Chapter Text
There is a human walking back and forth along the rocks of Dedue’s cove. From time to time it puts its hands around its mouth and calls out to sea. Dedue is the only other being capable of speech within hearing distance, so he supposes he should answer.
“You are looking for me?” he asks, rising out of the waves at the human’s feet. He rests his elbows on a boulder, his long, scaled tail trailing into the water behind him.
The human—a young man—startles and stares down at him wide green eyes. “Oh! You are real,” he breathes. “The other knights told me that I must have dreamt you up, that there are no merfolk in these parts anymore. But I knew something must have carried me to shore, must have pulled me up onto the beach—“
“You’re the one from the boat,” Dedue says, realization dawning. “The human who fell in the sea.”
The young man looks far better than the last time Dedue had seen him: spluttering, thrashing, being dragged into the depths by the weight of his sodden clothes and armor. His skin is pink and wind-roughened rather than ghostly pale and his silver hair is combed sleekly instead of laying like limp sea-grass over his face.
“Yes, that was me,” the human says. “Anyway, I’m here because I wanted to thank you for saving my life! If not for you, I would have died. Drowned! I’m forever in your debt.”
It was nothing Dedue starts to say. But the life of a thinking creature is never nothing. “I’m glad you are alright,” he says instead.
“Here, this is for you.” The young man holds out a basket woven from dried reeds. “It’s not much, but it’s a start. Made them myself just this morning.”
Dedue takes the basket, pushes aside the cloth that covers its contents, and discovers a pair of oblong brown…things…within. Their outsides look hard and are rough in texture. Some kind of land-dwelling shellfish, perhaps?
“It’s bread—food,” the human says, watching him eagerly. “I promise it’s delicious!”
The oblong things look less like food than anything Dedue has ever eaten, but he takes a bite of one to be polite.
The “bread’s” shell is much softer than he expected. His fangs instantly pierce straight through it and into the warm “meat” inside, which is dry. Not dry like sand, but pleasant and toothsome. If he had to describe it, he would say it is something like sea sponge, but without the sliminess or bitterness.
It is also, without a doubt, the best thing Dedue has ever tasted.
He devours the first “bread” in a few quick bites. Without thinking, he takes the second from the basket and in the space of a moment has eaten it as well. He looks up to see the human studying him with an expression of delight.
“I take it you liked it?”
“Yes. It was very good.”
“Well, that settles it,” the human says, laughing. “I’m definitely going to have to bring you more baked goods. And soon.”
Dedue shakes his head. “That will not be necessary. This was sufficient.”
“Nonsense. You saved my life! This is the very least I can do.” Then the human startles again. “Oh, I never did introduce myself, did I? I’m Ashe. Ashe Ubert. I’m sworn in service to the local baron.”
Dedue salutes in the way of merfolk, one warrior to another, a clenched fist over his heart. “I am called Dedue,” he says, and the moment the words leave his lips he feels the falsity of them. No one has called him that in a very long time. There might not even be anyone left in all of Mother Ocean who remembers his name at all.
“Dedue,” the human called Ashe says, as if savoring the word, and a sudden warmth blooms in Dedue’s chest. “Well, Dedue, I’ll see you tomorrow! Goodbye!” And with that Ashe begins threading his way through the jumbled rocks of the cove. In only a little while he has vanished over the top of the low sand dune that has served for so many years as Dedue’s landward horizon.
“Goodbye,” Dedue whispers to the silent shore.
---
True to his word, Ashe returns the next day. Dedue, who had spent the night telling himself how foolish it was to expect to see him again, meets him at the water’s edge.
This time, the human’s basket contains a different sort of bread—golden, triangular in shape, and seemingly made of thin layers laminated together like an oyster shell. When Dedue bites into one, he discovers it to be light and airy and filled with a dark red syrup that is an impossible, perfect union of sweetness and tartness.
After swallowing his first mouthful, Dedue can only stare down at the remaining piece in his hand in amazement. He is no stranger to good food—as Dimitri’s retainer, he had attended banquets in the great houses of the Sea Kingdom and had had a permanent place at the royal table—but yet he utterly lacks the words to describe how wonderful the morsel he had just eaten was.
“Too sweet for your liking?” Ashe asks, mistaking Dedue’s silence for discomfort. “I could bring something savory next time, if you’d prefer.”
Dedue’s hands curl around his half-eaten triangle. “I wish to ask something of you instead. Could you tell me more about these things you have brought? Or, perhaps, to describe how they are made?”
Ashe grins, his face brightening beneath the constellation of sun-speckles on his cheeks. “Oh, I can do better than that!” he replies. “Much better! Just wait and see.”
---
When Ashe visits again a few days later, he brings a horse with him. Dedue watches them from the lapping waves as Ashe guides the suspicious-looking land creature down into the cove. Once the two of them reach the tide line, Ashe unloads the packs and bundles that are strapped to the horse’s back, turns it loose to graze in the scrubby dune grass, and builds a fire.
Dedue knows what fire is. He has seen forests burning on shore before, and knows that humans use the ones they make themselves for warmth and light and sometimes to wage war. Before meeting Ashe, however, he did not realize that they also used them to prepare their food.
Ashe looks up when he hears Dedue hoist himself out of the water, and his mouth falls open as he takes in Dedue’s appearance in full for the first time. Dedue holds himself still as Ashe’s gaze sweeps down his length, head to fin, lingering on the place where his skin merges with the iron gray scales of his tail. There is an expression on Ashe’s face Dedue cannot parse, and he hopes it is not fear. He knows he is intimidating in appearance, scarred and heavily built, and there is his size to worry over as well. The upper bodies of merfolk tend to be of similar proportions to those of humans, but Dedue is exceptionally large for a merman; including his tail, he is half again as long as Ashe is tall.
His worries wash away like seafoam, though, when a moment later Ashe rouses himself and greets him warmly. “I brought some ingredients and cookware from the castle kitchens with me,” he says. “I thought you might like to try your hand at making human food.”
“You’d let me assist you?” Eagerness bleeds through Dedue’s usual composure.
“Of course! Cooking is my hobby, and I don’t get to share it with others very often—people seem to think it’s not something a knight should bother with. I’d be delighted to have your help.”
Dedue crawls over to the fire and folds his tail beneath himself to lift himself up. “Then I gladly commend myself to your instruction,” he says.
---
Bread, Dedue soon learns, is mostly made out of grass seeds that have been ground into powder. The kind of bread that he and Ashe are making requires the powder to be thoroughly mixed with fresh water (not seawater), and salt (so, why not seawater?) before being separated into little balls, rolled out, and cooked on a searing hot pan.
Dedue is slightly disappointed that they are making what Ashe calls “flatbread” and not the brown, oblong breads (“loaves”) that he had been gifted at their first meeting. According to Ashe, that particular variety of bread requires more equipment and the use of an “oven” to make and is thus unfortunately beyond the rudimentary tools they have at hand.
The palm-sized flatbreads the two of them put together turn out disconcertingly floppy—like dried-up jellyfish, but more substantial. Thankfully, once they are cool enough to eat, Dedue finds them to be as pleasing to his palate as everything else of human origin he has so far tried.
“They are actually meant to be a base for other food,” Ashe tells him, midway through rolling out another batch. “I brought along some toppings if you’d like to try them.”
“Yes, please,” says Dedue.
The toppings include several kinds of unfamiliar vegetables, leafy plants, and herbs, along with chicken (bird meat), and a substance called “cheese,” which Dedue suspects might be a hoax when Ashe describes its manufacture to him. After being chopped, mixed, and cooked up in the pan with various spices, all the land foods magically turn unfathomably delicious, and are rendered even more so when paired with the flatbread. As for the cheese, once melted, its taste and texture entirely make up for its dubious origin. All in all, Dedue believes the meal to be one of the finest he has had in his entire life.
Admittedly, much of Dedue’s satisfaction might be attributed to his present company. Ashe seems a generous and deeply kind man, and his chatter drives away the silence that has long been Dedue’s closest companion. How long has it been since Dedue last shared a meal with another thinking being? Moons? Years?
Years and years and years, he thinks. The weight of time presses down upon him.
---
As Dedue helps clean the dishes and re-pack the saddlebags, he feels the prickle of Ashe’s gaze settle over his shoulders.
He twists carefully around. “Is something on your mind?” he asks. “You are staring.”
Ashe looks up at him, and the tips of his ears turn slightly pink. “Ah, sorry, I was only thinking. You are...very different than what I expected, you know?”
What he had expected? Dedue turns the statement around in his head.
Dedue is a Deepwater Mer of the open ocean, darker-skinned and darker-scaled than the jewel-toned merfolk who dwell in shallower seas. Dedue doubts, though, that Ashe is merely commenting on his coloration. He seems too considerate for that.
Perhaps he is referring to Dedue’s bulky physique—still maintained by the daily training that he cannot bring himself to give up? Or is he instead wondering at the pale scars that litter Dedue’s face and body?
Likely the latter, Dedue thinks. Ashe is a knight, and can surely tell that those marks were wrought by violence. By spear and harpoon. By gauntlet and by trident. The nations of the sea had kept their peace for centuries; word of the Great War must not yet have reached the human lands. The world beneath the waves is a far different place now than it must have seemed in the tales Ashe heard growing up.
Dedue takes a breath.
I was once a warrior of the Kingdom he readies himself to explain. In service to its last Prince.
His heart clenches tight with grief and old regret.
But then Ashe steps forward and lays an urgent hand on his shoulder. “Look, it’s just that you’ve been out of the ocean for hours and hours, Dedue, and you’re acting like you’re not bothered at all!” he says. His brows are furrowed with concern. “The books in the castle library say that merfolk have to stay moist at all times or else they’ll get sick and die! If you aren’t feeling well, please don’t feel obligated to stay up here on my account. I can take care of the washing up on my own, I really don’t mind.”
Dedue blinks down at him, the tension within him draining away. And suddenly there is a tickle in the back of his throat. He opens his mouth to cough it out and discovers it to be a laugh. This, too—how many years has it been…?
“Dedue? Are you alright?”
“Your books are misinformed,” he tells the little human seriously, though he cannot stop the corners of his lips from turning upwards. “Merfolk are not fish. We do not dry out.”