#oarfish is the angel of travelers

[unholy-boi]

ocean angels

[random-tinies]

Sea and Sky and Stupid Decisions

hi there! bio anon here, wanted to post a thing i made in the mcyt g/t discord here. it was initially just a little prompt but it ended up spiraling out of control ;P this is about 1 parts noms story to 3 parts legend myth, because i haven’t any idea how to write noms without plot ;P

(thanks again for letting me submit this to you!!)

content warnings for: soft vore, fearplay, major injury (not delved into at all), blood (also not delved into much)

The sea is vast and unforgiving. It holds no master, it does not bargain or hold grudges, it simply takes and gifts as it pleases, a bringer of life and freedom and of death and deep crushing depths all at once. It is unknowable to mortal minds.

It can also, on occasion, be extremely stupid in its decision making.

The sea god, in the form of a vast whale shark, had been gliding through his domain with a peaceful certainty of his power. The sun beat down upon his vast spotted back, glittering the stripes of gold and emerald that signified his divinity along his fins. The vast open ocean was where he was most powerful, most tricky to deal with. Along the calmer coral reefs and kelp forests and shallow shores of his domain there was the certainty of land beneath you, even if it was buried under the ocean tides. In the open ocean you were a puppet to the playing tides, the world went on endlessly beneath and above you, and if you were in danger there was nothing you could do but plead to the ocean for a mercy that he never felt too inclined to give. 

The sea god had been making his way, with the endless patience of the filter feeder he was taking the form of, towards a tiny wooden boat bobbing like a toy atop his ocean. It was always fun to snap up a couple of mortals from their refuges at the surface, to remind them that their fear of the sea is not unfounded. It was a little surprising though that there was one all of the way out here - the main village trade routes generally kept to the shorelines in fear of his capricious nature. This mortal was either very brave or very lost.

It didn’t matter. The sea god swam languidly towards the tiny toy contraption, and however many creatures were inside of it.

He shifted into a sea serpent’s shape as he got closer, allowing the mortal the dubious honor of seeing its own doom approaching in the form of almost a kilometer long stretch of scales and fins, far more vast than even the greatest of the sea god’s creatures.

The psychic scent of a mortal in a deep panic, of a fearful and desperate prayer being sent out, made him grin. Then the sea god surfaced in a blast of surf and, in one bite, entrapped the boat and crushed the wooden frame like it was little more than a splinter. The sea god sank below the waves that were pushed up by his arrival, descending into the depths to play with this mortal.

The first thing he did was shrink down from his vast form into something a little more manageable. The scent of fear and terror and faster prayers (too late little mortal. You are in my domain now) made him decide on something that would tease even more terror from it. He chose an enormous shark, one with rows and rows of teeth that oh-so-carefully shredded the boat further, releasing the mortal from it and spitting out the remains of the pathetic ship. 

It flailed in his mouth, and he could feel the texture of feathers and wings. Perhaps the mortal had been bringing birds with it. Feathery little ground-fowl that were so beneath him he could hardly feel their presence. He amused himself in the mortal’s pathetic struggles for a moment longer, before opening his mouth and gulping in an enormous swallow of sea water that washed the mortal down into his gullet. It continued to struggle all the while, and he was starting to really like it’s fear. Just the tiniest hint of useless hope in the center of it to make it persist even when the mortal was all but dead. 

He swam for a long while in the indigo blue deep sea, indulging in the feeling of struggle and burning land-based life in the middle of his domain. But… hm, he could go more with this. The mortal had remained remarkably resilient and active in its useless hope, and he wanted to see if he couldn’t tease out any more reactions from it before it eventually perished.

He started slowly, shrinking from the enormous shark into a massive tuna fish with scales lined in emerald, and felt with it the movements of the mortal get arrested in his stomach. The once large space it had been flailing in had decreased dramatically, and he could tell it was nervous about that. 

Then he shrank further, into an oarfish with trailing fins of gold glitter. Its long snake-like body compressed the mortal further, and it had started struggling again for a different reason than before. The sea god whipped around joyously at the feeling, spurring from his erratic movements another wave of fear. 

Finally, the sea god shrank further still into the form of an elder guardian, its spiny scales shivering and clicking as the size of the mortal within him pushed out against the organs that crowded close around it. He lazily made his way back to the surface, the warm sun once again comforting on his back. He was done with this mortal, and the way it curled up tight within him was satisfying enough that he desired nothing more from it. Soon he would let it die, or descend further into the depths and allow the ocean to crush it more thoroughly than any animal’s stomach could. 

It was there, lying at the surface of the open ocean, shivering alabaster scales as the mortal seemingly never ran out of energy to push on the god around it, that the sea god was interrupted. 

And lo, the sky ripped asunder and the heavens fell and in their wake the Goddess of the Continuation After stepped upon the ocean god’s calm sea, shepherded not by her faithful acolyte.

And She said unto the ocean god -

“Release him from your grasp, he is not yours to take.”

And the ocean god smiled and transformed into an enormous dragonfish, and spoke to Her on the sea breeze.

“Deaths at sea are my domain, dear sister goddess. I do not tell you who not to take on land or sky, you should not insult me to insist you take from my oceans too.”

And She said in return, “that is my messenger and lover, my Angel who harkens my power. I demand his safe return to me.”

And the ocean god said - “wait shit really?”

If he weren’t so caught up in playing with the mortal in such a way, the sea god supposed he would have realized that the feathers that had tickled his mouth had continued to persist, pressed up against a wall of his stomach. Not a simple ground bird’s plumage, but a vast creature’s wingspan. Wings fit for an angel. 

It (he? The god supposed he would need to no longer think of it as a simple mortal) had renewed its struggles with more vigor than even before, hearing its Lady’s voice. 

Despite the sea god’s surprise and Her demands, he felt anger build in him. The angel had been foolish enough to travel his seas, he should accept the risks that are brought with it. She had allowed her attendant worshipper to leave Her all-seeing sight - clearly She didn’t care about it that much. Gods can be territorial over what they own, and clearly this was just a case of the sea god taking a toy that She decided She still wanted.

And so, in his infinite wisdom, the sea god bared jagged glass teeth at the Goddess of What Comes After and refused to relinquish the angel to Her. 

“I am fond of Your angel now. He has travelled with me to the depths of the ocean, and witnessed my power and myriad of beautiful creatures. I think I would like to keep him, dear sister.”

The Goddess raised Her wings of ebony and jet, and scavenging carrion birds that did not belong in the domain of the open ocean fled from Her and trailed into the sky.  She said to the sea god - 

“Do not become a fool, brother god. You will let my Angel go, or I may tear him from your gut. I will scatter your blood to all of the oceans of the world, and let your own creations feast upon you as you have feasted upon what is Mine.”

The sea god dropped his guise of the beasts of the sea, and in the form of a man wrought in gold and emerald he rose from the waters to stand before the Lady of the Lost. The two mighty gods clashed, tearing the sea and sky with their battle as the Goddess seeked to take back what was Her’s and the sea god desired to keep what he had claimed.

Their struggle only ended when the Angel, fearful and hurt by the pain his Lady had received in the fight and the harm that had come to himself from within the sea god, cried out. The Goddess of the Unforgiving Conclusion drew up a vast sword of midnight and tore the sea god open from the back.

From the god’s divine blood, the Angel emerged unharmed from his Goddess’ attack, and fled from the grasp of the wounded sea god into the great swarm of carrion birds that circled above.

The Goddess cast the sea god into the dark depths of the ocean, and wiped her sword of deep black clean. Where the droplets of divine blood hit the earth, all over the world, lay the tiniest portion of the sea god’s power in totems of gold and emerald. Where it hit the sea great pyramids of prismarine grew around it to celebrate its power. Now with his power broken into a thousand pieces, the sea god fled into the depths of the ocean, and he knew himself to be foolish for having tried to fight Her.

He never was quite the same from that day forward. The sea, his domain, was never fully his anymore. The wound along his back, struck to slice his gut open and release the mortal, never truly healed and even in the many shapes of the creatures of the sea it was still visible as a deep black scar. 

In penitence for his childish stupidity he stepped up onto the shores that he had so despised for so long and, in the form of both a shark and a man, he tried to learn about the mortals that lived outside of his open ocean waters for the first time. 

He had been foolish, and as such he didn’t deserve to rule the seas he had before. Perhaps though, one day, he can regain this title. Perhaps he could be reborn into this role, if the Lady so permits.

If the Angel forgives him, he may find his way back to the sea again.

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AAAAAAAAAAAA *stimming on my desk* THIS IS SO COOL???? BIO, THIS IS AWESOME OIHUGYUFT I’M HONORED TO POST IT HERE 🤩 HOW?? DO YOU WRITE SUCH MASTERPIECES???? THIS IS SUCH AN AMAZING ORIGIN MYTH FOR TOTEMS AND OCEAN MONUMENTS AND FOOLISH!!! I will be thinking about this for days. Incredible uwu Thank you so much for blessing us all ohuigyuty GAh THIS MAKES ME HAPPY!!