Stranger Tides
Chapter Two : Formalities
In which confrontation is had and not much gets accomplished.
The sword (cold, cursed, unnatural sharpness) swung from his shoulder like a lead rope until it hung inches from her face. She ignores it, glaring past the length of iron at the man wielding it. Grey eyes return her regard without feeling.
How dare he?
"Good work, sailor."
Even after all these years, he has not changed. No wonder she had wanted to slap him when first he had caught her eye. The urge is grown strong in her again. She does not forget, and it is not in a mermaid to forgive. She is of the sea and its rage is the tide that sings through her veins.
The net tightens, bringing her back to herself, and his spell is broken. It seems the passing of the years has not increased his intellect, as if time herself would regard him with her favour. Why now is he here, of all the forsaken places in Calypso's waters?
"Only a fool would hunt a mermaid, Edward Teach, and I do not recollect you for a fool."
He pays no mind to her words, turning to give orders the ma – woman beside him. Now that is a sight not often to be seen, on these or other waters.
His manner is an insult she had no choice but to bare. He has the advantage of her. For now. When he does not, she will do as she should have done long before, when Calypso still wore her chains in the place where the land was also the sea.
"You know her, father?"
Father? The kraken take him, he had had an – he had a daughter?
The pirate – Runner – waded up as she slowly shifted backwards. If she could get to the deeper water they could never hope to contain her, and her investigations could be conducted at her leisure. It was a vain hope. A man such as Edward Teach had been would never leave a prize such as a mermaid unattended for long - she was hauled out of the water and bundled into a transparent cage before she had made a foot's distance of the slack.
She twisted, bend half and half again as the lid was slammed on her, net, bound and all. Was she really that terrifying a creature to them? The sands around them were littered with the remains of her sisters caught in the sudden fire. The men avoided her gaze as it swept their ranks. Poor ignorant fools. The only place she would consider eating them was thirty feet deep, where the water masked their sent. The girl – woman – daughter – met her stare defiantly. Spanish blood, perhaps? She never had been good at generalizing humans into anything more than food and not-food. Her eyes drifting onwards, she met his back.
"We head for a protected cove."
No cove could protect him from her ire, if only she could break free of these Calisto-be-cursed ropes. She slammed into the glass with a hiss as the not-quite-de –was that the Quartermaster?
He turned, eyes catching hers again, something flashing and gone again as he picked his way around the sand splattered corpses of her sisters.
"Now."
What had he become in her absense?