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There was a mer for every kind of fish in the sea. Jelly, ray, urchin, you name it. Mammals weren’t exempt from their human-looking cousins either, and were probably more plentiful, but they weren’t so interesting—every Aeons-be-damned pirate had seen one.
“Oh, my sweet sunny-blue, what I wouldn’t do for you,” he rhymed, trying out a line of poetry on the light sky-green water, fit for a sweetheart to hold his hand or touch his chest a little, boot playing with the gently tumbled wave. “My sweet-sweet sunny-blue, don’t go, been lookin’ for you.”
If he had a guitar or some other instrument he’d be away on some stage somewhere, singing up a right proper storm to hundreds of lubber fellows who would collapse at the smallest sway of the sea. The hardwood would be lacquered fancier than a ship but they’d look the same, feel the same. That would be the good thing.
Gallagher didn’t think a romantic-minded carouser like himself would end up anywhere great anyhow. He was the current quartermaster of Mikhail’s ship, oft left to decide on bounty by his oh-so-generous captain. Wasn’t like there was much he wanted besides a bed to sleep in and a ship to rock him to it; a warm body next to his would be bliss, but it brought to mind the saying about beggars and choosers.
“Sweet sunny-blue, sunny-dee, hurry on back to me—”
“You gonna sit there harpin’ or are ya gonna start pointin’ us to our next spot?”
Acheron’s shadow stood by him, thick in the blaring sunshine. She was a hard one to follow. Coxswain was her role and she was dedicated, following wherever she need be. Mikhail was a proper strategist and liked to sit and simmer below deck most days—afraid of the sun, some bilge rat had mumbled once—so it was rare to see him at the helm. He was good at delegating, Gallagher supposed, seeing as Acheron was perfect in that position as long as she was directed. Getting lost in unknown ocean was no fun.
“Can’t a man harp in peace?” He pushed himself up, away from the side of the ship. “Wha’s harp even really mean? I hardly go on.”
“You do.”
She smacked his arm in reprimand and walked off, leaving him to the task of setting them on course. Naturally he’d already planned for this. T’was only a small ways away from where their ship, The Radiant Feldspar, and settled in amongst a large rock face with a grassy mound atop. He’d mapped it a while ago based on rumour and, luckily, it was in sight.
“What is it Mikhail’s letting you steer us t’ward this time?”
The glimmering sea assuaged the ship of its tranquility in an easy to-and-fro rhythm, an anapaestic sway-sway-creak that filled the air the same as the water lapping against the wood. It washed over the senses with a homely warmth.
“A last great discovery for us,” he said, grinning when she didn’t say anything. “A scaled raptor. Exocoetidae. Flying fish. Seabird.”
“You’re… lookin’ for a mer of all things?”
Gallagher chuckled, gesturing at the glittery waves. The pair of them travelled the length of the ship and up to the helm.
“Is it a special kind, at least?”
“Ah, I hope so,” he said, peering out as they made it to the top. “Jus’ over there, if you can. Jus’ forward, onward; close to the rocks.”
Acheron guided them over to the ever taller rocks, their shade dappling the blue into darker greens and greys, a wary sea if there was one to see. In that wariness was a choppier quality, as if the ocean was experiencing an ire at their close presence to a part of the untouched wilderness.
“Here fine?”
“Aye,” he said in a hushed voice, leaning too hard against the side of the ship. It was little more than a boat beside the rocks, in the great water, and Gallagher slowly and silently drew himself back to where he was making up his silly impassioned words.
Whether Acheron really cared was beyond him, but she still had words to say, breaking out across the quiet in a way he wasn’t sure he liked: “You hoping to find your ‘sunny-blue’?”
The thought of it made his eyes burn with joy.
“If I can.”
For a long time the silence remained over them as a thick veil. Acheron disappeared below deck, probably to sleep or talk to Mikhail about Gallagher’s unhelpful destinations. Left to his own devices, he tip-tip-tapped his fingers against the shiny wood, taking in the strong smell of brine turned soft under his nose.
The wind whistled over the hawser. The prow bobbed steadily downwards. Clouds tentatively dipped themselves a muted pink, like tissue made damp over skin.
Then, flitters over the water.
Gallagher froze.
A pod, gliding in arcs underneath the loop of the rock, passing through its shadow, shiny rainbow patterns gleaming. It was like watching dolphins or whales; a true marvel, even if seen by pirates all the time. Gallagher was simply fascinated by them, adoring of them if he dared put that name to it.
The pod disappeared under the waves when catching the light. He imagined they might’ve caught sight of the keel under the water.
He settled by the edge of the deck as before, shutting his eyes and pretending he held something or someone he could wax about.
“Oh, dear sweet sunny-blue.” His voice filled every inch of empty air. “I’d untie and give you my shoes. Oh my sweet sunny-blue, sweetest you are in all you do.”
The hum of his heart, the salt of the sea, brought to him a clarity he craved.
“Sunny-blue, my love, my leader in life,” he said, taking on a softer tone. “Liege and liar, sweet sun-flyer, fleeting and fleet-finned… sunny-dee, ever-be mine, ever-be entwined to me…”
He opened his eyes to the sky. He glanced down to an ocean of glittery star-eyes mooning at him, stares flat and unsteady, steeply evaluative or idly listening to his passions. Mer, a whole gallery of them, all watching and waiting on him.
He cleared his throat.
“Sunny-dee, pride of the sea; sunny-dee, proud of the bleed of my heart, apart and a part; sunny-blue, peeling pliantly, sunny-dee, unfurl me.”
Several trills from the water, heads flitting back below in an organised fashion, following after one another until only two faces were left, and then one, as the other sluggishly left the one above. He couldn’t quite see its face clearly, even in sun. Its scales were so bright it was hard to see its, his, face. Oh, how he hoped the Mer was a man—he’d loved nothing else, and there was no better place for a queer man than a pirate’s ship.
Looking directly at the mer, he continued.
“Sunny-sun, posing red and plum; sunny-sun, prettied and worry-less, worrisome.”
The Mer swam closer, staring up at him.
Silence.
His words had ran away from him, trachea tight as it was.
He, as Gallagher was sure of it now, rose gently to his eye level, torso painted in silver and white, long feathery-finned tail parsing the water around the ship the same with a dash of elegant grey, dark blue speckles across the tiniest portions like freckles.
His face was so lovely, he thought, peach-round and facing him. A simmering expression set with golden eyes, blue irises.
Gallagher couldn’t believe it.
There was surely no other being that would so closely match his sunny-blue.
And then there was his voice: “You call out across the air for someone. Who do you call to but the ocean?”
“My sunny-blue,” he said, without breath. “My sunny-dee, sweet as sea, sweet as strawberries…”
The wing shaped fins behind his ears fluttered. Gallagher didn’t know what it meant, but he liked it. He watched his sunny-blue’s tail sweep underneath the barrier of sea.
“Can you only speak in poem?”
“…I can speak in whatever you’d like, sunny-blue.”
The mer tilted back, possibly affronted or considering by the look in his eye. Considering, Gallagher decided, as he leant closer than before, inspecting like a hummingbird might a flower. An observing observing him; two outsiders staring at what they thought to be outside.
Fascination.
It only took seven days for whatever held human and mer in tight, locked emotional battle to solidify into a bond, sealed with a touch that Gallagher craved and a name given in secret—it was worth keeping buried in his heart, for he’d always call him Sunny-blue with a smile on his face, craving the purse of those lips and the ache in his bones for that cool touch.
When they wove poems together under a moonlit ocean, all the world asleep, they existed as one living organism and one rhythmic pulse through the veins of existence. A human and mer holding their hands half in the air, half in the water.
And, thusly, a gentle chantey of a pirate and a seabird breathed itself into the wood of the ship.
Drinking down a clap of thunder, Gallagher was drunk on adorement.