OPULENCE.

Julian’s people are dying. Drowning or being torn apart among the insatiable desire of the mermaids, to feel something. He cannot find his sister. Pasha, his sweet Pasha, could not be found. The Captain cries that she is dead, fallen among the stormy sea.

He cannot focus, for singing fills the air. It is the only sound consuming besides the sea’s raging, and the grunts of those who struggle across the deck.

Such beautiful singing that is far, far better than the greatest bard’s, who they had captured in the cells below. The bard was surely was dying, dying like this world. 

He follows the voice; so high and sweet. It promises peace, it promises freedom. It is the dawn breaking among darkness, in the brilliance of gold and pink.

He finds her.

A tail of dusk; scales of red fading into purple, then into darkness, swaying with the raging storm. A woman, golden and brown, lingering by a rowboat. Her dark purple lips part again and again, exposing sharp rows of teeth as she sings and sings.

Julian drops to a knee, arms resting against the wooden edge of the dinghy. His gaze is almost, almost fond among these peaceful moments.  The sun is forgotten behind darkening clouds. The little light birthed, illuminates the creature of the sea.

He thinks he is grasping his boyhood again. As a little child, he could only dream of such tales of such vivid beauty. Pasha always whispered how wonderful it would be to fall in love with a mermaid, to live forever among the sea.

“You look like her.” the mermaid says, her melody ending; her gaze is cold, cold as the depths of the sea. It is just as red as the blood of Julian’s crew mates—red as the plague beetles scuttling over the previous Captain’s body, among the belly of the ship. “She calls herself Pasha, before she became one of us.”

Julian swallows nothing, gaze wide as the moon and wild. He cannot help but to lean, lean in. He reaches, for fingers to curl into purple locks.

“What about me?” his voice is hoarse, and his throat is raw from his own howls. Time has stretched into eons. He does not know how this dawn has lasted for days and days, this nightmare twisting into eternity.  He remembers how to be wild, among these moments. Her beauty chokes him. He could choke on his own words, his tongue yearning to speak of the forbidden.

Nadia smiles a wide smile; sharp teeth exposed in her lips stretching from cheek to cheek. Her laughter is harsh and sweet, all at once. She swims closer, closer—for her arms to curl around his neck.

“Give me your heart,” she whispers. “Give me your all. I will not leave you wanting.”

He relents.

She tastes like the salt of tears, she tastes like heaven—she tastes like wine, when her lips seek his.

He cannot ever recall feeling so cold when he sinks into the watery depths of the sea. She drags him down, down to the sandy seabed. His spine breaks underneath guilt, as his body cracks and twists into an abomination.

This is the sweetest death, he thinks, as he screams to the fathomless abyss of the sea; water filling lungs. The mermaid, beautiful as the dusk in purple hair and scales, kisses and kisses his pain away as a clawed hand sinks into his chest.

She tears herself apart as within the cavern of her chest; she rests her prize. Half of his heart. She bleeds and bleeds, as the sea knits flesh back together. She smiles and smiles when she releases her grasp on him. She drifts around him, slowly as she sings and sings her song of adoration.

She watches how he writhes, how he twitches, how he screams his strangled screams among her home.

He breathes eventually when gills bloom and form upon his neck. Legs are no longer legs but a tail of black scales. She kisses him again when he ceases his screams.

“One of us, one of us,” she sings, among the deafening pull of the sea.

She carries his burden, of a heavy heart. It is an ugly thing, his heart. It feels too much, too quickly. Guilt of far too many things plague it.

He feels how his heart beats and beats when a hand seeks to rest upon her chest.

“Mine?” his whispers are hushed.

“Yours,” she says with gentle laugh. She feels so, so full. She did not have to bring him to death’s grasp, for death to choke and choke for a heart. Half of a heart was enough. “You have a beautiful heart. Much pleased am I, that I did not eat it.”

How rare, how wonderful was it to feel your own heart in another’s body.