long he has rested here in the human's companionship. He must leave. Other men will be out to sea soon, and if he does return his shoal will believe him truly lost.
Koushirou looks up to the human, motioning as best he can to show this, but Taichi only furrows his brows and shakes his head. He could just leave, Koushirou reminds himself. His manners should not matter, for he will never see this man again, yet his heart feels heavy with the guilt. Was there not some way human’s signaled their intent to part without language? Koushirou considers the human’s face for a moment before, recalling how Tentomon had described their customs to him once before.
Ah.
Koushirou trills, calling for Taichi’s attention. Such a simple task causes the light upon the human’s face to brighten still, and Koushirou motions for him to come closer, reaching up with one of his hands. Taichi complies, the skin of his cheek beneath Koushirou’s palm plump and warm. He leans most of his weight onto his hand still resting on the rock much to the protest of Koushirou’s sore muscles, rising to close the distance. For a moment he watches Taichi’s eyes, wondering, asking, but he does not shirk away.
He had feared the human might taste of iron, but Taichi’s lips are soft against his; sweet yet still tasting of the sea. It is only meant to say farewell, but Koushirou finds himself less willing to depart, the lid of his eyes heavy even as his heart sings within his chest.
Kissing is a rare custom; his people do not share one as easily as men. Koushirou knows now why. It feels powerful, fills him with an insatiable hunger. Or perhaps it is because Taichi is a witch, after all. He doesn’t know if that’s a terrible thing anymore. Koushirou wishes he could stay to learn for himself.
Taichi’s eyes are slow to open, darker than Koushirou has seen them yet, but still just as pretty to him as any gem within the ocean. Prettier, he decides. He wonder if too much time has passed now, if his message has been lost between them, and Koushirou thinks to kiss him again—
But that would be foolish, he knows.
Koushirou offers Taichi a smile before turning tail and diving beneath the next wave. It swallows the human’s call, but Koushirou can still hear the soft timbre in his mind, the sound of his voice filled with mirth, can still feel the warmth of his lips as if they had never parted. Such things cannot be placed like trinkets, but Koushirou treasures them no less, tucking the memories inside his heart where they may never be lost.