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Hello! Bit of a specific question, and you may have answered something similar to this already, but how would a scenario go if after being resurrected Death finally reunites with the reader only to find them much older than when he last saw them?
(Just turned 26 a week ago and have been waiting for this boi to come back since I was 12, so this ask is TOTALLY not inspired by that đ)
Tysm for your time! â¤ď¸
When Death felt the stubborn hammer of life come slamming down onto his chest, jerking him into the waking world once more, he was aware of only two things.
First, the Seventh Seal must have been broken. How else would he be lurching upright on the dusty ground with a raw and ragged gasp when - moments ago, it seemed - he'd been plummeting into The Well of Souls, his final glimpse of the world above centred on your face where you threw yourself to the ground at the lip of the Well, features frozen in a scream that pulled your expression taut with horror and anguish for a Horseman who'd never thought his loss would be grieved.
That was his second startling realisation.
You.
Where were you?
Last he knew, he'd appealed to the Crowfather's lingering soul, asking the Old One to return you safely to the Forge Lands and the makers who were likely waiting to envelope you into their fold with open arms.
Would you still be there? How much time had passed? And what of Earth?
All questions, he realised, that would sadly have to wait. Because War was suddenly looming over him, gauntlet outstretched, inviting their eldest to stand.
As Death grasped his brother's hand and used it to haul himself from the ground, he made a silent promise.
He'd find you, wherever you were. He didn't yet know how time had moved around him while he was 'dead,' but if you were out there, if your soul still remembered him, he'd find you and keep you as close as he had before the Well was opened.
It is, as you'd told him many times, what friends are for.
You couldn't rightly say you know if the years have been kind to you or not. It's hard to gauge when you see yourself change so slowly, every day, little by little. More hairs growing in around your jaw, more wrinkles settling beneath your eyelids, the one at the corner of your mouth that betrays the side of your face you tend to favour when you smile.
You don't think you've changed that much. Not really. You're still the same human who made friends with a race of giants. You're still the same human who helped a dead man feel alive again. Who forced an angel to live with his crimes rather than die without ever getting the chance to mend them. Who looked a Prince of Hell in the eye and thanked him for the Demon Key.
Who called an ancient, eldritch Horseman 'friend.'
You still miss him.
It's been years... decades even, and there isn't a day goes by that you don't think of Death in some capacity.
So, it's no surprise that you're thinking about him today as you doze in your favourite chair, the one you'd lugged here from several streets over so you could position it to face the setting sun, casting golden light in through glass panes and warming you where you sit amongst the tartan cushions.
You're tired now. More tired than you were when you young. Tired of rebuilding, tired of being Humanity's mouthpiece when there's tension between the races. Tired of being dragged from pillar to post by cold politicians who think that they still have power just because they used to enjoy it in the Old World.
You're not tired of waiting though, not for Death. Perhaps because you know, sooner or later, in some unknowable way, you'll be seeing him again when your clock ticks over.
Your head begins to nod, your lap sun-warmed and comfortable, when there's a sudden commotion at the door to your home. You flinch at the loud 'slam,' like someone has just thrown it open and let the handle crash brazenly into the adjacent wall.
Your eyes fly open at the same time as your hand flies to the knife in your pocket, gifted to you by your Horseman all those years ago.
'In case of an emergency,' he'd said as he pressed the beautifully crafted dagger into your palm, it's blade borrowed from one of Harvester's jagged edges.
It's the cold that reaches you first, a bone-deep chill that sweeps into the room ahead of any entity. At first, you think it's just the autumn wind blowing through the open door... but then there's a dark shape slinking into the entryway, a pair of embers glowing side by side in the air as they duck beneath the wooden frame.
... And then you're dropping your knife to the carpet and letting out a loud, wet gasp, both hands shooting up to cup around your mouth.
You'd never seen Death without his mask before, but you'd recognise the Horseman in front of you whether he were wearing it or not. The translucence of his skin like that of a fresh corpse... The cold that rolls off his bulging shoulders in waves, as if warmth itself is trying to escape his presence... Long, matted hair pitched darker than oil... And his face, until this point, completely unknown to you, is as sallow and sunken as you always imagined it would be.
The bone-mask he used to wear now sits safely on your bedside table, entrusted to you that day he gave himself to the Well in exchange for the souls of humanity.
He's the most beautiful sight you've ever laid eyes on.
"Y/n...?" his gentle voice wafts uncertainly into the space between you, sending tears over the edge of your lashes to cascade down your cheeks and dip between your fingertips.
It strikes you that, of course he'd be uncertain...
You've... changed.
He's still him. Still Death, with all his wonderful imperfections that were always there from the moment you first met him.
Yours, however, are new. A different body, a different face, similar of course, yet... it isn't the You that he knew. Suddenly, inexplicably, you find yourself feeling just a little self-conscious as his golden eyes rake over you from head to toe, and you move a hand away from your mouth to scrape some hair behind your ear. It shouldn't matter to you, you scold yourself sternly. Your friend is alive. He's alive, and he's here and -
Death doesn't even wait for you to confirm that it is you. He'd know your soul even if you changed so much that you couldn't recognise yourself.
In two short strides, he's crossed the room and flung his sinewy arms out wide, swinging them around your back and wrenching you forwards into his chest with such ferocity, it knocks the wind out of your lungs.
"I... I-!" You can't find the words as he buries his face - his real face - into the side of your neck. You can feel the hard ridge of his nose sweep back and forth over your skin, pressing firmly against you as if he can't get close enough even with his massive hands clinging feverishly to the back of your jumper, anchoring himself to you like he expects you to disappear at any moment.
"Too long," he whispers harshly into your ear, "It's been too long..."
It's far more of a firm and unyielding statement than any kind of pleasantry. It has been too long. So, to remediate the error, Death is holding onto you like he never plans on letting any more time pass without you by his side again.
You try not to let that go to your head.
And then he's pulling his head away from you, and his fingers untangle themselves from your jumper to slide from your back and ghost shakily up your arms until he's clasping the sides of your neck and tucking his thumbs beneath your jawline, tilting your head backwards so he can stare down at you, starstruck.
For several, long moments, you're caught there, peering into his eyes as he lets his travel the new contours of your face. Only this time, you can see his thin lips, dark like a purpled bruise, stretch into a blindingly fond smile.
"Look at you..." he croaks thickly as a calloused thumb scrubs at the tear-stained skin below your eye, "I... I wasn't sure I'd be lucky enough to see this face again..."
Huffing out a wet laugh, you give your head a tiny shake and reply, "That's my line." And as you speak, you raise your own hands, guiding them around his wrists and edging them towards his exposed face.
You still have enough forethought to pause though, letting your trembling fingers hover just above the hollows of his cheeks before you ask, "Could I....?"
The Horseman only snorts, his grin inching wider as if he'd expected nothing less of you, and then he tips his head sideways, seeking out the warmth of your fingertips until you're cupping his head in one palm and using the other to carefully brush his hair away from his face.
In an instant, Death melts against you with a contented rumble from deep inside his chest, which really goes to show just how badly he's been missing you because there was a time you'd risk losing a finger if they wandered too close to his mouth.
"You stayed..." he whispers drunkenly, and for the first time, you have to wonder how long he's been looking for you.... You don't think you've ever seen the Horseman look this haggard.
"Stayed?" you ask.
"You're still here," he says, "You're still alive... I thought..." Heaving a sigh that you feel against your skin for the first time, he leans his pockmarked cheek more heavily against your hand and admits, "I thought I might have been too late..."
Bemused, you scoff, "I'm know I'm old, but I'm not that old."
"Hah," he chuckles breathlessly, his eyes hooded and admiring, "You could live to be a hundred, and I'd hardly consider you 'old."
"Well, no. But this is coming from the oldest man in the Universe."
For your cheek, you're rewarded with the soft bump of his chin where it knocks against your forehead.
The heart in your chest squeezes furiously, and your face crumples as you tip forwards into the Horseman, slinging your arms around his emaciated waist whilst he slides his hands down to the small of your back, unwilling to let any bit of him part from you for even a second.
"You haven't changed a bit," you tell him, voice muffled against his cold chest.
You feel the rumble under the Horseman's sternum travel up his throat before you hear him say, "Neither have you."
Admittedly, you blurt out a laugh. "Oh, are you kidding? I'm aging like leftovers."
Deathâs abdomen jumps beneath you as he chuckles fondly and adds, âAnd what a privilege that is.â
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If death ever got into a serious relationship with y/n after the events of CHWH, would he ever love again after she dies?
I think realising that he was, in fact, capable of loving and being loved once would make Death a little more open to the concept of falling in love again after the agony of your absence stops consuming him like a howling miasma.
You showed him it was possible, you were the human who made a Nephilim - the oldest Nephilim - realise that love isn't some dismissible, negligible force.
He's seen you wield it as effectively as he'd wield his scythes, but there was a stark difference: You didn't know how adept you were at loving.
He's seen you move the makers with it, he's seen it move the dead. Maybe Love is neither beneath him nor beyond him at all, and as that little voice at the back of his head that sounds so uncannily like yours is always reminding him; Death is the loneliest soul in the Universe. But he doesn't have to be.
Set in a world where merfolk and humans are well-acquainted with one another, you've been given a job as litter-picker at The Four Corners Research and Conservation Institute, home to one of the largest and strangest Mers ever recorded. And you've just been tasked to clean up his territory.
Fluff, mentions of bullying, soft War, demeaning language, giant/tiny.
6500 words.
Mostly a call-back to this old-ass art I did of War as a giant crab some years ago.
If youâd have known that accepting the job your cousin secured you would have you working directly alongside the same girl whoâd spent most of her school years serving as your personal antagonist, you might have just declined the offer and moved on to the next application.
Abby has been wearing a face of thunder ever since she walked into your supervisorâs office this morning - doubtless fully expecting to see some fresh-faced new hire sheâd been tasked to chaperone - and instead seeing you, the butt of her jokes and an awkward reminder of the unkinder facets of her person.
Of course, your school days are years behind you, and you're not about to hold past behaviour over her head, not when you've both grown since then.
But even now, nearly an hour after your induction, everything about her exudes a pot threatening to boil over as she prowls ahead of you up the sandy stretch of beach running adjacent to a north-facing precipice.
She's angry, whether at you or the situation, you're too worried about keeping this job to ask why.
The Four Corners Research and Conservation Institute is the first place that actually responded to your application without including a template rejection in the bulk of their email, though you're under no illusions that it's only thanks to your cousin being a high-ranking member on the Board that your CV was given a second glance at all.
When the bills are due and the fridge is bare, nepotism stops looking so much like an unprincipled decision.
Besides, it eases your conscience to know that you haven't been handed a high-skill position over someone more qualified.
When you applied, you thought you'd be given the role of a cleaner at their public-facing aquarium.
Instead...
âLitter-picker.â Not immediately a glamourous title, but it's vital work, a fact impressed upon you by your new Boss, Mr Stevensmith when he told you you'd be clearing the beach and habitat of one of their largest exhibits.
âNo end of detritus washes up along that beach,â heâd told you with no small air of disdain, âBeing caught in a bay doesnât help. The current carries it all down from that new resort up the coast. So, itâs your job to make sure Warâs habitat stays pristine⌠Canât have our sponsors thinking we donât take care of their investments, now can we?â
War⌠An apt name for the largest - and scariest - merfolk ever recorded. You, like most of the public, barely know a thing about him beyond what youâd heard on the News nearly ten years ago, save that heâs the last of his kind. Crab-merfolk are uncommon enough, but a king crab?
Abby has driven you deep into his habitat, where magnificent stone cliffs plunge nearly a thousand feet down into the wind-trap of a bay.
The old truck you'd arrived in is parked right up against the wall of rock a hundred yards behind you on the sand, marking the start of your new job, and your only ride in or out of this vast stretch of territory.
Just being here, hemmed in on one side by a sweeping wall of rock and on the other by a tempestuous ocean, you canât help but feel daunted by the work laid out ahead of you.
Abby, for her part, seems more than content to let you pick up her slack, stomping past the majority of the litter and only pausing long enough to stab her picker into an empty bottle or two, leaving most of it behind her for you to collect.
The rain has been pelting you relentlessly since you hopped out of the jeep, drenching you from head to toe within mere minutes despite the waterproof parka buffeting around you in the howling wind.
You keep your head bowed, eyes squinted and your lashes dripping wet as you scan across the sand for anything manmade, keeping your footprints more or less pointed in the same direction that Abby is wandering.
You're almost relieved when you happen to raise your head for a spell and find that she's leading you directly to the colossal mouth of a cave that's sunk deep inside the cliffs.
At the back of your mind, you catch yourself wondering if you'll see any glimpses of War while you're here. He may be enormous, that much is a given, but you've also heard how reclusive he is.
As if she's sensed that your gaze has lifted, Abby twists around to peer over a shoulder and points at the cave, shouting back to you, barely audible above the wind, "Head in there and see what the damage is! I'll scope out the beach further along and find you in a minute!"
Youâre surprised, if pleased, that sheâs at least addressing you now.
Acknowledging her with a hearty thumbs-up, you veer away from her boot prints and stagger unevenly for shelter, blown to and fro by the gale. It's certainly a novel environment to work in, but you'll take this maelstrom a thousand times over before you ever sidle back behind that office desk and pick up the phone to deal with customer complaints.
Cold, wet, but ultimately buoyed, you pick up your feet and trot beneath the caveâs yawning overhang, letting your tight shoulders unfurl as the rain stops beating down on the back of your skull.
Almost instantly, you're hit by the nose-curling stench of salt and fish.
And it doesn't take more than a moment to figure out where it's coming from.
Just inside the entrance, you trail to a stop, blinking rivulets of rainwater from your eyes and breathing out a long, trembling exhale steeped in unabashed awe.
There, towering monolithically against the furthest wall, is the largest Mer thatâs ever walked the Earth and all of its oceans.
Your heart leaps into your throat so violently that you almost choke on the damn thing, gaping like a guppy as your eyes roll up the underside of a pale carapace, over two colossal claws as red as freshly-spilled blood, and finally land on the face of what could pass for a man were he sixty-three feet shorter⌠and walked on two legs instead of sixâŚ
War; a merfolk with the lower half of an Alaskan king crab and the upper half of a brawny, mountainous man, sans his left arm. Thereâs a vast, empty space where the limb used to be, cut raggedly just below the shoulder, and long-since healed to leave a swathe of lumpy, white scar tissue in the place of muscle and meat.
Heâs an absolute juggernaut of a beast, standing nearly seventy feet tall and as wide as a manor house.
His skin is almost translucent in its paleness, though what colour it does retain is mostly due to the contrast it plays against the incredible lengths of stark-white hair that cascade like twin waterfalls from the crown of his head down to a tremendous chest riddled with a myriad of scars.
âSkin as white as leprosyâŚ,â you marvel.
The waves crashing furiously against the shore as the wind picks up outside seems the perfect allusion to Coleridgeâs lengthiest work.
All of a sudden, it occurs to you that for the whole time youâve been gawping up at him, he in turn has been glowering back down at you, the deep crevasse between his ice-white brows growing deeper and deeper by the second.
Itâs the realisation that youâre being decidedly rude that wrenches you from your stupor.
 âI-Iâm sorry!â you blurt out, raising your voice so he might actually hear you, âI didnât realise you were in here! I thought youâd be-â Pausing to cast a quick glance over your shoulder, you peer out at the dark, grey ocean roaring ever closer to the cave. The tide, gradual as it is, continues to eat its way up the beach.
Turning back to the Mer, you raise a thumb and knock it awkwardly at the sea behind you. âI thought youâd be in thereâŚâ
War... doesnât react.
He barely even blinks those cold, blue eyes at you, just glares hotly in your direction, though heâs so vast and his eyes are so devoid of human features like an iris or pupil, he could very well be glaring at something else entirely.
You donât venture any further inside, hovering restlessly at the threshold where the dull light still falls on you from above, and the shadow from the caveâs overhang stays just a few inches in front of the toes of your boots.
âIâm Y/n,â you call up to War instead, figuring itâs best to get introductions out of the way while youâre at it, âIâm new to the team. Beach clean-up, though Iâm sure you could already tell!â Holding your picker out in front of you, you give the handle several squeezes, clacking the âclawsâ together a few times demonstratively.
All at once, the colossal Mer's head tilts sideways at the display, his brows easing apart inch by inch until his face is set more by surprise than agitation.
Alhough it's difficult to tell where those pupilless eyes are peering, you think he's studying your litter-picker, and with a bemused smile, you keep it suspended in mid-air, letting a smile bloom across your face when his own claws flex open and shut several times over, producing dull, thumping clacks that resonate off the high walls of the cave.
He's copying you.
You presume thatâs a good sign.
âMay I come in?â you ask, gesturing loosely at the cave in front of you.
Somehow, the colossal crustacean manages to portray an even more potent expression of surprise, his snowy-white brows launch up his forehead and his lips part just enough to offer you the barest glimpse of huge, flat teeth sitting inside his maw.
You're busy parsing why he might be taken aback by such an innocuous question when there's a sharp voice in your ear.
"What are you doing?"
Your ensuing yelp blasts through the cave and bounces off its damp, glistening walls.
In response, War reacts with a growl loud as a thunderclap, stamping his front legs firmly against the sand as his scowl falls right back into place, aimed over your head.
Whirling around, you come face to face with a very disgruntled, very sodden Abby, who's glaring at you from under her sharply arched brows.
Floundering for a second, you struggle to find your tongue as you shoot a fleeting glance back at War. "I'm... asking him if I can come in?"
Pushing out a rough exhale, Abby rolls her eyes so hard you're surprised they don't end up behind her skull. Tutting loudly, she brushes past you, striding right into the cavern and missing the way your jaw falls open to gape after her, alarmed.
You haven't known a great many merfolk, but those you have met operate no differently than humans for the most part, in that they'd prefer strangers not invite themselves into their homes.
Then, of course, you remember that unlike you, she's been doing this job for some time now, and it would stand to reason that she and War have a rapport, of sorts, though a quick glance up at the Mer's face contradicts your reasoning almost immediately.
For as unnerving as his glare was when it was aimed at you, now that Abby is in the firing line, the mer looks downright ferocious.
His lips have been peeled back to expose teeth and gums alike, and a pair of canines flash menacingly as he snaps them at her, a throaty rumble slowly bubbling to life from somewhere deep inside his chest and spilling out into the cave.
At once, you heed the unspoken warning and stumble backwards a few, respectful steps, sending your co-worker a nervous shout.
"Um, Abby?"
However, you're struck dumb when she not only ignores you, but is apparently content to disregard the titanic mer who's taking very clear umbrage to her presence.
Before you can call out to her again though, you catch her exasperated sigh from all the way back at the entrance.
"You're gonna find out pretty quickly that this guy isn't like other mers you've met," she tells you waspishly as she spins on a heel to face you, kicking up the sand under her boots.
Her expression darkens when she realises you haven't followed her. "Oh my god, will you get over here?!"
The demand sends a jolt right through you and notches War's grumbling up another few decibels. "You're never gonna last at this job if you don't have a backbone!"
... Honestly you think your trepidation has less to do with a lack of spine and more to do with acknowledging that War clearly doesn't want either of you in here.
Biting your lip, you wonder if the earful you're bound to get for questioning her authority will be worth it to voice your concerns.
"I-it just seems like he really doesn't want us here," you dare to gamble, inadvertently drawing War's attention. You have no idea if it's a good or bad sign that his growl falls silent the moment you finish speaking.
"I mean," you falter as Abby crosses her arms over her chest, "This is his territory. Shouldn't we leave if he tells us to? Maybe we could come back after we've cleaned the beach?"
Letting out a sharp, derisive scoff, she mocks, "Tells us?' War can't tell us anything. He doesn't speak."
Taken aback, you blink at her, eventually asking, "What, like he can't talk?"
"Uh. He never has?" she mimics your baffled tone right back at you, condescending.
You suppose it isn't altogether unsurprising that War can't speak. Plenty of humans can't either.
"Besides," she adds impatiently, "Ironically, he's all bark, no bite. He'll growl at you, sure, but he won't do anything."
Your brows furrow in a flash. You're not worried that he'll do something, he's a mer, not a monster. You'd just rather not upset The Four Corner's most lauded person any further than you already have.
"Honestly," Abby says whilst you reluctantly traipse towards her, keeping your head low in deference to the titan staring you down, "He's dumb as a rock. All brawn, no brain. Doesn't understand a word we say. Even Mister Stevensmith says he's more like an animal than a mer anyway. So it's not like it matters what we do."
"Jeez, Abby," you chuckle uncomfortably, hoping you're doing a good enough job of hiding the objection in your tone, "He's right here."
Which is, evidently, the wrong thing to say. Abby's demeanour shifts on a dime, her chin thrusting forwards and her eyes growing hard and cold.
"I'm sorry," she bristles, "Who's been working here the longest?"
Your mouth snaps shut at once, and you're too busy staring at her to notice the snarl twitching back onto War's face as he glowers at her.
Clearing your throat, you tentatively reply, "You, but-"
"-That's right," she cuts you off smoothly, her mouth twisting into a disdainful grin, "And, um, who's the nepo-hire who just started today?"
Alright, you swallow thickly, score one for Abby... Just like the good old days, you suppose.
While you don't appreciate being patronised, the nerve she's just flicked is still relatively raw, and you know all too well that throwing your weight around and bickering with your co-workers won't do you any favours in the long run.
You would quite like to be happy working here...
The hit to your pride might sting, but you're old enough to let it roll off your back, giving her a patient response. "That'd be me."
"Cool. So, are you gonna stop questioning me and actually learn what your job here is, or...?"
This time, you force a smile, letting it stretch awkwardly wide to suit a begrudging compliance. "If you'd be so kind...."
"Right, now that you're done slacking off..."
Somewhere overhead, War pushes a rough exhale through his nostrils, though he once again goes ignored by his keeper.
"Clean up any trash the tide's brought in here, don't forget that corner-" Here, she jerks a thumb at the very corner that's currently occupied by a prickling mer.
Gulping, you nod, dragging your gaze off War and quirking a brow at your co-worker. "Got it... Anything else?"
Fishing her mobile from one of her pockets, she busies herself with peering blankly at the screen for a moment, making a good show of disregarding your question before she heaves a put-upon sigh and thrusts the phone back into her jacket.
Then, with a hiss of footsteps over sand, you abruptly find yourself staring at the back of her head as she makes her way towards the entrance.
"I'm gonna go clean up the rest of the beach," she tells you dismissively, "You stay and finish up in here... Oh, and just ignore War. He'll definitely be ignoring you."
It isn't as if you'd been expecting something more encouraging... or informative... but Abby simply takes her leave without any further prompt, disappearing through the cave's mouth and venturing out to brave the howling wind.
You might have been slightly more put out if it hadn't just occurred to you that she's out there, battling through the rain and cold, while you're in here where the wind can't reach you, and icy water won't encroach upon your work.
You can't help but wonder if she did that on purpose...
Suddenly, your opinion of her shifts on its axis, and a small, grateful smile worms its way across your face.
Seems there's a chance she isn't the same girl you knew all those years ago after all, despite the frosty reception.
Shaking off the guilt of assuming the worst of your new co-worker, you draw in a deep, steadying breath and pivot around to your audience of one, offering the Mer a sheepish grin and a wave, both of which go unreturned.
Abby's instruction to ignore him flies out the proverbial window. The barest common courtesy you can afford is to acknowledge him in his own house.
"Right then, War," you begin pleasantly, bending to hoist your half-full trash bag off the ground, "I guess Iâll make a start. If you need anything... Well, I mean I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to get my attention."
With an amenable chuckle, you nod deliberately at the claws hanging from his carapace.
War follows your gaze, blinking down at his own appendages while you amble over to the wall nearest the entrance, deigning to work anti-clockwise as you go and clean the cave section by section.
It's menial work. Satisfying. The space grows cleaner with every piece of litter you grab and stash in the bag.
You find yourself paying no mind to War, trusting that the mer will let you know if he wants or doesn't want you to do something. Next time, you muse, you'll have to bring some headphones.
You manage to clear all of five metres from your starting point when the ground beneath you gives a sudden lurch, as if something heavy just crashed to the earth behind you, staggering you slightly on your boots.
"What the-?!" Startled, you wheel about to see what happened, only to find one of War's pointed legs buried in the sand just a foot away from you.
Staring at in in astonishment, you eventually tear your gaze off it and peer up the vast length of a crab's body until you get to War's face, half obscured by his silvery, cascading hair. His eyes are just as wide as yours must be, watching you with his lips downturned.
"Er," you swallow uncertainly, "You okay...? Need something?"
But the titan just keeps his eyes locked on you for several beats of your thumping heart, his entire body stiff and unmoving.
... Alright then...
Bemused, you let out a soft snort and turn back to the task at hand, zeroing in on another piece of litter laying a few metres ahead.
Just as you reach it, you feel the ground quake behind you once more, though this time, the vibration is followed quickly by five moresolid thuds.
You're being followed, it seems... By something with six legs that are as tall as houses...
Frankly, you don't know whether to be amused or intimidated. He must be exceptionally cautious about letting a stranger have free rein in his territory.
Shoulders jumping with a well-meaning huff, you shake your head and carry on, smiling softly to yourself.
Time and again though, as soon as you venture past a certain, unseen threshold, War becomes intent on closing the distance, sticking to you like a limpet yet never once making a sound or trying to get your attention.
You could have sworn Abby said he'd ignore you...
"Making sure I'm doing a thorough job, huh?" you joke breezily after a few minutes of being shadowed, straining your neck back to flash him a sidelong wink, "Well, not to worry. I'm sure you'll let me know if I miss a spot...Then Iâll be out of your shell in a jiffy."
You're swivelling away from him too quickly to catch the curious tip of his head.
"Although come to think of it," you murmur aloud to yourself, frowning at the vast scatterings of rubbish coating the cave and piling up against the walls, "For a place that's cleaned bi-weekly, this cave has a lot of stuff built-up..."
The brows on your forehead scurry together as you ponder, "Maybe someone ought to have a word with that resort if they're letting this much crap come off their beaches..."
Whilst you're busy contemplating, War lifts his massive head and starts to move again.
The moment he does, you immediately fall still, eyeing him warily as he ambles past you like a massive glacier rolling over the landscape. Each step he takes is slow and measured, sidling around you to bustle further into his cave.
Cocking a brow, you regard him questioningly as he stops by a pile of trash and uses his claws to scoop sand, an empty bottle, an old shoe, and several scraps of plastic into an awkward hold, lifting them with far more dexterity than you thought he'd possess.
The expression on his face is determined, and once he deems his claw-ful secure, he scuttles right back over to you, bringing himself to a neat halt once he gets close enough, casting his gaze to the side.
Then, gradual as a big, red frigate lazing over the ocean, he extends his claws towards you, letting them hover at your height for a moment before he starts to slide them apart, letting sand hiss through the pincers until it's followed by solid 'plaps' and 'patters' of trash following suit.
The pile builds steadily just in front of you as you watch on, gobsmacked.
"Wh- Uh...!" Clearing your throat, you dart a quick look between War's face and the mini-heap, and ask, "What're you up to?"
As if in reply, he slips off again, returning moments later with another load of scrap, and this too, he drops to the ground at your feet.
You're almost too stunned to speak, working your tongue into a molar at the back of your mouth as you puzzle over his bizarre behaviour, wondering why he'd bring the trash closer to you if you're going to be cleaning it up anyw-...
And then it hits you.
"Wait." A charmed smile burrows into your cheeks as you thrust out a hip and shoot him a knowing look. "Are you...? Do you want to help?"
And then War - the Mer who is supposedly 'dumb as a rock, and doesn't understand a word you say' - tips his huge, square chin down before bringing it back up.
He repeats the motion once, then twice, and on the third, a lightbulb finally clicks on in your head.
"You do?" you press, eager to see if he'll do it again.
And he does.
He nods.
Oh, you knew it. You knew Abby was messing with you! A little hazing for the Newbie's first day... Well, you can't say you weren't somewhat expecting that.
Must have been why War was scowling at her so viciously when she called him dumb. He wasn't in on the joke.
The sudden about-face in his behaviour is staggering, though not at all unwelcome.
Something in the way youâve been holding your shoulders loosens as you rest a hand at your side and sigh out a note of relief, letting one corner of your mouth crook up. "You know you don't have to, right?" you tell him, "I mean, I'm basically being paid to be your housekeeper right now."
In response, War just angles his head to one side, regarding you with a funny look before he raises the shoulder of his remaining arm in a recognisable shrug.
As he does, he plants a claw in the ground just behind the pile of trash, nudging it forwards so the heap is pushed soundly closer to your feet.
Well then.
"If you insist," you concede easily, shaking open your rubbish bag.
The Mer's permanant scowl eases a fraction as you begin picking things out of the pile and dropping them into the bag, and with a clack of his pincers, he's off again, casting his appendages out wide to scoop an even larger heap of detritus onto the flat edge of his claws.
You'll admit, having a giant Mer to ferry all the litter straight into one spot makes for much faster cleaning, and in just under an hour, you've already filled two binbags to the brim, and you're well on your way to stuffing a third all the way to the top.
Naturally, you're inclined to thank him after every delivery, and the way his chest puffs out each time bolsters your mood to even greater heights, leaving you delighted by the unexpected turn of events.
"Guess you must have wanted this place clean more than anyone, huh?" you ask him jovially, watching him from the corner of an eye as you pull the string tie on the last bag until itâs cinched tight.
For the last few minutes, War has been stomping to every nook and cranny in search of rubbish, grunting huffily under his breath when his search turns up empty. After a while, he wanders back to stand over you, staying in place as he twists his head this way and that, his eyes darting all over the cave in a futile search for something else to bring you.
"Uh, I think you got it all," you snort, giving the overflowing bags a pointed look, "Least, you got a Hell of a lot more done than I would have if I were on my own."
Craning your neck back, you let your expression soften as you dip a nod at the Mer, flicking a two-fingered salute off your forehead. "Much obliged, War. Maybe we should see about getting you on the payroll.â
The Merâs nostrils widen around a brusque snort at that.
âWell, Iâd better get out of your hair and get these to the truck,â you nod at the bags. Whilst they look heavy at a glance, youâre betting theyâll be easy enough to drag across the sand without too much trouble.
From between Warâs parted lips comes a strange, resonant sound; a churlish grunt that could have been agreement, though the way his lips twist back into another frown and his brows follow suit as you heft the first bag over your shoulder leaves you to wonderâŚ
Wrapping a fist around the handles of the other two bags, you pause to test the weight of them, satisfied when they seem to hold well enough.
High above you, War casts his eye out through the caveâs opening and fixes it on the lashing rain beyond, his chest thrumming softly as the line between his eyebrows etches even deeper into his forehead.
The storm that's been steadily sweeping in from the ocean has finally arrived to batter his bay, and as he lours at it, apparently lost in thought, you make your way outside, tossing a chipper "It was nice to meet you!" over your shoulder at the Mer.
A torrent of rain batters against your head as you pass beneath the threshold, and you duck further into the collar of your jacket, suddenly deaf to the heavy thumps that follow you all the way to the cave's exit, trundling slowly to a stop when it becomes clear you aren't turning back.
It's difficult to raise your head against the maelstrom, more difficult still because you don't have any hands free to shield your eyes from the prevailing wind and ocean spray.
One foot drags slowly after the other as you make your way up the beach towards the truck... On and on you trudge, hauling the spoils of your labour across the sand and leaving a pair of shallow trenches alongside your boot prints.
The mere five minutes it took for you to get from the truck to the cave passes you by, and it's only when those five minutes stretch into ten, and the tide has made noticeable progress swallowing up the beach that you're given pause, coming to a stop with a curl of apprehension in your stomach.
Squinting sharply through the rain, you scan the landscape ahead of you, blowing droplets of water off your lashes from the corner of your mouth.
The truck is nowhere to be seen. But you could have sworn it wasn't this far from the cave...
Baffled, you twist around to peer over your shoulder, eyes searching back up the bay, wondering if perhaps you'd just passed it without noticing.
And yet...
There's nothing.
No square, solid shape standing out amongst the towering cliffs and the brown sand.
An awful realisation sinks into your bones and drags your nerves down to the ground as it dawns on you...
You've been left behind.
An old discomfort starts to tighten around your throat. Had you turned the wrong way when you left the caveâŚ? No. No, you remember admiring the headlands as you drove in from this angle, you canât have been turned around.
Briefly, the very alarming thought occurs to you that the truck might have been swallowed by the sea. But youâre quick and vicious in dismissing it. Abby had parked it almost flush against the cliffs. You recall how youâd nearly asked her if she was worried about rocks falling onto it from above before thinking better of it and trusting her judgement.
With your breaths coming heavier and thicker as your pulse kicks into gear, you drop the bags of litter and take a few, stumbling strides towards the cliffface, raising a hand and shielding your eyes as you rake them up and down the sand.
It doesnât take long for you to find what youâre searching for.
Theyâre already half obscured, pitted into near-oblivion by the hammering rain, but you can still make them out. A pair of tyre tracks, running alongside the cliff walls until they converge in the distance and your eyes canât follow them any furtherâŚ
Reason begins vying for control of a spiralling narrative, and you tell yourself she might have been called back to the centre for an emergency, or to gather more supplies, with every intention of returning any minute nowâŚ
But with the ocean looking to start gnawing your ankles, you canât say with any confidence exactly how many minutes you might have left.
Dumbstruck, you suddenly come alive, slapping your palms over the pockets of your jacket, your trousers, everywhere until your frantic movements slow to a halt and you let your arms hang defeatedly at your sides.
You'd left your phone on the dashboard.... You can picture it now, sitting just above the air-con on the jeep's dash amongst a clutter of old receipts and wrappers. You didn't think you'd actually need it on the job...
What the Hell are you supposed to do now?
Fight the urge to let any tears mingle with the raindrops slipping down your cheeks, that's what. You're not about to cry for something so trivial. It was an honest mistake... probably. More to the point, getting panicked won't do you any favours.
Clenching your hands into fists, you press your lips together and inhale sharply through your nose.
You'll just have to hoof it, that's all. Hug the cliff walls and pray you can move quick enough to cover the same ground on foot that took the Jeep a good fifteen minutes... What is that... Three hours, max? That's if Abby doesn't come back for you.
One thing is for certain though. The longer you take to decide, the more time slips through your fingers, narrowing your window of opportunity. If you get caught against the cliffs when the ocean finally reaches you...?
"Shit," you mutter, more to expel a mote of tension than to say anything productive.
From the corner of an eye, you wince at the bags of rubbish laying where you'd dropped them...
... You can't just leave them here.
When the tide picks them up, they'll come undone and spill their contents straight back into the ocean, which means your work - and more importantly War's - will have been for nothing.
The cacophonous surge of the tide is unassailable in your ears, and the rain using your head like a percussion instrument leaves you deaf to the mountain rising up behind you, but you're not oblivious to the quaking thuds that rumble through the soles of your boots and resonate inside your chest.
The rain stops.
Just like that, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned off the sky, yet it's only your immediate vicinity that's spared from the watery onslaught. Hissing curtains of rain still mist the world beyond you, and for a moment, you're perturbed and mesmerised by the phenomenon, but a familiar sound from high over your head doesn't leave you wondering for long.
Tipping your neck back so fast that you feel something give a soft crunch, you blurt out a startled shout at the underside of a massive carapace.
"War!?" A spray of rain flies from your lips and you lift your hands to swipe furiously at your eyes, rubbing your lashes until they're no longer heavy with water. "What are you doing out here?!"
A rather inane question, you'll concede, given that he can go wherever he damn well wants to. Hell, he could probably fall asleep in this storm's eye and rest peacefully as a babe.
The Mer has parked the bulk of his body directly over you, as rudimentary yet effective a shelter as he can make.
You can't see his face above the lip of his shell, and when you try to venture forwards to peer up at him, he moves in tandem with you, keeping you underneath his sheltering mass with the barest shift of his legs.
War's gaze, hidden from you, blazes its own trail along the sand, following the lines of comparatively tiny tyre tracks narrowing to a point in the distance.
Bewildered by his sudden appearance, though no less glad to have the rain off you for a moment, however coincidental that may be, you lower your head once more and press your knuckles to the curve of a hip.
"Guess I missed my ride," you chuckle humourlessly below him, eyeing his claws with a despondent sigh as they clench shut in response to your voice.
You canât fathom a guess as to what the old Mer must be thinking. Even less so when the titanic mass above you suddenly shifts down, and without warning, a vast, thickset hand comes reaching into the space beneath his carapace.
Instinctively, you kick your boots up and start to backpeddle in clumsy steps across the sand, away from fingers longer than you are tall as they nudge after you, swiftly and easily overtaking your retreat.
âWoah! What are you-? Oh! My God!?â
You jump out of your skin, spine colliding the curve of his fingertips first when they spring shut like a trap behind you, and then his thumb, broad and rough and chiseled with grooves, bunts into your stomach and scoops your straight into the cup of his palm.
The shock of it all turns your body rigid as youâre promptly extracted from the shelter of his body and raised several dozen feet off the ground, set upon by the lashing rainfall once again.
Sputtering through your daze, you crane your head back to squint up at the Mer whose own gaze has already landed upon you, his enormous face hanging ominously against the backdrop of an iron-grey sky.
Jesus, you must look no more dignified than a drowned, somewhat indignant rat in his palm. âI was gonna take the trash bags with me!â you bark, taking a stab as to why youâre being glowered at so severely.
But if War cares about the bags at all, he doesnât let a single hint slip through his stony façade.
Instead, in a move that catches you wildly off guard, he brings his hand in close to the base of his throat, tucking you just above his collar bone as he bows his chin over you, and itâs only when the torrent of icy water stops running down the back of your neck and pounding at your skull that you realise what heâs doing. What heâd been doing when he followed you out here to loom over you.
Heâs using himself to shield you from the rain.
Youâll have to remember to be touched by the gesture once you can speak past your chattering teeth.
The heat from his palm seeps right through the back of your jacket, as does the warmth radiating off his neck where youâre pressed flush against it.
For a second, you wonder if heâs just so keen to be rid of you that heâs picked you up with every intention of taking you back to the perimeter of his territory to drop you off himself. And youâd be lying if you said a ride wouldnât be appreciated, given the circumstances.
But then, with slow, deliberate movements, the Mer pivots his body sideways and begins moving down the beach⌠back in the direction of his cave.
Thereâs no threat behind his actions, nothing discernible anyway, just a strangeness that glues your tongue to the roof of your mouth and leaves you draped stiffly in his remaining palm whilst he ferries you into his home.
You'll be honest, for your first day at a new job, you'd been expecting something a little more mundane.
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Set in a world where merfolk and humans are well-acquainted with one another, you've been given a job as litter-picker at The Four Corners Research and Conservation Institute, home to one of the largest and strangest Mers ever recorded. And you've just been tasked to clean up his territory.
Fluff, mentions of bullying, soft War, demeaning language, giant/tiny.
6500 words.
Mostly a call-back to this old-ass art I did of War as a giant crab some years ago.
If youâd have known that accepting the job your cousin secured you would have you working directly alongside the same girl whoâd spent most of her school years serving as your personal antagonist, you might have just declined the offer and moved on to the next application.
Abby has been wearing a face of thunder ever since she walked into your supervisorâs office this morning - doubtless fully expecting to see some fresh-faced new hire sheâd been tasked to chaperone - and instead seeing you, the butt of her jokes and an awkward reminder of the unkinder facets of her person.
Of course, your school days are years behind you, and you're not about to hold past behaviour over her head, not when you've both grown since then.
But even now, nearly an hour after your induction, everything about her exudes a pot threatening to boil over as she prowls ahead of you up the sandy stretch of beach running adjacent to a north-facing precipice.
She's angry, whether at you or the situation, you're too worried about keeping this job to ask why.
The Four Corners Research and Conservation Institute is the first place that actually responded to your application without including a template rejection in the bulk of their email, though you're under no illusions that it's only thanks to your cousin being a high-ranking member on the Board that your CV was given a second glance at all.
When the bills are due and the fridge is bare, nepotism stops looking so much like an unprincipled decision.
Besides, it eases your conscience to know that you haven't been handed a high-skill position over someone more qualified.
When you applied, you thought you'd be given the role of a cleaner at their public-facing aquarium.
Instead...
âLitter-picker.â Not immediately a glamourous title, but it's vital work, a fact impressed upon you by your new Boss, Mr Stevensmith when he told you you'd be clearing the beach and habitat of one of their largest exhibits.
âNo end of detritus washes up along that beach,â heâd told you with no small air of disdain, âBeing caught in a bay doesnât help. The current carries it all down from that new resort up the coast. So, itâs your job to make sure Warâs habitat stays pristine⌠Canât have our sponsors thinking we donât take care of their investments, now can we?â
War⌠An apt name for the largest - and scariest - merfolk ever recorded. You, like most of the public, barely know a thing about him beyond what youâd heard on the News nearly ten years ago, save that heâs the last of his kind. Crab-merfolk are uncommon enough, but a king crab?
Abby has driven you deep into his habitat, where magnificent stone cliffs plunge nearly a thousand feet down into the wind-trap of a bay.
The old truck you'd arrived in is parked right up against the wall of rock a hundred yards behind you on the sand, marking the start of your new job, and your only ride in or out of this vast stretch of territory.
Just being here, hemmed in on one side by a sweeping wall of rock and on the other by a tempestuous ocean, you canât help but feel daunted by the work laid out ahead of you.
Abby, for her part, seems more than content to let you pick up her slack, stomping past the majority of the litter and only pausing long enough to stab her picker into an empty bottle or two, leaving most of it behind her for you to collect.
The rain has been pelting you relentlessly since you hopped out of the jeep, drenching you from head to toe within mere minutes despite the waterproof parka buffeting around you in the howling wind.
You keep your head bowed, eyes squinted and your lashes dripping wet as you scan across the sand for anything manmade, keeping your footprints more or less pointed in the same direction that Abby is wandering.
You're almost relieved when you happen to raise your head for a spell and find that she's leading you directly to the colossal mouth of a cave that's sunk deep inside the cliffs.
At the back of your mind, you catch yourself wondering if you'll see any glimpses of War while you're here. He may be enormous, that much is a given, but you've also heard how reclusive he is.
As if she's sensed that your gaze has lifted, Abby twists around to peer over a shoulder and points at the cave, shouting back to you, barely audible above the wind, "Head in there and see what the damage is! I'll scope out the beach further along and find you in a minute!"
Youâre surprised, if pleased, that sheâs at least addressing you now.
Acknowledging her with a hearty thumbs-up, you veer away from her boot prints and stagger unevenly for shelter, blown to and fro by the gale. It's certainly a novel environment to work in, but you'll take this maelstrom a thousand times over before you ever sidle back behind that office desk and pick up the phone to deal with customer complaints.
Cold, wet, but ultimately buoyed, you pick up your feet and trot beneath the caveâs yawning overhang, letting your tight shoulders unfurl as the rain stops beating down on the back of your skull.
Almost instantly, you're hit by the nose-curling stench of salt and fish.
And it doesn't take more than a moment to figure out where it's coming from.
Just inside the entrance, you trail to a stop, blinking rivulets of rainwater from your eyes and breathing out a long, trembling exhale steeped in unabashed awe.
There, towering monolithically against the furthest wall, is the largest Mer thatâs ever walked the Earth and all of its oceans.
Your heart leaps into your throat so violently that you almost choke on the damn thing, gaping like a guppy as your eyes roll up the underside of a pale carapace, over two colossal claws as red as freshly-spilled blood, and finally land on the face of what could pass for a man were he sixty-three feet shorter⌠and walked on two legs instead of sixâŚ
War; a merfolk with the lower half of an Alaskan king crab and the upper half of a brawny, mountainous man, sans his left arm. Thereâs a vast, empty space where the limb used to be, cut raggedly just below the shoulder, and long-since healed to leave a swathe of lumpy, white scar tissue in the place of muscle and meat.
Heâs an absolute juggernaut of a beast, standing nearly seventy feet tall and as wide as a manor house.
His skin is almost translucent in its paleness, though what colour it does retain is mostly due to the contrast it plays against the incredible lengths of stark-white hair that cascade like twin waterfalls from the crown of his head down to a tremendous chest riddled with a myriad of scars.
âSkin as white as leprosyâŚ,â you marvel.
The waves crashing furiously against the shore as the wind picks up outside seems the perfect allusion to Coleridgeâs lengthiest work.
All of a sudden, it occurs to you that for the whole time youâve been gawping up at him, he in turn has been glowering back down at you, the deep crevasse between his ice-white brows growing deeper and deeper by the second.
Itâs the realisation that youâre being decidedly rude that wrenches you from your stupor.
 âI-Iâm sorry!â you blurt out, raising your voice so he might actually hear you, âI didnât realise you were in here! I thought youâd be-â Pausing to cast a quick glance over your shoulder, you peer out at the dark, grey ocean roaring ever closer to the cave. The tide, gradual as it is, continues to eat its way up the beach.
Turning back to the Mer, you raise a thumb and knock it awkwardly at the sea behind you. âI thought youâd be in thereâŚâ
War... doesnât react.
He barely even blinks those cold, blue eyes at you, just glares hotly in your direction, though heâs so vast and his eyes are so devoid of human features like an iris or pupil, he could very well be glaring at something else entirely.
You donât venture any further inside, hovering restlessly at the threshold where the dull light still falls on you from above, and the shadow from the caveâs overhang stays just a few inches in front of the toes of your boots.
âIâm Y/n,â you call up to War instead, figuring itâs best to get introductions out of the way while youâre at it, âIâm new to the team. Beach clean-up, though Iâm sure you could already tell!â Holding your picker out in front of you, you give the handle several squeezes, clacking the âclawsâ together a few times demonstratively.
All at once, the colossal Mer's head tilts sideways at the display, his brows easing apart inch by inch until his face is set more by surprise than agitation.
Alhough it's difficult to tell where those pupilless eyes are peering, you think he's studying your litter-picker, and with a bemused smile, you keep it suspended in mid-air, letting a smile bloom across your face when his own claws flex open and shut several times over, producing dull, thumping clacks that resonate off the high walls of the cave.
He's copying you.
You presume thatâs a good sign.
âMay I come in?â you ask, gesturing loosely at the cave in front of you.
Somehow, the colossal crustacean manages to portray an even more potent expression of surprise, his snowy-white brows launch up his forehead and his lips part just enough to offer you the barest glimpse of huge, flat teeth sitting inside his maw.
You're busy parsing why he might be taken aback by such an innocuous question when there's a sharp voice in your ear.
"What are you doing?"
Your ensuing yelp blasts through the cave and bounces off its damp, glistening walls.
In response, War reacts with a growl loud as a thunderclap, stamping his front legs firmly against the sand as his scowl falls right back into place, aimed over your head.
Whirling around, you come face to face with a very disgruntled, very sodden Abby, who's glaring at you from under her sharply arched brows.
Floundering for a second, you struggle to find your tongue as you shoot a fleeting glance back at War. "I'm... asking him if I can come in?"
Pushing out a rough exhale, Abby rolls her eyes so hard you're surprised they don't end up behind her skull. Tutting loudly, she brushes past you, striding right into the cavern and missing the way your jaw falls open to gape after her, alarmed.
You haven't known a great many merfolk, but those you have met operate no differently than humans for the most part, in that they'd prefer strangers not invite themselves into their homes.
Then, of course, you remember that unlike you, she's been doing this job for some time now, and it would stand to reason that she and War have a rapport, of sorts, though a quick glance up at the Mer's face contradicts your reasoning almost immediately.
For as unnerving as his glare was when it was aimed at you, now that Abby is in the firing line, the mer looks downright ferocious.
His lips have been peeled back to expose teeth and gums alike, and a pair of canines flash menacingly as he snaps them at her, a throaty rumble slowly bubbling to life from somewhere deep inside his chest and spilling out into the cave.
At once, you heed the unspoken warning and stumble backwards a few, respectful steps, sending your co-worker a nervous shout.
"Um, Abby?"
However, you're struck dumb when she not only ignores you, but is apparently content to disregard the titanic mer who's taking very clear umbrage to her presence.
Before you can call out to her again though, you catch her exasperated sigh from all the way back at the entrance.
"You're gonna find out pretty quickly that this guy isn't like other mers you've met," she tells you waspishly as she spins on a heel to face you, kicking up the sand under her boots.
Her expression darkens when she realises you haven't followed her. "Oh my god, will you get over here?!"
The demand sends a jolt right through you and notches War's grumbling up another few decibels. "You're never gonna last at this job if you don't have a backbone!"
... Honestly you think your trepidation has less to do with a lack of spine and more to do with acknowledging that War clearly doesn't want either of you in here.
Biting your lip, you wonder if the earful you're bound to get for questioning her authority will be worth it to voice your concerns.
"I-it just seems like he really doesn't want us here," you dare to gamble, inadvertently drawing War's attention. You have no idea if it's a good or bad sign that his growl falls silent the moment you finish speaking.
"I mean," you falter as Abby crosses her arms over her chest, "This is his territory. Shouldn't we leave if he tells us to? Maybe we could come back after we've cleaned the beach?"
Letting out a sharp, derisive scoff, she mocks, "Tells us?' War can't tell us anything. He doesn't speak."
Taken aback, you blink at her, eventually asking, "What, like he can't talk?"
"Uh. He never has?" she mimics your baffled tone right back at you, condescending.
You suppose it isn't altogether unsurprising that War can't speak. Plenty of humans can't either.
"Besides," she adds impatiently, "Ironically, he's all bark, no bite. He'll growl at you, sure, but he won't do anything."
Your brows furrow in a flash. You're not worried that he'll do something, he's a mer, not a monster. You'd just rather not upset The Four Corner's most lauded person any further than you already have.
"Honestly," Abby says whilst you reluctantly traipse towards her, keeping your head low in deference to the titan staring you down, "He's dumb as a rock. All brawn, no brain. Doesn't understand a word we say. Even Mister Stevensmith says he's more like an animal than a mer anyway. So it's not like it matters what we do."
"Jeez, Abby," you chuckle uncomfortably, hoping you're doing a good enough job of hiding the objection in your tone, "He's right here."
Which is, evidently, the wrong thing to say. Abby's demeanour shifts on a dime, her chin thrusting forwards and her eyes growing hard and cold.
"I'm sorry," she bristles, "Who's been working here the longest?"
Your mouth snaps shut at once, and you're too busy staring at her to notice the snarl twitching back onto War's face as he glowers at her.
Clearing your throat, you tentatively reply, "You, but-"
"-That's right," she cuts you off smoothly, her mouth twisting into a disdainful grin, "And, um, who's the nepo-hire who just started today?"
Alright, you swallow thickly, score one for Abby... Just like the good old days, you suppose.
While you don't appreciate being patronised, the nerve she's just flicked is still relatively raw, and you know all too well that throwing your weight around and bickering with your co-workers won't do you any favours in the long run.
You would quite like to be happy working here...
The hit to your pride might sting, but you're old enough to let it roll off your back, giving her a patient response. "That'd be me."
"Cool. So, are you gonna stop questioning me and actually learn what your job here is, or...?"
This time, you force a smile, letting it stretch awkwardly wide to suit a begrudging compliance. "If you'd be so kind...."
"Right, now that you're done slacking off..."
Somewhere overhead, War pushes a rough exhale through his nostrils, though he once again goes ignored by his keeper.
"Clean up any trash the tide's brought in here, don't forget that corner-" Here, she jerks a thumb at the very corner that's currently occupied by a prickling mer.
Gulping, you nod, dragging your gaze off War and quirking a brow at your co-worker. "Got it... Anything else?"
Fishing her mobile from one of her pockets, she busies herself with peering blankly at the screen for a moment, making a good show of disregarding your question before she heaves a put-upon sigh and thrusts the phone back into her jacket.
Then, with a hiss of footsteps over sand, you abruptly find yourself staring at the back of her head as she makes her way towards the entrance.
"I'm gonna go clean up the rest of the beach," she tells you dismissively, "You stay and finish up in here... Oh, and just ignore War. He'll definitely be ignoring you."
It isn't as if you'd been expecting something more encouraging... or informative... but Abby simply takes her leave without any further prompt, disappearing through the cave's mouth and venturing out to brave the howling wind.
You might have been slightly more put out if it hadn't just occurred to you that she's out there, battling through the rain and cold, while you're in here where the wind can't reach you, and icy water won't encroach upon your work.
You can't help but wonder if she did that on purpose...
Suddenly, your opinion of her shifts on its axis, and a small, grateful smile worms its way across your face.
Seems there's a chance she isn't the same girl you knew all those years ago after all, despite the frosty reception.
Shaking off the guilt of assuming the worst of your new co-worker, you draw in a deep, steadying breath and pivot around to your audience of one, offering the Mer a sheepish grin and a wave, both of which go unreturned.
Abby's instruction to ignore him flies out the proverbial window. The barest common courtesy you can afford is to acknowledge him in his own house.
"Right then, War," you begin pleasantly, bending to hoist your half-full trash bag off the ground, "I guess Iâll make a start. If you need anything... Well, I mean I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to get my attention."
With an amenable chuckle, you nod deliberately at the claws hanging from his carapace.
War follows your gaze, blinking down at his own appendages while you amble over to the wall nearest the entrance, deigning to work anti-clockwise as you go and clean the cave section by section.
It's menial work. Satisfying. The space grows cleaner with every piece of litter you grab and stash in the bag.
You find yourself paying no mind to War, trusting that the mer will let you know if he wants or doesn't want you to do something. Next time, you muse, you'll have to bring some headphones.
You manage to clear all of five metres from your starting point when the ground beneath you gives a sudden lurch, as if something heavy just crashed to the earth behind you, staggering you slightly on your boots.
"What the-?!" Startled, you wheel about to see what happened, only to find one of War's pointed legs buried in the sand just a foot away from you.
Staring at in in astonishment, you eventually tear your gaze off it and peer up the vast length of a crab's body until you get to War's face, half obscured by his silvery, cascading hair. His eyes are just as wide as yours must be, watching you with his lips downturned.
"Er," you swallow uncertainly, "You okay...? Need something?"
But the titan just keeps his eyes locked on you for several beats of your thumping heart, his entire body stiff and unmoving.
... Alright then...
Bemused, you let out a soft snort and turn back to the task at hand, zeroing in on another piece of litter laying a few metres ahead.
Just as you reach it, you feel the ground quake behind you once more, though this time, the vibration is followed quickly by five moresolid thuds.
You're being followed, it seems... By something with six legs that are as tall as houses...
Frankly, you don't know whether to be amused or intimidated. He must be exceptionally cautious about letting a stranger have free rein in his territory.
Shoulders jumping with a well-meaning huff, you shake your head and carry on, smiling softly to yourself.
Time and again though, as soon as you venture past a certain, unseen threshold, War becomes intent on closing the distance, sticking to you like a limpet yet never once making a sound or trying to get your attention.
You could have sworn Abby said he'd ignore you...
"Making sure I'm doing a thorough job, huh?" you joke breezily after a few minutes of being shadowed, straining your neck back to flash him a sidelong wink, "Well, not to worry. I'm sure you'll let me know if I miss a spot...Then Iâll be out of your shell in a jiffy."
You're swivelling away from him too quickly to catch the curious tip of his head.
"Although come to think of it," you murmur aloud to yourself, frowning at the vast scatterings of rubbish coating the cave and piling up against the walls, "For a place that's cleaned bi-weekly, this cave has a lot of stuff built-up..."
The brows on your forehead scurry together as you ponder, "Maybe someone ought to have a word with that resort if they're letting this much crap come off their beaches..."
Whilst you're busy contemplating, War lifts his massive head and starts to move again.
The moment he does, you immediately fall still, eyeing him warily as he ambles past you like a massive glacier rolling over the landscape. Each step he takes is slow and measured, sidling around you to bustle further into his cave.
Cocking a brow, you regard him questioningly as he stops by a pile of trash and uses his claws to scoop sand, an empty bottle, an old shoe, and several scraps of plastic into an awkward hold, lifting them with far more dexterity than you thought he'd possess.
The expression on his face is determined, and once he deems his claw-ful secure, he scuttles right back over to you, bringing himself to a neat halt once he gets close enough, casting his gaze to the side.
Then, gradual as a big, red frigate lazing over the ocean, he extends his claws towards you, letting them hover at your height for a moment before he starts to slide them apart, letting sand hiss through the pincers until it's followed by solid 'plaps' and 'patters' of trash following suit.
The pile builds steadily just in front of you as you watch on, gobsmacked.
"Wh- Uh...!" Clearing your throat, you dart a quick look between War's face and the mini-heap, and ask, "What're you up to?"
As if in reply, he slips off again, returning moments later with another load of scrap, and this too, he drops to the ground at your feet.
You're almost too stunned to speak, working your tongue into a molar at the back of your mouth as you puzzle over his bizarre behaviour, wondering why he'd bring the trash closer to you if you're going to be cleaning it up anyw-...
And then it hits you.
"Wait." A charmed smile burrows into your cheeks as you thrust out a hip and shoot him a knowing look. "Are you...? Do you want to help?"
And then War - the Mer who is supposedly 'dumb as a rock, and doesn't understand a word you say' - tips his huge, square chin down before bringing it back up.
He repeats the motion once, then twice, and on the third, a lightbulb finally clicks on in your head.
"You do?" you press, eager to see if he'll do it again.
And he does.
He nods.
Oh, you knew it. You knew Abby was messing with you! A little hazing for the Newbie's first day... Well, you can't say you weren't somewhat expecting that.
Must have been why War was scowling at her so viciously when she called him dumb. He wasn't in on the joke.
The sudden about-face in his behaviour is staggering, though not at all unwelcome.
Something in the way youâve been holding your shoulders loosens as you rest a hand at your side and sigh out a note of relief, letting one corner of your mouth crook up. "You know you don't have to, right?" you tell him, "I mean, I'm basically being paid to be your housekeeper right now."
In response, War just angles his head to one side, regarding you with a funny look before he raises the shoulder of his remaining arm in a recognisable shrug.
As he does, he plants a claw in the ground just behind the pile of trash, nudging it forwards so the heap is pushed soundly closer to your feet.
Well then.
"If you insist," you concede easily, shaking open your rubbish bag.
The Mer's permanant scowl eases a fraction as you begin picking things out of the pile and dropping them into the bag, and with a clack of his pincers, he's off again, casting his appendages out wide to scoop an even larger heap of detritus onto the flat edge of his claws.
You'll admit, having a giant Mer to ferry all the litter straight into one spot makes for much faster cleaning, and in just under an hour, you've already filled two binbags to the brim, and you're well on your way to stuffing a third all the way to the top.
Naturally, you're inclined to thank him after every delivery, and the way his chest puffs out each time bolsters your mood to even greater heights, leaving you delighted by the unexpected turn of events.
"Guess you must have wanted this place clean more than anyone, huh?" you ask him jovially, watching him from the corner of an eye as you pull the string tie on the last bag until itâs cinched tight.
For the last few minutes, War has been stomping to every nook and cranny in search of rubbish, grunting huffily under his breath when his search turns up empty. After a while, he wanders back to stand over you, staying in place as he twists his head this way and that, his eyes darting all over the cave in a futile search for something else to bring you.
"Uh, I think you got it all," you snort, giving the overflowing bags a pointed look, "Least, you got a Hell of a lot more done than I would have if I were on my own."
Craning your neck back, you let your expression soften as you dip a nod at the Mer, flicking a two-fingered salute off your forehead. "Much obliged, War. Maybe we should see about getting you on the payroll.â
The Merâs nostrils widen around a brusque snort at that.
âWell, Iâd better get out of your hair and get these to the truck,â you nod at the bags. Whilst they look heavy at a glance, youâre betting theyâll be easy enough to drag across the sand without too much trouble.
From between Warâs parted lips comes a strange, resonant sound; a churlish grunt that could have been agreement, though the way his lips twist back into another frown and his brows follow suit as you heft the first bag over your shoulder leaves you to wonderâŚ
Wrapping a fist around the handles of the other two bags, you pause to test the weight of them, satisfied when they seem to hold well enough.
High above you, War casts his eye out through the caveâs opening and fixes it on the lashing rain beyond, his chest thrumming softly as the line between his eyebrows etches even deeper into his forehead.
The storm that's been steadily sweeping in from the ocean has finally arrived to batter his bay, and as he lours at it, apparently lost in thought, you make your way outside, tossing a chipper "It was nice to meet you!" over your shoulder at the Mer.
A torrent of rain batters against your head as you pass beneath the threshold, and you duck further into the collar of your jacket, suddenly deaf to the heavy thumps that follow you all the way to the cave's exit, trundling slowly to a stop when it becomes clear you aren't turning back.
It's difficult to raise your head against the maelstrom, more difficult still because you don't have any hands free to shield your eyes from the prevailing wind and ocean spray.
One foot drags slowly after the other as you make your way up the beach towards the truck... On and on you trudge, hauling the spoils of your labour across the sand and leaving a pair of shallow trenches alongside your boot prints.
The mere five minutes it took for you to get from the truck to the cave passes you by, and it's only when those five minutes stretch into ten, and the tide has made noticeable progress swallowing up the beach that you're given pause, coming to a stop with a curl of apprehension in your stomach.
Squinting sharply through the rain, you scan the landscape ahead of you, blowing droplets of water off your lashes from the corner of your mouth.
The truck is nowhere to be seen. But you could have sworn it wasn't this far from the cave...
Baffled, you twist around to peer over your shoulder, eyes searching back up the bay, wondering if perhaps you'd just passed it without noticing.
And yet...
There's nothing.
No square, solid shape standing out amongst the towering cliffs and the brown sand.
An awful realisation sinks into your bones and drags your nerves down to the ground as it dawns on you...
You've been left behind.
An old discomfort starts to tighten around your throat. Had you turned the wrong way when you left the caveâŚ? No. No, you remember admiring the headlands as you drove in from this angle, you canât have been turned around.
Briefly, the very alarming thought occurs to you that the truck might have been swallowed by the sea. But youâre quick and vicious in dismissing it. Abby had parked it almost flush against the cliffs. You recall how youâd nearly asked her if she was worried about rocks falling onto it from above before thinking better of it and trusting her judgement.
With your breaths coming heavier and thicker as your pulse kicks into gear, you drop the bags of litter and take a few, stumbling strides towards the cliffface, raising a hand and shielding your eyes as you rake them up and down the sand.
It doesnât take long for you to find what youâre searching for.
Theyâre already half obscured, pitted into near-oblivion by the hammering rain, but you can still make them out. A pair of tyre tracks, running alongside the cliff walls until they converge in the distance and your eyes canât follow them any furtherâŚ
Reason begins vying for control of a spiralling narrative, and you tell yourself she might have been called back to the centre for an emergency, or to gather more supplies, with every intention of returning any minute nowâŚ
But with the ocean looking to start gnawing your ankles, you canât say with any confidence exactly how many minutes you might have left.
Dumbstruck, you suddenly come alive, slapping your palms over the pockets of your jacket, your trousers, everywhere until your frantic movements slow to a halt and you let your arms hang defeatedly at your sides.
You'd left your phone on the dashboard.... You can picture it now, sitting just above the air-con on the jeep's dash amongst a clutter of old receipts and wrappers. You didn't think you'd actually need it on the job...
What the Hell are you supposed to do now?
Fight the urge to let any tears mingle with the raindrops slipping down your cheeks, that's what. You're not about to cry for something so trivial. It was an honest mistake... probably. More to the point, getting panicked won't do you any favours.
Clenching your hands into fists, you press your lips together and inhale sharply through your nose.
You'll just have to hoof it, that's all. Hug the cliff walls and pray you can move quick enough to cover the same ground on foot that took the Jeep a good fifteen minutes... What is that... Three hours, max? That's if Abby doesn't come back for you.
One thing is for certain though. The longer you take to decide, the more time slips through your fingers, narrowing your window of opportunity. If you get caught against the cliffs when the ocean finally reaches you...?
"Shit," you mutter, more to expel a mote of tension than to say anything productive.
From the corner of an eye, you wince at the bags of rubbish laying where you'd dropped them...
... You can't just leave them here.
When the tide picks them up, they'll come undone and spill their contents straight back into the ocean, which means your work - and more importantly War's - will have been for nothing.
The cacophonous surge of the tide is unassailable in your ears, and the rain using your head like a percussion instrument leaves you deaf to the mountain rising up behind you, but you're not oblivious to the quaking thuds that rumble through the soles of your boots and resonate inside your chest.
The rain stops.
Just like that, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned off the sky, yet it's only your immediate vicinity that's spared from the watery onslaught. Hissing curtains of rain still mist the world beyond you, and for a moment, you're perturbed and mesmerised by the phenomenon, but a familiar sound from high over your head doesn't leave you wondering for long.
Tipping your neck back so fast that you feel something give a soft crunch, you blurt out a startled shout at the underside of a massive carapace.
"War!?" A spray of rain flies from your lips and you lift your hands to swipe furiously at your eyes, rubbing your lashes until they're no longer heavy with water. "What are you doing out here?!"
A rather inane question, you'll concede, given that he can go wherever he damn well wants to. Hell, he could probably fall asleep in this storm's eye and rest peacefully as a babe.
The Mer has parked the bulk of his body directly over you, as rudimentary yet effective a shelter as he can make.
You can't see his face above the lip of his shell, and when you try to venture forwards to peer up at him, he moves in tandem with you, keeping you underneath his sheltering mass with the barest shift of his legs.
War's gaze, hidden from you, blazes its own trail along the sand, following the lines of comparatively tiny tyre tracks narrowing to a point in the distance.
Bewildered by his sudden appearance, though no less glad to have the rain off you for a moment, however coincidental that may be, you lower your head once more and press your knuckles to the curve of a hip.
"Guess I missed my ride," you chuckle humourlessly below him, eyeing his claws with a despondent sigh as they clench shut in response to your voice.
You canât fathom a guess as to what the old Mer must be thinking. Even less so when the titanic mass above you suddenly shifts down, and without warning, a vast, thickset hand comes reaching into the space beneath his carapace.
Instinctively, you kick your boots up and start to backpeddle in clumsy steps across the sand, away from fingers longer than you are tall as they nudge after you, swiftly and easily overtaking your retreat.
âWoah! What are you-? Oh! My God!?â
You jump out of your skin, spine colliding the curve of his fingertips first when they spring shut like a trap behind you, and then his thumb, broad and rough and chiseled with grooves, bunts into your stomach and scoops your straight into the cup of his palm.
The shock of it all turns your body rigid as youâre promptly extracted from the shelter of his body and raised several dozen feet off the ground, set upon by the lashing rainfall once again.
Sputtering through your daze, you crane your head back to squint up at the Mer whose own gaze has already landed upon you, his enormous face hanging ominously against the backdrop of an iron-grey sky.
Jesus, you must look no more dignified than a drowned, somewhat indignant rat in his palm. âI was gonna take the trash bags with me!â you bark, taking a stab as to why youâre being glowered at so severely.
But if War cares about the bags at all, he doesnât let a single hint slip through his stony façade.
Instead, in a move that catches you wildly off guard, he brings his hand in close to the base of his throat, tucking you just above his collar bone as he bows his chin over you, and itâs only when the torrent of icy water stops running down the back of your neck and pounding at your skull that you realise what heâs doing. What heâd been doing when he followed you out here to loom over you.
Heâs using himself to shield you from the rain.
Youâll have to remember to be touched by the gesture once you can speak past your chattering teeth.
The heat from his palm seeps right through the back of your jacket, as does the warmth radiating off his neck where youâre pressed flush against it.
For a second, you wonder if heâs just so keen to be rid of you that heâs picked you up with every intention of taking you back to the perimeter of his territory to drop you off himself. And youâd be lying if you said a ride wouldnât be appreciated, given the circumstances.
But then, with slow, deliberate movements, the Mer pivots his body sideways and begins moving down the beach⌠back in the direction of his cave.
Thereâs no threat behind his actions, nothing discernible anyway, just a strangeness that glues your tongue to the roof of your mouth and leaves you draped stiffly in his remaining palm whilst he ferries you into his home.
You'll be honest, for your first day at a new job, you'd been expecting something a little more mundane.
Sharing your first kiss with War after heâs been revived, the final seal has been broken and whilst he crushes the Watcherâs head in his hand would be such a vibe.
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Thinking about friends to lovers with War. Being found by him as a stray survivor on a now ravaged Earth, tired and dirty and beyond frightened for your life as you gaze up at the massive bulk of red, piercing blue eyes looking back at you in disbelief. Your heart only sinks further when the Watcher appears from his cloud of black smoke, his own six eyes squinted in disgust at you as he commands War to kill you.Â
To your utter disbelief, the red behemoth looming over you makes no move to hurt you. Even more surprisingly, he reassures you that he won't. He does question your survival â how on earth you've managed to stay alive in a world near destroyed by bloodthirsty demons and vengeful angels. Somehow, by some sheer miracle, you've managed to survive⌠and it seems the horseman won't be leaving without you now. As far as you're both aware you are the last of your species. There's not a chance of him leaving you on your own. Whether you want the Horseman's protection or not, you've got it now. He may be in the midst of a quest to clear his name but that doesn't mean he's incapable of protecting you at the same time. He's quite capable of doing so, you'll come to learn.Â
Whilst uneasy to begin with, you steadily begin growing comfortable in War's company. He responds to most of your chatter with a grunt or a hum, but that's not to say he doesn't listen to you. After some time together, he starts to open up to you too.Â
All the way from Tiamet to The Destroyer, he lays down his life to protect you.Â
Even once the final seal is broken and the rest of the four are summoned, you're stuck with him as your protector and closest friend.Â
Do I have any idea how a human would end up on Earth 100 years post apocalypse? Nope. But I still love to think about joining War on his journey and becoming his silly little friend.Â
