Buckwheat Pancakes

A disappearance in a city like Paris would have been unfortunately standard, especially among the peasant population. In the agricultural town of Litore it was uncommon, if it ever happened at all, for a person to be unseen for as long as a week. Sitting on the coast of southern France, Litore was cursed with sturdy winds from the strong Mediterranean Sea's currents and the crops grown by farmers could be nothing more than buckwheat, maize, potatoes and leeks. Occasionally in the summer the soil was wealthy enough to hold apples, wine grapes and the most luscious figs; and in the spring mushrooms sprang from the soil. Once in the hottest summer the town had experienced, when the sun beat down onto the straw hats of the farmers, the Lavande's let their prized pig out into the nearby wood, and its keen smell kept it hovering around a specific tree for many minutes. When the family investigated the area, they dug up thirteen truffles eight centimetres in diameter, and made enough money to move to Lyon and live on the richer variety of fruits and honeys they could harvest.

John Watson was overpoweringly jealous of the luxuries the Lavende family now lived in, while he hit the soil with a rusty spade to loosen the roots of the dead fig tree, only a sprout after a dull and cold summer. He ripped it from the earth and threw it over his shoulder, only pausing to wipe at his forehead before moving onto the next pitiful growth.

His lands were looking over the coast of Litore, over the Gulf of Lion. His fields were high up, looking over a beach on a cliff of clay and mud, and his cottage was towards the centre of Litore nearer the company of people. Sometimes John stood on the very edge of his field, right against the threshold of the overhang, and tried to pretend he could see Italy passed the unfriendly ocean where they ate tomatoes and rice, and the grapes grow ripe all year and olive oils are found in every kitchen, and the food is full of taste and cherries are sweet as marzipan. The bitter spring gust wrapped around him once, and he thought it was dragging him over.

As the sun was setting he was happy to retire, and when the evening cast its orange glow on his farmland he felt the harsh winds of the ocean pulling him towards their waves. He burned the sprouting to boil his water for tea, and cooked half a rabbit for dinner. He had no glaze or sauce for it; and his supply of salt was limited due to the death of his donkey, meaning he couldn't travel to town to trade, so the meat was bland and lonely. It left him unsatisfied, and his thoughts were sour as he slept.

The next morning he was barely awake enough to speak to the people he passed on the beaten gravel paths to his field, but he still found the energy to be shocked by how many people were surrounding him. The town had many inhabitants, let it be said, but it had no sort of comparison to Nantes or Lyon, and so to find over ten or fifteen people surrounding one broken lamppost on the uncommon road to the coast was almost alien.

Lestrade turned to him, officer bonnet under his arm. "It's that Dubois' girl. She was sixteen." The police officer couldn't have possibly looked more solemn in that moment, so john walked with him, thinking it would only be to the centre, but Greg took him passed the centre and its tiny stalls filled with wilted lavender from the richer towns; right onto the coast. John felt wet sand struggle into his boots, and looked up with an air of sadness to his field way above their heads. Greg sat him down on a bench opposite the sea.

"Sixteen." Lestrade's head was in his hands, and as he rocked his head back and forth he sometimes ran a palm through his grey hair. He spoke in French to John, whose own attempt to maintain the conversation was difficult, not because he wasn't fluent, but because of his English accent.

"What happened?"

"She's gone. Completely vanished."

John could never say that he knew the family, or the girl, but the way his long-time friend was acting made him worry. He spoke up.

"Did you know her?"

"Does it matter?" Lestrade looked at him and his face was tired, like it had been a week since he slept, and his body was weak in the way it was holding him up. John didn't understand the connection Lestrade had to the girl, and for a second he suspected something romantic. Lestrade's hat fell off the side of the bench with a twirling flurry of wind, and John understood as soon as he looked down at the blue cap.

Lestrade was the only police officer for over fifty miles, and although he had seen few crimes in his time in Litore, he was as respectable and trusted as a king, like he had fought off a dragon.

"Do you feel an obligation to find her?"

"I'll never find her."

John snorted, and his hands rubbed over his own thighs to warm his legs. "Don't be such a miserable git-"

"John," Lestrade said, his voice a serious tone, "I know where she is, but I'll never bring her back."

John felt uncertain, and perhaps scared, of his friend in this instance. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and Lestrade placed his head back into his hands, now leaning right over into a hunch, putting his elbows on his knees.

"Alright," john said, slight mockery in his voice. "She ran off somewhere? With a bloke? Topped herself?"

"There are no carriages out of Litore until Easter, and she couldn't have walked that."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

Greg wouldn't look at him. The ocean opposite him, which John hadn't really observed before now, was consuming the policeman's vision. His eyes were watching the water roll over the sand, and John could swear that the moment Greg's focus shifted down onto his feet, the sea let out a mighty roar and a sharp upset of wind circled them.

"I've seen people out here," he said. "Walking on the water, one of 'em spoke to me." He turned to the farmer, a look akin to insane grief on his face. "He told me he wouldn't take anyone if I came into the sea with him, and I told him to fuck off."

"I don't understand-"

"She was sixteen, and I bet he took her, I bet she's under the water," Greg stood suddenly, but John had to hold his arm to secure him as he nearly toppled over with a quick spell of head rush. "I have to go, the sea's talking to me again."

Greg sped away from him, haste in his steps, and he was leaving deep prints in the wet sand, so john jogged after him. He chased him into town, shouting after him even as they went passed the citizens. When Lestrade turned back to him, his teeth were bared and he was panting with the exertion.

"What-" John himself paused to catch his breath, recognising that he was on the path back to his field and a smaller group of people were still gathered where he had met Greg earlier. "What are you on about?"

"There are creatures in that sea, John, and they're trying to make me go mad."

With that Lestrade returned to the citizens. They didn't speak again, for on the dawn of the next day, Lestrade too was missing.

In March, twelve other people went absent. One of them was a child, eight years old, and it was then that people began to panic. John was still in a state of mourning for his old friend, and out of pure sadness he didn't dare look over the edge of his cliff and accidently catch sight of the last place he and Greg had held conversation while the man was alive. The minister of town rode for seven days into Narbonne where he convinced three officers with mushrooms and figs to guard his sleeping town, but the officers were there a day, and the minister was gone with them.

John sat across form his fire, burning his old bible, useless to him now, and putting his hands under his armpits to warm them up. The winds howled outside his walls, and the cracking of the fire was nothing to the volume of the gale.

In April they lost thirty people, and the remaining groups were not leaving their homes in fear of being swept away by the breeze. Stories began, and John was surprised they weren't spreading all the way to Paris with how ludicrous they were. A widow on the other side of the town was telling children that a harpy was stealing the people to feed to its young, and that if they heard a bird squawk at dusk, it was the hatchling calling for food.

The first night of May was the worst of John's life, and the night he understood. He was in bed when he heard it, the screaming, and he jolted from his covers. When he was outside, dressed in only his bedclothes, he was not initially cold. He took a step out of his house and onto the path in front, the road to and from the centre completely empty, and he for a moment thought he was going mad. Then he heard it again, a shrill cry, and he ran down the road towards his field, spurred by courage.

He ran right to the edge, and under the moon he could see clearly what was happening on the bay. The wind picked up and tried to push him closer, but he was already stood on the brink, and if he moved any closer he would fall to his death. He first looked to where he and Lestrade had spoken, the lonely bench, and felt a pain like a bullet wound shooting through him, and then he saw the girl. She was young, and she was cold, and she was screaming.

He called to her, but he did not know her name: "Girl!" he shouted, and then he saw the figures. The girl chased a tall woman with flowing brown hair, and she shrieked up to the woman louder than John cried to her. He stamped his feet around to get her attention and waved his arms in the air. Cutting his foot on a rock, he cursed.

"Ma Mère!" she called up to the shadow of a women, who did not change in her pace of walking to the ocean, the waves moving out to touch her feet. John was rooted, shaken and fearful, but safe upon the cliff. He turned back for only a second to look behind himself, and when he twisted back the beach was full. People from every edge of the village were surrounding a lone, white, glowing figure standing on the sea.

He awoke the next morning, believing it to be a dream, but his foot bled.

His crops were yielding far worse and the only thing that had persevered until the harvest in June was the buckwheat. An old man hailing from rural Germany, Dirk Hoffmann, who had moved to Litore in his golden years, called him over when he ripped the wheat from the ground. His accent was strong German, so John was unable to comprehend some of his speech, but his first words were resilient.

"My wife was taken by the monster, but she has an excellent thing for those wheats."

John followed the man back to his own house, holding small chat about the seasons and soil until they reached the door, and then he handed the man his buckwheat and sat upon an old chair beside the newly lit fire. He allowed Dirk to talk while he admired the wooden interior of the cottage, and how well polished the tables were.

"It's just you and me now, monsieur, I'm afraid." The man seemed to embrace this idea, and pulled a bucket out from one of the cupboards, and it was filled with the thickest milk John had ever seen. The man must have seen John's astonishment, so clarified. "My cow has eaten well this year."

"I'm guessing you don't mean your wife?"

"No," he laughed, and John was happy to see him laugh. "I don't."

John had never seen a man live to the age Dirk had, so it felt natural to him to ground his wheat with a stone instead of having the older do it, and as he did so he reminisced the year the harvest had been good enough that he sold some of his crop in the city and traded the gold for wine and cheese, and he and Greg had savoured every cup. His figs were juicy that year, and Greg dropped one in his glass, but found the mixing of the red grapes and the fruit to be wonderful; and they drank into the night and stuffed themselves on warm bread, cooked mushrooms and blue cheese as wonderful as the best.

"You see that cupboard?" Dirk asked, gesturing to the one he had pulled the milk from. John nodded and moved towards it, while the other placed a flat piece of expensive steel across the fire propped buy two glass bottles. "Can you get a jug and ladle for me? Wife keeps them in there I think."

"Not much of a cook then?"

"No, that's Joséphine, she was gifted. Should have seen what she could do with sausages."

John knew he shouldn't laugh.

"Sausages?"

"Oh yes," he responded enthusiastically and John bit his lip last minute. "Home in Stuttgart she would work them for hours to get them so juicy," John was still trying not to laugh, because given the circumstance of their meeting it was unfair to laugh at the man's dead wife. "The butcher gave her a good deal, she got so much meat from him."

The grinding of all of the wheat to flower took John half a day, and midnight approached. His companion mixed his now ground flour, salt and a cup of the rich milk into a bowl. From another cupboard under his bed he produced an egg from his only hen, and mixed the ingredients until they made an inconsistent mixture.

"There should be some mushrooms under the bed, in a jug."

John knelt and picked the jug out, hidden under a cloth, and looked upon a sight he would have never thought he would see.

"Are these Chanterelle mushrooms?"

"I think the occasion is right," the man offered him a warm smile, and after john had ripped them up into small bites, the mushrooms were thrown into the batter, and the man threw the lumpy mixture onto the hot plate of steel, where it cooked slowly into a flat cake.

"The French call them galettes when they're made with buckwheat flour, water, and eggs; but you and I are not French."

"What is it to a German and an Englishman?" John asked.

"Buckwheat Pancake, monsieur, you've never tasted anything like my wife's buckwheat pancake."

With a spur in him to resolve this, with determination any creature should fear, John left the house. The man inside slept, filled with buckwheat pancake and sadness, and John Watson had felt anger inside of him coupled with the loss of his friends. He was only half way to the beach when he felt the first inklings of fear, but he spoke to himself aloud.

"For Joséphine, and for Lestrade."

He was marching to the sea, going to fight Poseidon with his bare fists.

"Don't be dead."

He stood against the waves as they sloshed his bare feet, his boots discarded behind him. The waves were slow, and gentle, but cold. He kicked the water, and it seemed to awaken; there was a storm of wind and thunder quickly, a thick gale, and a figure rose from the salty liquid chasm.

The creature, as it stood on the water, was beautiful. The moon behind it was bright, but it was setting, and it shone through the monsters curled hair and onto John's eyes, and its face was defined and sharp (like a shell at the bottom of the ocean); and the creature's mouth was so perfectly arrogant in its shape.

"John," it said, and its tone rivalled its mouths overconfidence.

"Tell me what you've done."

It snorted, and walked towards the human, its body covered by a thin white sheet, draped over its body so loosely john was surprised it didn't slip. "John, it's nice for you to finally join your town,"

"What did you do to them!" he shouted, as loud as he could, shouted to a floating beast on the water.

"I can show you, if you'd like,"

John flinched back like he had been spat at, "You could never trick me like you did to them!"

"Trick you? Humans may all be stupid but you are the least stupid, I think."

"I don't understand, what do you want me-"

"Well you wouldn't understand would you, England hasn't ever really been interested in the idea of mythology, which is why it was so hard to find people there I guess."

John squinted at the creature as it put a long hand against its chins and then tapped a finger on its lips.

"How do you know I'm English?"

"We've been talking English this whole time John," The farmer's face was screwed in anger at this, because he had somehow completely missed the change. "Maybe you are a bit more stupid than I thought."

"How dare you! I want answers!"

"Stop shouting, it's embarrassing." It paused, "Isn't it obvious?"

"Of course it's not obvious!"

The creature made a facial expression that told john he didn't think it was unapparent, and so he closed his eyes to stop himself from marching into the sea and ripping the monster a new asshole.

"I'm, evidently, a siren. I've damned your town."

"Did a shoddy job."

"Well, obviously-"

"Not obviously-"

"-I left you and the German for a reason. I really am rethinking it now, considering you haven't worked it out yourself."

John was fuming at this point, his ears practically producing steam with his red-faced rage.

"Bring them back!"

"I want something in return."

"I don't care, whatever you want."

The creature pulled its eyebrows together and twirled its mouth up in the corners. It moved closer to John, a mere metre away, and now the Englishman was able to fully appreciate the height and muscle of the figure.

"That's quite a deal to make, you don't want to hear the terms?"

"Fine."

The monster continued to smirk, but its eyes became a darker shade of blue like the ocean around him, and the wind had less of a cold bite.

"You, in return for every other soul of this town."

John didn't understand at first, but he knew better than to voice that. He was stood, stock still, unable to comprehend the bargain. He didn't feel that he was worth the value of every villager and minister and guard, every child and mother, but he thought that the sacrifice was noble.

"Every soul? That's Joséphine and Greg too?"

The monster screwed its face.

"Greg?"

"Yes, Greg Lestrade."

"Oh Lestrade!" John was almost shocked by the creature's outburst, "Oh, I'm afraid you can't have him back."

"Excuse me?"

"My brother's quite fond. You'll get to see him though, just as usually as you would on land."

"Brother?"

"A male sibling-"

"Shut up, I know what it is."

John turned from the beast to walk a few paces out of the water, and he breathed in as deep as he could. He could smell the salt, and it smelt like the pancakes. He understood, in a quick second, why the monster had left Dirk on the coast; because, if he had said no, the man would remain lonely, and then he thought about Lestrade, and how he would never see him again, and he thought of the little girl and her mother, and he thought of his crops, and he could think of no reason to say no.

As he turned back, he pondered that the creature had siblings, and that many sirens existed in the Mediterranean Sea.

"If I say yes, is there a guarantee that these people will be safe from any of your kind?"

"I can promise. I urge you, John. I can take you through these waters to Naples and Florence where the wine is so sweet, and there are cherries and sugars, onions and peaches, you will never feel need again. Your frown lines are deep, don't try and tell me you aren't yearning for something better than Litore's buckwheat pancakes."

"They were good pancakes, actually." John said as he stepped into the water once more. It sloshed up to his knees when he reached the monster, and he saw how flawless and white the skin was, and how handsome the monster was- so much so it wasn't a monster anymore. The waves pulled in a moved against the shore again, and the bodies of his town reappeared. He saw them breathe in the air of France again, and some of the children were already sitting up on the sand:

"My name is Sherlock Holmes, by the way."

Sherlock ducked down and took his shoulders, kissing John slowly, and John could do nothing more than marvel that he was kissing a siren before Sherlock pulled back, looking upon a dazed human with a smirk. Behind Sherlock's head the sun rose, and Litore had the warmest June in history.

Sherlock kissed him again as they went under, and he could taste marzipan.

A/N: i dont usually write Johnlock so sorry for the characterizations.

Litore= latin for coast

Lavande = lavender in French. All the other names are common French surnames.