Chapter Text
Another one!
Leonarda smiled as she spotted the sunken ship, tugging on Foolish’s arm and pointing to the wreckage with glee.
“That one’s new. Should we go check it out?” he asked her.
Leo nodded excitedly as she slung her little bag of goodies over her shoulder before clumsily swimming towards their next target.
The sunken ship was looming in the water over the rocks, the broken hull wide open and inviting her to come rummage around inside. Brushing past the splintered wood of the hull, Leo took a gander inside the ship before entering what appeared to be a cabin below the deck. Foolish enjoyed searching them too, but always let Leo have the first pick at any treasures they came across. The look on her face was worth it every time, and whatever they found they usually ended up sharing anyway.
The water was a little colder here, the sunlight barely flitting in through the holes in the ship as Leo wandered around the cabin. It had mostly been another peaceful day in the sea, another quiet afternoon of collecting bits and bobs, yet the sun above was not shining like it previously was.
Foolish told Leo it was because the sky was full of angry clouds that were ready to bring a storm, but that they would be safe in the water and away from the surface that was already thrashing from the weather.
She wondered what it would be like to see the storm from the surface, to hear the thunder with her own ears out of the water, to feel the rain properly on her thick skin if she ever got to just sit on the beach without fear of being seen or drying out too quickly. She longed to feel the dry sand on her hands, to sit under those odd trees near the beaches and read a human book of paper pages and black ink.
Leo wanted to see the human settlements and see if it was anything like her dreams. The dreams that had her convinced there was something up there that she was supposed to be a part of. At the core of Leo’s obsession with the surface world and what life up there was like was simple curiosity. But then her dreams had only made it that much worse, and it became something she wished to know everything about, searching for the limits of what might be known to them from all the way under the sea.
Along with this however, was a peculiar fascination in humans in particular. And that interest came with a lot of concern from her dad.
He worried a lot about her. Foolish may have been a single dad just like Bad and Fit, but they seemed so much more put-together than he was. Or at least that was what it felt like. He cared for and loved Leo from the minute he found her all those years ago, but he couldn’t help but have those days where he felt absolutely out of his depth. Where he felt he had no idea what he was doing.
And yet he just kept a smile on his face, kept his head held high, and kept doing the best he could every day.
Watching her now, her thick but short dark hair swaying in the water as she fiddled with the drawers of the cabin, Foolish’s heart felt soft. Even as the water grew darker with the storm rolling in, she was like his own little beacon of light. His ray of sunshine. The point on his compass that could always guide him home.
Shortly after searching the drawers, Leo found a small ornament of blue glass and instantly grinned ear to ear. With a swish of her tail, she turned around to show it to Foolish.
Dad, look what I found! It looks like you, Leo signed to him while proudly holding up the ornament for him to see.
“Aw, it’s a little shark," Foolish commented as he inspected it. “This would look nice in that new room I’m building for you," he said out loud as well as signing it to her.
Leo could hear him just fine and she told him that he did not need to sign when he spoke, but Foolish thought it was good practice to just always do it anyway when talking to Leo and the other kids, and they appreciated that a lot.
I could put it on the shelf next to my pretty glass bottles.
“You’re getting quite the collection now, aren’t ya? Pretty soon you’ll have more cool stuff than me.”
Foolish ruffled Leo’s hair teasingly, Leo shooing his hand away as she silently laughed at him.
Tucking her new treasure away into her bag, Leo’s eyes suddenly widened and became nervous. Her gaze went up towards the ocean's surface, and she gestured to that area behind Foolish.
A shadow came into Foolish’s vision as he turned to see what she was pointing at, and they watched from below as a ship on the water thrashed and fought the harshness of the storm. The waves must have been more unforgiving than they could gauge, for the ship was struggling far more under the force of the weather and ocean than they had anticipated, the storm clearly worse than what they could see at first.
Foolish was about to get himself and Leo away from the commotion when Leo’s tail quickly raced past him towards the bottom of the ship. He had barely any time to register what was going on before he found himself just rushing after her, using all the might in his tail to get to her before something bad happened.
“Leo! What are you doing?! Leo!”
He called her name many times frantically, waiting for her to stop and come swimming back right into his arms but she didn’t.
Broken planks of wood and pieces of the ship floated about like shrapnel, and despite the rain making it harder to see, Foolish could make out from under the water that the deck and masts had somehow caught on fire. Sailors from the vessel were jumping ship and making for the nearby rowboat, but when Foolish finally reached Leo who was by the side of the hull under the water, she panickily signed to him that there was still somebody on board.
Muffled shouting from the people on the rowboat filled their ears as they watched the ship quickly tip over to its side, mere minutes away from capsizing and sinking down into the depths. The sailors were too busy shouting that they were neglecting their own dangers, the rowboat rocking and filling with water that they hurriedly tried to bucket out before they too sank.
As the storming waves pushed the rowboat to drift further and further away from the ship, Leo and Foolish saw that they were in fact trying to paddle back for the one sailor who was still there despite the danger of their own situation. Leo thought that if they did not get out of the storm soon then they were going to die but knew that they could not do it on their own.
Ever the hero and optimist, Leo was about to go and help the sailors when Foolish swam in front of her, preventing her from going any further.
But they need help! Leo signed frustratedly.
“And what if they see us? We don’t know what’ll happen if you help them," Foolish rebutted, giving her a shocked expression like she was crazy.
If we can help then we should at least try, Leo pleaded.
“Leo-”.
His words cut off when a loud splash sounded out in the water, Foolish snapping his head in the direction of the noise. A still body was slowly floating down to the dark under them, and immediately Foolish could feel himself succumbing to the infectious inspiration of Leo’s courage.
He glanced back at Leo, his mind already half-convinced.
Dad, we don’t have time. We need to help them…
Pressured by Leo’s conviction and knowing that if they did nothing that he would regret it, Foolish became resigned. Letting out a breath, he swam out of Leo’s way.
“You help the rest of them to the mainland," he directed sternly, “Get under the boat and steer them until you make it to the just beyond the shallows. And don’t let them see you! Be careful, Leo.”
Giving him a single nod, Leo was off and using her remarkable strength to help the boat get out of the storm. Her, Dapper, and Ramon were all unfathomably strong for children their age, but whatever questions they had about that eventually died out as they exhausted all their resources trying to find answers in what little literature or myths they had.
Regardless of how strong but small she was, Foolish trusted Leo to do the right thing and he trusted her to stay safe. Unfortunately for him, until he saw her again he was going to be worrying about her non-stop.
Whilst Leo went to the rowboat of sailors, Foolish turned to whoever fell in the water as a small frown crossed his face, his daughter now fading from his sight. Swimming furiously to the person in the water, he managed to get his arms under the sailor before hoisting both of their combined bodyweights up towards the surface. It was not easy, as this man had a lot of muscle and was quite tall for a human, but Foolish was bigger and had a lot of experience moving heavy things around while building.
The ship was going down, the waves were ruthless, and the storm was raging like the terrifying fallout of battling sea dragons in the deep trenches of the ocean. Foolish found a broken pallet of wood and put the man on top of it, hoping that being above the water would combat the instance of the unconscious man drowning as they swam to shore.
Careful and vigilant, Foolish pushed the door slowly across the water for a couple of hours as they moved away from the storm and went towards the island. He hoped that Leo had already made it there and that she had been long since gone, safe and back home waiting for him.
The island itself had been occupied by humans for centuries. It was a small island with a small kingdom. And in this small kingdom was an even smaller city on the West coast, where the occupying royal family had been seated in for at least one of those centuries.
He had seen the city from the ocean before when he was younger, but never dared to get any closer out of fear. Humans were strange. They were unknown and that made them dangerous, simple as that. Besides, what was up there on the surface that they could not find in the ocean? Surely the human world was not all Leo had been cracking it up to be.
Foolish had decided long ago that just as a rule to stay safe, the nature of humans could not be trusted. They were trouble, and he knew that this man would be no exception.
The storm seemed to stick with them as they spent the next couple of hours slowly swimming and approaching the island. They found their way to a relatively isolated beach with some rock formations and tall dunes beyond it.
Foolish used the door to get the man onto the sand and out of the water with a little difficulty, as he only had his upper body to rely on and his tail did not agree with essentially crawling up onto the beach. He checked the sailor’s chest, the shallow breathing letting him know that he was still alive. Foolish sighed in relief, letting his head hang down as some tension left the muscles of his back and shoulders.
He could briefly see some stuff happening in the sky and hear some noise coming from the very near city but was completely distracted by the current problem of his daughter and the man.
He was first and foremostly worried about Leo. That was a fatherly stress he would never be rid of, and he did not want to be rid of it. It reassured him that he was a good dad that cared. He cared so much for her that he would race across entire lengths of the uncharted world to make sure she was safe and happy. He would do anything and everything to just be the kind of father that she could be proud of. Nothing in the world had ever been more important to him than that.
He prayed that Leo was just safe back home by now. He hoped that wherever she was, that they would find each other soon. That was all that mattered.
The man streamed in and out of consciousness, shifting the position of his head ever so slightly as he fought to wake up. Blinded by the quiet of the moment, Foolish almost fooled himself into thinking that he was staring at someone worth remembering. And in the blank moment of his observations, he could not help but let himself become… curious.
Guess he and Leo were not so different then. She probably got that from him now that he thought about it.
It was just--
He had never been in such immediate proximity to one before or had the opportunity to simply study one up close like this. It was like a shipwreck that you could not turn away from, only in this man’s appearance he saw no wreck like that of a sunken ship. He saw skin and flesh, the cracked lips and pale cheeks of the man making him nonetheless handsome in Foolish’s opinion. He felt radiant body heat from pumping blood that was struggling to keep the man warm. He heard a heartbeat and gasps of breath that mirrored his own, the sailor’s muscular chest rising and falling like he was in an uncomfortably bothersome sleep.
The man seemed so harmless as he lay there on the beach. Vulnerable. Peaceful. Gentle. Like a little thing that needed to be protected. Foolish felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility come over him, and he began to fret.
He was anxious as to whether anyone would find and help him. Or what if he died here on this beach because Foolish did not know how to help him? There were a terrible number of ridiculous things that could happen to the man and unfortunately Foolish was too nice to just leave him yet.
“It’s not because I care!” Foolish started rambling out loud when his thoughts became too unbearable to keep in. “I’m just being a good guy, okay? I’m just being a good guy with a good heart like Leo. I do not care about you, alright?”
He did not know why he half expected an answer considering the sailor was unconscious, but some part of Foolish wondered about what would have happened if he did. Still… there was no response. The man rested on the beach just breathing and slightly turning his head as his mind fought more to open his eyes.
Foolish groaned in annoyance at himself, at his own silliness for talking at a man that looked like he was just lying dead on a beach.
But oh…what a pretty man this sailor was.
Hands hesitant, Foolish delicately brushed some wet hair out of the man’s eyes and onto his forehead. More skin and flesh, the man just as alive as Foolish himself but still made from two different worlds that did not meet except for here.
It crossed his mind too quickly that he could talk or argue at this man’s face for hours because of how pretty but worn it was. It was like he was sculpted: nose and jawline sharp, but his eyelashes and cheeks soft except for the very faint scars that decorated his skin.
Not even underwater crystal caves of reflected moonlight were ever such a beauty as this man, and it drew Foolish in like a fish to a baited hook. He felt taunted by the closeness of this human and life on the surface, thinking that just maybe in another life of different circumstances that he would have perhaps liked to see part of that world.
Without thinking, Foolish started humming. It was soft and sweet, a melodic whisper that danced around them in the air. Had the world not been cold and grey from the lingering atmosphere of the storm, the scene might have been laced with something other than longing and regret for something that never even was. Something brighter and warmer that might cut through whatever it was that was holding these worlds so far apart.
Fluidly weaving in and out of the space that enclosed them, something in Foolish’s voice reached out to the sailor and he began to stir on the sand. Caught by surprise, Foolish instantly pushed himself away from the sand and into the water as the man's eyes fluttered about struggling to open.
Crawling past the shallows and now in the open water, Foolish took one last look at the human he saved before doing a flashy dive into the water.
As Foolish’s tail flicked into the air when he dove down, he did not realise that the man had regained just enough consciousness to see the gleam of his golden tail splash the water before it was suddenly gone.
Bewildered and in disbelief, the human sat up in alert and rubbed his eyes as he processed where he was and what exactly he had just seen.
Although Foolish had been the wiser and known better, the man indulged in the whims of something he could not explain as he sat speechless on the beach. As if the gods themselves had flipped a coin twice, the man had decided he would gladly be the fool who believed that whoever it was that saved him, whoever it was that he had just caught only a glimpse of, was worth remembering.