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Gillion was fascinated by humans.
Their social structures, their behaviour, their culture, and in particular, their bodies.
And no, not in the way his grandpa was. There was no lust or urges to satiate, he just enjoyed observing the way they moved.
He liked to capture this by sketching, he’d discovered. Since he’d become a part of the Albatross crew he’d filled pages and pages of doodles of Chip tying the rigs or Ollie and Pretzel playing chess together. He was always a curious mind, and a little voice in the very back of his head suggested that maybe if things had not been prophesized before his birth that maybe he would’ve gotten the chance to properly learn how to capture one’s spirit in an image.
This particular night however was one where he was observing Jay as she moved about the captain’s quarters completing her nightly routine. The small room that the captains shared was illuminated by a single lantern that sat next to Jay’s bed (in which the triton was currently sat on with his sketchbook in his lap) and it was only the two of them in the room at the moment.
Chip was staying the night on the Grandberry pirates’ ship with his sister, probably sharing drinks and entertaining each other with stories.
Gillion looked up from his drawing every couple seconds to analyze her form, watching how her arms flexed whilst she held a cup and finished washing her mouth of toothpaste.
She was always effecient with her nightly schedule, executing her tasks mechanically and with a considerable amount of grace for someone who’d grown up on land; her naval roots always showed in the manner she went about her tasks.
She swished around in her mouth, popping her head into the bathroom connected to the quarters to spit the liquid out into the sink. Gillion was distracted easily, her firey hair catching his eyes and drawing them away from whatever he was attempting to doodle.
She finished that and stepped back into the room, sighing. She was clearly tired and the triton was thankful that she’d agreed to go to pause her tinkering and go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. Her nimble fingers reached around her torso, grasping the string that was tied at the bottom of her corset and pulling it loose. From there she was able to loosen it considerably and began removing her layers of belts.
When she’d taken all her accessories off she swiftly peeled her tank top off, throwing it in their bin of dirty laundry. He looked down at his lap, thinking.
Occasionally he’d encountered odd social discrepancies between the Oversea and the Undersea and one of them was definitely nudity. Chip had informed him that up here nudity was considered incredibly indecent and must be kept to private quarters, and shared only between certain individuals. He thought it was odd; in the Undersea most folks went shirtless regardless of anatomical parts to allow a full range of motion while swimming and because shirts could be difficult to construct for those with large dorsal fins or spines.
It was all bizarre and hard for him to understand what was so wrong about the mere act of having skin, but Chip had informed him that his masculine appearance may make women uncomfortable to take clothes off in his presence and he never wished to make Jay uncomfortable so he simply kept his eyes down.
He must have been doing it very obviously though because he heard a light snicker come from across the room, and he looked up to see the corner of Jay’s mouth quirked up in a laugh whilst she changed into her night garments.
“Gill, you’re staring funny at your sketchbook, what did that drawing do to you?” She joked.
He quickly moved his eyes to the wall, attempting to keep his expression neutral. “You were changing clothes and Chip told me you’re supposed to not look when someone’s doing that.”
She gave him a thoughtful nod while she pulled on a comfortable sports bra. “As a rule of thumb I’d agree with Chip and say yes, most people would prefer you look away. I don’t care though, bodies are bodies.” She shrugged.
He scribbled senseless little lines on the page, looking back up at her. “I agree, in the Undersea things are very different, whether they be for better or for worse,” he gave a dry laugh. “….Would it be okay if I sketched you in your nightclothes?”
Jay was almost finished shimmying into her sleep shorts, jumping on one foot and pulling them up then quickly stabilizing herself against the wall.
“Only if you show me when it’s done!” She responded eagerly. “Should I pose?”
He shook his head. “No need, I prefer to sketch candidly.”
“Got it.” Smiling, she nodded and grabbed her book on artificing to sit down on the ‘Beaned Bag’ Chip insisted they keep in their quarters.
He started with the basic shapes, a circle for her head and rectangles for her body. He started sketching her legs first, tucked to her chest while holding up her book.
He found so much fascination in the little oddities he’d picked up observing various humans’ forms. Such as the freckles dusted across every visible expanse of skin on her body, tiny little dots resembling the galaxy of stars that looked down upon their domain.
It reminded him of his sister’s markings, wavey purple marbling across her skin, stretching and dancing in the distorted reflections of below water when she smiled at him.
He carefully took time to add each dot, adding as many to her facial features as he could reasonably fit.
The thing that always caught him off guard was the resounding lack of fins, not a single indication of how their predecessors had ever developed them.
Sometimes his mind wandered, pondering what his co-captains might look like with the long, vibrant fanning fins that many tritons sported. He could only feel warm at the thought of Jay with fins the colour of her hair, firey and rippling through the water.
He urged his mind to wander other places, starting to hone in on the minute details of his art piece. He narrowed his eyes, tracing the way the rolls on her stomach appeared as she relaxed and read.
He tried several times, one of his biggest struggles being his difficulties with depth perception. He looked so intently that in the low warm light of the candle-illuminated room, he started to notice little silver lines reaching vertically across the skin of her stomach.
It was hard to make out their definition, and he worried at first that they were some kind of scarring. However the closer he looked, he realized that they were much more flat and smooth then the other little pink scars littering her body.
His head cocked in confusion, and he set his pencil down. “Jay?” He broke the comfortable silence between them.
“Is it time for the next pose?” She joked, silently dogearing her book to pay attention to him.
“I noticed something, on your stomach. You told me humans didn’t have markings like fishfolk, but it appears you have little stripes.” He gestured loosely towards the marking, and her face molded into confusion until she looked down and caught sight of what he was pointing out.
She snorted lightheartedly, leading Gillion to tilt his head in confusion about what part of his question was humerous. She set her book down beside her seat, leaning back so he could get a good look at them.
“These things aren’t markings, well—sort of. They’re called stretch marks! It’s something that happens to humans when they grow really quickly.” His co-captain explained, pointing them out.
Gillion cautiously crept forward off the bed, moving to get a better look. The closer he got he realized that they covered the sides of her stomach, but he could also see them present peaking out from beneath her sleep shorts and the junction of her arms.
He inhaled curiously, watching the candlelight dance off her pale skin. “How—or, why?”
“When humans have growth spurts their skin gets pulled in different directions. Thankfully it’s stretchy, so all it results in is these funny little marks. It typically happens in areas that are on the squishier side.” He reached forward, before abruptly pulling back as he remembered that he didn’t want to come off as imposing.
Jay didn’t look nervous in the slightest though, catching onto his small retreat. “You can touch them, they’re not particularly sensitive.” She reassured.
With that information Gillion hesitantly reached his hand out again, curling his fingers so that the non-claw tipped part of his finger brushed as lightly as a feather across her stomach. He gasped softly when he felt the difference in texture, the small silver marks feeling much smoother and thinner in nature.
They were even softer then her regular skin, making small dips that he could feel the difference in even if his eyes were closed. She smiled in amusement at his awe, his fascination evident.
“If I knew you thought they were this cool, I would’ve shown them to you earlier.” He pulled back, rocking back and forth lightly.
“We take our markings very seriously in the undersea, they’re not only a sign of your individuality but your lineage. You say humans don’t have markings, but these are unique to your body, are they not?” She hadn’t thought of it like that before, but he couldn’t say that the triton was wrong at all.
“They are, but I guess we don’t think of them the same. It’s stupid, some people care way too much about other people’s bodies.” Gillion nodded in agreement, pulling his hand back with the same careful approach. She looked back at the triton, a question forming in her mind.
“So what happens to you guys when you grow really fast?” She asked, reflecting his curiosity.
Gillion was hesitant to indulge questions about his culture at first, but as more was shared with him he grew more comfortable with it. “For bigger tritons, I can only infer that our bodies are simply more acclimatized to the change. We don’t have any of those marks of the stretch, but there are other little signs.”
He waited, paused to search her reaction carefully, then continued. “I could show you mine, if you're curious.”
Jay immediately nodded, picking up the subtle intention of you shared so I’ll share between the two of them. “I’d love too, it’s fascinating to me how similar we look but how different we are.”
Gillion grabbed the hem of his shirt and pushed the fabric up to his chest, revealing his paler blue stomach. The first thing Jay noticed was the pattern of darker stripes extending from his back to curl around his sides, ones she’d never seen before.
At first she wasn’t sure what she was looking for, until Gillion shifted his sitting position to lean into the candlelight and a small reflective sparkle danced off of his stomach.
Her eyes widened in awe, a quiet “Woah,” slipping from her mouth. She couldn’t tell what was causing the glittering reflections of light until Gillion pointed.
“These are called guppy scales, young tritons have them pretty much everywhere and start to lose them when they become old enough to use their natural defenses. They serve as a defense method to disorient attackers and a universal beacon to alert older tritons that a younger one is in trouble.” He explained, and the closer Jay leaned she started to see the small indications that they were, in fact, little scales.
“If they’re for baby tritons, why do you still have yours?” She wondered out loud, making his expression morph into something somewhat bashful.
“Tritons mature in different ways. I’ve observed that humans only seem to have two maturity milestones so to speak, but my people live so long that we hit them continuously—In terms of brain, both humans and triton are considered developed adults in the years following their twentieth, but triton bodies continue to mature until we’re……eighty, ninety maybe?” He rambled, watching her nod along. “So I’ve lost almost all my guppy scales, but still have a couple here and on my neck.”
“Can I see those too?” It was a cautious question, not wanting to make Gillion feel like he was cornered.
He let his loose shirt fall and return to covering his patches of iridescent scales. He reached a hand between his neck and his thick curls, sweeping them back to reveal them to her. “Here, these should be ready to go fairly soon.”
Jay was surprised she’d never noticed the ones on his neck. He tilted his head to the side to display them, showing off the small clusters of scales right under his jawline and gills.
“They’re beautiful,” she said quietly, reaching her hand to graze them. Gillion jerked away slightly, before playing it off by readjusting himself.
“Be careful with the gills…..but, thank you.” He didn’t quite know what to do with the praise, surprised by Jay’s interpretation of their apparent beauty. He didn’t dislike them, but he didn’t like parading around letting people know he technically still had his childish guppy scales either.
She carefully maneuvered around the gills on the side of his neck, brushing against the scales below them. They were soft, a little softer then the rest of Gillion’s rougher skin and she could feel that these were more primed to seperate soon.
She slowly swiped her thumb across them, admiring how they shifted under her light touch. Gillion stared at the floor, his cheeks warm at the touch.
When she pulled away he let his hair fall back and cover them, letting them fade back under the protection of his teal curls. “I’m going to return to my drawing, but I’m glad we both learned something new.”
He pushed his lips into an intentional smile, causing her to smile in return. “I mean it Gill, those are real pretty. I’m glad you showed me, I’d love to see the drawing when your done.”
He felt a distinct warmth in his chest as they both settled into their comfortable positions, the triton paying all the more intention to the texture of the little marks he added around her stomach.
His neck felt warm where she’d touched him, like a particularly warm patch of sunlight had beamed down and warmed him up. A new found confidence was blossoming, and he wondered what else he could learn if he branched out and shared his illustrations with his crewmates………..