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The cry of the seagulls and the smell of salt filled the air. It was the first day of the expedition – an ambitious quest to retrieve the Crown of Karsus.
Gale enjoyed the fresh breeze on deck, his heart filled with glee at the prospect of studying such a powerful artefact.
The weather was perfect – not a cloud in the sky and the wind came from the ideal direction.
The crew was busy hoisting the sails, leaving the four mages to their own devices. The expedition was completely funded so no one of them needed to help – besides that they wouldn't be much help, was all their nautical knowledge purely theoretical.
An hour after they set sail, Gale found himself engrossed in a heated debate with one of the other aspiring young mages on board. He and Rolan – a tiefling with way to much opinion on the right way to classify alchemical ingredients – couldn't come to an agreement.
Neither of them noticed the brewing storm.
A loud crack of thunder disrupted the dispute – startling even the seasoned crew.
The storm unfolded unnaturally fast – it was as if they offended the goddess of the sea with their mere existence.
In mere minutes everything was surrounded by pitch black darkness, only the occasional bursts of lightning gifting momentarily a glimpse of one's surroundings.
Heavy rain whipped Gale's face as he tried to cling to a mast without luck. His fingers slipped from the wet hard wood, letting him hit the floor hard before one of the waves swept him overboard.
The air got punched out of his lungs when he hit the stormy surface, the current pulling at him like tentacles. Panicked, he tried to gasp for air, only to taste the salt of the sea as he breathed in more water.
The sea tossed and turned him, like children fighting for a toy, as he struggled to orientate.
He couldn't differentiate up from down and even if he could – he never learned to swim. A fact he bemoaned tremendously in this moment!
Calmness washed over him as he ceased his fighting and surrendered himself to the ocean. His head felt light and his lungs burned – he even imagined to see a red glow in the dark!
Dark storms that made the day to night were a blessing for their kind. So when the ocean started to vibrate with the song of thunder and tingle from the kiss of lightning, the cursed left their caves.
Pale skin and scales glowed like bones in the flashes of light as they made their way to the ship that was dangerously close to capsizing. The sound of bodies breaching the surface luring them in.
It was all so devastatingly familiar. A storm, a ship and passengers that don't know how to swim.
It all reminded Astarion of the night he went overboard. How his lungs filled with water, how he struggled against the waves and how he believed Cazador's promise of saving his live.
That it entailed an existence as this grotesque perversion of a Merman, he wasn't told. Neither that he would be forced to bring him prey until his debt was paid of.
Astarion swam closer to the drowning struggling with their fates. A few of his 'siblings' already dragged some of them further down.
Down where their master waited, down where their fates would be sealed.
Astarion closed in on a beautiful brown haired man, his tunic billowing around him in the stormy seas.
His face was relaxed when Astarion approached. It was wrong, so wrong that the man stopped struggling in the face of a monster like him.
Astarion tried to still his thoughts and only focus on the work at hand as he grabbed his mark.
The man in his arms was warm like the sun, his warmth seeping into Astarion. He was mesmerized for a moment – a mistake he promptly felt as an especially violent wave threw him against the barnacle-covered hull.
Instinctively he curled himself around the man, protecting him from the impact and taking the brunt force of the impact.
The seawater burned in the wounds the barnacles cut into his back as he maneuvered them away from the vicinity of the ship.
Without another thought he breathed the last bit of air, that was left in the remnants of his lungs, into the dying man in his arms and swam towards the next shore.
The storm began to pass when they landed with a 'thud' on the sandy ground if a little island.
Panic seized Astarion since he neither knew when the man stopped breathing nor how long it took him to carry them safe to shore.
He scrambled to get the man to breath again.
It was decades ago since he saw an healer do it and he wasn't sure if he remembered enough to save the life of this man, but he already felt the olive skin beneath his palms grew colder.
The first things Gale felt, as he gained consciousness again, were the solid sand beneath him and cold lips on his.
Spluttering, he opened his eyes and sat up, nearly startling his rescuer.
Gale thought he must be dreaming as he looked at the face before him.
In the sand beside him laid a beautiful merman, his hair curled like the waves of a stormy sea, its colour that of a shining pearl.
His skin was pale on the first glance, on the second Gale noticed that the merman’s torso was translucent, revealing a faintly beating heart.
Fascinated he reached out his hand to touch.
A cold webbed hand caught his, "A 'Thank you' would have been appropriate, before you try to touch me, darling." His voice was melodic like the sound of the sea, "Not that I can blame you." A cocky smirk played on his lips.
Gale fought the urge to kiss the smirk from his lips. "My apologies, I was just... fascinated," he pried his eyes from his rescuer's lips, "Thank you for saving my life. I owe you a great debt. If there's a way I can repay it, you just need to say-," Gale frowned, "I'm just realizing that I don't know your name."
The merman looked perplexed for a moment as if he wasn't used to the question, "My name is Astarion."
"I'm Gale," he held out his hand, "Gale of Waterdeep."
Astarion took Gale's hand cautiously.
Looking back on this day, Gale was then and there smitten, but it took several meetings before he could find his way into the merman’s heart.