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𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
“Hyung,” he’dd whispered, voice faint and pleading, his gaze desperate before the unwavering form of Hyukkyu- no, Deft- before him.
“Minseok,” he’d asserted with an air of quiet finality, as calm and collected as ever. There’s regret and sadness in his eyes, but serene and collected in contrast to Minseok’s desperation.
Then, soundlessly, he disappeared without a trace into the misty evergreen forest.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Long ago, legends told of a siren in the river valleys of Rhine.
They say they were once mortal, driven by the heartbreak of unreciprocated love, who cast themselves into the rapid currents of the Rhine. But the truth of their origin remains in the shadows, and few have
Several elements of the tale remain unclear. Some believe it is a children’s fable, a warning to stay behind the shoreline. Others avoid the passage for fear of an aqueous death.
Those who travel along the waters of Rhine would clutch their charms and talismans, chanting ancient rhymes and prayers to its deity in hopes it would grant them safe passage.
Tales of those golden irises above the silver stone send entranced merchants to their watery graves, and stories of the voice sweeter than honey grant adventurous sailors their end in bliss.
They tell of a voice, soft yet resilient as silk, enchantingly beautiful waves of sound traveling throughout the river valley. A voice so alluring it sent sailboats crashing into the boulder from which its echoes rebound. They tell of a youth deserted by their love, charming melodies deadly with deception.
Mystery shrouds the Rhine’s river valley. Careful observers search for silver scales against the bed of sage green moss. Explorers tread the slate boulder in hopes of witnessing the golden gaze of the long-sought vocalist.
But as the luminous moon rises and fills the darkness with its lunar light, a different voice can be heard, dejected and dissonant, pleading and desperate, an anguishing aria for the silver sky. A song of hope and despair, tender and bitter. A song for the heavens invariably ignored, a melody echoing against the cold stone into a void filled with eternal silence. A song so innocent and pure yet harmonized by heartache and resentment.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Long ago, there lived a youth in the river valleys of Rhine.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
It was midnight when he’d taken one last look at the small, lonely cabin on the hill he would never enter again, with its wind chimes styled out of dried maple leaves and birdhouses fashioned from cherry wood. Currents of bittersweet contempt carry his thoughts across his mind as his gaze drifts around its appearance once more.
The home was small, but charming and cozy and Hyukkyu had been the one to help him build it from the ground up.
A small lantern was all it took to send it up in flames, red-tinted glass shattering onto the oaken floorboards, and he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of cruel satisfaction as the smoke rose upwards, fading into the thin evening air. The scent of spruce and juniper drifted from the mountains’ forests, mingering with the rapidly flowing freshwater below
“This is your fault,” he’d whispered bitterly to the silver reflection in the water, the pathetic, resenting sound so strange and foreign to his own ears.
Then he’d paused, staring into the soft white light in the sky. The small flicker of hope he couldn’t extinguish, lingering from his wishful thinking and the memories shared together over the past few months. He closed his eyes in hopes of something, anything, in reaction, that would convince him he was still there for him.
His eyes open, and searches the field frantically, wildly, lingering on the plants, the boulder at the peak of the hill, back to the cabin now engulfed in flames
He doesn’t look into the sky, into the serene glow of moonlight above the high valley, and instead into its silver reflection in the water.
And really, what was he expecting? For the clouds to part and the lunar deity to descend from the heavens, eyes full of concern, and embrace him in his arms? Convince him not to leave and to remain in his arms until the end of forever and whatnot?
Even the most childish of hopes wouldn’t be so far-fetched, and his wishful thinking really wasn’t doing much for him.
The dirt underneath his foot was cold. Cold, and the sharp edges of wild grass cut his skin as he’d pushed through the undergrowth into the open air. It wasn’t enough to draw blood, but certainly irritable and left his ankle laced with swollen abrasions too faint to notice yet too tender to dismiss.
A cool breeze carried the last leaves of autumn into the chilly air atop the hill, whispers filling the air with sweet, deceptive comfort alluring the final leaves from their branches then continued further southward.
Those that don’t make it drop to the dusty stones in the ground to rot and decay, and one day those winds will calm and the rest will, too.
The air is comfortable. The winds are soft, and the sounds of rushing water are soothing. The glow of moonlight over the water would be, too, had he been as young as he’d been when he first arrived, tired and faint, collapsed on a boulder in fatigue.
Hyukkyu had suddenly been just there, all serene and gentle and caring as he’d helped him up, handing him something to eat while sheepishly admitting he hadn’t been expecting a child, much less one so battered to turn up by the Rhine.
Minseok had stared at him in wonder, stared at him until he’d awkwardly patted his hair with a helpless expression and disappeared into the hazy forest lit by dawn.
Then he’d come back, with that same ironically comforting awkwardness, finding the young Minseok piling branches onto each other in a mockery of a shelter. But Hyukkyu didn’t laugh, didn’t sigh at his clumsy efforts to bring to life something he’d pictured in his head. Instead, he’d silently walked over and picked up one of the thin wooden logs, placing them below the hastily bound wooden lumber. Then he did it again, and again, and he’d never thought anything was amiss about how quickly he’d completed months’ worth of labor in a single afternoon as he’d traced with his sight those graceful movements adorned by the golden afternoon light.
He’d left in the luminance of the moon, silver rays reflecting onto the cobalt-cerulean of the leather tunic, bidding him goodbye as he disappeared slowly into the distance, while a fire crackled in the newly-built hearth, illuminating the room with its brilliance and filling Minseok’s insides with a fuzzy warmth he couldn’t pinpoint.
Now, the memory has turned bitter and acrid, scorching to the touch and tainting his sweet recollections with despair and resentment. Sourced from his own delusions, but agonizing nevertheless.
A sliver of the rapid dark waters appeared in sight, peeking over the extended strip of slate where he stood. The terrain’s edge was approaching, but all he could focus on was the suffocating breath caught in his lungs as he approached the steep drop into ice-cold currents. In the sky, a stray cloud of gray drifted across the silver pendant nestled between the clouds, and he shivers.
The faint scent of charred wood reached where he stood, and if he’d looked back, there would be a brilliant display of smoldering tones, amplified against the darkness of the forest where it stood.
He wills himself not to, but his throat tightens and tears well up, threatening to fall and splatter onto the stony gravel. Lightheadedness clogs up his senses and he doesn’t dare blink, doesn’t dare experiment with that delicate tension keeping his dignity intact.
No, he’s sworn not to let the tears fall-not on his life, they wouldn’t. The darkness of the water below beckons to him, drawing him in with the promise to wash away his heartache and sorrow.
He lifts a foot, placing it forward and letting it hover above the lofty height from the waters. Another darker, denser cloud passes overhead, shrouding the world in temporary darkness.
He doesn’t think twice.
He lets himself fall forward, and-
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
The sky is nice.
The sky is nice, thought Minseok.
…?
He’s on the Rhine’s riverbank. Red tendrils of dawn have begun to slowly creep from the horizon, and his mind is foggy with only a single clear, undeniable fact.
He isn’t supposed to be alive.
So why is he?
***
A whisper fills the silence with a soft, gentle voice. The streaks of moonlight waver as it ripples through the still air.
Minseok.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
When he regains his consciousness, he’s sitting on a slab of stone some distance from the shore on a river bank. The midday sun shines above, rays of brilliance sending a glimmering spectacle across the rippling currents. His vision’s hazy, but there’s no pain, and a wave of sleepiness hits him again until he remembers the series of events throughout the night, unconsciously curling his fingers into a loose fist. So instead of putting his forehead back against his arms, he scans the waters for signs of…
…he isn’t sure what he’s looking for.
And realizes something’s wrong.
Something’s very, very wrong, and he proves it by rubbing his shoulder blades, twisting his arms back and tentatively prodding, applying more pressure to the area until a layer of light pink blooms across his skin. He does the same to his head, before stretching out his arms, waving them in circles, bracing himself for any sensation that might send him collapsing back onto his stomach.
Nothing happens. There’s no pain, no blood, and all his limbs move as usual at his command, and he can’t understand how he survived the drop some three hundred fathoms steep.
Another scan around the clearing tells him he’s somewhere around where he’d fallen from the cliff, and pushed himself to his feet-or tried to, anyway, because a quick glance down tells him he’d morphed into a fish. Or half of one, anyway.
Instead of his legs, a long, shimmering tail coated with silver scales from the waist down sparkled in the sunlight, droplets of water reflecting the rays of gold.
He blinks once, twice, but it doesn’t disappear like some sort of illusion dreamed up in his brain, and it strikes him that this just might be a dream. And then, he wonders if it’s the moments before his death where he’s in some state of delirium. Which he’d be fine with, mind you, but a lingering sense of edginess has him reaching across and briefly pinching his other arm.
Sharp pain shoots into his system.
“Ouch. That must have hurt.”
He startles at the sound, and turns to his left, then his right, but finds both directions empty before the voice sounds again, laced with a hint of amusement.
“Behind you,” it says with a soft laugh, tilting their head to the side when Minseok finally twists around to meet a pair of dark brown irises tinted golden under the sunlight. A circlet of silver sits across his forehead, intricately carved in the shape of ripples across the surface of water.
A youth, dressed in a simple white robe bound neatly by a strip of brown leather, sits cross-legged above the water. Around him in a circle the water had calmed, currents rushing past the undisturbed surface.
“I’m Gumayusi,” he offered with a smile. “But you can call me Minhyung. I’m the local water spirit around here.”
Minseok stares at him.
“Come on down, the water’s fine,” Minhyung says lightly, dipping his hand into the water that swirls around his hand in a miniature whirlpool and promptly pulls out a pale blue shell from the center. He offers it to Minseok between outstretched fingers, expression casual and easygoing as if Minseok wasn’t having the greatest existential crisis of his life.
Interestingly, the first sentence that emerges from his mouth is, “Am I in heaven?” and there’s a barely restrained snicker from the youth who’d been smiling throughout their encounter.
Minhyung drops the shell. “What do you think?” he murmurs, glancing around the peaceful afternoon scenery as Minseok’s fingers slowly but surely make their way into his own hair, pulling and tugging at the strands of ink in distress. “Anything look different?”
With a pang, he realized that, indeed, nothing had changed since he’d thrown himself off that cliff moments ago, before realizing that he didn’t really know how much time had passed.
So instead of responding, he asks, “How long was I out for,” and hopes with all his heart for Minhyung to shrug and say, I don't know, or maybe I found you passed out on that rock. Where’d you come from, anyways?
And in all honesty, it would still include the complication of how much fucking time has passed, but in that case, he’d be able to seek out someone else anyways-
Instead, Minhyung shrugs and says, “A day,” which is both unhelpfully disappointing but does reassure him that he hadn’t been slumbering for a thousand years during which humankind was slowly erased.
So, he does the next most logical thing that comes to mind, turning around to fully face the water spirit and asks, “Who are you?”
He watches as the nature spirit before him stifles another laugh. “Gumayusi, but you can call me Minhyung. Your local water spirit,” he responded.
“Why are you here?”
“That, you’d have to yell at Deft.”
Minseok blinks at that, and asks, calmly, “What do you mean?”
Minhyung shrugs. “He’s why all of us exist. Nature spirits, I mean. I guess the heavenly deities were experimenting with the expanse of their abilities. He was just more original about it.”
“...Oh.”
Disappointment ripples through him for the second time that day, and he’s overwhelmed by a wave of fatigue that softens the tension in his shoulders. He looks around and dejectedly wonders how he could make his way back to land, past the rapid currents and deep waters and whatever creatures were lurking in there.
He gets up, and-
And for the second time that day, he crashes onto the boulder like a fish out of water, so he looks back on instinct.
The tail’s still there.
The tail’s still there.
He looks at Gumayusi.
Gumayusi smiles. As he’d always had.
Kill me now, Minseok thinks desperately.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Becoming half-fish wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.
For one, he has a pretty voice. (He just doesn’t know how to use it yet.)
Second, navigating through the ocean was convenient and much swifter than on land. Unlike the surface, there weren’t any cities or towns filled with people to block his way. (Except he hasn’t run into any since he was five, living in the middle of uncharted forests and all.)
At least he doesn’t think of Deft anymore, now that he has Gumayusi. (It’s a lie. He still thinks about the lunar deity during every waking moment, and sees him behind his occluded vision from the moment his eyelids flutter shut.)
…He admits it. It’s a little hard to convince yourself that everything’s fine when you’re half fish.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
The first time he utilizes his newfound talent was on a humid midsummer day the following year. Cicadas sang from where they nestled between the cracks and crevices of tree bark, and the lush green leaves blanketed atop the forest swayed in a lazy rhythm to the sound of the breeze.
He’d tired of wandering through the same forest of lotus stems and of carving out their sweet, pearl-like seed. The underwater landscape was fascinating at first, but the never changing shape of the creatures and plants eventually had him yearning for something new, something more interesting.
After surfacing to the water, he’d experimentally hummed a few childhood rhymes he recalled from his days in a wooden cradle nestled by a fireplace.
The spell of time, an ancient rhyme,
Forged by the cries through soundless chimes.
The voice that rang out was a sound he recognized as his own yet incredibly foreign, and he’d glanced around for any sign of Minhyung. When satisfied that the nature spirit wasn’t anywhere near him, he cleared his throat and tentatively sang a few notes, experimenting with the vibratos and glissandos he could now effortlessly execute.
He wonders, for a moment, how Minhyung had come to save him. He wonders how he could have healed the lethal injuries resulting from his fall.
He’d spent two years in the company of the older nature spirit. He’s never seen him utilize any sort of remedial spells, and wonders how the wounds would have left otherwise.
He has a theory, but he doesn’t want to think about it.
His intestines twist, and he once more submerges himself in the clear midsummer river.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
How did this happen?
He’s slightly out of breath between both of Minhyung’s arms, and his lips burn as if alight in flames.
You’re underwater, idiot, he thinks to himself.
He’s dimly aware of a gentle caress on the side of his cheek as Minhyung leans in, so he takes a deep breath and braces himself once more, but the anticipated pressure onto his lips never arrives.
He blinks at Minhyung, who has the audacity to laugh, and the heat atop his skin is undeniably burning it a bright scarlet red.
Briefly, he thinks of Deft, and wonders whether it’s right to do this with Minhyung.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
“Minseok,” Hyukkyu whispers one day, that voice carrying the same softness it once did all those years ago.
His gaze widens, and his entire body stills as he slowly turns towards the source of those words. Their eyes meet again, so familiar yet so distant. The silence weighs heavily between them as the final rays of sunlight dip beneath the horizon
“I thought…” Minseok starts, then stops, unsure of what he wants to say. I thought you left me. I thought you were gone forever.
But instead of anger, instead of accusations, the only words that escaped his lips were a quiet, “Why did you come back?”
Hyukkyu steps forward, the moonlight catching the silver strands in his hair. An arm extends towards him, but pauses as he draws it back. Behind him, the remnant light of blue hour ripples as lunar light shines alone in the sky, and a soft sigh escapes Hyukkyu’s lips.
“Because I’ve never left, and never will.”