#granted

I CONFESS! YOU GOT ME.

*drops to knees and... asks for forgiveness?

Odysseus, who has been in war for years and is quick to be crafty and trick his enemies: *laments and mourns giving up mercy and being forced to become the monster*

Mostly vibes right now imma be so fr with you. But just. Man. Imagine.

Maybe there's stories about things that lurk in the waters. Maybe it's a pretty strong belief that they're the ones causing many shipwrecks. Maybe a lighthouse's light is meant to ward them away.

Maybe it doesn't always work.

Picture this, okay? You are Shang Qinghua. You're young, having become the keeper of the An Ding Lighthouse- one of the farthest and most remote points in the Cang Qiong Coastal Line- after the previous keeper claimed you were ready enough and proceeded to fuck off into the sunset post-haste. The worst storm of the season rolled in. You were fighting for your LIFE making sure that lighthouse stayed on and no ships were lost. Gods know you got banged around plenty during the whole ordeal. But you did it! You got through it! And now its the next day and you're picking your way through debris yourself because nobody is coming your way for a good while yet and you may as well, right? And the further you go in, the more strange things you keep finding washed up on the shore.

You follow the trail, and at the end- hidden by scraggly cliffs and low tide pools- you find..... a creature. It is massive, the tail alone looked big enough to rock somebody's car in, strange deep blue color that seems far more breathtaking than it has any right to be, and fins, and spines, and were those gills- And also, you notice, deeply, deeply stuck. The massive tail is tangled in a terrible knot of fishing wire and an old net, and theres even debris stabbed into it's side. The creature looks BIG. It looks scary. It's surrounded by the wreckage of what seems to be some kind of boat- a huan hua symbol catches your eye from the debris and something in you sours at the thought of whatever this is being caught up in one of their chemical dumps- and you don't even know if its alive.

As the keeper of the An Ding lighthouse, you should eliminate one of these deep sea threats. Let it die, if it isn't dead already, stranded ashore with no way to attract more to their coasts. It's part of the unsaid duties of your position, you know. The parts that no one mentions but they all know exist.

You should just leave it be.

And really, what is stopping you? Maybe you'd even garner a spark of recognition from the rest of the Cang Qiong Coast Line. Maybe some of your efforts would be acknowledged for once. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

.... maybe you take a proper look at the creature's face and suddenly you think "he looks my age."

Screw it, you think, what's one creature saved? You couldn't bring yourself to simply let him die.

And so, you haul him deeper into the pools, using the buoyancy to help detangle his tail and take out all the splinters and debris digging into his ice-cold skin. You hope you are not treating a corpse as you hurry to lather salve on the open cuts and wrap some of the deeper injuries thoroughly. You grow worried when you see pieces of ice start forming nearby. So you lean over, to try and feel for breath or a pulse or something, hand carefully hovering over vital areas. You barely have time to sigh in relief at the faint thrum of a heartbeat before it abruptly spikes, and you find that the creature's eyes had snapped open and were now staring directly at you.

And of course you yelp, and flail back until you land ungracefully in the shallow end of the pool. And of course you begin stammering out some half-panicked babble that maybe?? was meant to be an explanation, maybe just a "you're not dying, right?"

And lucky you're such a disaster, because the creature had snarled and made to snap at your fingers moments before your undignified stumble put you firmly out of his reach. Not that it would have amounted to much- it seemed the creature's injuries still impacted him enough for his own undignified splash.

And some unmoored part of you that really, probably, had a deathwish really wanted to giggle at this. Your heartbeat pounds, rabbit fast, and yet. And yet. You watch as the creature rights himself, the furrow of his brows slanted in an angry line, but the way his strange webbed ears folded down almost seemed.... embarrassed.

Damn it all, really. You're already committed.

You manage to get up by the time the creature demands you tell him what you want from him. Why you helped. What you expected to gain.

Not in such many words, mind. You maybe interpreted a bit more than what was strictly said.... but nevertheless, you open your mouth to ask a million and one things that could be pertinent to the situation. Are there more of your kind nearby? Are you being chased? Do you need anything? When will you leave? But instead of any sensible question- something small and quiet in your heart comes forth instead.

You ask him for his name.

His intense stare turns almost.... confused?

You hurry to explain, stumbling and tripping over your words, but putting them out there nonetheless. You healed him as best you could, he's free to swim off once the tide rises. You just. Felt curious.

Somehow, his stare turns even more scrutinizing. The silence drags on, and you ache with the need to fill it. You settle for fidgeting instead.

Finally, after longer moments still, he tells you. Mobei-Jun. The name settles pleasantly in your mind and you smile. Its nice to meet you Mobei-Jun, you tell him, My name is Shang Qinghua.

Time passed- it turns out Mobei-Jun did need some additional help before the tide rose to take him back, and so you kept him company and brought him food and nervously talked a mile a minute and somehow, somehow, no blood was drawn. You cannot recall a moment in recent memory where someone just let you talk for so long without growing irritated. But there Mobei-Jun was- still listening attentively and even huffing on occasion, staring at you with such intensity you're not perfectly sure he is not meaning to eat you.

The tide rises, and Mobei-Jun slips past the tide pools that held him in. You see him come up one last time, turning to look at you with that same intense scrutiny, before he dives under the waves with a flick of his long tail.

You think that is that.

Later, far past the point you would have been grateful for their appearance, the help from the rest of the Cang Qiong Coast Line shows up. They pick up the debris you already finished cleaning, they inspect the damages you had already repaired, they get handed the reports that you had had ready for the last two weeks now. The only thing that puts a lid on your irritation about the entire entourage's "too little too late" approach is that they also bring rumors. The news that they all never speak plainly out in the open.

You hear whispers of a huan hua hunt into open waters, of a shipwreck, and lost shipments, of strange happenings that keep ocurring in nearby waters, and of creatures from below that seem more agitated than previously observed.

Your curiosity swells, but soon you're standing in front of an empty lighthouse, and duty takes a hold of your attention once more.

It doesn't take long for you to start noticing something strange happening.

It starts with the fish. Strange, deep sea fish that had no business being so near the coast, turning up freshly killed, perfectly suitable for the dinner you had gone out in the first place for. Then, you begin finding trinkets and baubles washed up along the path you take along the beach each morning, somehow in very good condition despite the method of delivery. Strange shells and pearls and even oceanic crystals start appearing whenever you take a nap out by your favorite spot near the tide pools. You feel like you're being watched, constantly. You catch flashes of something dark diving beneath the waves, the flick of what can only be a tail the only thing you think you catch clearly. And by now you have a nagging feeling of who may be behind all the strangeness, but not why.

You begin talking in the direction of the ocean. You ramble, and complain, and muse, you warn about patrols, and say all sorts of things while you go about your duties. You never feel without an audience.

You start hauling crates with fish and crabs you caught yourself and leaving them by the tidepool. You felt a little silly for this at first- after all you figured if fish was being delivered to you, he'd be plenty capable of catching his own- but it was the closest thing to sharing food and paying the favor back that you could think of at the moment, and you found the crate empty the next day, so you figured it worked.

You paid attention to the flashes of tail you caught every once in a while- noticing the shimmer of jewlery on occasion and tentatively also leaving some small pieces you'd sourced from a nearby artisan.

You danced around each other for a while.

And then one day, you see him properly again.

Injured, again.

You haul him into the tidepools once more, and treat him, and scold him when you catch him trying to swim out before you're done treating him, and snort a laugh when he sinks into the water and blows bubbles like the sea equivalent of a pout.

And after the whole ordeal, and the tide coming back up, and swimming away...

He comes back.

Again, and again, and again.

Somehow, you've found yourself in the company of the one called Mobei-Jun at almost any point you wander outside your lighthouse. And even from within, if you glance outside, chances are you can wave to him and he'll be able to see you. He seems perfectly capable of slipping by in the shadows cast by the beams of the An Ding lighthouse, and yet you're never inclined to report this flaw in the Cang Qiong Coast Line's system. Not if it permits you to keep Mobei-Jun's company.

It's not something you should have let go on for as long as you have- if you're caught with him, breaking the unspoken rules, you don't want to even think of what will happen to you. Nevermind if he grows bored of this strange routine of yours and remembers you are meant to be enemies, meant to kill each other- and yet...

You keep risking it.

Maybe, you muse as you haul in a catch, Mobei-Jun lounging lazily in a nearby pool, you might have even come to enjoy this.

Just a bit.

"Mostly vibes" I write in the beginning of my notes app. Like a fool. The drabble got away from me lmao. I'm a fan of second person, as you can probably tell. Maybe one day I'll clean it up and change the pov. Not soon though, y'all will simply have to enjoy as is.

OOhh!! Cute! I'll see what I can do! :D

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