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The sound of sea shanties, the high whistle of wind breezing past her, and the cawing of gulls circling overhead have become the white noise of Edelgard’s life.
From her place at the ship’s wheel, she surveys everything in front of her. Her crew working diligently on deck, her ship’s sails billowing in the favourable wind, and the blue of sea and sky blending together as far as her eye can see.
“Captain Edelgard, a moment.”
“Hm? What is it, Hubert?”
There’s a certain trance that one gets into when steering a ship for endless hours across a calm sea, but Edelgard is always aware enough of her surroundings to know when someone is coming up behind her. Especially when that someone is her trusted first mate, Hubert.
“We have the latest charts, and I wanted you to take a look at this…”
Hubert comes up behind her, carefully laying out the chart so she can see it without having to leave the wheel for too long. The weather is nice and steady now, of course, but there’s no telling when things might take a sudden turn when they’re this far out at sea, which can be a truly harsh and unpredictable mistress…
They’ve been on the tail of a shipment of gold bouillon bound for a Church harbour, and judging by Hubert’s latest intel (that she absolutely does not question the source of because she absolutely does not want to know the answer, knowing Hubert as long as she has) and the charts they’ve mapped together, they’re finally closing in.
It won’t be the first time they’ve hit the Church where it hurts, but it’s starting to get them noticed now— and that’s both good and bad. Good because they’re finally accomplishing the goal she set out to do when she left her noble family behind to chase a life on the high seas… And bad because…
Well, pirating is a dangerous life, even for the most talented of crews. And with an enemy as big as the Church, there’s really no telling how long it will be before they end up running out of good luck and someone gets the better of them.
But Edelgard doesn’t let that discourage her. Not one little bit.
Because it’s a beautiful day, her crew is singing, and the sea is on her side.
And what more could a young pirate captain ask for?
“Dorothea! Dorothea!”
Where she’s lying on a flat rock sunning herself on a perfect afternoon, Dorothea cracks open a single eye when she hears Annette calling for her.
The younger siren— still losing the last of her baby scales, even though she really isn’t that much younger than Dorothea, just a little bit of a late bloomer.
Dorothea casually rolls over onto her front, flipping her tail in the water to splash Annette as she comes swimming up to her, making her giggle.
“Where are you coming from in such a hurry, Annie?” she asks, leaning across the shelf of her sunning stone with her chin folded in her arms. “Find something exciting?”
“Did I ever!”
Usually, when Annette declares that she’s found something interesting, she’s talking about a beautiful shell she’s found perfectly intact, or a pod of whales, or a seal that’s taken a liking to her when her overbearing father isn’t fretting over her at every moment and keeping her from having any real fun.
But this time, there’s a mischievous glint in Annette’s eyes that gives Dorothea’s tail a particular swish of anticipation.
“There’s a human ship! Anchored not that far from here!”
“A ship?”
As sirens, their sacred duty is to lure human sailors from their boats— it’s a job all of them are trained to take very seriously, of course. If humans get too close to merfolk settlements, it only leads to conflicts— and the only way to avoid conflict with humans is to scare them off so they aren’t tempted to come back ever again.
It’s the duty of every siren to be prepared for the day when she might need to defend her home against the threat of a human who wants to capture them, or kill them— even in their safe little stretch of coast where there are no human settlements anywhere nearby to attract sailors to their ports. Dorothea has been training for it all her life; so too has Annette. And neither of them have ever been able to put their skills to the test.
“Where is this ship?” she asks, trying to sound… Wary.
Because wary is what she should be? She’s grown up with stories told by the matrons and the warriors about how cruel and vicious humans can be, why they have to keep apart from them in order to preserve their ways of life and just… Their lives in general, how they would keep them as poorly cared for pets or carve them up to eat them if they manage to get their hands on them.
And yet…
Things are always so quiet in their little shoal that, much like Annette, Dorothea can’t help but feel a little excited by the thought.
Since she’s never gotten a chance to prove what she can do— and she’s never even gotten to see a live human up close and personal— it only makes sense that she would want to prove that she knows what she’s doing, right?
“It’s really close by,” Annette whispers way too loudly to be an actual whisper, not that there’s anyone else around to really hear her— “And there’s this big bunch of rocks so you can see it without them seeing you— come on, come on, I’ll show you!”
And before Dorothea’s better sense can grip her, Annette splashes back into the water and swims off, and then of course Dorothea has to follow her to make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble, right?
Right.
Dorothea has heard plenty of stories about human ships, and she’s even seen a few of them in the far distance from the relative safety of their home, but she’s never really had a chance to think about how… Big they are.
Safely being the rocks Annette had mentioned, the two of them sit and watch the ship.
With the sun starting to go down and the wind died down, keeping their ship from going much of anywhere, the crew has put down their anchors to stop for the night, making it clear that they’re not just going to keep sailing on like anyone should do if they know they’re in siren infested waters— so really, it’s not their fault if anything bad happens to any of them, right?
But rather than just being focused on how many of them she could potentially lure into a watery death, she takes the chance to just… Watch them for a little while.
Human singing sounds so odd to her, pushed through their exclusively air-breathing lungs, but she and Annette still sit and listen to them from their hiding spot as they dredge huge nets over the side of their boats into the fish-bearing shallows.
Once that’s done, most of them disappear into the underbelly of their ship— Dorothea can see lights through the little holes, can still hear laughter and talking even though she can’t see anyone anymore.
“Wow,” Annette practically breathes. “I’ve never seen so many humans so close before…”
Dorothea nods in agreement. Maybe they’ve missed their best window of opportunity, but she’s not sure the two of them alone would be able to handle so many humans anyway… So maybe this is a good chance for their first real ‘lure humans to their death and warn them not to come anywhere near their home’ run?
“Alright,” Dorothea whispers as she leans in close to Annette, cupping her hand over her ear. She has no idea how well humans can hear, and she’s not going to take any chances when she has Annette with her. “Since there aren’t as many of them here anymore, this is our perfect chance… We can lure just a few of them and then their friends should get the picture and move on, okay?”
With raw determination in her eyes, Annette nods— but the idea of sending sweet little Annette, who gets upset at the idea of cracking open oysters for supper, in to kill humans on her own just doesn’t sit right with her.
“I’ll go in first,” Dorothea suggests.
“Aww, what? Why can’t I come with you?” Annette raises her voice a little, and Dorothea quickly covers her mouth with her hand.
“Simple,” she says. “I’m older, which means it’s my turn first. And this way, if something goes wrong, you can swim back to everyone else and get help. You’re a much faster swimmer than I am, after all.”
That little bit of flattery is enough to buy Annette over— sweet little Annette, who Dorothea feels just the tiniest bit guilty lying to… Even though it’s not really a lie, is it?
Not a big one, at least. And it’s for everyone’s good.
Leaving Annette behind in their hiding place, Dorothea dives underwater and swims up as close to the human ship as she dares. This close, she feels almost dizzy at the size of it— she’s swam with pods of whales before, but it seems weirdly more intimidating when you know something the size of a whale is filled with people who have weapons and want to hurt you with them.
From this angle, though, it makes it hard for Dorothea to see anything on the deck, so she tries to swim and get a closer look—
Not realizing she’s gotten perilously close to the fishing nets the sailors have put down.
Dorothea has seen fishing nets before, but nothing like this; as soon as she swims too close, it’s like something snaps or goes off, and suddenly she finds herself hauled into the air and out of the water. She screeches, reflexively, and tries to claw at the ropes— but they’re made to endure the sea water and harsh weather and don’t give so easily.
“Ohmigosh! Dorothea!”
Annette squeaks and tries to swim towards her, but Dorothea flails her arms.
“Annette! Just like I told you! Go get— someone!”
The last thing she wants or needs is Annette swimming straight towards her doom with her— all because of their unprepared curiosity.
“Ah! R-right! Be careful, Dorothea! I’ll be right back!”
Annette disappears under the water and swims off.
Dorothea is, for a moment, blindly hopeful that Annette will be able to swim off and get her father or Manuela or someone who can help her before the humans find her— but all of her thrashing and squealing must have caught their attention, because a moment later she finds herself being hauled up and over the edge of the ship’s desk.
Dorothea does exactly what she’s been told to do in this situation— she thrashes and screeches and does everything she can to make sure that no one can get close enough to her to shove a spear through her— but the humans who have brought her up are all keeping their distance as she throws herself around wetly on the deck of their ship, and soon enough she’s too exhausted to keep it up.
“See? I told you my special nets would work.”
“Linhardt, your special nets were meant to catch us fish for our dinner, not some— hapless woman!”
“W-well… She’s kinda… Half fish? Does that mean she half counts?”
“And I would watch what you say about her being ‘hapless’. You do know what she is, don’t you?”
“Irrelevant, Linhardt!”
She can tell they’re talking about her, but Dorothea has no idea what they’re actually talking about, and she has absolutely no idea what she’s going to do even if her pod do show up to rescue her— it’s not like they can climb up onto the ship to come get her, right?
Oh, why did she have to give in to that curiosity of hers…?
“Sirens coming too close to a ship can be spelling of disaster.”
“So what are we supposed to do with her…?”
“We need to let her go, of course!”
“Sirens come close to human ships to lure sailors to their deaths, Ferdinand. Unless you think your perfect pitch is going to save you from her death song, perhaps we should reconsider?”
“Would you have us just spear her instead?”
“Oh, you know I never advocate for violence— perhaps we should just ask the Captain what she thinks.”
“I am certain that Edelgard will—”
“I will go and fetching her.”
There are too many voices for Dorothea to be able to tell them clearly apart and she’s too disoriented by the unfamiliarity of her surroundings, but she does hear footsteps racing across the wooden deck— and then all she can do is curl herself up into as protective a ball as she can as the rest of the voices around her just get louder and louder.
Annette, Manuela… Please, hurry!
Edelgard is too absorbed in her chart plotting to hear the commotion happening on the deck overhead until she hears light but swift footsteps coming down to her hold— and then, suddenly, a loud pounding at the door.
“Captain Edelgard!” Petra’s voice calls loudly.
Hubert raises himself up to his full height standing behind her, ready to admonish anyone for disrupting Edelgard’s very important work, but Edelgard knows that among any member of the crew, the one least likely to bother her without a very good reason is Petra.
“Come in,” she announces, and Petra wastes no time practically bursting through the door.
“There is an urgency— an urgent matter on the deck,” Petra says. “Linhardt has caught a merperson in one of his nets—”
Edelgard is already out of her seat before Petra can even finish what she’s saying.
“Captain Edelgard—”
“Hubert, tend to things here,” she says as she’s already heading up the stairs, hot on Petra’s heels as she brings her up to the deck.
As they get closer to the main deck, she hears the commotion— the sound of half a dozen voices bickering with each other and trying to yell over each other, although as soon as she appears on the deck and they catch sight of her, everything comes to an abrupt stop.
“What’s going on here?” she demands, storming up to the bulk of her crew all standing around something she can’t quite see.
“One of Linhardt’s fancy fishnets pulled up a woman,” Caspar blurts out immediately, as soon as he hears her voice.
Edelgard hopes that if any of them get captured— though hopefully such a thing would never come to pass— Caspar isn’t the one who gets caught. She has a feeling their entire operation would fall apart quite quickly if the keeping of their secrets were to be left to Caspar alone.
“She’s not a woman, she’s a siren,” Linhardt says with an exasperated sigh. “Or, I suppose you could say she’s both… But I digress. We were just debating what to do with her, Captain.”
“Captain Edelgard, I told Linhardt that the only reasonable course of action would be to release her immediately—”
“Calm yourself, Ferdinand. We already have one fiasco on our hands, we don’t need to be causing even more trouble.”
Although Ferdinand looks aghast at the idea that he could be causing anyone any kind of trouble, it does exactly what she wants it to do, which is get him to stop talking and just sort of stand there with his mouth hanging open so she has a moment to quietly assess the situation.
And what she sees does not leave her happy.
Everyone moves out of the way easily for her, and on the deck in front of her is a woman in one of Linhardt’s magical trap nets— or, at least, from the waist up she has the appearance of a woman. A beautiful one at that— young and sun-freckled with long wavy brown hair and big eyes, which are glaring up at her menacingly right now while she bares her sharp teeth at her, which is completely fair in Edelgard’s opinion since she’s stuck in a net on the deck of her ship.
Below her waist is a glistening tail of a brilliant, deep navy, so dark it almost looks black— beautiful, but Edelgard has heard enough stories of the merfolk and their deadliness to know that beauty doesn’t mean a lack of danger.
It is a difficult situation, Edelgard has to admit.
On the one hand, although the merwoman hasn’t said anything yet, she knows of the intelligence of the merfolk, and she has no desire to keep anyone capable of free thought captive anywhere they don’t want to be—
On the other hand, she knows that a single siren has more than enough power in her lungs alone to spell the death of an entire ship of sailors.
It’s not like she didn’t know this would be a risk. In order to catch up to the Church’s ship, she had been willing to sail through a channel that had gone unused for a long time— and for very good reason. Her fingers had been crossed hoping for an uneventful passing, but it seems like that’s not in the cards for her this time.
But Edelgard isn’t a monster. She has no intention of killing an innocent person because of a mistake she made… And she doesn’t intend to have her crew pay for it, either.
“Caspar,” she says, crouching down on the deck in front of the siren. “Could you hand me your knife, please?”
“Uh… Sure, Edelgard.”
Caspar hands her the heavy duty knife he uses to cut snagged rigging, and Edelgard holds it loosely in her hand as she considers the problem in front of her.
“Hello there,” she says, locking eyes with the siren.
The siren glares at her, but behind that glare she can see fear— especially as her eyes dart to the knife she’s holding.
“Don’t worry,” she says firmly. “I have no intentions of using this on you. Can you understand me?”
All of the books she’s ever read about the creatures of the sea say that the merfolk can understand human language— but considering humans can’t even understand all of human language, she wants to be quite certain that this particular siren can understand what she’s saying before she continues.
For a moment, she just gets another glare… Before she gets a small, almost nervous nod.
“Good,” she says, nodding back at her. “First of all, I want to apologize for this misunderstanding— these nets were meant to catch fish for our dinner, not to catch you. I’m very sorry for any trouble we’ve caused. Now, if it’s alright with you, I’m going to use this to cut you loose, okay?”
She offers the siren a closer look at the knife. Although still obviously frightened, she seems a bit curious, too, leaning in to get a closer look at it— and Edelgard moves slowly as she picks up the heavy, reinforced ropes of Linhardt’s nets to start cutting them loose.
“Ah, what a waste…” Linhardt sighs and yawns behind her.
“Well, at least you know for sure that they work now, right?”
The usual ‘witty banter’ between Caspar and Linhardt fades into the background as she slowly works at cutting the siren loose.
“I also want you to know,” she says carefully, once again meeting the merwoman’s eyes. “We mean you and your people absolutely no harm. I know poachers and their ilk come to these waters to try and capture you, but we’re merely passing through and we intend to be gone as soon as possible. So if you would consider not luring all of us to an early, watery grave…”
Even Edelgard isn’t quite sure whether she means that last bit as a joke or not, but regardless, she manages to cut through the last of the knots holding the net fast.
Moving quickly so the siren doesn’t hurt herself trying to make a rapid exodus from the ship, Edelgard tosses the cut net behind her for the others to deal with, along with Caspar’s knife— before moving in close with her arms open, hoping to show the woman she doesn’t mean her any harm.
“I’m just going to pick you up so we can get you back into the water more easily,” she explains. “Is that alright?”
Another long, lingering look between them.
The siren nods.
“Alright.” She smiles, and turns to Petra. “Petra, I’m going to use the lifeboat to take her down close to the water— watch for my signal to haul me back up.”
“Yes, Captain!”
Edelgard expects the siren to be heavier than she looks— her human body is delicate and slender looking, but her tail is a massive weapon— but Edelgard has always been especially strong, and though she wavers for a moment, she’s able to get one arm underneath the siren’s beautiful tail and another around her back.
With the help of her crew, she’s able to lift her into the lifeboat, which they drop steadily down the side of the ship— and once it’s just barely above the water, not quite touching, Edelgard releases the siren from her hold.
“There you are,” she says, hoping her voice sounds gentle and reassuring and not… Condescending, or something of the sort. “I’m terribly sorry for all of this… I hope you can forgive us.”
Still, although she can see recognition in her eyes, the siren says nothing— but she swears that just for a moment before she dives off the side of the lifeboat, she nods at her.
When Petra and the others return the lifeboat to the deck, Edelgard sighs.
“Well,” she says. “That was more excitement than I think we all needed tonight…”
“Agreed. And we still don’t have any fresh fish for dinner.”
“Linhardt!”
“What? I get tired of eating hardtack all the time.”
Annette has always been the fastest swimmer in the pod, although not always the most careful— but tonight, speed is more important than care anyway.
Because if she doesn’t hurry, Dorothea might be dead by the time she gets there.
“Hurry, Manuela! Hurry!”
“Annette, if you don’t stop making such a racket—”
“I know, I know, but Dorothea, she’s—”
Annette is so busy yelling back at Manuela who is following as close behind as she can that she doesn’t even notice the jagged outcropping of rocks she and Dorothea were using as a hiding place until she manages to swim face first into them.
“Owwww!” Annette recoils, holding her squashed nose— thankfully it’s not bleeding, because the last thing she needs right now is to draw inquisitive predators, not when she has to worry about—
“Dorothea?!”
“Oh, Dorothea, you’re alright!”
And ‘alright’ she is— sitting on the same rocks as though Annette had just gone to fetch Manuela and not like the last thing she had seen of her was her getting hauled up onto the deck of the ship screaming, probably about to get skewered or eaten or sold or—!
“Dorothea!”
Annette practically jumps on top of her, wrapping her up in the tightest hug she’s ever given anyone in her life, but even though she’s not exactly being subtle it must catch Dorothea by surprise because she lets out this noise before Annette’s weight pulls her off the rocks and into the water.
“Thank the heavens, Dorothea… When Annette told me what happened, I was beside myself…”
The only person Annette could think to grab who wouldn’t send a complete armed militia out was Manuela, who was now doing her best job at trying to suffocate Dorothea with hugs alongside her— but it felt almost like Dorothea was trying to escape?
The idea of Dorothea not wanting a hug from Manuela is so out there that Annette can’t help but let go.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Dorothea assures both of them. “I’m so sorry I made you both worry so much… And I’m sorry I even got myself in that mess in the first place.”
“You better be sorry!” That one vein in Manuela’s head starts throbbing the way it always does when she’s really mad, and even though Annette was just completely overcome with worry over Dorothea, now she just kind of wants to hide behind her. “What were you even thinking, the two of you charging in to attack a human ship by yourselves?!”
“I-it was my fault, Manuela! Don’t get angry at Dorothea!” Annette peeks over Dorothea’s shoulder, clinging to her. “I’ve never seen a human ship up close before, and after everything you’ve always told us we thought that we could… I don’t know…”
She trails off, because she doesn’t really know what else to say to defend them, but Dorothea puts her hand over hers and gives her a reassuring squeeze.
“...Sorry, Dorothea.”
“For what? You don’t have anything to apologize for, Annie,” Dorothea says, reaching up to gently pat her on the head. “And Manuela… I’m sorry I made you worry so much. But I promise I’m fine. In fact… These humans even seemed sort of nice.”
Annette and Manuela both pull back and stare at Dorothea like she’s suddenly grown another head… But Annette can tell from the almost dreamy look in Dorothea’s eyes as she stares off at the ship that she’s being perfectly serious.
“Nice?” Manuela repeats, blinking a few times. “Dorothea… Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
“I’m fine,” Dorothea repeats once again. “We don’t have to worry about these humans— they won’t bother us. They wouldn’t have let me go otherwise, right? They even apologized for capturing me in the first place.”
Annette and Manuela stare blankly at Dorothea some more, until she just sighs and shakes her head.
“Nevermind, you two. Just… Nevermind. Trust me on this, okay?”
“Well… I suppose you are still here and not being served as someone’s dinner or being kept as someone’s pet…” Manuela doesn’t sound entirely convinced, but then she sighs. “I didn’t really want to have to mount an entire attack anyway… As long as you two girls have learned your lesson, we can all go back to bed now, right?”
“Yes, Manuela!” Dorothea and Annette chime at the same time, and Manuela wishes both of them a good night before swimming off back towards the rest of the pod.
As soon as she’s out of sight, Annette breathes a sigh of relief.
“I’m really glad you’re alright, Dorothea,” she practically whines. “I’m so sorry for getting you into this mess in the first place…”
“Don’t worry about it, Annette.” Dorothea gently combs her fingers through Annette’s hair. “It’s all over now, okay? Nothing to worry about. Let’s just go back home now…”
And that’s enough to have Annette yawning— exhausted from the ‘thrill’ of their little ‘adventure’— but when she swims off in the same direction as Manuela, she can’t help but notice that Dorothea lingers just the tiniest bit longer on the rocks, staring at the silhouette of the human ship off in the distance.
Edelgard, for once, feels like she’s incredibly lucky.
Luck isn’t a thing they’ve had a lot of since they started on this venture; it feels like they’ve been beset by problems at every turn, and the Church has always been one step ahead of them.
But thanks to their daring and bold choice to make their way through merfolk-inhabited waters, they’re not only making good time on the Church vessel they’re tracking— they’re actually ahead of schedule.
For the first day or so, she’s worried that her act of kindness with turn around and bite her and her crew and that the siren she freed from their nets— after being the ones to trespass on their home— will return with her friends to make short work of them all, but it seems that once again luck is on her side, and so the next night as they carefully plot out the best course with which to intercept their target they find a small stretch of island to set anchor by.
It’s more of a fancy sandbar than an island, with just a few scrubby plants and some sea birds complaining about being forced to share their space, but when they’ve been on their ship as long as they have its still a nice change of pace for the crew to be able to get their boots on solid land again.
Even better, Linhardt’s second attempt at using his fancy automated nets to catch them some dinner proves much more fruitful than the first— meaning that they have something to eat other than hardtack and salt pork for the first time in a while, and it will hold them over until they’re able to make it to another port of call.
Although Edelgard usually just stays in her quarters on nights like these, preferring to get some work done while her crew is making merry, this time she finds herself with a particular urge to get out and get some fresh air. So, once dinner has been had and a bonfire has been lit on the sandbar on the port side of the boat— the embers blowing away from their ship’s precious sails— Edelgard slips off to the starboard side.
She watches the ship anchored out in the water as she wanders the sandbar shallows, looking back every so often at her crew, listening to Caspar’s cheers and whoops, practically able to hear the stories Petra excitedly recounts of her homeland as though she’s standing right next to her.
Sometimes, Edelgard worries that she’s too… Distant, but she has a job that needs to be done. There will be plenty of time for joining in on the merrymaking once everything is complete.
She finds herself ankle-deep in crystal clear water, sitting down without a care for the fact that her clothes are getting soaked— she’s a pirate, after all— and watching the way the waves gently beat at the side of her ship, feeling the breeze passing through her hair…
“Fancy seeing you here.”
Edelgard startles at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. If she were anywhere else, maybe it wouldn’t be so surprising— but out here in the middle of nowhere, with no one else around for nearly a day, she thinks she’s perfectly within her rights to be shocked.
“Wh-who…?”
She whirls around, almost expecting one of her crew to be standing there playing a trick on her— but instead she hears a wet FLOP and when she turns, she’s face to face with the beautiful siren woman from the night before.
“Hello there,” the siren says, smiling at her with those sharp teeth of hers.
For a moment, Edelgard wonders if she’s about to become someone’s meal.
But her noble upbringing kicks in first and she just says,
“Hello.”
“I thought you said you and your kind would be leaving as soon as possible.”
It’s jarring, because Edelgard didn’t hear the woman speak once the entire time she was freeing her, but now it’s very obvious that she was listening carefully to everything she had been saying. But then, she has Hubert in her life, so perhaps she should just be used to it by now.
“We will be,” Edelgard assures her. “We’re pursuing another ship, and we should be able to cut off their route and intercept them tomorrow, if the weather holds true. So we won’t be bothering you much longer.”
“Oh, you’re not bothering me. I just don’t want any more misunderstandings to happen.”
Edelgard takes the chance to get a better look at the siren, who makes herself quite comfortable sitting on the sandbar next to her, her dark tail flapping playfully in the water.
She’s never had the chance to see a siren or any other merperson up close; she’s seen drawings, and she’s seen samples in museums, but never a living, breathing member of the merfolk…
“I’m terribly sorry for that, again. Coming this way was my idea; it was the only way we were going to be able to catch up to the ship we’re hunting down.”
“So rather than risk losing your prey, you decided to take a chance with a nasty group of predators instead?”
Edelgard watches the siren flip her long, curly hair at her and smile, and she gets the distinct feeling she’s being played with.
“What’s your name?” she asks, because she wants to change the subject, and also because she’s genuinely curious.
“Dorothea. And yours?”
“Edelgard.”
It should feel weirder than it does, suddenly being caught up in a conversation with a siren, but Edelgard has always liked to think of herself as adaptable (in spite of what her crew sometimes insists), and it’s not like she can blame her for being intrigued by them when they literally caught her in a net the day before.
Dorothea asks her questions about her ship, and her crew, and eventually Edelgard asks her why she came back to speak with her.
“After you cut me loose and brought me down to the water, I kept an eye on your ship,” she explains. “I wanted to make sure you were going to keep to your word and not cause any trouble. And… We don’t see many humans around these parts. I’m just… Curious.”
“Well… If it will prove that my intentions are good, I’ll happily answer any questions you have.”
Dorothea laughs at her when she says that, but Edelgard can’t decide whether she’s being made fun of or not.
Time flies by as the two talk, and Edelgard finds herself learning a great deal about the merfolk— what they do for fun, the sort of animals they keep as pets, and even a few tips about the local weather she makes a note of to tell Hubert when she gets back on board the ship. And she stays true to her word, answering any questions Dorothea has until her throat starts to feel dry and parched simply from talking so much.
That’s when Edelgard realizes that the sun is already starting to rise.
“Oh, my,” she says, blinking as if she’s just come out of a dream. “I should check on my crew and make sure everything is ready for our departure— I wouldn’t want to linger longer than we’re welcome.”
“Please, take your time,” Dorothea replies. “But don’t lose track of your prey on my account. If you do happen to come back this way at some point, though, maybe you could stop by and we can talk some more…?”
“I would like that very much.” Edelgard smiles, and rises to her feet. She almost offers Dorothea her hand before realizing what she’s doing— and Dorothea just laughs at her and takes her hand, bringing it to her lips to kiss the back of it.
“Goodbye, Pirate Captain Edelgard,” Dorothea giggles as she drags herself into the deeper water until it’s deep enough for her to start floating on her back, and then actually swimming. “Try not to catch any other sirens in your nets or you might make me jealous, okay?”
And Edelgard doesn’t even have a chance to say anything to that before Dorothea disappears under the water.
Giving her head a shake, Edelgard takes a moment to try and process what just happened— only to decide that it can wait until later.
She has a ship to run, after all.
When Dorothea set out to see if the human ship was still in their territory, she hadn’t expected to find anything. And she certainly hadn’t expected to find the pretty human woman who had let her loose sitting on her own without any of the other humans around.
A human on their own near a siren is just begging for trouble— but Edelgard had given the distinct impression that she wasn’t worried about anything like that at all.
Now that she’s spent an entire night talking to her, Dorothea can see why.
No, she has no idea what she was thinking when she went to find the humans, especially after the less than warm reception she had gotten at first— accident or otherwise— but Edelgard is most certainly not what she had been expecting.
And against her better judgment, she finds herself terribly intrigued.
“A human pirate captain, hm…” She taps a finger against her lower lip as, from a safe distance, she watches Edelgard and her crew ready their ship to sail in pursuit of this mysterious prey she was talking about.
They don’t get many humans in their waters.
Dorothea very much hopes that Edelgard decides to use this to her advantage again.