Work Text:
Sand.
Wave.
Sand.
Breeze.
Wave.
Sand-
Tango jerked awake and started coughing. Air- he needed air and he needed the water out of his lungs. He crawled a little farther up the beach, away from the gentle tide.
Once he could breathe again, Tango took a few moments to collect himself, then rolled over and looked around.
The sun was starting to come out. That was a nice change. Being on solid ground was also a nice change. He was incredibly lucky to have not drowned in the storm that had wrecked the ship he had been on.
Bits and pieces of the ship, and other driftwood and flotsam, were scattered across the beach. Something about the marine geography that Tango didn't understand had made this area relatively calm, and apparently drew things in onto the safe beach. At either end, rocky points and coves jutted out and around, but this stretch was all sand.
Slowly, Tango stood up, brushing the sand off of himself. Now, he had a better view of the whole beach - and of the person lying face down about a hundred feet away.
Oh geez. Tango half jogged, half stumbled toward them. As he got closer, he recognized the lanky figure and white hair as Etho. The two had gotten to talking quite often on the ship. Please don't be dead please don't be dead-
He fell to his knees next to his relatively new friend, trying very hard not to panic, until he finally noticed Etho's chest move a little. Oh thank god.
Tango rolled Etho slightly and dug some sand away. He leaned Etho's shoulder on his knee to wrestle the wet, sandy, black cloth mask off of Etho's nose and mouth. At this point, the chances of Tango catching the cold Etho had been recovering from was the least of either of their worries.
Etho squeezed his eyes shut tighter and mumbled something inaudible. "Mmrm?"
"Etho!" Tango shook his shoulder. "Talk to me, buddy."
Etho shaded his eyes and blinked at Tango. "Where am I?"
"Uh. No idea." Tango looked around. "Some island, I think."
"Classic," Etho groaned as he sat up. "Not an inhabited island, I'm guessing."
"Haven't had a chance to look, but, uhhh, probably not."
"Okay." Etho sighed and rubbed his face. "This is. Not good."
"No, I'd say probably not."
"We are alive, though."
"For however long we can manage that."
"Hey, I was in Scouts!" Etho protested. "I could get us somewhere. Probably."
"Okay, then, Mr. Scout, what's first? Food? Shelter?"
"Uhhh... signal fire?" Etho suggested. "Probably? If we get found quickly we won't even need the other stuff."
"Cool. Fire good."
-----
Etho could, in fact, put together a very efficient fire. The two of them even found a way to start it with a friction setup, without hurting their hands too badly.
"I am amazed," Tango commented, watching smoke curl into the darkening blue sky. "And now we'll have warmth tonight, too."
"Hopefully it's enough," Etho grinned. "We might have to cuddle up."
-----
With some exploring, they found a few date palms, and small animals that could theoretically be hunted. Tango recalled a way of collecting condensation and rainwater using a water repellent surface, and a couple of large leaves did the trick. One day, Etho found Tango by the signal fire, messing with branches.
"What are you doing over here, then?"
"Trying something," Tango replied distractedly, twirling a thin branch in his hands. "I was thinking, what if we make the smoke come off in puffs? That would make it really clear that it's man-made."
Etho frowned. "Did you tie my face mask to the end of a stick?"
"It already has strings, I figured I might as well use it for testing."
"Oookay." Etho wandered off on a different errand. Tango hummed to himself as he jabbed two forked branches into the ground near the fire and set the one he'd been messing with on top. After a few tries, he managed to find an angle where the rising hot air from the fire caught the fabric of the face mask just right, and spun the branch a little in its holders. Tango chuckled to himself. "This might just work."
-
Etho came back from his gathering trip lugging what seemed like miles of vines, half stripped of leaves. "I got stuff."
"Geez, guy," Tango commented. "What's all that for? Not food, surely."
"Well, kinda." Etho dumped the coils off his shoulders with a grunt. "We need some meat in our diets. And we haven't had much luck with your pocket-knife-on-a-stick spear."
"Hey, the idea was great, thank you! We're just bad at hunting."
“Whiiich is why I got these.” Etho started unrolling the vines and laying them out. “Fishing, right? We can make a net.”
Tango gave him a skeptical look. “You learned how to make a fishing net in Scouts?”
“Welll, no,” Etho admitted. “But I know the knots you’re supposed to use for one. It can’t be that hard, right? Here, I’ll show you the knot and then it’ll go twice as fast.”
-
They picked their way out to the very end of one of the rocky points to cast their net. One vine was tied to a corner, and Etho held onto the other end while Tango flung the net as far as he could.
“...Etho,” Tango commented. “I see a problem here.”
Etho looked out at the net, floating peacefully on the surface of the water, spread out flat. “...Okay, yeah, I see the problem.”
As they pulled the net back in, Etho thought he spotted a large shadow beneath the surface, moving in the same direction. Probably a seal or something, he decided. Or light playing tricks in the water.
-----
Soon, the two of them were back out at the point. This time, the net had pull lines on all four corners, and rocks lashed to a few points to make one end sink. Once again, Tango flung the net out into the water.
They watched it sink for a moment - until the same shadow appeared. It circled the net - then bumped against it. “Quick, quick, pull!” Etho yelled. “We caught something!”
Hand over hand, they hauled the net onto the rocks. A fish’s tail flapped, as big as a tuna’s and a vibrant blue color with thin orange lines along its length.
The rest of the catch, though...
The fish tail blended into a human torso, with the blue scales reaching halfway up his sides. Their catch held onto the net with human hands, and stared at them with piercing blue eyes, surrounded by more scattered blue scales like freckles. He had a beard, neatly trimmed, which Tango was absurdly even more surprised at and a little self-conscious about; despite having presumably been underwater all its life, it still looked nicer than the straggles that the two castaways had gotten from not having the resources to shave.
“Okay so uh,” Etho said slowly. “Either we’ve gone delirious from isolation, or...”
“...We caught a mermaid,” Tango finished.
-
xB had just been curious about the net.
He had seen humans before. He saw their big ships pass by, and found objects that must have come from them, including other nets. But this wasn't one of the big, dangerous ones that came off a boat and needed to be bitten or sliced apart with sharp shells; this was just... plants. It certainly wasn't catching anything.
He may have pressed himself into it on purpose to see what would happen.
Now he was listening to the two humans argue about and generally be in awe of him. He couldn't quite follow the conversation perfectly, but he caught some discussion about whether it was right to call him a "mermaid" if he was a guy (he didn't care - that was a Human word with little meaning to him) and a debate on what to do with him. xB wasn't familiar with the words "sell" and "fame", but they were apparently pretty important, and at least one of those might have involved him staying captured for a while. He very deliberately inspected his claws, then bared his jagged teeth to pull out a fish bone stuck between them.
He almost missed when one of the humans asked him a question. xB made eye contact with the human who asked and made a question sound.
"What's your name?" the human repeated, more slowly. He turned to the other. "Tango, I don't think it understands English."
xB watched their mouths. He understood enough, but hadn't really spoken the language. "N-ame?" he tried.
Once he had the humans' attention, he traced the two letters of his name on the ground. Obviously it wasn't the name he'd give to other mers, but he doubted the humans would get anything out of his actual name. He just gave them a couple of letters that he'd seen on a piece of human trash once and liked the shape of.
Hm. That apparently made them start arguing about "sell" and "morals" and "fame" again. xB watched for a moment, then scooted part of the net off him and crawled out of the opening, only needing an extra heartbeat to get a fin out of one of the net holes.
Ha, that made them stop talking. xB grinned at them, turned, and pushed himself toward the water.
"Hey hey whoa whoa whoa no-!" one of the humans yelled, as both ran toward him. But xB was already sliding off the rock into the sea. For good measure, he made sure to smack his tail against the surface hard enough to splash the humans with water as he dove back toward his home.
-----
"So, uh. Are we sure that just happened?" Tango asked, as they sat by their fire trying to dry off. The contraption Tango had built spun slowly next to them from the rising heat, not yet connected to anything else. "We aren't, like, burning some sort of hallucinogenic plant over here?"
Etho was silent for a long time before he answered. "...I don't know."
Tango sighed. "And after all that, we still didn't manage to actually get any better food."
Something flew out of the water and hit Tango in the face.
"Ah- gahpfklth!" Tango flailed and fell over backward. He grabbed the offending object as Etho started laughing. "A fish?? Who threw a fish at me??"
A second, unfamiliar laugh joined Etho's. "It's food."
Tango glared at the mermaid watching them from the shallow water. xB, unconcerned, threw a fish at Etho, too. Etho, being a little more prepared, managed to sort of catch it.
“...Thank you?” Etho replied.
“You’re taking pity on us,” Tango accused.
“He’s giving us food,” Etho pointed out. He grabbed one of their pointier firewood sticks and used it to hold the fish over the fire - which xB watched curiously, until he suddenly decided to splash water at them.
“Hey!” They both scrambled to their feet, Etho standing between the mermaid and the fire. “What are you doing??”
“Just eat it already?” xB said, confused. “It’s fish.”
“Okay, but no splashy-splashy, got it?” Tango said. “We need that fire. We do want to get rescued eventually.”
xB stared, confused. Then, as soon as Etho took a bite of the fish he was holding, xB nodded and swam away.
-----
“Etho?” Tango called. “Where’d you put the spear?”
“It should be leaning against the tree we carved our names in,” Etho called back.
“Well, it’s not there!”
Etho trotted back to camp. “Huh. It definitely isn’t there.”
“It doesn’t roll or anything, and I checked the bushes. Where is it?”
“You don’t think...” Etho glanced out at the ocean.
“The tide’s been out for like eight hours. And we’re a little way from the beach, anyway.”
The two still went down to the beach to check. Tango wrinkled his nose at a pile of fish near the highest point the water could reach.
xB popped his head out of the water as they approached. “Hi!”
“Uh, hi,” Tango replied. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen a spear around, would you?”
“Ssp-eeeerrr...” xB rolled the word around in his mouth. “Is that what this is?” He brought his hand out of the water, holding the stick with the open pocketknife still lashed to it. “It’s a really good hunting thing.” xB gestured to the pile of fish on the beach.
“You did-” Tango spluttered. “That’s our spear! Why- how did you even get that? You don’t even have legs!”
“Uhh.” xB demonstrated a crawling motion with his arms.
“He took our spear and is better with it than we are,” Etho pouted.
“I guess as long as we’re still getting food out of it,” Tango sighed. He gestured at the fish pile. “Is some of this for us?”
xB nodded. “Yeah. Since you humans can’t hunt.”
“Hey-”
-----
Tango and Etho were almost - almost - disappointed, when their signal fire was finally seen by a search party investigating the initial wreck. Tango’s spinning contraption never did generate enough force to do what it was meant to, but it didn’t matter in the end. To no one’s surprise, xB disappeared long before the rescue boat even came into view. Neither Tango nor Etho mentioned him. No one would believe them, and anyway, xB clearly didn’t want to be found.
Months later, Tango was visiting Etho in his hometown. There was a beach not too far away, and after some discussion, they decided to go down and actually enjoy being on the coast for the first time in a long while.
The beach was populated, but not crowded. They watched people play in the water and sand. Inevitably, their conversation eventually turned to the mermaid.
“I’m still not quite sure that guy was real,” Tango mused. “I mean... we were out there for a while. And weren’t you the one who brought up the idea of us going delirious?”
“Uh-huh.” Etho stared out at the waves. “I guess, if he wasn’t real, how did we get all the fish we ate? We never did manage to make a good tool for that. That we could use.”
“I guess.” Tango sighed. “I dunno, man. Human brains are so weird.”
Etho blinked. “Speaking of weird brains. Is it me, or is there a person who’s like... really far out in the water?”
Tango squinted. “Power of suggestion, I think. I don’t see anyone very far out.”
“I think they’re gone now. Huh.”
After a little more relaxing, they both got up and took a casual walk along the length of the beach. They soon reached an area with no people at all, a little rockier and less desirable to human feet.
A head emerged from the water, then vanished again.
A fish flew out of the water and hit Tango in the face.