5th of Ymiden 720
Continued from here
They mostly said nothing before the lad with the pig arrived. Rakvald, or Craw as he came to know himself in this form, was generous with the animal he sacrificed to the mermaid. She and he both gorged on its flesh, and it squealed uproariously as their sharpened teeth dug into the skin, flesh, and scraped bone beneath. Eventually it lost its battle for its life, thrashing in the waters as they dined on it. Craw for his part gave her the lion's share of the pig, the best parts were reserved for her eating, the internal organs, liver, kidneys and so on.
Once this was done, this almost ritual gorging, she taught him how to transform his land legs into sea legs. She took him into a shallow lagoon some distance from shore. As they arrived at the spot, where the waters were yet warm and shallow enough to come up to his waist, she took him by the shoulders, and thrust him beneath the waters. There, under the salty brine, he breathed in the waters, and felt the slow transformation, not too unlike the sensation of becoming, and yet more natural than that. It was something all mer knew how to do instinctively, yet Rakvald had to learn it as he was, an essentially newborn mer in an adult mer's body.
Breaks passed in this way, with him acclimating to the water, and he felt his legs split into various tentacles. Apparently he was one of those kinds of mer. He remembered Cirrina still fondly, and wondered what she'd think of him now that he was one of her kind. He did pine for her at times...
Once the transformation was finished, the mermaid took his hand, and swam off with him deeper out from shore. They arrived over the ocean shelf, where the deeper waters took a steep dip into an underwater canyon or cliff. Then, they plunged into the waters.
She led him into deeper waters. Thoughts and impressions were made known to Craw, as he spent time among the mermaid. Mate connotative in a negative sense was conveyed to Craw through the mer's strange manner of communication. So she knew he wasn't the same mer whose form he'd taken. Of course she would notice, there were various things in his appearance that set him apart from the mer. His tentacle arm being the least subtle of them.
Who? She asked, the meaning of the question self-evident.
Craw tried to respond, but found it difficult to get a handle on the mer's strange submarine telepathy. Oddly enough, he came upon it by accident, the same way he seemed to know instinctively, the way his body knew instinctively how to move its tentacles in order to swim. Craw, true, hungry. Were the first thoughts he sent back to her. She sent amusement back his way, and continued to lead him gently along, allowing that he'd handle one of her tentacles to keep pace with her. So he swam in her wake, for how many miles he couldn't say.
Food. The thought was sent backward to him. And she pointed one of her tentacles and one of her fingers at a large fish, stalking the waters ahead of them. Craw turned to her, a question carried over the waters to her. He must've seemed a helpless child to her, barely keeping pace in the water, probably half the speed she was used to travelling. And floating in the deep, drifting aimlessly, moving his tentacles about like a newborn mer, just starting to find its way.
She seemed a different sort than the mermaid he'd known once upon a time, Cirrina was her name. This one seemed more maternal and caring. He wondered idly if that was aberrant as far as mer went. Or perhaps that was just a consequence of stealing the body of her mate. In either event, she seemed far less monstrous than the rest of her kind, at least in attitude.
Whatever the case, he had not much opportunity to ponder it, before she left him alone in the midst of that great fish. So much for caring. Or maybe this was tough love. Either way, he found himself hungry and alone and in the company of a potentially dangerous sea creature, which was just beginning to notice him on the edge of its territory.
And she was nowhere to be seen. Thus when the fish turned on its fins to start barreling toward Craw, he jumped in the water, a sudden thought came out of his mind. Panic. He wheeled around frantically, searching for any sign of his departed travel companion.
Yet, for the absence of his partner, it didn't take long for the large fish (which was much larger up close!) to find him, along with its triangular and sharp teeth. Craw reacted with instinct to fight, for he hadn't the speed or expertise to outswim a fish, even when he was a fish.
The panic manifested in an inky cloud that obscured much of the surrounding waters, issuing from the center of his mer-tail. It blinded him as much as the fish, and they thrashed and snapped their teeth and swung their bodies around in the dark for a time. His body thought he meant to flee, but he wished to fight, to hunt.
They roiled in the briny waters for nearly quarter of a break, before one of them did find purchase in the flesh of the other. The large barracuda took a bite out of Craw's tail, but for that Craw wheeled around in the water, grabbing him with both arms and sinking his own teeth into the flesh of the mighty fish.
The silvery blood filled his mouth, the gash he’d torn with his fangs bringing out the flakey flesh and salty blood of the creature. It was almost enough to prompt him to flay the creature’s blood, but he held off on that impulse. Instead just enjoying his meal, gnashing his teeth and crushing both cartilage and bones and flakey flesh.
He spent the better part of the next break, after killing the fish, consuming it. The energy it took to eat the thing took a lot out of him, and he felt impelled to sleep it off. When he awoke some breaks later, he was panicked to find himself surrounded by darkness. He wheeled this way and that, trying to figure out where he was.
Then, as he looked up into the stars above the surface, he realized what had happened. He’d slept until nighttime. It was dangerous, Rakvald thought, to sleep in the middle of the ocean, in waters inhabited by such dangerous fish. Yet, perhaps his partner had kept him protected in his sleep, yet unwilling to wake him.
In any event, he had to swim to seek her out. He was too well-rested to sleep off the darkness of night at the moment. At the same time, he couldn’t spend it in open waters, where the creatures were on the hunt. So he sank below the surface of the waters. About a break into his descent, he found a large coral cave, which looked to be unoccupied from a cursory observation of its flora.
He delved into that underwater cavern of both basalt and coral, sinking farther into it as he sank, deeper, deeper.
When at last the darkness seemed to swallow him, he closed his eyes. He was exhausted by the swim into those great depths, and only wished now to rest deeper. He fell into a deep sleep, slumbering on the edge of the Untold, yet never exiting his Dreamscape. For a while, he was peacefully snoozing beneath the water, bubbles forming from his mouth and gills as he rested there in the underwater grotto.
Craw. Came the thought, some untold breaks later. It was the same voice, or thought rhythm that he'd heard from the fish woman who'd lured him into sea. He cast his eyes this way and that, and found the chambers lit up with a slight luminescence. There, at the crack that served as the entrance to the chamber, was his guide. She smiled her pointed teeth at him as he noticed her. He only furrowed his brow.
Hungry, hurt, lost. Were his thoughts to her. At this her smile vanished, and she shrugged.
Alive... The thought trailed off like a whorl of squid's ink in a current. Where it went, led only to thoughts of mirth and unconcern. Home?
Craw gurgled a belch, as he stirred from where he reclined. Then he swam up toward the opening to the greater waters, where the woman was. There, he sat for a moment, admiring the beauty of the ocean floor, lit up by the sun above in midnoon. In time. He thought back at her, not smiling, not fully aware of how to smile in this mer form.
