"We have a king too, you know." Sansa told him one morning. She stretched out on the beach near the water, letting the waves splash up at the end of her tail. "My father knew the Merking before the one that reigns now."
"Is your father an important man?" Sandor asked. There was a dirk among the broken supplies she had brought up for him. He used it to cut strips of cloth to wrap his wound with.
"I think he was." She turned over on her side. "I was to be Queen."
He paused. "Queen of the entire ocean, then?"
She shrugged. "Most of it. When the Merking died, his son became king. I was supposed to marry him, but he killed my father and cast me aside. He is… not a good king."
Sandor thought of Joffrey's cruelty. "Seems this world is full of cruel kings." He gave her a bitter smile. "I'll harpoon your Merking for you if you skin the Bastard King for me."
"Bastard King?"
He nodded. "I used to watch over his mother, before she was Queen and then when she became Queen. She married the King, and birthed the boy named Joffrey, but he was not the King's son. She was fucking her brother. She had been for years."
Her mouth twisted. "Her brother? Is this… common with men?"
"Targaryens used to do it, but that was their downfall. It made them insane." He shook his head. "The Targaryens were the royal family before a rebellion started. There has been a lot of war."
"There is a war in the sea too." She lay back down in the sand. "It's why I've been alone. I don't have any family left. The others were only cruel to me, or did not care for me at all. It was safer to be alone." He knew exactly what she meant. "There are those who are out looking for me. They won't think to look here, though. I must be careful. If they find me, they will probably kill me."
He wanted to tell her he could protect her, but he knew he couldn't. He couldn't chase fish into the sea for her. It would do no good to swim after her. He would only drown himself, and his corpse would be no use to her.
Night fell and he stayed near the fire for warmth. She crawled up close to him, but kept the end of her tail in the water provided by the trench he had dug for her. Her fingers trailed up his leg and he suppressed a shiver. She was fascinated by his legs, which was understandable since she did not have any. He grabbed her and hauled her between his knees and turned her to face him. Her tail fell over his wounded thigh, but she was learning to be careful.
He ran his fingers over the silvery scales that would've been her knees, had she been human. She had scraps of pink and red cloth wrapped around her waist where her scales met her flesh.
"Why do you wear these?" He asked her. They were tattered and filthy, as if she had worn them for many years.
"I'm not sure. We just do." She rubbed the cloth between her fingers. "I like them. I think they are pretty. I used to have jewels to wear, but I did not like those as much. They hurt my scales." She untied them from her waist and threw them to the side. "They say that highborn mer have different looking scales. See, look at mine." There was no solid line where the flesh stopped and the scales began. There were a few smaller scales beginning on her belly, and they thickened on the way down like hair might. Below her hipbones, there were more scales than skin. There were patches high up on her tail where skin peeked through under her scales. "Lowborn scales are more even. They have the belly of a man and the fin of a fish. Highborns have scales all over, because they have more ocean in their blood." She smiled at him shyly as he stroked the skin of her stomach.
"If only I could be half a fish like you." He said, feeling the spaces where the two ends of her met.
"Why?" She was confused.
"You've got the whole ocean to explore. I'm stuck here on this island."
"The ocean isn't like you think it is. It's not that easy." Her fingers found his knees and he noticed that she had bits of scales on the tops of her hands too. They were translucent, not silver-blue like the ones on her tail. "I wish I were human. I wish I had legs to run and jump and dance with. I wish I could know what it's like to have toes." The end of her tail flapped against his side. "I wish I had skin that was smooth and dry like yours."
"You are fine the way you are." She smiled sadly and made to look away, but he gripped her chin and forced her to look up into his face. "Listen to me. The world of humans is not a good place. There is war, and violence, and rape, and disease."
"The ocean has this too." She pushed his hand away from her face. "I've been married twice, you know."
"I didn't know. Is your husband going to come and kill me for you, then? Is that what you've been waiting on?"
"My husbands are dead." She shrugged. "It does not matter to me. I didn't want either one of them. I was made to marry the first so I could be kept a prisoner, and I was made to marry the second in exchange for my freedom. It was all lies and deceit. I'm not sure how the first one died. He disappeared, and then the whole ocean proclaimed him dead. The second was killed by sharks."
"It wouldn't be any different for you if you were some highborn human."
She shook her head and looked away. She was upset. She stayed quiet for a few minutes before looking up at him again.
"Your face doesn't match on both sides." She reached her hands up to touch him but he shrugged her away. "Were you a slave?"
"No." He frowned. "Why do you think that?"
"I met a man once, and his face didn't match. One side was blue. He said it marked him as a slave."
"This is a scar. I was burned." Remembering his brother made him want a drink. Some of the supplies she found had been bottles of wine. He was trying not to drink it all at once since he didn't know how long he'd he on the island. There was a little pond of fresh water on the island, and it rained often enough that he was not afraid for running out.
He stood and walked over to the shore, grabbing up one of the wine bottles and making up his mind. He returned to her and sat back down, uncorking it and taking a long drink.
"Is that blood?" She asked, wrinkling her nose.
"No. It's wine." He took another long gulp.
"I want to try." She took the bottle from his hands and gulped it like he did. He expected her to sputter and cough, but it did not seem to affect her at all. "It tastes strange. It's nice, though." She handed it back to him.
"Why is your face burned?" She asked him like he knew she would.
He hated the way remembering made him feel. He felt so angry, but more than anything he felt weak. He looked down at the little fish and decided that she had no one to tell. She did not even seem to mind his scars.
"I have an older brother." He said finally. "Gregor is his name. He's five years older than me and over twice my size. He's the largest man in Westeros, so large that he earned the name the Mountain that Rides. But he's got a nasty temper, and loves killing for the sake of killing. When I was a boy, six or seven years of age, a man in my father's keep made him and me some toys. Gregor did not care for his toy, so I took it. When he found me, he didn't say a word. He picked me up and shoved my face down into a brazier we had in the room. It took three men to pull him off of me." He took another gulp of the wine. "Not long after, the prince knighted him. It was a great honor."
"He sounds like a monster." She said.
He wanted to laugh at her. He wanted to tell her no, that they were the monsters.
"Have you met many human men?"
"A good number, yes. When I was a child, I was netted by a group of men who called themselves Krakens. They cut their net as soon as they saw me and sat me on deck to talk with them. They gave me clothes to wear and man food to eat, called cakes. I like man food better than what is found in the ocean." She smiled. "Then they asked me to sing for them, and I gave each man a kiss before I left them. It made me happy to make them happy."
"Krakens." He snorted. "How long ago was this?"
"I don't know how to measure years like men do. I only know that men do not live as long as we do. It was probably a long time ago."
"It matters not, I was only curious." He took smaller sip of the wine. "Winter will come to this little island soon and freeze me to death. Or, if I'm lucky, some ship will sail up and find me and I can return to Westeros. You'll lose me as your plaything then."
"Are you trying to scare me or make me sad?" She asked, and he only shrugged. "You try to be intimidating quite a lot. You should be careful, I can be frightful too."
Sandor found himself laughing long and loud at that. "A frightful little fish? I'd love to see that." Suddenly she was shoving herself out of his grip and sitting up to look him straight in the face. Her eyes quickly narrowed into vertical slits, and the blood drained from her face. All of the scales on her body seemed to stand up, and she let out a low noise like he'd never heard before. In that moment, she looked more like a giant angry serpent than a fish.
This only lasted a second, though, for quickly her eyes changed back and her scaled laid down flat again. She laughed right in his face. "See, I can be terrifying too, maybe even more terrifying than you are."