(I blame Yūki Kaji's vocal cover of Part of Your World for this. He's a real life merman probably.)
Once upon a time, far out at sea, there lived a lonely little merman. In the evening when the sun came to rest atop the water's edge he would swim to the surface just to watch it sink.
In the world above light danced off his golden scales on full display. The sea kept calm there where he basked on a lone rock jutting out of the water, not far from some nameless island's cove. On his back lazily furling and unfurling the translucid caudal fin at the tip of his tail, he hummed to himself and preened the seaweed from his hair.
Perhaps he was a little proud of that tail, of the thin, honey colored locks that fell to his shoulders, of the many treasures he had collected from ship wreckage on the ocean floor. Everything had magic in it. Especially the things humans created.
But the little merman's most prized possession could only have been his voice- the sweetest of any creature's above or below the sea. He liked to think the sun would have good dreams if he emerged to sing to it before each nightfall. So that was exactly what he did.
Even so, he was lonely. Never could he grow attached to other of his kind. Never would he remain in one place long. The sea was far too vast, filled with too many things to explore.
The little merman would grow tired after scouring the ocean floor all day. And though the sun would set the same, this evening would prove to be unlike any other.
"Ah~"
Wide eyes grew wider, brighter. A ship appeared on the horizon, its crimson sails catching a swift current of wind.
He couldn't have known that very ship belonged to a king who oversaw one of the sea's most feared naval forces. Humans were dangerous to begin with; this one happened to carry with him the guarded secret of Greek wildfire. The substance was known to devour entire enemy fleets in flame when under skilled control. The king had a reputation for being as ruthless as wildfire itself. It was said he'd swallowed an entire pot of it when he was young.
But the little merman knew nothing of these things. As a slave to his own curiosity he dove head first into the sea, lithe body and tail shimmying through the water after the ship.
Day after day he trailed them and kept as close to the surface as he could without being noticed once. Nothing had ever captured his interest so thoroughly; the ship was a marvel in itself but what it carried was an even greater mystery. Not once did he tire of listening to the humans' scuffling and shouting above. Sometimes they would stay out on the deck drinking late into the night. Then the light from their lanterns would make anything below the water's surface seem too dark, too cold for him.
The little merman found himself pressed against the ship's hull- longing.
However, it was the figure that would appear at the edge of the deck when all grew still that he would long to see most. Broad shoulders. A cloak draped over them to keep off the spray of the sea. Hair wild and windswept. The silhouette alone emanated a kind of power that commanded attention, yet scorned it just the same.
From down below it was only ever a silhouette. The little merman began to wish that he might see this human up close. Curiosity bred fixation.
And so he would use the only power he possessed to lure the king down from his floating castle. He would use his voice.
The ship grew eerily calm once the sun began to settle down again on its watery bed. Rocked by the waves, he laid on his back looking skyward and mustered the courage to sing. His song began too soft to carry, but as he swam along in lazy circles around the ship's hull its melody grew fuller, more hypnotic than before.
There was only but to wait and watch and swish his fin impatiently. Then, in the last light of dusk, the figure appeared and his song grew only more urging. It rose without lyric or meaning, only an etherial sensation, over the hold, over the shrouds. But he remained out of plain sight- only to tease the ear. His kind perfected this technique over centuries and had lead many ships to ruin. The figure of the man above stayed, and listened even still.
The sun had lost the little merman's favor. From then on his song was meant for another.
Each nightfall he came to find his human looming over the edge of the stern. Faithfully. And faithfully he would call out in song from above and below the surface. Diving in and out. But there came a night that his human did not appear in the usual place. The little merman's heart sank, until a single lifeboat appeared, rowing around the wide body of the ship. A lamp's light guided its way.
Heavy footfalls sounded from its inside as the vessel was allowed to drift. The vibrations they caused felt intimidating, but called to the little merman just the same. Only the top of his head peeked out from the surface where the lifeboat floated closer. Soft was his song then but it carried on until...
The figure mounted one boot-clad foot on the edge of the boat and shone the lamplight out onto the water.
Are all humans so striking up close? The little merman thought in awe, watching that tired but fearsome amber gaze even as it fell upon him.
"There you are," the human's voice had a growl and depth to it that resonated through the water, through to his core. "Swore something was stalking after my ship."
A coy pair of eyes blinked up at him from the sea below. And suddenly they were filled with excitement.
"You heard me! You heard me and you came..." The little merman couldn't help himself. In one leap he cleared the middle of the lifeboat with a corkscrew spin and landed on the other side.
Emerging again he found a severe glare across the human's visage where he'd expected a look of shock to be. Hair as red as the ship's sails dripped with water from the splash; he was still standing there, questioning his own sobriety. Only now he was wet.
"That was your singing then."
Rubbing his temples the human eased back to sit in the boat with a heavy sigh.
"I apologize, I mean, if I was disturbing you. It's just that I've been watching and waiting and hoping you would-"
"Come. Here."
That was a direct order. It was clear the man feared nothing. Not even the depth of the sea below nor every unknown thing it held in its belly. He stripped the tight black gloves one after the other from his hands.
The little merman nodded gently and let the lapping waves carry him even closer. Close enough to touch the side of the vessel. The closest he had ever been to one of their kind.
Eyes narrowed, the human reached out and drew a hand through blonde hair all soaked with salt water. The touch was so warm where it ghosted along the little merman's cheek, seeking truth where he might have expected thin air; the unexpected contact caused gills to flare a little.
There could be no doubt in the human's mind. With bare hands he'd felt it. This stunning creature before him was flesh and blood. There was truth push of the breeze and the unmistakable scent of the ocean and the starry flecks in those eyes below catching in his lamplight.
With a single touch the human's plane of reality had shifted. An ache would grow deep in his chest to hear that song again, knowing it wasn't some hallucination.
"I've... heard of your kind. What do they call you?"
Those words came slow as he drew back, as if he were struggling slightly to believe them.
"Oh~ Totsuka," the little merman beamed, "but nobody really calls me anything anymore. I've been on my own for a very long time. But I must know your name too."
With a long huff he decided to play along. Looking away he could almost pretend this was a normal conversation, "Tch. Nobody calls me much else b'sides Your Grace. Easy to forget I was born Mikoto."
"Why do they call you Your Grace?"
" 'Cause like it or not I'm a king. That ship bares my sigil, plain as anything on the mainsail," he bristled. "First of my name. If fate's kind, the last."
The little merman didn't exactly understand why it made his human sound so angry- but that word captured his heart. Whatever it meant it was important.
King.
"King. I knew you were something great," Totsuka's fin slapped the water, creating another rain of droplets as pulled himself up almost into the lifeboat.
With the boat rocking and still unsure of what to say, Mikoto stiffened. "And you're... well, something."
The little merman took this for a compliment.
Neither could help staring boldly at the other. Where scales were revealed in the place a lower body Mikoto couldn't wrench away his attention; in turn, Totsuka tried to memorize every detail of the man's countenance.
His arms look so strong. If they held me tight enough could he even make me human...
In the stillness of the moment King lit the pipe he'd carried out with him in his coat. Totsuka had never seen anything like it before. Not the pipe itself- there were several in his collection- but the little flame that appeared on the tiny stick for a fleeting instant before setting the tobacco inside aglow.
He was instantly overcome with wonder. And so many questions. This fire, he would learn, gave humans warmth and the ability to see in the dark. But Mikoto explained its destructive power with such a quiet, terrifying passion. All the ways he could bend it to his will. As if that were the only thing he cared to talk about- even if he didn't seem to derive any pleasure from talking about it.
Totsuka wanted to see more. Even if more was that kind of destruction; it sounded beautiful in a way. He wanted to see everything as it was above, not buried in wreckage at the bottom of the sea.
Though faint, a contented smirk broke through Mikoto's stern facade, just as the King's Hand called out for him from the deck above after noticing he had gone missing. He growled. Eyes rolled. There was no choice but to heed that call.
Totsuka ducked out of sight to watch the lifeboat row away from under the water. Blindly he had given so much of his trust to this man, his king that he had found all on his own. He thought nothing of his own security.
Mikoto wouldn't promise to return to the little merman's company, but something in the flustered way he glanced over his shoulder guaranteed they would meet again.
It all became very much like a dream.
In secret their nights were filled with questions and sparely worded answers- the king spoke very little but despite his occasional annoyance with Totsuka's excitable nature, he would always return on that lifeboat.
And when he retired to bed the little merman's song carried on even through to his quarters, curing the restlessness which had plagued him for years. The king would fall into such a soothing, deep sleep that waking him proved near fatal for anyone who dared to try. Rumors claimed he had sold his soul to something in the waters below. Hadhe become tamed by it, possessed? If that were true Mikoto could not have been any more pleased.
He would have sold his soul a thousand times over for this peace he was finally granted.
When the ship returned to dock so many leagues away at the palace by the sea the little merman would follow. Responsibility nipped at Mikoto's heels no matter how he tried to kick it away. With all that stood between the king stole every chance he could to return to the water's edge unfollowed. To wade in waist deep, standing firm against the current just to be with him.
Time transformed their fascination with each other into something that burned a bit fiercer. And the little merman wished with all of his strength to be human, to follow the one he would devote his life to out of the sea. Not even the deepest kiss could break the natural order of things. Even though they would try, over and over, like a ritual; the sounds they made well hidden by the roar of waves. Totsuka's laughter once Mikoto was finally dragged off his feet into the surf, still held fast in his arms. Not even his songs sounded so sweet.
Just to soothe the king whenever he was unsettled as the churning tide and wrap his tail around that powerful body and feel the surge of energy in his touch- this was the little merman's one and certain happiness.
"I have to go."
"I know."
With eyes closed felt himself set free into the water.
Happiness in spite of everything.
With the changing of the seasons King was summoned back out to sea. Bound for another post he commanded he was not so reluctant to leave the land this time. Totsuka's slender form could be found racing along beside them. It was amusing to watch him occasionally crest the waves when he thought no one was looking. The ocean felt a kinder place with him below.
At least that was the way it seemed.
Mikoto lay entombed in the same serene, dreamless sleep each night until a distant sound jarred him awake: a cry to chill all the fire in his blood. Dread washed over him akin to nothing he'd ever experienced before. All of the horrors laid out before his eyes and visions of casualties of war, some real, some imagined, flooded back to haunt him. There was something about that cry.
He tore down his coat from its hook, determined to hunt down anyone who could give him the truth. The man at watch had witnessed everything unfold.
What appeared to be a benign trader's vessel had been allowed to closer passage than usual. Something in the water had captured their attention. Without a moment's hesitation a skilled marksman landed a harpoon deep in whatever it was. Every hand on the king's ship gathered to watch them drag up the bizarre catch from the sea to their waiting deck. Even dead, something like this would fetch a good price. Whether fish or man- they argued amongst themselves- it had been speared clean through its middle.
Silence settled over the king first, suffocating under its weight. The sickened, deadly aura around him could be felt, like a toxin in the air. It spoke volumes. Until a single command was issued. One to grip every soul on board with the kind of fear, blind madness that could not be disobeyed.
They would watch their leader break, just as the bow would break through the side of the other vessel with a violent crack. The king abandoned the ship that had by duty become his prison for the other's deck clutching a single, lidded pot under one arm.
Amber eyes glowed with a deranged light; without question he would set the Greek fire's blaze to begin swallowing the very ship upon which he stood. The clay pot cracked against the deck. Intense heat flared out from its origin. Men came for him like a pack of dogs, their swords bared to defend the one responsible for his rage. The same rage would claim their lives as fire claimed wood and turned it to ash.
There was nothing to stand between them anymore. Nothing to hide them.
Heavy boot heels called out through the roar of flames and anguished cries to where the little merman only still clung to life. For the first and last time he was seeing the full extent of his king's power.
I was able to sing for him then. That is fine enough.
Blood came choking up from Totsuka's mouth, through the gills flaring out desperately at his sides. A mix of the same red and deck water pooled from where his body had been thrown down against damp wood. They had torn the barbed metal from his side. There at the very edge of the deck every fragile part of him was ready to let go. Just as the tide ebbed out so would the last of his strength. The little merman lay very still once he was lifted up into steady arms.
"K-"
He tried but couldn't. Waiting was the best he could do. His gentle upturned smile spoke for him for the last time.
Mikoto could only hold him and cringe and swear and swear
"They will not take your scales, they will not take your fins, or your eyes or your song or all of the things you keep under the sea... they will not have anything that is mine.
They will burn instead."
All around his promise would be fulfilled, but not before a blade was drawn and run deep into his back. Straight through it pierced to the other side before wrenching back out again. Broad shoulders heaved. There could have been no other way. That final stab of pain came more welcomed than the soothing warmth of a fire's glow against his flesh. Or one last drag of a smoke. Legs gave way beneath them as he struggled to take one final step toward the waiting sea.
Over the edge the pair fell. The descent was long and the surface hit hard but neither could have noticed. At the bottom of the ocean there was no fire, but there was peace. There they would go to rest together for all time.