started: 12/17/2018
finished: 1/6/2019
Crowning Glory
(Part of the "Sky and Sea" series)
By Lucidscreamer
Loose or braided, straight or curled, merfolk wear their hair long.
It comes in as many hues as their scales, and all merfolk weave remembrance and achievement into the strands like living tapestries, changing and growing as they do. Each person's life-story can be read in the adornments they wear.
Every merperson receives their first token, representing their birth patron, as soon as their baby-fine hair will support it. As they grow, rites of passage, achievements, mementos are all recorded in jewelry, charms, amulets, and tokens.
Merfolk wear ornaments of pearl and plastic, gold and glass with equal aplomb.
Yugi's hair is heavy with the tokens of a life lived full, shining against his blue-black tresses. His birth-token, a pale moonstone disk, represents Harib Who Lights the Night. Thin braids that brush his shoulder blades hold carved whalebone charms and shimmering fish scales, recording his rise through the hunter's ranks. Iridescent shell holds his Charm's insignia; rare purple pottery, fired on land, the family's royal sigil. Purple linen threads and human metals invoke the tale of his courtship.
But his favorite adornments, worn against his forehead for all to see, are the newest: tokens that say "mate" and "beloved."
Like all landborn adopted by the Sea, Yami's "birth" patron is Nirzi Who Walks. His token is a polished teardrop of petrified wood, hard and shining as a gemstone, warm with the hues of earth: amber, sienna, umber, gold. Yugi threads it into Yami's hair at his official welcome ceremony, along with the token that symbolizes the Charm, and another representing the royal family (Yami's family now, too).
The tokens of mates and marriage already hold pride of place, woven into one of the blond braids framing Yami's face. (Their counterparts grace the pale lock that hangs over Yugi's forehead.)
A properly dressed merman is never without his jewelry. Yugi takes great joy in outfitting his mate with bangles for his wrists, chains and pendants for his neck, rings for his fingers, a seal-skin belt to hold his daggers. Today, Yami wears a coral necklace, angles softened with age, that picks up the flame colors of his hair and scales. One of Yugi's ancestors harvested the coral long ago, carved it, strung it on a chain of gold. Now, it rests against the golden skin of Yami's chest, along with a broad pectoral (even more ancient) that Grandpa had brought back from one of his adventures exploring sunken wrecks and had gifted to Yugi in his youth. (He has a chest of such treasures, hoarded for this very purpose, waiting for him to lay them against Yami's skin.)
Yugi wants to dress him in splendor worthy of his beauty: fragile pearls of moonlight and beads of sunglow, crystals that gleam with captured starlight, twists of onyx like polished shadow, lost gold from ancient civilizations and verdigrised bronze, iridescent mother-of-pearl shimmering with captured rainbows, blood-red carnelians, the sacred blue of lapis-lazuli, bright malachite and pale celadon, honeyed amber and topaz, every shade of muted glass and neon plastic, coiling fossils and clay beads, glazed brilliant with the myriad hues of a tropical reef bursting with life.
Already, Yami's hair grows heavy, full of charms that sparkle in the muted sun piercing the surface; green water-lights, that dance and drift with the motion of the waves, shining off the tokens he wears. His braids are tangled with the tales of his life on his deserted island, of their courtship, of his new life beneath the waves. Yami wears his aspirations like gems. In idle moments, Yugi weaves new reveries amid the sunset strands of his lover's hair.