#dimidubert

dimidubert | 76k | mermaid au

Dedue never learned his father’s trade, but there are other places he is useful: he knows how to rig a boat, and he knows how to fish, and so he goes out on the sea with the men and does his best to feed his people. Things do not grow here as well as they once did, and they have never had the land to waste on livestock. Besides, Dedue likes the straightforward ritual of it: he wakes up with the tides and takes out his little boat and his net and does not have to think at all until the weight of his catch forces him home.

He is just turning into the cove by his house when he sees the blood in the water. Even this close to shore, blood can be dangerous—whatever seal met an unfortunate fate is going to attract predators, and Dedue has known more than enough sailors to be wary of any shark in a blood frenzy.

But the red stain in the water seems to lead towards shore. He readies himself to instead see some gorily injured beast that has dragged itself onto the sand in a desperate bid to escape those dangers.

At first glance the beach appears empty, and Dedue cautiously lands his boat and drags her up onto the shore. The hairs on the back of his neck are prickling, some echoed sense of unease crawling up his spine, and he remains on alert as he approaches the little shack where he stores his boat and guts his fish.

It is just a thatched roof and some supports with no walls or door to speak of, so he gets quite close indeed before he can see that something is wrong.

Dedue drops the boat and stares. First of all, there’s blood everywhere. Secondly, the wounded creature lying unconscious—if not dead—behind his fish-gutting table is certainly no seal.

It is difficult to tell what it is, however. A water-creature, to be sure, with a darkly-scaled tail as long as Dedue is tall. Its torso, however, appears to be pale flesh, though its arms taper into horrible, scaled talons. It also appears to have hair, and a face, and it is bleeding from several huge gashes on its abdomen.

Dedue steps closer, intending to investigate, but it appears the thing is not so unconscious after all: in a flurry of movement far faster than Dedue could have imagined, it flips around and coils in on itself, hiding beneath the table with fangs and talons bared.