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camilladraymarch · 26 days ago

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The Mako Pup

So here at the end of MerMay, I wanted to release the first short story I had the idea for/completed for my new project - an anthology of dark mermaid themed short stories.

I'll keep posting blurbs and segments about the project from now on, but I wanted to give you all a look at the first first draft for the project in its complete form just to give you a taste of the themes you can expect going forward. I love everyone who's given me support for this project already, thank you so much. :)

For a hundred years, the house had stood on the hill overlooking the small cove. A patch of land and sea that no sane person wanted, cut off from most of the comforts of civilization. A place hidden from the world.

To the uninitiated, the green hill looked far from the coastline. But those with a keen eye and knowledge of the violent storms that blew in during the winter and spring saw the waterline lifted far above where it should. At the worst times, it even came up to a few yards from the doors of the house.

Heinrich had endured these storms with the ease of an old partnership for fifteen years. His time at the house had been much shorter than the house’s lifetime. A place his family had held since before he was born, but which he hadn’t visited until his son was grown enough to swim for himself. In a time when the ocean was still new to him and the storms an unfamiliar trial.

His wife was long gone. The storms had driven her away. But Heinrich couldn’t leave.

They’d never found his boy’s body. He’d been taken, whole, into the ocean and lost in the toss of wave and wind. His golden curls swallowed by the water. Like an offering thrown to a pagan god.

Heinrich wanted to believe he’d been swept out to sea by a current and picked up by a ship, but he knew it was wishful thinking. There was a price to thinking of the sea as safe. Of relishing in the false security of a cove and not being wary of the wild winds and waves. If only he’d been the one to pay it, he wouldn’t have minded so dearly.

He hadn’t left the vicinity since then. The farthest he went was to the nearby market to buy new clothes, necessary supplies, and new journals. The townsfolk called him mad and a hermit. But Heinrich thought of himself as a ghost. Endlessly repeating his haunted routine.

During the summer and fall, he trapped small fish and raised them to fatted adulthood in the fish farm made of nets and pillars attached to the house’s dock. During the winter, he sat before the secure windows and watched the storms rage, eating salt fish and preserved pickles, and writing endless books on his observations of the creatures and the weather around him. By the time the storms were over, they would have flooded every sheltered place around the cove and left great, isolated salt pools full of stranded sea creatures and shells.

Heinrich had found various large and small fish and even octopods stranded in the rocky salt pools. He documented the species he saw and lifted them into the wider ocean when he could. More often, they hid from him and evaded him until the pool was too low and they suffocated or died of the increased salt concentration. Then the storms would roll back in and the whole cycle would start over.

And so it had gone, for fifteen years.

Heinrich pulled his blanket closer around his lap as the storms raged outside. He read the last sentence of his book’s page over and over. The words refused to make sense. His head dropped forward and he finally slept.

When Heinrich woke up, all was quiet. The winds had settled and the waves had taken on a different tone. The last storm of the season had died. He stood and swept the blanket onto the back of his chair. Gathering himself, he went outside to see what had happened and to open the storm shutters over the outside of the paned windows.

The salt pools were as full as Heinrich had ever seen them. The excess water draining over the walls of sharp-edged rocks. There were no trees, but the grass was brittle and laid flat where it had been pounded down by tons of water.

The roof had held, which was all that really mattered. Cracked windows could be repaired with new panes ordered in the town. Heinrich had fixed the door more times than he liked to remember. But the roof was beyond him, and dangerous. The up-turned boat sat where he had laid it at the beginning of the storm. Heinrich would give it a few days so any creatures that had taken shelter beneath it could leave.

Taking a broom, he swept mud and debris from the steps leading from his house to the dock. The surface of the salt pool was unnaturally still, the water murky with disturbed sediment. Over the next few days, it would settle and become almost clear.

Heinrich noticed there was something larger than normal in the salt pool that afternoon. He saw a triangular fin breach the surface of the water. Leaning on his broom, he watched the fin disappear. So, the waves had carried a small shark into the pool. That would make for an interesting reel of notes. He wondered what kind of shark it was and how old. The black fin had given nothing away, and if it was a pup it could be any number of species.

Looking forward to seeing more of it, he eagerly went about his chores, laying traps for young fish in the cove and gathering up pieces of kelp and seaweed to add to his evening meal. Thus buoyed, he went about his day and waited for the salt pool to go clear.

The next time Heinrich spotted the fin, he knew something was not right. He caught sight of something yellow pulling in front of it. Like the young shark was tangled in something it shouldn’t be. In concern, he tried to see more, but his eyes wouldn’t make sense of the wild gold that surrounded the fin. It had to be something unnatural from the world of man. Perhaps that was why the shark had ended up in the salt pool when no shark had before.

Heinrich watched the creature swim, tangled up, until it vanished into the deepest part of the pool. He decided to start carrying one of his nets around and try to capture the shark to free it of the tangling detritus when he could.

That night, he dreamed of his son swimming in the sheltered cove. His golden curls dampened and not quite tamed by the salt water. His neck adorned with a seashell necklace Heinrich had painstakingly taught him to tie himself, the scallop trapped by strong knots on the length of cord. He woke damp and lonely and faced the dawn with resigned calm.

The pool had mostly settled when Heinrich stepped up onto the rocks at its rim, net in hand. He searched, looking for the triangular fin and the tell-tale shape of a shark wrapped up in some kind of trash or weed. Spotting the tail, he took careful aim and dipped the net below the surface with care. A single false move would send the creature into the center of the pool where he wouldn’t be able to reach it.

A quick twist of his hands and Heinrich caught the creature up in the net, dragging it out of the pool for a better look. He stared in dawning comprehension as the creature twisted in the net, tail flailing, as grasping claws tore at the net itself and black eyes stared back at him. Dropping the net back below the surface, he tried to make his mind believe what his eyes were seeing. A mermaid stared back at him, trapped in the net, showing off sharp and serrated teeth. The yellow tangle was its hair, the most human feature of it.

The mermaid struggled backwards out of the net and darted away from Heinrich into the depths, gone like a ghost. She was smaller than a six-year-old-child, and Heinrich couldn’t help but believe his initial estimate of her age was still correct: She was a pup.

Heinrich’s first thought was that she had the same blonde water-curls that his son had. He had seen them many times, beneath the surface of their sheltered piece of the ocean. The coincidence tore open old memories.

His second thought was to wonder what to do with the little creature. If he fished her out and released her into the cove, would she survive? Or had she been separated from her mother and was too young to be alone?

If she was a baby under the care of one or more parents before the storm separated them, turning her loose into the wild ocean was a death sentence. On the other hand, if she was an independent creature like the normal shark pups, she would likely prefer to be released.

Heinrich sat at the pool’s edge and watched for her to reappear, considering. If he watched her long enough, perhaps he could determine which she was. If she could hunt for herself, perhaps she could also evade predators. But she stayed in the deep parts and hid from him, and he didn’t see her for the rest of the day.

The next morning, Heinrich brought a picnic basket filled with fish sandwiches and sat at the pool’s side with his journal and a few different observational tools. The merpup watched him from a shallower depth than before, though she was still obviously wary.

Heinrich reached into the basket and pulled out a fish, fresh and cleaned, and dangled it into the water, holding it out for the pup. If she wasn’t able to hunt for herself, she would be tempted by it because it had been days since she’d been trapped in the pool. If she was, she would be more wary and most likely not accept the offering.

The little shark smelled the fish and began drifting closer by inches. She maneuvered in two ways – with flicks of her tail that sent her into little jets of fast movement, and by crawling along the bottom of the pool with her claws hanging onto the rocks.

Now that he could see her better, Heinrich was sure she was a Mako shark. She had the speed and silhouette of one. Her front torso began to emerge from just below the shark half’s impressive dorsal fin. Her skin was the same even grey and white coloration of her shark half, but the skin of her upper half looked smoother and more slick, like a stingray’s.

She didn’t have claspers, so he could only assume she was a female after all. She was too young to have mammaries – if merfolk even had mammaries – and the only other clue was her long hair. Heinrich had lived long enough to know that a shorn head did not make a man anymore than flowing locks made a woman.

She snatched the fish from his hand with her serrated teeth and dragged it away by the head into the depths, but not so far that Heinrich couldn’t see her. She tore into the fish and ate it in hunks, holding its carcass in her claws and gnawing into it until all but the hard head was gone. She sucked out the eyeballs in a gruesome display and abandoned the skull.

It didn’t seem to be enough. She watched him intently where he sat, blac eyes on his hands and the surface of the water between them.

Heinrich drew a second, unfortunate trout out of his basket and offered it up beneath the surface. She approached much more quickly and stayed closer to eat this time. When he didn’t produce a third fish, she watched and sulked from nearby. His pity for her grew and he peeled apart his sandwiches, feeding her the fillets from inside. She seemed quite flummoxed by the new form of fish, but ate each piece even as bits flaked off them and fell to the bottom to be snagged by the small fish and crabs trapped with her.

Heinrich named her Eleanor.

“It’s my grandmother’s name.” He told her as he held whole fish beneath the water. Each one was dead, killed mercifully after he’d netted them, and cleaned perfectly for the pup’s consumption. “A good, strong name. The name of a queen.”

Eleanor snagged the first fish and ate it, ripping the fillets off the bones and crunching on the spine.

“Be the scourge of your enemies, Eleanor.” Heinrich cooed. “Eat as much as you want.”

She swam back close to him, impatient for her next fish. Her tail moved smoothly from side to side as she anchored herself below the water by her claws. When Heinrich dangled the next fish into the water, she launched off the bottom and snagged it in her teeth, spinning and flicking away to eat the fish. This repeated for three whole trout.

By the end of the feeding session, she remained closer to Heinrich and hovered just below the water’s surface, staring up at him with her dark eyes.

“Are you still hungry?” Heinrich asked as he bent towards her. “Or is there something else you want?”

Eleanor made movements of her jaw and teeth, but no sound.

Heinrich reached down towards her and dipped his full hand into the water. She hovered nearby, watching his digits with what seemed to be intent curiosity. He dropped more and more of his arm in until he was all but lying on the flat rock with his arm in the water up to the shoulder and then she made a flicking motion, flipped herself onto her back, and laid in the crook of his arm.

Face inches from the surface of the water, Heinrich dropped his other arm below to complete her cradle and she fell asleep. It was a gesture of trust so complete that he couldn’t bring himself to move except to adjust by small increments so his arms wouldn’t fall asleep.

It was a new routine. A break from the usual, peaceful life at the oceanside. Heinrich spent the early morning in his rowboat, fishing with his cast net in the cove. The fish farm was full of young fish, fattened on seaweed and bait fish he dropped in every morning. The large fish he caught went straight to Eleanor. As weeks passed, he noticed there were fewer fish inside the salt pool itself.

His suspicion was confirmed when he came down to the pool and found Eleanor gnawing a crab in her sharp teeth, crushing its legs and sucking the carapace as she ate it. She had begun to hunt. Where the shark had been as long as his arm, she was now as long as two arms. But she was still just as eager to eat the fish he’d caught. More eager, even.

Heinrich climbed into the pool after Eleanor had eaten and settled down against the largest, flattest rock he could find for comfort. She swam up to him and rested on his chest for sleep, eyes going filmy and closing as her two separate eyelids shut. She had one human set that closed horizontally, and then a filmy one that slid over her eyelid from the outside of her face towards her nose.

It was worth being wet to hold a child again. Heinrich sat in the water until his skin turned wrinkled as a raisin and his legs ached from sitting on the rocks.

Eleanor’s salt pool was shrinking.

Heinrich watched it with alarm, marking the level on the rocks as summer evaporated the water bit by bit. The almanac promised rain within two months, but the shrinking pool threatened Eleanor within the week. The best thing to do would be to move her to the fish farm’s protection.

Yes, she would most likely eat his fattening fish, but that was a price he was willing to pay to protect her from the dangers of the open cove. In order to keep from losing all of the fish he’d been feeding, Heinrich moved as many as he could from one half of the fish farm to the other, leaving the one closest to Eleanor’s salt pool mostly empty. There were a few stubborn stragglers who would soon learn their foolishness.

He looked back up at the rough terrain of the hillside. A cart filled with water would overturn if he could even get it up there. A barrel was just as impossible to lift and move.

The little mer stayed near his knee, looking up at him with wide, black eyes from beneath the surface of the waves. She trusted him to solve the problem.

Heinrich walked different routes over the rocks to the bay, looking for a way to transport a barrel. He didn’t want to stress Eleanor by removing her from the water for so long, but it seemed inevitable that he would have to, at least for a short period of time while he climbed up from the side of the pool.

It was distressing because he hadn’t lifted Eleanor out of the water since the first day with his net. He didn’t know how she’d react, if it was painful for her, or if it was harmful.

A well-timed sprint might carry him over the hill in about one or two minutes if he didn’t slip. That was a long time to hold one’s breath, but he could get her into the ocean as fast as possible and then move her to the sheltered nets of the fish farm.

The final straw came the next day, when Heinrich came down to the salt pool with his lunch and fish for Eleanor as usual, he noticed Eleanor bumping up against rocks as she swam to him. There were scratches and bruising on her sides. She didn’t have enough room.

Heinrich set down his basket and took a deep breath. Bending over, he held out his arms to her and she swam into them, resting her head on his bicep as she flicked her tail in the remains of the pool. She’d annihilated the remaining fish and crabs.

“Hang on to me, Eleanor. I’m getting you out of here.” Heinrich told her. She clung to his upper body and he took a deep breath, then straightened up all at once.

Water splashed around Eleanor’s tail as she thrashed it in surprise. Heinrich tucked her body to him, held her firmly, and ran for the shore of the actual ocean. Eleanor’s claws cut into his shirt as he went over the hill. She thrashed and he had to stop running to adjust his grip. Her teeth were gnashing in stress and her black eyes were so wide he swore there was a white ring around them that he’d never seen before.

“Not long! Not much longer.” Heinrich assured her, cresting the hill as he held the struggling creature. He stumbled and tripped down to the water’s edge, falling against a rock and catching himself at the last moment. He navigated the rocky shore, crept over the last hurdle, and flopped into the deep waters of the sheltered cove.

Eleanor relaxed in his arms as she took her first, deep breath of the fresh ocean. Heinrich held his breath in return, sinking beneath the waves to nuzzle and comfort her. His bursting lungs demanded he hyperventilate at the surface to recover from his sprint, but he waited and held on to the shark pup, protecting her from the unfamiliar swell and toss of the waves.

When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, he surfaced, head breaching the waves as he dragged in a long-overdue gasp. Recovering, he oriented himself and loosened his grip on Eleanor. She kept a hold on his arm as she let the waves move her and adjusted to the new environment.

Like a child learning to swim, she trailed behind Heinrich as he edged towards the dock and the fish farm’s protective nets. She didn’t show any sign of resentment but she was also tired by the ordeal. She barely gave any resistance as Heinrich pushed her into the nets of the fish farm and floated just under the surface when he removed her claws from his arm.

The saltwater bit at the scratches she’d left in his skin. Getting out of the water only exposed him to the kiss of the sun for a few moments as he climbed onto the dock and then rolled over into the fish farm with her. Eleanor curled with her head on his collarbone as he sat in the shallowest section and endured the waves pounding at him.

The nets of the trap had never failed Heinrich before. They’d kept the fish and crustaceans he’d fattened for years safe from larger predators. But they seemed flimsy before the burden of their new task.

Heinrich held Eleanor and worried over her. In the past month and a half, she’d grown to almost twice her original size. At this rate, she would be as large as an adult shark by the next year. The fish farm wouldn’t be large enough for long.

He closed his eyes. He would think about it when it was time.

Heinrich all but moved out to the fish farm afterwards. He loosed his bedroll on the dock and fell asleep listening to the waves beneath it. When the early autumn rain came, he tossed a tent up over his bedroll. But being wet was becoming his normal state. He cooked fish on a fire pit beside the dock and tossed Eleanor choice bits for her to snap up.

Exposure to the sun and the salt was weathering his skin, making it thicker. His nails grew long and he left his beard to grow out for days on end before he shaved it. Every morning, he still climbed into his rowboat with his net. Eleanor watched him from the safety of the nets until he returned.

One day, she wasn’t content to wait. As Heinrich rowed over the waves, she thrashed her tail, ducked beneath the surface, and flew out of the water in a great leap. She landed in the open water of the cove and swam out after his rowboat.

Heinrich exclaimed aloud and almost dropped his paddles as she came up alongside. “Impatient today, I see!” He huffed at the little shark as she swam. She was almost as long as he was tall and her frame had built itself up with muscle.

Eleanor flicked her tail and hovered in the water beside the rowboat. The message was clear, she was coming out with him.

“Stay out of the way of my net.” Heinrich told her. “I don’t want to catch you a second time.”

She almost seemed to nod and followed after the boat as he rowed into the center of the cove. When Heinrich dropped his anchor, she bobbed beside him and then vanished. She would reemerge occasionally, usually following fish jumping out of the water.

Heinrich fished up his usual catch of small fish and shrimps for the fish in the farm and watched for the telltale signs of Eleanor’s dorsal fin and the jumping fish desperate to get away from her. The implication was not lost on him. Sitting on the bench, he watched her hunt with a deep sadness building in his chest.

She could feed herself now. Soon she wouldn’t need him at all. Soon, she would swim off into the endless ocean and be gone forever.

Heinrich lingered in the rowboat until Eleanor drew close. When he offered her one of the fish from his nets, she took it and ate it, but in a positively dainty way. The polite nibbling of someone who wasn’t hungry.

Salt flowed down his worn cheeks. “It’s all right, Eleanor. You hunted well.” He tried to smile at her and took up his oars. The paddles felt heavier than they should as Heinrich rowed his way back to the dock and tied the rowboat up.

Over the next months, Heinrich stayed out with Eleanor, either on the dock or in the rowboat or submerged in the water of the cove. He should be preparing his salted fish stores for the winter storms. He should be pickling sea vegetables. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave Eleanor. Not for a moment now.

The dreams of his son disappearing into the waves returned, just as strong as before. He woke up at dawn every morning and heedlessly leapt into the netted off section of water. Eleanor was so used to it, she came directly to him when the splash woke her. Through the rest of the twilight, she would sleep pressed up to him and he would half-sleep with his hand holding onto the dock so he wouldn’t slip under until the day broke.

She returned to the fish farm every day after hunting. Leaping back over the edge of the net the same way she leapt out. Heinrich usually tossed out his net a few times for sport, but he’d taken to eating the fish from the other half of the fish farm for his meals. While he was out in the boat, he watched her.

She liked to leap out of the water as she chased after her prey and she was beginning to get an impressive height. One day, when she was feeling especially playful, she charged straight at the rowboat so fast that Heinrich worried she was going to crash into the side. At the last moment, she ducked under the surface and then popped out, flying up into the air, over his head, and down into the water on the opposite side.

Heinrich couldn’t help but laugh as she came up, tail flicking playfully. “Beautifully done, Eleanor. Full points.”

He dropped a hand into the water and tangled his fingers in her hair. She flicked her tail and splashed him in return, enjoying his touch and her freedom to move.

He wanted to ask her if she would come back, or if she even had plans to leave. But she had never shown any sign of speaking, and didn’t lift her head out of the water. Even if she understood his questioning, how would she answer?

As Winter closed in, Heinrich made his last pilgrimage up to the house to retrieve something special. A pendant on a golden chain, its face shining around a ruby the size of a pigeon’s egg. If her shining hair did her no harm, the pendant wouldn’t either.

The house was dusty and spiders had taken up residence in all the corners, Heinrich could hardly bring himself to care in his stained and torn shirt. He dug the priceless treasure out of its hiding place and carried it back to the ocean’s edge with trembling hands.

Eleanor was waiting, curious, because this was unusual. When she saw him come out, she clustered close to him and poked at the pendant and the chain with her claws.

“For you, Eleanor.” Heinrich tiredly set it around her neck and settled it. “So you remember me.”

He watched her play with the flashing gem, admiring the gold and touching it. He felt tired as he rested against the pile of the dock.

He woke with a start when he felt something touch his cheek. To his surprise, Eleanor was draping something around his neck. A necklace made of a piece of tough, stringy seaweed tied in knots around a shell.

Heinrich touched the scallop shell with reverent fingers. “…I never taught you that.”

Eleanor grasped his arm, dangling from it like she still needed to be towed about, even though she was much longer than he was tall now. The pendant seemed to have adhered to her soft skin, gripped close to her body even though it should have been loose in the water. Like she was born to wear it, like it was part of her.

Heinrich closed his eyes and remembered his son. His wife. Times when they were happy. What would Annalise think of him adopting a merpup?

Eleanor laid her head on his collarbone. She had grown up so fast. Neither of them could stop time, but Heinrich tried his best to etch this moment into his mind. To brand his memory with the feel of her cheek on his shoulder and the look of her eldritch near-humanity.

Heinrich paddled out into the cove slowly. Out at sea, he could see the first storm brewing. He wasn’t ready for it. He had no stores. No pickled vegetables, no salted or smoked fish. No flour to make bread or oats to boil for porridge. Not even any firewood stored up to cook. Even the fatted fish were eaten.

Eleanor swam close to the rowboat. She stayed nearby after Heinrich dropped his anchor. To encourage her, he cast out his net a few times, but it came up empty and he gave up. She stayed by the side of the boat, not fooled by his half-hearted attempts to fish. Eventually, she dove down beneath the surface and returned a moment later with a struggling fish in her mouth. And then, she did a very strange thing.

Eleanor grasped the side of the rowboat with her claws and breached the surface of the water. She dropped the fish into the boat, giving it a cruel death bite so it would lie still. Afterwards, she dropped beneath the surface and watched Heinrich with expectant eyes.

Heinrich looked at the fish, but it didn’t stir any hunger in him. Still, she had given him the fish. “Thank you, Eleanor.” He gutted it with his knife, tossing its organs into the water away from where the mershark was watching.

Eleanor slapped her tail against the side of the rowboat when he put it into his fish basket.

“It’s a lovely fish, Eleanor.” Heinrich assured her.

She slapped the boat again and it rocked.

“Oh, Eleanor…” Heinrich sighed. But if it would please her… He took the fish back out and held it where she could see.

She hovered under the surface, watching him, waiting.

Heinrich dug his teeth into the fish’s fillet, pulling a bit of flesh straight off of the bone. It was tastier than he would have expected. Perhaps eating nothing but roasted fish and sea vegetables had changed his taste buds. He used his long fingernails to tear off more of the fillet and to press the cheeks out of the fish’s head. Finally, he pursed his lips over the fish’s clear eyes and sucked. Eleanor was right to always make sure to eat them: They were delicious.

Wiping his mouth with his hand, Heinrich looked down at Eleanor. “A good fish, dear. A good fish.”

She disappeared beneath the surface.

Heinrich looked out to sea where grey clouds were looming. The storms would reach the cove by nightfall. Soon, the ocean would rise and the waves would rage. What would they toss up into the salt pools next year? Surely nothing so rarified as another merpup with golden curls.

Heinrich felt the boat rock beneath him and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked back at his house on the hill and realized it was smaller than before. The rowboat was moving.

Looking forward, Heinrich saw Eleanor’s tell-tale fin. She had bitten through the anchor rope and was towing the rowboat out to sea. She was gaining speed too. Soon they would be out of the cove. If he jumped overboard, he could still swim back to shore.

Heinrich sat right where he was and let her tow him into the storm.

Between the lashing of the waves and the lashing of the storm, Heinrich had long forgotten what it was to be dry. Eleanor stopped towing the rowboat to catch fish every day and would toss fish up to him to eat. Heinrich would toss over the skulls when he was done, just like she used to.

The fish must have been enough water for him, because Heinrich stopped being thirsty after their journey had gone on for some time. At first, he worried, but it wasn’t uncomfortable so he didn’t complain.

His clothes became rags and he shed them. He didn’t feel cold, and his skin was growing thicker and harder by the day. When he looked at his hands, they were hardened and gnarled, each one tipped by a claw.

One day, Eleanor stopped towing the rowboat early. She began to swim in rapid circles, dashing in and out of the water, all around the boat. The storm overhead rained into Heinrich’s eyes and made it hard to see why she was so excited.

Suddenly, there was an impact. Heinrich gripped onto the sides of the rowboat as something rammed into it. Looking over the side, he saw the barest glimpse of a tail. A shark’s tail, much larger and longer than Eleanor’s. Then there was a second impact from the other side and he was nearly tossed out. This time, he caught sight of a mako mer with black hair. She was a female, like Eleanor, with a scallop tied by seaweed around her neck. She passed under the boat as it rocked and out of sight.

Eleanor rushed the boat and tried to pull it over, using her weight to make it rock and bob. As she released it, Heinrich realized they were going to keep trying.

Heinrich thought of bracing himself, but it was no use. Instead of waiting for the three mer sharks to topple the boat, he stood up and leapt into the dark blue.

Letting himself sink, Heinrich heard the ocean’s storm above fall silent. He opened his eyes and stared into the blue void. Eleanor came up beside him and took his hand in hers, pulling him further under. His lungs ached with the pressure of his breath, so he let it go. His last breath streamed from him in a line of bobbing bubbles like jellyfish.

The larger mako came up on his other side. She looked almost exactly like Eleanor, except for her black hair. Beneath the waves, protected from the crash and the wail of the storm, Heinrich could hear clicking come from both sharks. It almost sounded like language to him.

He was either dying or dreaming. The third shark, larger than the other two, appeared directly above him and he looked into the eyes of his son. His son’s eyes in a grey-skinned face, staring at him unblinking. A scallop tied with a human-made cord was around the mer’s neck and his face was surrounded by a halo of golden sea curls.

Heinrich stared at him and released the last mouthful of air in his lungs. “Hodd.”

Fin.

#MerMay 2025 #Fiction #Lovecraft #Mermaid #Merman #Dark Aesthetic #ocean #writing #fantasy #horror #lovecraftian horror

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