The Rocky Shore (Hetalia)

Author: Ashynarr

Summary: Eleanor grew up knowing humans were dangerous. Emily grew up knowing merfolk took her brother from her. When the two of them meet on a stormy summer morning, both of them will realize there's more to what they once knew than they originally imagined.

Disclaimer: Hetalia's not mine.

Warning: Nyo!AmeCan, mermaid!Eleanor, human AU

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

Eleanor took her first breath when she was four years old.

It was a sort of coming of age ceremony for all young merfolk, though in more dangerous times it marked the point where one could - in theory - outswim a predator long enough to get aide, hence meaning they were much more likely to survive to adulthood. In those days, humans had been included on the list, though with the truce between their races - and the advances the land dwellers had made in medicine and safety - it was more a formality than anything.

Never the less, it meant that the autumn after her fourth summer, Eleanor and two of her age mates were carried towards the shimmery lights above by their respective mothers, and gently eased above the rippling surface. Their first gasps of dry (comparatively) air were quickly followed by surprised clicking, their voices distorted by the thinner medium.

After a few minutes for the children to learn the joys of splashing the surface to make droplets fly everywhere, and some grabbing after the strange fish - seagulls, their parents called them - far out of reach above them in the bright blue sky, they were brought back underneath the waves and taught how to quickly change their breathing between their gills and their lungs. It was, they were warned, one of the only things that might save them if things went wrong.

Eleanor was too enamored with the feeling of sunshine and salty breezes to listen to most of it.

Those days where she wasn't busy with lessons or chores found her playing with the pods of dolphins or whales that occasionally came by, her own gray flukes and dorsal fin easily allowing her to blend in to the casual watcher. Sadly, no pods spoke the same dialect of chirps and whistles as the merfolk, but they still made good playmates and companions for her surface adventures.

At ten, she saw her first human.

Eleanor had been gathering mussels near the shore when something abruptly disturbed the waves above her. Blinking and peering up, she saw it happen again, the small rock sinking past her until it settled to the sand below her. Intrigued, she carefully moved a bit further downshore, away from the falling stones, before surfacing to peer at the source.

It was a girl, just about her age. It took a minute for the mergirl to notice the lack of tail or fin, not to mention that weird covering all over - those were called clothes, right? And those two things curled up by her chest while she threw another stone were called lags? Legs!

For the first pair of legs she had ever seen, Eleanor decided they were very nice.

After a short while the human girl got up and brushed her clothes off, picking up the small pile of driftwood beside her before walking down the beach towards the human town. Eleanor ducked back under the ocean, gills fluttering in excitement to match her grin as she quickly hauled tail back to her own home, the barely remembered mussels still in her arms.

For the next week she was distracted, committing to memory the way the human girl had moved, had bent and walked and made it all seem so easy, almost like swimming. Though she was called out on her inattentiveness in class, she was thankfully never asked to explain just what was on her mind.

Daydreams, though, would not make her any more likely to suddenly grow legs than kissing a green hermit crab would. It seemed the mysteries of the land dwellers would be forever out of her reach, just like the seagulls.

Despite her limitations, Eleanor still wanted to know as much as she could, and so bothered any adult who would talk to her with questions about the land and the beings who lived there.

"It doesn't matter," She would always be told. "There's no need to know about them, so save your interest for more important things."

"But why don't they matter?" She would ask in retaliation. "Don't the humans give us medicine to help us when we're sick? Don't they tell us how the rest of the world is?"

Their faces would crinkle, their eyes and mouthed narrowed. "That's a matter for the chief, not for little girls."

And that would be that. Eleanor pouted at the memories, rolling over on her sleeping stone and tightly hugging the seaweed doll her mother Alice had woven for her. The older mermaid came in soon after, settling beside her daughter and running a hand through Eleanor's short hair.

"Momma, why doesn't anyone like to talk about humans?" She asked, moving closer to get more of the comfort she craved.

Alice just smiled sadly, continuing her small comforting movements. "Because a long time ago the humans did something unforgivable. They took one of our own."

"They did?" Eleanor frowned, looking up at her mother. "Why?"

"I don't know," Alice admitted. "But they convinced the old chief's only son to go up on land, and he never returned. We don't want that to happen to anyone else, so it's best we stay away from them."

"Oh," The young mergirl finally replied, remaining quiet aside from a mumbled "goodnight" as her mother kissed her forehead, leaving Eleanor alone to think.

Her teacher had always cautioned her and her agemates about the dangers of the ocean - humans among them - but it had seemed empty when the humans in the town above never really went out of their way to bother any of them. But if they were dangerous, then why did no one else even mention that boy being kidnapped? Surely that would work better than vague threats from the past to keep them away from the land dwellers!

Eleanor recalled the girl at the beach. She certainly hadn't seemed dangerous, except she had been throwing those rocks, which the mergirl admitted to herself could hurt if they were thrown right at her.

This required investigation.

The following morning was gray and windy, weather that normally would hardly affect the mergirl except for the fact that it meant there certainly wouldn't be any humans at the beach, not to mention it would be impossible to watch them safely with the choppy waves dashing against the rocks.

Only she was proven wrong when the human girl indeed showed up, looking rather desperate as she walked along the beach. She kept looking around and bending down, like she was searching for something. Had she lost something here?

Eleanor followed along under the water, curious as to what she was looking for - at least, until she spotted a glint of something on the sand ahead. Swimming ahead and snatching it up, she looked over the necklace with some curiosity, messing with the clasp on the pendant until it opened, a picture of who could only be the girl with another human - an older boy; a brother? - peering at her from inside.

The mergirl would bet her fins it was what the other girl was looking for. Now how to get it to her…

Throwing it was clearly out of the question - the girl might miss it anyways, and it might damage the necklace. Just swimming up and handing it over seemed simpler, but Eleanor still had her mother's words bouncing around in her head, making her bite her lips at the idea of actually approaching a human on her own.

Wait, what if she swam ahead and left it somewhere easy to see? Then the human would get it back and Eleanor wouldn't have to show herself at all. And she knew from experience that there was a small cluster of boulders up ahead perfect for the job, since one of them had a nice indent perfect for the task.

She darted ahead, barely stopping herself from running into them in her haste. Swimming around to the other side, she pulled herself out of the water enough to find the indented boulder, dropping the necklace in and sliding back into the water with a victorious grin.

Only to panic when the next wave washed the small object out and back into the water, slipping between two boulders before she could think to go after it. Thankfully it wasn't out of reach, but the gap was hard to squeeze even her arm through. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the cord and pulled the piece out, ignoring the scrape on her wrist as she pulled herself up again to replace it along with a small stone to hold it in place.

As if to continue to frustrate her, she had barely started to place it before another wave slammed into her, sending her tumbling towards shore. She hissed at the bruises her tail and arm got from slamming against another boulder, glancing up in time to see the next wave send her tumbling onto the rocks.

Eleanor bit her lip and tried to ignore the grit rubbing against her gills, pushing herself up to look back at the water. Even though it wasn't too far, it felt a lifetime away, not to mention her new fear of being trapped on this beach again by the waters that had abruptly thrown her out here was making her lungs and gills both suck in air in sharp, fast bursts.

"Are you alright?" She heard someone ask her, drawing her attention from her panic to the human she'd been trying to avoid in the first place.

"H-alp-" Eleanor choked out, her mouth slurring the word. Why hadn't she paid more attention when they were learning the basics of human English?

"I-" The human started, hesitating when she looked down to Eleanor's tail, distrust evident in her expression.

"Please," The mergirl pleaded, remembering at the last second the trinket that'd gotten her into this whole mess and holding it forward - a gift or a bribe, depending on how one saw it.

The human gasped. "You found my necklace for me?"

"Please," Eleanor asked again.

"I- oh, right." She came forward, gently claiming the necklace from Eleanor's hands. Just when the mergirl thought she'd be left to dry out on the rocks, she felt arms wrap under her arms, dragging her back towards home and safety.

When the water was deep enough Eleanor was released, and without hesitation she pushed herself through the waves until she was far enough from shore to avoid a repeat of that experience. Peeking her head back up, she was able to catch glimpses of the human at each peak of the waves under her.

The human girl noticed her as well, because with an awkward wave she shouted, "Thank you!"

Eleanor waved back, repeating the words and grinning at the light smile she got for it before retreating into the deeper waters. Humans weren't all terrible, it seemed, and she'd helped by giving back an important treasure the other girl had lost. Maybe she even knew why the other humans took a merman?

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

AN: Okay, so this took way too long for me to write, but i fucking did it - here's the first part of my contribution to mertober! It's got Nyo!AmeCan, because lesbians and mermaids go hand in hand obviously. I will probably be continuing this, but at what rate I can't say because of school and other stories and whatnot.

Also for future reference: Eleanor = fem!Ame, Emily = fem!Can, Alice - fem!Eng.

(To ease up confusion: I imagine mermaids in this AU having dolphin-esque tails and dorsal fins instead of colorful fish-like tails. Reasons for this being a) I fucking love dolphins and think there should be more mermaids with those features, and b) really there should be more variation in mermaids for obvious reasons.

…still have gills though. Mrrph. Ah well.)