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gamemakerm · 1 year ago

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In honor of Mermay and the current trend of Animal/Therian HRT going around (inspired by @ayviedoesthings's Dragon HRT series, @welldrawnfish's Fish HRT, @kaylasartwork's Bat HRT, @nyxisart's Puppy HRT, @deadeyedfae's Human HRT, etc etc etc, love all your work), I wanted to share the short story I wrote last year about medically turning yourself into a mermaid. This got published in WriteHive's Reclaiming Joy anthology, and we're now just outside of the six-month publishing exclusivity, so I can make it publicly available.

This was really raw to write for me, and there are trigger warnings for transphobia(/whatever the equivalent would be for mermaids?), implications of violence and hate crimes. However all the stories in the anthology were ultimately about perseverance, courage and love. I hope you enjoy, and if you want to get this and eleven other uplifting stories I can't recommend the anthology enough (though this is the only one relevant to the tags as far as I know). And if you really, really like it, you can buy me a kofi!

Scales

When the scales began to break through skin, they said you were becoming a monster. Blue and green, seafoam to pearl. You weren’t certain at what point you started to believe them.

You began to wrap yourself in tighter layers, a futile effort not to draw attention to the rough patches. Elbows, knees, along your arms, mottled with foundation and concealer caked on like spackle. Toner to offset the iridescent shine so that a passing glance wouldn’t be drawn to it. Constant checks and double checks, bathroom visits far beyond the routine.

Your careful camouflage is usually enough to deflect scrutiny, but occasionally a stranger catches on. Nobody has said anything to you yet, but you have noticed more glances on the train. The old woman’s frown of disapproval. The young man with something to prove to you, himself, the world. His jaw tightens as he calculates his ability to start something. You tuck your chin and pretend to be busy with your phone. In the dark screen you can see the skin flaking on your cheeks. The beginnings of another patch betray you.

As you touch up in the bathroom mirror you tell yourself you wanted this, that you were prepared for the hardships.

You walk to the public library after your shift ends. You walk most places these days, telling yourself it’s a last hurrah. The fact is you sold your car to make a dent in the cost. You’ll sell everything eventually. You’re going to have to.

The forums have a list of books everyone checks out when they choose this path. There aren’t many and most are fantasy. There’s a running joke: if anyone mentions Hans Christen Anderson, run. You spot The Little Mermaid on a small display. You don’t run. You check out your books. The librarian gives a knowing nod, but doesn’t remark. You silently thank her for the discretion.

You take a long shower, makeup swirling down the drain. You can’t help but scratch at the itching patches on your thighs, peeling skin tearing away for new growth. Shampoo and blood circle under your feet. Your fingernails are sharper than they were this morning. You exfoliate, letting the city, public transit, the glances of strangers be cleansed. Your reflection in the mirror, a colorful smattering of new scales dusting your cheeks, is tear-streaked, ethereal. Beautiful.

You knock the concealer into the trash bin.

Your mother left a voicemail. She avoids the elephant seal in the room, talking about her gardening, your cousin’s new baby. She lingers for a moment, then: You’re being selfish. She burns brightly as a beratement begins, emboldened. But without someone to riff with she loses her steam, trails off and repeats it. You’re being shellfish. She can’t help it; she laughs despite herself. There’s a minute where she doesn’t speak, but you can tell she’s waiting for the sob in the back of her throat to settle. She promises she’ll come to your party and the voicemail ends.

You still haven’t heard from your father. You don’t expect you will. You’ve made peace with that.

You do your weekly injection on the alternating leg, needle piercing deep in a gap between scales. The plunger delivers 200mg of concentrated hope directly into your bloodstream, salt water in salt water. You put a hello kitty bandaid over it and wait for the feeling of ice in your veins to settle, the tension to go out of your muscles. It doesn’t.

You pass an enraged man on the street, spit flying, a home-made sandwich board making his message clear: The Siren Is The Devil’s Agent. The back offers an equally cogent argument: Go Back To Atlantis, Fish Freaks. You would if you could, you think dryly. He notices you and seethes, but the current of the crowd carries you away before he can curse you out.

You drag your potted plants down to the front stoop and post a craigslist ad: free to a good home. They’re gone within the hour. You allow yourself the rare indulgence of posting a selfie, eyes closed, serene, to the reddit: Learning to love my scales <3! It’s still difficult to type on your phone with the new claws. The upvotes start to come in; everyone loves a guppie.

You catch up on the shows you haven’t gotten to yet. Where there was once only the metaphorical List, there is now an actual list. Despite your best efforts it’s becoming increasingly clear you’re not going to finish all of them. You knock a few off, restructure it based on length. It still looks too long.

You have dreams about choking on toxic waste, getting minced by a boat propeller. You keep a running count of the number of times you’ve dreamt of getting your head stuck in a six-pack of soda rings. You’re up to four.

Every few days you do laps in the local pool. You’re getting faster, but you feel exposed. There are whispers around the locker room.

Your cat knows something is happening, but doesn’t understand what that means for her. You hold her whenever and for as long as she’ll allow, give her as many pets and treats as she wants. Despite clearing out your apartment you’ve spoiled her. She licks the scales on your cheek as you cry over her. This seems to inspire something in her; she demands her tuna crunchies. Dutifully you give her the tuna crunchies. She can have as many tuna crunchies as she wants.

You doomscroll your twitter feed, making sure this isn’t the day you lose access to your meds because of some white man in a suit. A sister is assaulted by a violent extremist with a sense of humor: he shot her with a harpoon gun. Her crowdfunding campaign starts on the maidens reddit and goes viral.

You triple check to make sure your friend is still willing to take your cat when you go. They promise to spoil her and tell her stories of you every day. You continue to cry over it. They invite you out for sushi to talk about it, then backtrack to ask if that’s a microaggression. You go to sushi. You’re thankful for the distraction.

By the time your legs are more scale than skin and your fingers begin to develop webbing you’ve given up on pretense. The looks are now constant, but you get reflective sunglasses and a new patch for your jacket: Don’t like it? Drown, with a scaled hand reaching out of water and flipping the bird. You put the energy out into the world, and the world doesn’t fuck with you.

Children love you. Their parents do not.

On the train a young girl quietly asks if she can feel your scales. You allow her to touch her little fingers to the aquamarine pattern running up your arm, giving her your most reassuring (but still fanged) smile. She’s fearless, enamored, reverent. Her mother pulls her daughter away and hastily apologizes for her, not looking you in the eye. But you know that girl believes in magic now.

A group of white supremacists go out on a boat loaded with assault rifles for “no reason” and get lost at sea. This is somehow your fault.

The day your fins begin to push their way out from your arms, your boss calls you into his office. You both know he can’t fire you in this and seven other states, but you both also know you won’t be staying much longer. He’s done his best to make you aware you’re making his life more difficult. You put in your two weeks before he can flounder for another excuse. He moors you with paperwork for the rest of the afternoon.

Someone leaves a rotting fish in your pool locker. You don’t go back, and you don’t file a report. You tell yourself the chlorine was bad for the gills freshly forming under your ribs anyway.

Your friends take you out clubbing. You lose yourself under the waves of music, submerged under strobe lights and the salty sweat of dancing bodies. You whisper sweet nothings into a stranger’s ear, entrancing her as you move against each other. You can see iridescence shining around her eyes, shimmering glitter and an emerging pattern beneath makeup. You brush a thumb against her cheek and she melts into your touch. You don’t get her name. You don’t need to; you’re both not long for this world. You catch up with your friends smoking outside, your lips still tingling with vermouth.

Weeks pass. Work ends. Your apartment is down to furniture and cat supplies. You take longer showers. News stories continue to come out, the machine churns and roils: monsters walking among humans, the mark of the beast, sacrificing daughters to the ocean.

You make sure your meds are reupped for the final stretch.

When your legs start to merge you know you don’t have much time left. You donate the last boxes of your clothes. Your friends get first dibs on furniture before it’s put on the street. They bring drinks and sit on your floor, an impromptu celebration and wake. They ask all the usual questions: what are you going to do for food? Shelter? What if you get hurt, or attacked by a shark? Do they have waterproof laptops yet? Will they ever see you again? What if it isn’t right for you? Can you ever come back?

You don’t know how to answer most of those questions. The group stays with you through the night. At 4AM you put on The Little Mermaid and the group drunkenly sings along. Everyone knows the words. It’s juvenile and you can hear the maidens on the reddit rolling their eyes and tutting about misrepresentation, but you know everyone in your position does it. You try not to cry, but the waterworks start and don’t stop.

At daybreak you put your cat into her harness and everyone piles into a friend’s van. It’s not far to the beach, but they take the long way around. One final tour of the land. Your cat sits on your lap and stares out the windows as you pass old haunts, your grocery store, your gym, your high school. You realize you still have library books to return and almost get them to turn around, but someone promises to go back for them afterwards.

There’s an isolated area on the beach where a canopy and tables are set up; banners, food, friends. It’s a regular going away party, as if you’re going on a short trip abroad. You suppose you are, in a way. Someone rented a wheelchair with fat tires to help you get down to the beach.

When your mother arrives she pulls her shirt off to show her custom-made clam bra. Her eyes are already red and puffy, but she’s doing her best to be energetic and upbeat. She holds you for a long time and says she’s happy for you, that you’re beautiful, that you’re so much stronger than she ever was, and then she puts on a brave face to help everyone get served at the buffet. Your cat chases small crabs across the beach around you, and you sit in the sand. The party goes strong.

The tides come up until your fin is tickled by the seafoam. Everyone knows that means it’s time to go. You pass your cat off to her new owner and she gives you a last headbutt. She seems to understand. You kiss your mother’s cheek one last time and she clings to you. The group raises their drinks as you paddle out, disappearing beneath the waves. You give them the money shot and leap out of the water on your way out of the sound, and you can hear cheering from the shoreline. You hope someone got a video for the maidens.

You keep the city in sight for a while, but the currents lead you further into open waters. There are boaters out on the water who wave to you. You wave back and keep swimming up the coast.

At dusk you rise to the surface and watch the setting sun turn the horizon from blue to pink to purple and orange. There’s nothing for leagues around. As the sun sinks below the waves and the skies darken you sing your first real siren’s song. Shaky and imperfect, it soon resounds over the ocean breeze. You leave everything behind in it. There are no words, only feeling and sound. It’s a lament, an invocation, a dirge. It is many things, but it isn’t an apology. You have nothing to apologize for.

In the seas beyond a chorus joins in with a language you never learned but understand, integrating your song into theirs. You swim to join them.

#animal hrt #furry hrt #dragon hrt #therian hrt #otherkin #mermaid #mermay #mermay 2024 #transgender #tf hrt #mythical hrt?#writing #short story #writeblr

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lnbeep-art · 5 months ago

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"A favor for a favor."

It is the Year of the Snake, which means Cam gets some love and attention before the month of MerMay for once... In this house we love an enemies to lovers dynamic, even if only Ari sees him as an enemy. Cam's just the trickster who likes the attention, negative or positive. Doesn't matter when he thinks he's in control of a situation.

Bonus little short story in the "Read More" below! Lots of lore building for the world, size stuff in the halfway mark. Consider it a companion piece to this.

TLDR: Ari finds a way to wound primordials and gods, but at the cost of it cursing him. Cameron offers to help alleviate it at no expense, just because he likes him.

Ari’s arm had morphed into a black and stinging limb, spreading farther and farther toward his chest. How much longer before the curse would claim his heart?

Time and time again he’d tried to rid the curse, but not even his half-divine blood empowered his magic enough to extract it. He considered himself a relatively competent healer, and he had lifted quite a number of curses from others before during his wandering through the mortal realm. Was this curse simply out of his depth? A wall he’d slammed into in his current ability level?

Ari clicked his tongue, dropped his unmarred hand, and let the pink magic in his palm fade.

No, he thought and grimaced. The curse just didn’t want to leave. Just like that other presence that haunted the recesses of his mind, waiting to make due on the mark bitten in his skin.

Pulling his sleeve down, Ari sighed, then mussed up his bangs in frustration. When he glimpsed his reflection in the mirror, he saw it again; the golden twin snake tattoo on his shoulder. Surprisingly, it was not the same shoulder which bore his curse, although he would have been remiss to ignore he had two arms where marks miraculously tainted them. When he’d first received the snake tattoo, his skin had been raised and irritated. Now, it blended in like any of the other golden decals he’d paint on his body. At times, however, the mark would glitter as if brimming with the sun god’s light itself.

A few robes and overcoats were all Ari required to hide the blight. The challenge came instead when he’d returned to the Summer Court. Like bloodhounds, the High Order of Summer Elves’ long-lived lives could detect primordial stench on him. “It was just a product of seeing the Luck Devourer face to face,” Ari had reassured them at the time. He was a being born from the gods themselves, the first of their kind. Of course his comparative power and essence would linger on Ari, especially when he’d had his claws on him. A split moment was all it took.

That explanation allayed their suspicions, and he’d had no further questions since. This time? They might unearth the secret faster unless he vanquished Cameron himself. Until then, Ari would not allow the order to relieve him of this duty.

“You’re welcome to try smiting me as many times as you like,” Cameron’s words echoed. “I’m sure you’re itching to cover up this blunder of yours, aren’t you? Same time next week then?”

Ari growled under his breath and clenched his good hand. Arrogant bastard. Why couldn’t he have just stayed smote?

Several sunrises had passed since Ari’s visit to Zahn and the Solona Ocean depths, pushing ahead on the rumors of Cameron’s whereabouts. The primordial had spoken as if he knew Ari’s return was immediate, but Ari refused the serpent that satisfaction. Why? Let him stew. Exchanging words was no greeting Ari wanted to partake in, but his twin sabers would be the best “hello” he could give. One for the primordial’s tongue, the other to carve off his shoulder’s mark with his own blade.

It had likely vexed Cameron—the fact of how long Ari had waited to cross his shores again—and the thought delighted him at least a bit. However, that was not his sole motive; some of the mortal realm’s regions had the best libraries known across the realms, holding ancient wisdom from the war. Accounts of those who had managed to slay lesser monsters, and stories of champions who had felled ones even greater than Cameron. Knowledge like that was often difficult to come by, if only not to disrupt the current balance of their post-war world.

Yet if he read between the lines long enough, a method would reveal itself to him. He had to find it. How many centuries had elapsed of Cameron spiriting away interesting finds, transforming them into nymphs to belong to his underwater dominion? The Order of Elves had failed to wrangle him in, and they were eager to repay the torment he’d enacted over time. It had been the gods’ mistake to leave Cameron surfing through mortal waters, unbidden and uninhibited. More would see injury in the reign of his whims.

Their greatest question had always been Cameron’s aim. In their lengthy diatribes, the oldest elves on the order stated primordial beings’ actions were devoid of reason; they took because they wanted, and they intended to keep whatever they possessed. Cameron’s kinship to dragons meant, of all the discorded primordial beings left to walk among the realms, coveting and hoarding burned stronger within him. Maybe he felt he deserved what he took because the pantheon had given his kind the shorter stick. It was why the Order found his greed insatiable.

Eldritch horrors, primordial beings—they went beyond mortal reason. Cameron’s true form should have been incomprehensible, yet the Luck Devourer’s features were instead easy on the eyes. “Beautiful,” as many stories depicted him. And it was that beauty that Cameron lured in to surround himself with. He had created sirens from his desires to roam the seas. That was one interest most recorded of Cameron; what other reasons he had to act with the freedom he pleased was lost on Ari. Truly as mysterious and deep as the Solona Ocean itself.

When he’d laid on the shore of Zahn’s capital, Rimerock—spit out by Cameron’s promise and left to catch his breath—he’d been struck with the wonder: what side did he fall on? Was he of interest to Cameron because he was beautiful, or because he amused him? The curiosity had vanished just as quickly. After all, it wouldn’t change the mark Cameron etched on him. And with how vibrant the color was against his skin, pulsing intermittently, he certainly hadn’t forgotten Ari either. Unfortunately.

He had no intention of becoming another item on the Luck Devourer’s lengthy menu, and he would not allow a mark he could not remove, nor a curse that refused to lift, to best him. There must have been a detail they’d yet learned, Ari told himself. A clue from the unturned stones.

That was when he’d found it. A spell which enhanced the sword, cutting not bone and marrow, but what mattered to any divine being. Their essence. To kill a god, you killed not the god itself but the many threads of belief tethering them to the realms. And since Cameron thought himself one, the same method would work just as well.

What felt like molten fire surged through his arm and Ari winced, clutching it. Was this his punishment because he’d ignored Cameron’s call? Times like these, Ari almost wished he had not vowed to be his own battery. Mother Nature’s blood was his own, which allowed Ari to use his own power to supplicate his cleric needs. A half breed, Cameron had called him.

I’ll show you ‘half breed,’ you snake.

The ratta-tatt of knuckles wrapping against his personal chamber’s door distracted him. Ari’s long ears twitched, and after adjusting the billowing sleeves a second time, he answered, “Come in.”

The sound of nails clicked against the tile floor, and Ari caught a flash of pink and white wings in the mirror. Varys? he thought. What was the messenger of love visiting him for? It wasn’t that the two were unfriendly—hard to dislike Varys when he was his sister’s confidant. But love did not stop, so Ari and Varys rarely spent leisure time together.

“I thought you might still be here,” Varys said, and as he spoke, his gaze snagged on Ari’s arm. Instinctively, Ari tensed, which only made Varys sigh. “I wasn’t going to say anything since your business isn’t my business, but I can smell the stench of that as far as the palace gates. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

“How long have you known?”

A tired expression darkened Varys’ features. He snorted. “I know that it’s newer than the other trinket you have on you.” Varys tapped his own shoulder, the one that mirrored Ari’s primordial eyesore. “But you probably didn’t think I knew about that either.”

The archangel rank Varys held slipped Ari’s mind at times. The man often took the form of a werefox human instead of that of an angel, wielding digitigrade paws; furred, clawed hands; pink paw pads the color of blush; and the ears and tail of a fox, always alert. With the many tales mortals spread about Ivory and her herald of love, Varys had always said he’d play into the role of vixen. It seemed he quietly enjoyed it too. Ari thought it suited him.

However, Varys was less keen to display his angelic lineage. Sometimes he brandished his wings in full view, and other times he hid them. Yet whether they were visible to the eye or not did not erase the angel in him. If anyone could sense evil on another, it would have been a holier being like Varys. And it had been Ari’s mistake in thinking he would stay completely under the radar. Had Ivory not noticed either? Unless she’d specifically asked Varys to pay Ari a visit, as was always the case for his equally busy sister.

Ah, Ari thought. Varys’ visit made sense now.

Ari turned to his work desk, clearing off the notebooks with their half-turned pages. He’d already demolished four of them in the past week, all filled with scrawls and his condensed versions of raving madmen, who believed they held the key to erasing divine creatures’ existence entirely. He scowled down at the notebook—how the light red cover became more stark under his pitch black hand. “I’m handling it,” he said.

Varys crossed his arms. “Are you?”

“I will be. It’s his work, isn’t it?” As Ari spun to look at Varys, he paused at the way Varys’ brows furrowed. “...can you not tell?”

Varys hesitated. “It’s old—I know that much. But it doesn’t exactly work like that, Ari. I’d have to know the caster well to know that it’s their magic.” He pointed a claw at Ari’s arm. “And both are relatively the same age, so the nature of your curse is foreign to me. …Have you thought of asking Cordelia about it?”

Ari’s mouth ticked downward. No matter if he was a son to Mother Nature or not, he would not burden the goddess with trivial problems he could solve on his own. It was the same reason he hadn’t sought out Ivory. “No need,” Ari said, his hand clasping the notebook and then the satchel hanging off the desk’s corner edge. He slung the strap across his shoulders and tucked the notebook inside. “I’ll be taking a short trip to Zahn. Ask the nymphs to prepare the Gate for me.”

Although Varys’ gaze needled his back, he didn’t bother blocking Ari’s exit at least. Slid away from it, in fact. “And what will you tell your court?”

Ari glared at the twin snakes on his left shoulder. “I have nothing to say to them until I’ve finished what I started.” Once he reached the Gate, he would ferry himself across the realms. If that monster wanted his visit, then he would have it.

…

The midday sun captivated Zahn in its amber hue and sparkled like fairy lights across the horizon, the capital of Rimerock especially. Saltwater and ocean spray left a refreshing sea flavor in the air. As both a mineral city and vast trading port hub, Zahn’s nation thrived beside the great Solona Ocean. It was one of the most prosperous nations the mortal realm had to offer.

Yet neither trading ports nor the mountain peaks interested Ari. Instead, he stayed the course until he reached Zahn’s coastal edges, where the gap of water between Solona Ocean and the Blue Tides was tightest. Here, ships and creatures and scores of people had been aptly devoured, either to reappear in another region, or plane, entirely—or to never be heard from again. No mortal dared test the waters during a thunderstorm.

Maybe this space of water had another name once. Now, it was known only as The Swallows.

Below the rocks, the rapids swirled and swirled to form a vicious, hungry whirlpool, one whose radius spanned as wide as a small village. The last time Ari visited, he’d been armed with a boat and first-timer’s bravado. He almost missed that naivety. Now he had a broken promise on one arm, and a time limit on the other.

Light caught his periphery; the snake mark, brighter now as he stood at the water’s precipice, vibrated against Ari’s skin. When he retreated a few steps, the glow dimmed. Ari scowled at it before turning his gaze toward Rimerock again. Like newborn infants, the waves beside the docks cradled the boat’s tiny shapes. People were lucky to return intact at all, much less with their boat accompanying them. Surely no one could complain about a lost boat when they knew the risk they lived beside.

Ari took a single step toward the docks when a voice, coming distinctly from his left side, whispered at him. “Jump,” it said.

He froze. In spite of the region’s warm air, a chill accosted him from the top of his neck all the way down, tracing his spine. It was how he would have imagined Cameron’s claws raking his back if given the opportunity.

More voices compounded upon the first, coupled with a mounting pressure in his cursed arm. Ari grit his teeth against the pain.

“Jump jump jump jump!”

“Blessed child of the Fey.”

“Champion!”

“Trust the process. Give yourself to the ocean, and it will guide you.”

“Surrender!”

“Down down down!”

Hissing, Ari covered his ears. Had he finally lost it? The path he’d chosen specifically avoided any sirens’ games, but perhaps he had made a mistake. Sirens did not stray far from Cameron, because he loved them so, but not a single tail or melody carried over the waters. Now that the voices had quietened, only Ari in his silence remained, and the roaring whirlpool in front. That vortex could have easily wasted twenty ships alone.

The water rolled closer, lapping the shoreline.

This was insane—he shouldn’t consider this. Not when it was undoubtedly another of Cameron’s tricks coaxing him to his demise. While the primordial released him initially, nowhere did that suggest he’d be as kind the next. So was this what Cameron wanted? For Ari to drown? Willingly?

Ari squeezed his hands into fists, head inclined as he scorned The Swallows. His magic begged for release—spiked through him as a reminder not to forget what he possessed. Finally, Ari touched his throat and closed his eyes.

Expand.

His lungs ballooned with a thin layer of magical film, and three slices of the same pink glow cut across the sides of his neck. The first encounter with Cameron happened so hastily that Ari hadn’t enchanted an aquatic blessing unto himself before. Now, if circumstances necessitated he return home, the risk of drowning when he spoke was minimized.

“Fine,” Ari said, the word a hiss between his teeth. “But I’ll make this your mistake.”

He plunged.

When he resurfaced, arms akimbo and keeping him afloat, the current drew him toward the whirlpool. It was slow at first—taunting—until it yanked him. Ari’s heartbeat jumped like the waves. Why were the currents not taking him on a spin cycle? Rather, his body cut straight through, the single path available being the beeline toward The Swallows’ epicenter. And only a void greeted him at the end of that long, twisting cyclone.

The voice returned in his right ear, deeper in its inflection this time—and steadier. Almost a tiger’s growl in his ear. “Closer.”

It didn’t sound like how he remembered Cameron’s voice. What in the world was that?

Once Ari reached the center, his body plummeted no differently than a ship torn apart by the waves. His yells became trapped in the bubbles flying from his mouth. The magical slits along his neck opened, extracting oxygen from the ocean and circulating it into his body. It was what allowed him to open his eyes sooner.

Underwater, Mother Nature had dropped her bucket of paint to smear color that the surface’s sunlight could still capture. Except the color came not from an artisan’s tools, but scales. Fish—fish as far as the eye could see; eels, tuna, bass, mackerel, blue sharks. Yet none dared approach the cyclone containing him. He swore he saw a green light glint off of their scales too, but it could have been caused by his shoulder. The snake tattoo’s light had become so intense the farther he fell that it was the only light possible to see the fish. No natural sunlight could penetrate the depths of The Swallows.

Had seconds passed? Minutes? Hours? His descent some several hundreds of feet below sea level pressed on, and eventually, the tendrils of light on Ari’s shoulder lost the fight against the ocean’s darkness. Even when he knew he’d thrust his hand outward, his fingers remained invisible to his eyes. It was only a matter of time before every bit of his senses faded.

However, Ari caught a sight in the distance: two green spots, electrified by the flecks of yellow in them. Split by those slit pupils. Watching, and waiting. Sharp white fangs hung underneath those eyes in a curved shape.

“Found you,” the familiar voice sang in his head just before his consciousness cut short.

Ari had actually jumped. The audacious elven prince had actually done it.

If a naga could be on the edge of their seat, Cameron had mastered the balancing act while his attentions were otherwise trained on Ari. He needed no mind-reading tricks to know Ari hated every bit of the decision—the prince’s frame had been riddled with tension and barely restrained frustration as he stood over Rimerock’s coast. In that state, he appeared so easy to ruffle—how could Cameron resist poking him? After all, what better game was there to play than the game of chicken?

Yet life could still give Cameron surprises, apparently, as he’d watched the elven prince dive feet first into the waters. Cracking that stubborn self-respect Ari held impressed him enough to greet the elf personally. Not many held the honor.

His uncoiled tail stretched on for miles as he moved through the scattered sands, making treasure ship bottles and coinstacks rattle. Trinkets he had collected over the centuries, dating every age of progress the cycles underwent. It was no palace like the pantheon, but it was his home—this little demiplane tucked in the corner of the mortal realm’s bounds.

And now, as he bore down on Ari, the delight of finally putting eyes on him again simmered. Cameron tilted his head. “That’s a shame,” he murmured, eyeing Ari’s right arm. “Seems someone else got to you before I could, hmm?”

Their time apart had created idle hands out of Ari, and during the absence, the elven prince had poked his nose where it did not belong. Old magic encased him, centralized in that blackened arm of his, and steadily tore through his essence. Cameron could taste it on the tip of his tongue—an acrid flavor, but all too familiar. Perhaps the prince assumed his half-divine blood would protect him, yet he failed to understand it only hastened the process.

Cameron had been so bored waiting for him, and when he finally returned, it was with a time limit on his life? Truly a travesty. At least the blessing he’d stamped onto Ari remained. He eyed it with a pleased hum.

Blessing of the trickster; that was what mortals called his snake tattoo when bound to him temporarily. The mark itself was fairly harmless, a way of saying Cameron had his eye on someone he liked well enough and had piqued his curiosity. It wouldn’t pain the wearer, and once Cameron stayed a permanent thought on their mind, he removed the mark and let nature take its course. If he wanted to become a god as well, belief in what he could give and accomplish was tantamount to his influence. He didn’t want to remain confined to Zahn alone. He wanted to travel the lands like the old days.

However, his blessing did come with a caveat. It was how Ari had found this new magic, but also where he had picked up his curse.

As his fingers encroached on the small figure, Ari immediately sprung to his feet like a jack-in-the-box. A bladed sickle appeared in the fey’s grasp and lanced forward. Cameron tutted, withdrawing and staring at fresh laceration where Ari had struck his fingers.

“Straight to business as always, I see,” Cameron said. He pouted. “Really—after all this time, and not even a hello?”

“What do you mean ‘someone else’ found me?” Ari demanded, keeping the blade level with Cameron. He backpedaled a few paces, glanced at the serpentine tail surrounding him, then slanted Cameron with an unamused glare. It must have been Ari’s default expression. “You won’t keep me here like the rest of your nymphs, Luck Devourer.”

Cameron sighed and shook his head. The first words to come out of Ari’s mouth, and they were so vitriolic. Regardless, a smile curled on the corners of his lips. Ari had been silent as stone the first time they’d met, aside from when he’d cast his spell. He would take goading him to speak as an achievement. “You’ll come around.”

Ari scoffed and jutted the scepter forward. “Talk. Or the next won’t let you staunch the bleeding.”

Yes, Cameron thought; thanks to the time Ari had kept busy, he’d discovered some nasty tricks. Bleeding from a cut a mortal had inflicted had always been part of Cameron’s theatrics. It wouldn’t take long for him to wave his hand and dispel the wound with no blemish to find on his skin. That was the consequence of primordials, the gods had said—they made their first creations a little too powerful.

Honestly? Cameron didn’t see the problem with it. What was the harm in having regenerative capabilities? They were a piece of the gods and titans that helped create them. Of course they should be entitled to that influence. And mortal beings only sought to attain the same power. Ironic, wasn’t it? If nothing else connected primordials and mortals, the color of their blood did—dark, red and vivid.

This magic wasn’t nearly as humorous as Ari smiting him, but no matter.

He turned his hand and fingers over, letting the trickle caress his arm too. Once enough time had passed, Cameron reversed the blood, sucking it back into the wound and closing the cut on his finger. When he turned back to Ari, his pupils thinned. Sweat had accumulated on Ari’s face, and though he tried to conceal it, his shoulders bobbed. He was panting.

Cameron dropped his elbows on either side of the man and balanced his chin on his interlaced fingertips. “I can ease the burden you bear, you know. All you have to do is ask.”

“You mean the burden you put on me?” Ari rolled his shoulder, the one containing Cameron’s snakes, to better face him. “Don’t bother. I’ll do that myself when I cut out your lying tongue.”

Cameron laughed. “I thought you were supposed to be the expert, love? All that research and you don’t know the difference between my mark and another’s?”

“Please. Spare me your lies, Luck Devourer. You leave this on my arm—” Ari tossed his hand toward his left shoulder “—and suddenly I’m magically cursed three and a half weeks later. I’m just supposed to believe that’s all a coincidence?”

The elven man had wit, he would concede that. Most wouldn’t have drawn that conclusion. But he wasn’t wrong so much as he wasn’t right either.

Cameron’s lips curled. Dropping one of his hands from his chin, he crept his fingers toward Ari. The gesture didn’t go unnoticed, however, as Ari sidestepped his hand, blade trained and poised to inflict another bite.

“Do you think finding that research was coincidence too?” Cameron asked. “Equivalent exchange, my friend. Fate needs balance at some point, because the worst life can change for the better, while the opposite is true. The same applies for luck. Eventually you’ll run out of good luck, and all that’s left is the worst of it. Do you know that that is?” His voice fell to a whisper. “Karma.”

Ari’s eyes widened and Cameron regarded him impassively. Karma was under Cameron’s eldest brother’s control, and no one wanted to gain Rayne’s ire—not even Cameron himself. A bitter reminder of how many leagues apart they were now that Rayne had ascended to control the storms and left behind his own kin, changing from primordial to the god of retribution. Cameron hated him for the loneliness it had brought.

But perhaps the one memento Rayne had left had been the magical stopgap, preventing any divine beings from destroying primordials. Few gods wanted to reignite the Divisionary War—none such who hadn’t already been exiled, stripped of power, or banished to the outer realms.

Cameron had never been much invested in the war, finding it more fun to collect warriors, clerics, and warlocks who wished for something, or someone, to grant them powers. To take matters into their own hands and change. Was it really his fault if change meant both good and bad deeds?

So, all of the gods had banded together to create a failsafe, one that would come at a cost. That was the exchange to end the war, and what led to Rayne’s ascension to begin with. The knowledge to kill a god’s essence was out there, but it was a race to the goalpost to reach it in time.

And now Ari was cursed by that knowledge. All this because he couldn’t bother to visit sooner. If he’d stuck to simply smiting him, his good luck wouldn’t have soured nearly as quickly.

Again, Cameron’s hand neared Ari, undeterred by the elf’s retreating footsteps. It wasn’t like he had very far to move—not with Cameron’s tail looped around the space. “It’s not my magic that’s eating away at you, little wanderer. As long as you carry that curse, you can’t even begin to make good on your promise,” Cameron said and smiled. “Unless you’ve given up trying to keep me out of the mortal planes? I surely hope not. You were just getting somewhere!”

Ari clutched his head. “Stop talking.”

Yet Cameron saw the thoughts churning behind Ari’s eyes in the way he stared at the ground. Risk. Each mortal, and demimortal, Cameron had crossed underwent the same weighing process. Were all of his words a lie? Or was there truth in them? Underestimating either side by even a hair could dramatically tip the scale. It made the tip of Cameron’s tail wiggle.

“My offer still stands,” Cameron added patiently. “Do so, and the curse won’t trouble you any longer.”

“And make it that much easier for you to put another one of your things on me like the last time?” Ari spat. “I’m not your fool to toy with, Cameron, and I’m not giving you another opportunity.” His hand glowed pink. “I’ll—”

All at once, Ari’s body seized up. The man dropped onto his knees, but despite his collapse, his black fist remained clutched on the handle of his scepter. Humming, Cameron leaned forward, close enough where his breath could tease strands of Ari’s brown hair. The sleeve covered a significant portion of Ari’s arm, but he noticed the nerves beneath the silk convulsed. It gave off the smell of soot and tar, markedly divine and twisted.

For good measure, Ari took a swipe at Cameron, yet the blade did not connect. The one thing Cameron would not allow him to touch was his face.

“You may have found the secret to wound me, but you’ll cut your own life short before you cut me,” Cameron said. “Why do you think you’ve been cursed? You could kill me, but you’re discovering it’s not so easy, aren’t you?”

“I’d rather die than accept your so-called ‘help.’”

“And yet you came to me, willingly, and chose this path for yourself! Make no mistake—I’m flattered, truly. But you didn’t have better things to do than put me on trial? That really hurts my feelings, you know. I’ve been minding my business.”

Ari growled quietly, and the sound of it made Cameron chuckle. The longer this went on, the greater his intrigue. Some of Ari’s peers were equally mouthy, but they’d crumbled faster under his ministrations. Ari, however, was stubborn. He might actually have let himself perish instead if it meant taking Cameron down with him.

Placing a claw-tipped finger against Ari’s blade, Cameron restricted him from lifting it a third time. He felt the blade twitch and wiggle under his nail from Ari’s effort to free it, then heard the slow-building sizzle the longer his nail touched.

“Is your pride worth more than your life, Fey champion?” he asked softly, enough so that it made Ari’s ears twitch. He upturned his other hand’s palm to Ari and leaned over him. “Do you want it to end here and now when you’ve been the closest one of your circle?” Ari stared at him, and although he glared, shock belied those fiery pink eyes of his. Cameron tilted his head. “Did you think I didn’t know who you were, prince? I study all of my guests. The interesting ones anyway,” he added.

“Your tricks—”

“I speak only the truth this time.” The space around them shrunk bit by bit as Cameron added more coils to wrap around them. The shhff of sand carried across his entrance room. “I know my brother’s magic, well enough to know how to undo it too. Do you really wish to die with failure in your heart? That doesn’t seem befitting of the summer elves’ prince, wouldn’t you say?”

Those rose quartz eyes of Ari’s stayed locked on Cameron’s hand, distrustful and scathing. The only sound permeating the room then became that of sliding glass. Cameron’s zoetrope had shifted to display yet another realm of the fey. That didn’t matter now—he had the fey he’d been watching here with him now. No need to see Ari through a glass any longer.

The tip of Cameron’s tail wiggled again when Ari reached his hand out, hesitated, then connected with one of the large fingers before him. His expression spoke nothing short of frustrated. Giving no room for second thoughts, Cameron slid his fingers underneath Ari’s body and into his palm, where he held him to his eyes.

“A wise choice, love. Now let’s get this curse off, shall we? You’ll be untouched…mostly.”

“Don’t call me that,” Ari snapped. His gaze was transfixed by the dark wisps rising from out of his sleeve and into the air, coated in a green layer of mist that matched Cameron’s eyes. His heavy breaths slowed. “What do you mean ‘mostly’?”

“There’s more than just Rayne’s magic in this, I’m afraid! Such a thing happens when the whole of the pantheon wants to show off their skills.” Cameron hummed. “You’ll have to figure out the rest on your own. But at least you won’t die, so what’s there to sulk about?” He gingerly traced his nail against Ari’s head, stopping at his chin and tilting it to meet his gaze. “And I get to see more of this pretty face.”

Although Ari shoved his finger away, the faintest hint of red stained his cheeks. “This doesn’t change anything else—know that.”

Maybe not now, Cameron thought. But luck and fortune's favor were his specialties.

#oc: cam and ari #oc: cam #deityverse #g/t #giant tiny #giant and tiny #giant/tiny #size difference #enemies to lovers #my writing #lnbeep art #ari is my bf's oc!#i feel like it goes without saying at this point but just in case #ari like 'mark my words..' and cam the epitome of 'im gonna make this lad fall for me so bad'#until ari actually does and then cam's terrified of a reciprocal romance LMAO #deity!au

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