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The sun dips low on the horizon as Jasper sits at the end of the dock. The rest of The Maharani ’s crew has already made their way into town to spend some time and gold in a tavern for the night, but Jasper had declined the invitation. He has someone to meet this evening.
Jasper watches and waits, staring out at the endless expanse of blue before him. This close to shore, the sea is calm and the tide laps at the ships in the harbor.
“She’ll be here,” he mutters to no one but himself, unconsciously moving to touch his forearm. She moves in her own time, he knows, but he trusts her to keep any promise she makes. She said she’d be here, so here he waits.
And then he spots it, that telltale flash of white just beneath the surface of the water. At first glance, it looks like another glint of sunlight off the waves. But it moves closer, quickly and deliberately, and as it does, the indistinct “it” becomes a clearly defined “she.” The sleek white form of a mermaid glides through the water toward him, before breaking the surface of the waves near the end of the dock.
Eva is beautiful in her otherworldly way. Salt water drips from her long white hair as her head breaks through the water and her pale skin all but glows in the dying light of the sun. An ever-present crown of pale pink flowers encircles her brow. Her bright blue eyes—the only natural color in her haunting form—blink up at him as a smile spreads across her face. He can’t help but smile in return.
“Good evening, Jasper,” she says, her voice lilting over the words.
“Hello, Eva.”
She reaches up to grasp the edge of the dock, pulling her chest up out of the water. She crosses her arms over the well-worn wood, resting her chin on top of them. Jasper can see her tail swishing just below the surface of the water as he moves to kneel in front of her.
“You look well,” she tells him and he can’t help but laugh. He is more scar tissue than flesh at this point in his unlucky life, but somehow her compliments always sound sincere.
“Thanks. You look… wonderful.” It’s all he can think to say and despite the truth in his words, he still feels a bit foolish saying them out loud. Despite his nervousness—or perhaps because of it—she giggles, soft and low and perfect, and smiles at him.
“Thank you.”
He reaches out tentatively to brush a long strand of wet hair out of her eyes. She does not shrink away from his touch, does not stop him—simply gazes up at him and accepts this bit of gentle attention. He thinks he sees a faint blush color her cheeks, but perhaps it is just another trick of the fading sun. In the low evening light she looks like an angel, like a priceless painting made flesh, like a—
“I… I have something to show you,” Jasper says, mustering his courage and swallowing hard. He’s been nervous about this for days.
“What is it?” Eva asks, always curious, always eager to learn, “A new book? A new map? Treasure fit for a pirate?”
She grins at the last suggestion, a teasing note to her voice, and Jasper can’t help but think she’s flirting again. Her boldness spurs him on.
“Of a sort.” He takes a deep breath. “I… I got a new tattoo the last time we made port.”
“I saw the bandages on your arm that day. I thought you’d gotten yourself hurt again.”
“No.” He lets out a rough laugh and begins rolling up the sleeve of his shirt. “I mean—it did hurt, but… I chose it. This one seemed more than worth the pain.”
“And why’s tha—” Eva’s voice dies in her throat as he reveals the full image to her.
It’s a mermaid, with her head positioned just below the inner crease of his elbow and her tail curling down into a gentle curve by his wrist. Her hair is white, falling in soft waves past her shoulders to cover her bare chest. Her tail is white, too, a delicate pattern of overlapping scales leading into a wide fin. The mermaid’s eyes are blue above a gentle smile and a crown of pale pink plumeria flowers rests on top of her head, those two details lending the only hint of color to the image.
It’s a good likeness.
Eva reaches one pale, still damp hand out to carefully trace the lines of the tattoo.
“That’s me,” she breathes.
“Y-yeah. Yeah, it is,” Jasper says, his eyes following her every movement as she caresses his arm, “And I—where a man gets a tattoo tells you a lot about what it means to him.”
Eva glances up, eyeing him inquisitively. He had a whole speech prepared for this—lovely metaphors and insights and rationalized explanations for why he chose his forearm over his ribs or his back or his shoulder—but all those carefully crafted words escape his grasp as her delicate fingers continue to trace the lines of her own image on his skin.
He reaches down to touch the tattoo and Eva’s hand creeps up his arm, skimming over the ink before her fingers brush his. Jasper’s voice catches in his throat, but he looks out at the horizon instead of at her beautiful, kind face and forces himself to say something.
“I—I thought a lot about where I wanted this one and, uh—” All those pretty words seem superfluous now. He reminds himself to breathe. “—well, my arm seemed like the best place. Everywhere else seemed… too likely to get hit by a stray bullet. And this… this’d let me see it—see you—whenever I wanted to. Be reminded of… y-you. But I—I couldn’t do my right arm. That’s my sword hand,” he says, even as Eva’s hand closes over his, both of their palms now covering the mermaid tattoo, “One slip up and someone else’s blade could slice straight through the prettiest thing on my person. So, I, uh… I decided to get it here… somewhere I could show you off—” He winces at his own choice of words. “I mean… I didn’t want to hide you… and it’s somewhere that you’d be close by, that I could see when I needed a reminder of… what’s good in this world, what I care about. Somewhere you’d be safe—” He lets out a dry laugh. “—or as safe as you could be, on a body so prone to… damage.”
Jasper finally finishes, watching as the setting sun glints pink and gold off the distant water. The tide laps at the old wood of the dock below him, the gulls call to each other overhead, and the nighttime noises of the port begin to rise. Yet Eva remains resolutely silent. Jasper steels himself, fearing the worst, as he tears his gaze away from the horizon to look back down at her.
“So… what do you think?” he asks hesitantly.
Eva looks up from studying the black lines of ink that both their hands still rest upon. She pulls her hand away from his and Jasper’s hopeful smile falls. He’s upset her, he’s sure of it. This was too much, too soon. She probably took it as an act of claiming, just another form of capture after everything she’s escaped; it was a ridiculous boyish idea; how could he ever think she’d want—
But then Eva surges up out of the water, planting her hands firmly against the dock to push herself up out of the ocean and press her lips to his.
The sudden force of her kiss surprises Jasper and it almost knocks him on his ass as her mouth crashes against his. He recovers quickly enough, though, taking her face in his hands and kissing her back hungrily.
This is the moment in all the tales and songs—warnings masquerading as stories—where he should be pulled down into the deep, to die in the arms of a traitorous creature that he was foolish enough to love. Mermaids are temptresses, beautiful devils, or at least that was what Jasper has always been told.
But Eva is nothing like the stories. She has always been so much better, so much more real than any fantasy or nightmare.
She tastes like the sea—like salt and freedom and dangerous beauty he will never tire of chasing after—and her pale sun-warmed skin is soft beneath his calloused hands. He can feel her smiling against him and his fingers tangle in her still wet hair when he tries to run his hand through it. They are both inexperienced, out of practice, fumbling their way toward something unexpectedly brilliant and he’s more than happy to keep kissing her until they get it exactly right.
Jasper has wanted to kiss her at least a dozen times since first meeting her—during the long hours she’d spent circling the row boat in the shallows to keep him company while the crew went ashore, in the frantic breathless moments after she'd saved him from drowning when The Maharani was attacked by The Elysium, on the nights he’d spent sitting on the rocks by her cove to sketch her as she worked—but despite the connection that has grown between them, he’s never been brave enough to actually do it.
Of course it is her—kind, gentle, eager, curious, brave Eva in all her glory—who finally crosses that line between them. And with that barrier broken down, he intends to kiss her as often as she’ll let him.
After a long moment, he finally pulls back to breathe and watches her lower herself back into the water. She settles back into the lapping surf, leaning her cheek against one hand as she rests her elbow on the dock.
“I—I’m gonna assume that means you like it?” Jasper ventures, just a little out of breath.
Eva giggles again and smiles up at him, revealing one of her delicate white fangs as she bites her bottom lip. Even as the stories call her kind beautiful monsters, they never seem to mention the fangs. As much as the others say he has strange taste, Jasper thinks they look rather pretty on her.
“I love it, Jasper,” she answers, “I’m… honored that you would want to carry me with you like that.”
“You make things better. I never want to forget that.”
Jasper didn’t know mermaids could blush until he met Eva—until they started edging toward flirtation and affection rather than just friendship—but now he sees a familiar shade of pink spread across her pale cheeks.
“I’m very glad I met you, Jasper,” she responds, smiling up at him.
And he loves her—loves her smile and her voice and the way she just knows things; loves the way she says his name and how she has never shrunk away from his scars; loves her patience and her gentleness and her ferocious loyalty. And if he’s honest, he likes the lovely, vicious siren in her, too—likes that she's strong enough to drown any man who crossed her; likes the way lightning runs down her spine when she’s angry; likes that edge of a hurricane in her beautiful blue eyes. He loves all of her, just as she is.
“I’m glad I met you, too.” Jasper is not a confident man when it comes to expressing his own emotions, but her smile always gives him courage. “And it’s a bit of a tradition, among… those of my profession… to get a tattoo commemorating—honoring—celebrating… well, showing your commitment to… your girl.”
“Am I your girl, Jasper?” Eva asks, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
“If—If you’d like to be… I’d, uh, I’d like you to be.”
“On one condition.”
“Anything,” he says, perhaps a bit too quickly.
“Will you be my chosen, my sweetheart… mine ? Just as I would be yours?” she asks, and the deep affection in her voice makes him think that perhaps it is not so foolish after all to hope that she loves him in return.
“I’d be honored… to call myself yours.”
“Then I would be honored to call myself your girl.”
“Al-alright then.”
Eva laughs without a hint of cruelty—laughs because of him, but never at him—and Jasper can’t help but think it’s the prettiest sound he’s ever heard.
“Does your girl get to kiss you again?” she inquires, voice playful and expectant.
“She can do whatever she likes… whenever she likes.”
Eva grins at him, pushing herself up out of the water again, and for the second time that day Jasper finds himself kissing a mermaid. They are both more sure this time, more confident, more skilled but no less eager. Jasper pours every bit of passion and joy and excitement into this kiss, trying to convey just how much he cares for her even as words fail him. It lasts for an eternity, but that is still not nearly long enough.
Much to both his disappointment and hers, Eva’s arms cannot support her weight forever and she breaks the kiss reluctantly to settle back into the water again.
The songs and stories do not tell of how soft and sincere a mermaid’s smile can be when she is in love, how brightly her eyes can shine, how her laughter can sound like a sunrise. But as he and Eva exist in this moment together—talking late into the night as they have so often done before—Jasper doesn’t think any musician or poet could ever do justice to this kind of beauty.