Disclaimer: Star Wars The Clone Wars is the mind and heart work of George Lucas and Disney, and the sea folk most definitely belong to themselves. I just enjoyed imagining them in company. ;)
~Kelp and Wind~
...
He sat on grey sand beneath a white sky.
Motionless, he was all but invisible against his monochromatic surroundings. Only the occasional and slight movement of his head in tune with the snares along the beach betrayed his distinction from them.
Shul sat alone, but remembered when he hadn't.
Back when the days had been measured in more than tides and sun. When he could feel the thunder of the cruisers in his chest, when he could hear the skinny whines of air strikes, and his visor had been clowded with the smoke of alloy and armor touched by blasterfire.
A race had taken place between the GAR and CIS on the very sand where he now sat in silence. Back then the sky and sea had been dotted with ships and the radios had echoed with keyed codes and chatter. When they had landed it had been a necessity to keep their eyes and ears open for that constant, fierce, blessed normalcy. Their adversaries had been tanned, glinting metal, and they had lived and died doing what they had been trained and bred for.
It had been a familiarity that he had taken for granted.
The war had progressed to different sector of the galaxy, a stalemate reached as the planet had slipped from interest. Both sides had begrudgingly moved on.
Shul and his platoon had been the last of the company to remain, awaiting transport amid the dying chaos. But the first retrieval ship had been brought down by the remaining abandoned droids, and the second lost to a storm that bellowed abrupt and savage as the sea and sky raged for days.
And when it had finally burned itself out they hadn't come back.
At first he had felt betrayed, abandoned, lost. As months passed, the bitter pangs of resentment.
Now it was simply resignation.
He did what he was told each day out of loyalty to his remaining brothers, and because, quite frankly, he didn't have anything better to do with his time. Protocol, rather than necessity was why he sat where he did right then. And if he saw anything but the wind mottling the water, it'd be a good day.
He tasted the wind even through his helmet's filters. Salt that blew cold and thick as the sea. Around him the hap-hazard nets were in their usual act of becoming knotted by the wind. One to his right gave an especially vivid clang that spoke of flying loose and sparking rocks. With a sigh he rose to go secure it.
He picked his way across the shore, careful to give the edge of the water a wide a berth as possible. As vital as the substance was to their survival, it was also deeply hated. In spite of its life-giving properties, it was also deceptive; treacherous. Though it provided them with what they needed to survive, it also took. Those that remained alive had learned avoidance through experience or the fates of others, and not one among them entered it without explicit direction or necessity to do so.
He kept eyes on it more than the ground before him as he walked, glancing over his shoulders whenever it became necessary as he traversed the rocks that pierced the beach, as though he half expected something to erupt from its surface and make a break for him.
It wasn't an unfounded watchfulness.
The grip of the tide, the liquid foul moods, and the lack of visibility weren't the only dangers.
The sound came again and the melody of it told him that it was more than wires and wind. Something struggled within the tines, a thrashing that waxed and waned and wasn't governed by the salted breeze.
There was an intelligence to the ryhthm.
At first Shul imagined a wayward B1, too oblivious to avoid a net in broad daylight and a shadow of a grin touched his face. That would've made his day. Something to shoot. A reason for sitting and waiting, watching.
But as he drew closer he heard no alloyed chime to the net, no distressed metallic voice. The realization of what it had to be struck him, like the memory-scrap of a nightmare, and he shuddered.
One of them.
The small prey fish that they harvested from the nets weren't the only things in the ink-sea. There were other, far more sinister, things. Creatures which moved like silk-strips beneath the water, visible only in the flashes of eel-like tails that broke the surface. Tails that were long and striped, sharp-scaled and lethal. Deceptively thin and graceful for the strength of their grip and the poison they possessed.
Perfect for the wicked games they played.
A tripping blow to the shin, or sudden sharp tug that stumbled you on the jagged stones. The coiling grip around a leg or arm as you were bent over harvesting the catch of the nests. Tightening, testing, toying, and then disappearing.
Vicious fins that raked deep slices across the surface of their armor. There wasn't one among them whose plastoid wasn't spider-webbed with scratches from this play.
They were quick shadows, water ghosts you could feel and fear, but never catch.
Not that Shul or his brothers made any effort to do so, for good reason.
When the clones had first looked to the sea in desperation and hunger as supplies dwindled, the creatures had been identified as a possible food source. They had tried their luck with the limited knowledge they possessed of hunting for both food and the unseen.
It was not a battle they would ever consider again, though avoidance with them was now impossible.
Through observation following the consequences of this contact, the clones had learned of a viable food source. The only one, within manageable distance with their limited men and supplies.
It had been the sergeant who had discovered this. He had made note of the presence of the creatures and their thrashing on the in-bound tide. He had picked the shore for remains of their feeding afterwards and tested it for consumption.
And it had been he who had dared to enter the water to catch what the creatures ate in the only time it could be actively harvested: as they did so themselves. It had been a game of chance, life or death, at the whim of their faceless mercy. At first his presence had been perceived as another attack and they had had hissed streams of fury, circled like sharks. He had received several glancing blows that made him stumble, meant to disorientate or weaken. A few had wrapped tails around his limbs and waist, a trial of pain and intimidation.
But after a long time in which he returned none of their attacks, they had at last left him alone to finish their work, hungry or bored. They had accepted his presence begrudgingly afterwards, and that of his men.
But this acceptance came at the cost of being stalked and toyed with. Tested and reminded that the allowance was granted purely for the sake of amusement.
A stalemate had been reached on these terms.
When the creatures came to feed, so too did Shul and his brothers. They harvested, as the creatures did so alongisde them with grim reminders of who was in charge.
Through trial and error they had learned that the best course of action was to remain unresponsive to provocations. To surpress the shudder of something snaking up your leg or binding your ankles. To ignore the movement that rippled the water at your side and the fins that shrieked across your armor. Even this had its dangers, however. Once a clone had received a reprimand for this behavior. The swift and powerful smack of a tail across the back, a smarting blow that had left him wheezing for a week.
None had ever seen the face of the creatures, but Shul imagined eyes and teeth that shone with cruel wit, spined and scaled and layered teeth. It looked like he was about to finally find out.
He had no idea how it had survived without water for so long, the tide had left hours ago. But it had, and this information came as less of a surprise and more of a confirmation that these creatures were the stuff of nightmares.
Even hearing the distress, he wasn't so unwise to assume that being caught had tamed the creature, or that its strength wasn't still formidable. The savagery of its writhing in the sand could be heard from behind the large rock mere feet away. His pace slowed as his blood quickened.
The sound of his boots on the sand caused an abrupt stillness of movement. Shul took the last steps cautiously, knelt to peer behind the rocks as he raised his blaster on instinct.
Aware that he could not use it.
These creatures were intelligent enough to determine cause of death and were perfectly capable of extracting revenge, and that was the last thing he wanted to bring down upon them all.
But there was a base instinct within him that still called out for him to shoot dead this enemy that ruled with torment. In a time when there was no stockpile of rations left, and the days harvest off the lines meant whether or not you ate, those who sabotaged their effort were enemies in the truest sense. And the creatures made games of ripping their nets and stealing their catch.
That's probably what this one had been doing, Shul guessed, when it had gotten caught.
The tail came into view, wrapped and knotted in the lines. There remained a shallow puddle of sea water in the sand, perhaps made by the indentation of struggle and streaked with blood. It surprised him to see it was a hue not unlike his own.
The nature of its dilemma was obvious. The grey-green flesh was punctures by the wires, invisible where they were wound so tight that they cut into the tail. He slid his eyes up the body, involuntarily cringing at the work of its struggle, seeking at last to see its face.
And froze.
The creature lay out in full view and at last he had within sight the invisible terror that had haunted him and his brothers. Its eyes were on him. But it had the advantage of knowing exactly what every inch of him looked like, and didn't freeze like him. It hissed and writhed, passionately trying to extricate itself.
Shul shook his head and looked again.
Where he had imagined an aquatic head, green- grey and scale-sheened to match the despised tail, there was none. No flapping gills, or bulging reflective sea-eyes, no gaping maw of jagged clear sharp fish teeth. Instead a very human-like face stared back at him.
The face was pale, inhumanly so, the tint of the bleached shells that dotted the sand amid the rocks. Hair like fog spilling over soft bare shoulders and sharp tail-scales, making long ribbons across the sand.
Eyes the grey of the stones, and wet-wide with fright.
It was the reflection of his own helmet in those wide eyes, the looming stark visor and raised blaster within, that brought him back.
With as much shock as training, instinct kicked in and he lowered his weapon even as he fell back to a defensive crouch a few feet away. The call of his blood was to kill this thing which had made his life hell. But his eyes were a tempered opponent to that reaction, surprised, yet uncertain, begging consideration beyond that impulse.
She remained staring at him as the tide curled against the beach far to the right, and pain or fear made her chest rise and fall in quick, shallow breaths. She struggled to move away, leaning as far away from him as her tangled tail would allow. The shift, even as slight as it was brought the twang of line against fin and she halted in obvious pain. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and her hands made desperate stars as they pressed in the sand.
Shul snapped to motion as though coming out of a spell. Without thinking he stepped over to the ties that bound the net to the ground and began cutting them before he even realized what he was doing.
Or perhaps he did.
He was trained to make split-second decisions when presented with a scenario. Ten years of intensive training made him more than qualified. Listen, breathe, assess, respond. This was hardly a scenario he was familiar with, or trained for, but there existed the pressing need to do something. And this was what his mind came up with.
Whether it was a good choice or a bad one would have to be determined later. He crouched close enough to begin working on the lines that bit into the creature's tail with a wary glance. He knelt down slowly and put aside his blaster in favor of the knife from his utility belt.
But before he withdrew it he made a point of looking at her and showing her empty hands, palm up. A universal gesture of 'I mean you no harm'. Or he hoped.
It seemed to draw some reaction from her, as she halted her struggling to give him her full focus. As her eyes roved him, searching for intention or honesty, he remembered that she couldn't see his own. Carefully, he reached a hand up and removed his helmet beneath her intense scrutiny. He made a point of looking into her eyes as he removed his helmet, hoping she wouldn't take it as a direct challenge, but an offer of truce.
Was it a truce? He himself had no idea.
Though she still said nothing, her eyes spoke. He could see that she understood. He saw the recognition in her gaze that he was helping. For the moment, a peace of sorts had been made, even though trust remained visibly elusive.
He didn't blame her. Situations reversed, he doubted he'd have trusted her at all.
He withdrew the knife and placed fingertips to the wire. Her eyes were still hard on him with suspicion, disbelief and study but she gave the slightest of nods, and he began.
Slowly, as gently as possible, he severed the lines and pulled them free, working his way down her tail. He gingerly worked around the area where the spines were when he came to them, swallowing a shudder triggered by memory.
Once an unlucky clone had had the misfortune of coming into contact with one of those barbs. Through intent or accident, in a pass one of the creatures had raked its spines across the back of his leg where it was unguarded by armor. For a week he had drifted in and out of fevered conciousness, existing in tortured pain until it eventually eased. Fully healed, he still limped.
The initial yelp from their brother at the attack had elicited an immediate response from those nearby. In spite of the no-fire order they had lit the water with their shots before their minds had caught up. The sergeant's cries had gone unheard and unheeded, and the creatures beneath had been swift to retaliate. Each and every one who had fired was dragged beneath the water and held there, futilely thrashing for long desperate moments, until at last, just shy of drowning, they had been released coughing and choking to the surface.
Shul had been one of them.
When he finished his task he rocked back on his heels, subconciously putting a bit of space between them. He watched to see what she would do.
He half expected her to slither away across the sand, quick as a snake, scales gleaming and hair trailing behind her. One bright flash as she disappeared beneath the waves like a feather engulfed by ink.
But she remained, and he realized then that she could not. Not without dragging open wounds across the stone and sharp shells and grit of the beach. The wounds weren't fatal, but surely painful and debilitating.
With a sigh that was more frustration at himself for missing the obvious than anything else, he pulled out his medkit and flicked it open. An action that would have made sense once. But there was nothing within. All the supplies had been used, lent or given to the acting-medic. He looked to her apologetically and shook his head.
She simply blinked at him curiously. She didn't seem possessed of words, or the desire to speak, so at last he gestured with his hands that he would carry her to the water.
If, and only if, she kept her tail in check. He made sure that was clear. Very clear.
He saw something then that he didn't expect.
Between the pain and the tears, he saw the faintest smile. As the sunlight caught her silhouette and the wind blew the stream of her hair around her streaked and pretty face, some intangible barrier had been broken.
But it was brief. And when he picked her up, the fear in her eyes returned and she tensed, hands scrambling between trying to avoid contact and catch hold of him somewhere. He waited, supporting her but allowing her to find a grip on him on her own terms.
Over her shoulder the water murmured and foamed in small ridges and the sky was a stark contrast to the line of the sea on the horizon. He heard the nets floundering.
At last he felt one arm tentatively loop around his neck while the other hand found and gripped his undersuit along his side, and he glanced at her. Her grip was cold and sharp, but finally she gave him another nod, a touch more confident than the last.
As he walked, Shul tried to imagine what knowledge the sergeant or any of the others might have gained through this encounter, of this moment or the ones before, from carrying her. What might they have noticed other than the soft hair or thin arms and small breath against his neck that kept his attention from anything else?
When the waves lapped at his waist he stopped walking and lowered her into the water. She clung to him for a moment, still clutching his undersuit tightly, cheek to his neck, eyes on the shore. He felt the chill of her fingertips and the weight of her tail as it met his legs beneath the waves, and then as it wrapped a slow coil around him.
For a second a wave of panic washed over him and he froze.
As she had been in his territory before, at his mercy, their roles wer now very much reversed and the feeling of it was too familiar, too ingrained with a deep-seated fear.
He cast a wary glance down at her, slow and deliberate. Trying not to show the emotion that crept up the back of his neck. He saw that she was watching him back, large grey eyes blinking, as fathomless as the sea.
And then he saw mischief on her face, a slow smile that curled her lips and flashed in her eyes. And stayed.
He let out a breath and shook his head, returned the look as a new feeling teased away the echo of fear. Something like… humor, and a reconciliation with something that hadn't been recognized before.
Even now, wounded and exposed and in her enemy's arms, she was playing a game.
Perhaps that's all they always had been.
She hesitated a breath more. Grin fading, and pulled him close, and he thought perhaps she would say something, with a voice like water rushing over sand. But instead she gave him a quick kiss, soft and cold, long hair whispering around them in the wind, thin fingers pressed on either side of his face.
And then she was gone.
A ripple of shining foam rose on the black sea where she disappeared. Afterwards nothing marred its surface for miles.
Nothing but the kelp and wind.
...
I hope you liked it. ;) Let me know what you think!
For any readers of my other stories- It's been so, so long, hasn't it?
I'm sorry. These past few months have been an adventure of moving. Searching and renovating and settling into a new life-path. Things are finally quieting down, and I hope to resume writing again. This little one-shot was born of the peace I found on the chilly morning we stepped from months of limbo into our new home at last. That, and from reading copious amounts of fairytales to my son. Can you tell the little Mermaid is one of our favorites?
A very heartfelt thanks to Ms CT-782 for being my editor on this. She's pretty amazing, and found sense in my word-rivers, where even I couldn't.