Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A map, an aged orange, with markings scrawled over it describing various locations. In the center is an odd arrangement of islands, described as the Clogs. To the east is another collection of islands, somewhat larger than the Clogs, save for the Clogs’ main island; the Drain.

This eastern collection of islands is called the Lost Man’s Hands, and they do indeed look like hands, all pointing in different directions with the appropriate islands representing phalanges. Some are scratched out, with the caption ‘sunken’, and others are drawn in with pencil, supposedly having arisen from the ocean, with an approximate year listed as well.

To the southeast is the Bellowing Deep, illustrated as what appears to be a blue hole.* The ring encircling it has some towns drawn in with the map’s original ink, although those too are crossed out. 

The north holds the Broken Teeth, a trail of mountain-like islands that spread from the top of the map down to the west. They are ragged and chained together, with many towns scattered around them. 

The compass in the lower right corner is jagged and sharp, bringing to mind shark’s teeth. Next to it is a name in cursive, partially torn in half until all that remains is Gawr. The overall title, in thick dark calligraphy, is the Anatomy of the Smoke Sea.

* A blue hole being a large marine cavern or sinkhole that was formed during past ice ages, when sea levels were as low as 100-120 meters.

- - -

The ocean was kind occasionally. Gura knew this like how she knew the taste of a storm in the air, how the swirling eddies lapping against your hull warned of dangerous rocks. The rope was rough on her hands as she untied it from the docks, threw it onto the deck of her boat, eager to get a move on.

The sun was barely out, just licking the small hills of the island with its rays. The brine in the air was strong enough to sting one’s eyes, like a pure bath of saltwater to the face. Gura laughed aloud with a glee matched by the cawing of the seagulls, hair flowing in the wind, tied back as messily as she could manage. 

Her engine puttered weakly as she moved as quickly as she could, mindful of the rocks, marking out the ones she hadn’t yet seen in a small notebook she kept tucked in her pocket. The splashing of the waves whistled in her ears like a song, the rattling of the little shark keychain she kept attached to her boat keys keeping in time with it.

Gura let herself move monotonously, working out her routine that she would spend her days doing. Check the crab pots, mark the spots of disturbed water to see if they were regular. Keep an eye on the horizon for a storm, the sea for turbulence, the islands for other towns to do business in. 

Soon, her hands were wrinkled from working in the water, and her boots squeaked across the deck. The sun trickled down her back and into her shirt, making her skin prickle and likely turn red. A dip in the ocean sounded mighty fine right then.

Wiping her brow of sweat, Gura looked out towards the sea, dark green and endless, empty of anyone or anything else. 

- - -

She could see them working, humming some tune that carried over the waves and was smothered by the surface. Still, the voice reached her, melodious, a shell held up to your ear to hear the waves it had captured throughout its life. 

It was beautiful enough to make you forget you were listening to a corpse. 

- - -

According to a recent survey of various sailors with varying jobs aboard their ships, ranging from ages eighteen to sixty plus, they find great peace in the ocean and themselves. Their stories detail the sounds of gulls in the morning, the waves lulling them to sleep, a peaceful life on their boats working with their crew. Their responses to questions about mental strain, anxiety, and stress show feelings of being calm and supported by their crew.*

Additional surveys may be needed, but this combined with other experiments involving repeated clips of white noise and droning audio to various test subjects, seems to suggest the concept of going ‘mad at sea’ has less connection to the sheer noise that comes with it, and rather has to do with isolation.

All sailors who took part in the survey were part of large ships, so next we moved on to smaller groups and vessels, with crews with numbers less than ten.

- Dr. Marie Klaska, Anchor Publishing Company, 1958, “SOS: Lost at Sea, the Sounds of Silence”

*These statistics leave out a rather large number of outliers from crews that frequent the Bellowing Deep, the Broken Teeth, Lost Man’s Hands, and the Clogs; all part of the Smoke Sea region. All the crews from these areas claim to have heard ‘voices in the waves’, to have eaten strange plants that grew in even stranger areas, to have seen ghost ships that lead other foolish crews to early and watery graves. Simply, and a little unprofessionally put, they are part of the afflicted group that we are trying to study and find proper treatment for. 

Until then, their testimonies and responses shall be released at the end of this study in Appendix IV, along with other faulty numbers that we logically assumed to be skewing our results.  

- - -

The sun was setting as Gura headed back to harbor; a small thing huddled in the shadows of hills. The Clogs were living up to their name, leaving Gura to dredge up enough trinkets and materials to last her a few days. Her ice box was full, she made a small note to herself to save up for a larger one, perhaps just another for more storage space. 

She hummed a little song to herself, wiping the sweat from her brow as she worked to move the icebox into a provided wheelbarrow, preparing to head over to the fishmonger’s cabin.

“It looks like shit,” Gura said to herself, below her breath, as she stood at the crooked, humidity-swollen front door.

It was a wretched little thing at the beginning of the docks, all warped boards and tarped over windows that spoke of a building that had probably stood there since the creation of the town itself. It reeked of fish, salt, entrails, of wood that was rotting inside. 

That’s why Gura spent as little time as she could manage within it, because every step she took had the walls creaking and threatening to fall down atop their heads.

The old wizened man inspected the wrapped fish with a piercing eye, the other one swollen shut and leaking something dark. Gura looked away when he caught her staring, letting him return back to poking and prodding at the various types of fish she had caught. No crab today, Gura had to mark all the locations she had put them at as low probability spots. 

When he deemed it acceptable, he handed her the money and she bolted out of there before the door opening could send the whole place crashing down.

She wandered a little after that, still in the not too late hours of the night. The ocean was audible no matter where she went in the town, a constant hushing in her ears. The shipyard looked promising, and the fishmonger’s request board by the city hall was also noted by Gura to check them out the next morning. 

Her steps echoed on the cobbles below, her hands shoved into her pockets as bitingly cold air swept in from the sea. There were no lights on in the few houses dotting the hilly landscape of the island, spread out on varying levels. 

Strangely though, even with the low light levels of the island, no stars shone in the sky save for a few scattered around in the direction of the island’s lighthouse. Gura squinted at them, stopping for a moment to gauge their spacing, to remember its shape.

It looked a bit like an eye, when she thought about it more.

- - -

The stars hated her, she just knew it. Rarely did they ever peek out from the darkness of the Smoke Sea’s sky to look down on her, a poor thing swimming and waiting for the light. The tall structure on the corner of the largest island in the Clogs shone a light too, the strongest thing out there in order to pierce through the mists. 

She would settle on a good rock, soft from algae, worn smooth by waves. She’d feel the cool sea wind rush through her hair, the strands the color of the shallows in the Broken Teeth; a light green. Her hands would fiddle with all the knicknacks attached to her dress as she looked up at the meager stars and the lighthouse.

She really liked her hands. Delicate things, entwined with rings of bone, things carved from old friends who used to come around more often, when the Teeth were a little less Broken and the Bellowing Deep was quieter. 

A little small part of herself told her that was her fault. But that couldn’t be right. Her hands were beautiful, reaching for the sky, for the lump of shadow snoring on the new boat that had entered the Clogs’ harbor; painted a vicious blue that reminded her of the sky. 

Pride burst in her chest as the shape moved under its coat, though it dimmed when it slipped off its chair with a loud thump onto the deck. But still! She’d gotten them back home, onto the ship, closer to the ocean and herself. It wasn’t good to spend so much time on land.

That surely wasn’t healthy at all.

- - -

Gura blinked. Her hands felt clammy, brushing the familiar texture of the deck of her ship. She noticed a dent in the side, she’d have to fix that soon before it got worse. 

“When…” she managed to say through a dry mouth, licking her lips with a tongue that felt fuzzy and fat, a caterpillar. “Did I walk here?”

Standing on legs that acted as if she hadn’t spent the majority of her life on the sea, Gura wobbled to the bow of her ship. The sun was rising, too high up, Gura should have been out on the water hours ago.

Stumbling, with a veritable symphony of curses, she hurried to prepare her equipment and icebox, making sure it was good and cold. Undoing the moorings, “Who had done the moorings last night?” spoken out loud to the empty docks to no answer, obviously. Gura pushed her ship away from the docks and clicked on her engine, the purr of it lifting her spirits as she headed back out onto the ocean.

Her days continued like this, of going out to sea to fish, collecting requests for the townspeople, exploring nearby islands too. Little trinkets found their way into her pockets, she talked to people from the towns scattering the islands of the Lost Man’s Hands. Gura skirted around the dark abyss of the Bellowing Deep, too freaked out by the odd noise it hummed in her ears to stay too long. 

Gura caught a few trophy fish, growing to lengths she’d never seen before. Their eyes haunted her, did you know that? One stared at her as she kept watch over her line, its glassy eye never blinking, its gills never fluttering. It lay there, limp, head slit open as soon as Gura caught it so it would stay fresh.

The ice was clean. Blood stained the deck. Gura figured she’d have to mop soon.

- - -

She disliked doing this, but to disturb the calm waters around the boat would give her away. She wished her fisherman would go to the Deep, where it was easier to watch them from an out of sight position. She figured the noise was just too loud there, which was true.

It was a constant, bassy, crooning hum. It was a baby’s wail, it was a mother’s song, it was an old sea shanty sung by throats worn by hard labor and too many vices. It slipped into the soft parts of you like a tender embrace, loving, understanding, but no mortal could handle the concept of being fully known, apparently.

That made her sad. At least she thought so. Maybe she’d always been sad, staring out from the eyes of dead fish to catch a glimpse of white hair in the sun.

- - -

Dashes denote illegible script. [?] denote unidentified symbols.

Welcome to the Clogs! Home of the - ---- - ---! Fantastic creatures of the depths abound! A thriving ------- comm--ity! Heart of [?] *.  On the opposite side:  Come back so---. We ---- you already. [?] 

- A sign found from a dredging ship, out in the edges of the Hands. The wood is old and worn, but only shows signs of the physical wear and tear associated with being out on land. No algae grows on it, no barnacles found a home on its surface. Fish gave the ship a wide berth when they hauled it onboard. It is unknown where this sign could have been placed. Sign handed off to the Smoke Sea Historical Collection, whose building can be found on the northernmost index finger of the Hands.

*All unidentified symbols, upon being observed for a longer period of time, begin to shift shape, according to some witnesses. Claims vary, from hands, to eyes, to teeth. All say they felt headaches and had to lie down, upon which they experienced strange dreams in which nothing happened. Nothing at all.

- - -

Gura kept a routine; set out crab pots with marked locations, venture farther out to find more fishing spots to keep the nearer ones sustainable, and gain the idea invest in a radio so she wouldn’t have to sit in silence every time she had to move from one place to another in the droning hum of the engine, the rush of the water against her ship’s sides. 

Then, after days of catching the most high paying orders, the radio didn’t work. When she was on the island, it would play cheerful tunes, the radio host always chatting with someone who had called in. They were probably stationed on the Hands, on one of the tall, rocky mountains, where the ocean floor had buckled and groaned and pushed itself out of the water. That would imply they had a strong signal, to be able to reach this far, and yet as soon as Gura left the Drain’s bay, the main and largest island in the Clogs collection, and went out past the lights attached to the rocks to mark them for boats coming in at night, the song would immediately fade into static.

“Oh for the love of-” Her voice trailing off into a few more curses she’d picked up while sailing, all of which would make her parents roll over in their graves, she smacked the top a few more times. It croaked out a bass line before it again, fell into static. 

So Gura just gave up and let it do its thing.

Her hands robotically reeled in the line, killed the fish, dropped it into the ice box, reset. The static wasn’t really too annoying, and it was nice to have some other sound out on the ocean. At the very least its drone managed to overpower the sound of the waves.

They’d been getting on Gura’s nerves for some reason.

She meandered away to her captain’s station, her little room on the boat where she kept some supplies if she ever built up the courage to stay out later, or just wanted to have lunch on board instead of on an uninhabited island.

There were plenty of them, with rich and varied landscapes, with perfect spots for fishing some more unique and rare fish, in deeper parts of the Smoke Sea. Gura was perfectly content with her boat, though, and the static on her radio.

- - -

She wasn’t sure if she liked the radio. It was loud, drowned out the ocean in her ears and the bubbles drifting by. It played pretty songs when the fisherman was in the harbor, songs that crooned, songs that screamed, love songs that she sang to the bleached bone skull of a sailor still resting on the deck of a sunken ship, down by the Teeth.

She wondered when she’d started using their names. It was usually just home, and all the rest of the ocean. She used to not care much.

Maybe when it was when the fisherman in her bright blue boat first got the darn thing, beamed like the sun when it turned on all crackly like, playing out a charming tune. Ah hah! They had crowed, a bird with a shiny new find. That’s how you do it! And they had done a little dance.

In the water, the other, herself, had watched. Her eyes were wide at the movements the little fisherman made, the little hip checks and tapping feet, ropes undone and engine turned over all to the rumbling beat of some song that sounded sad, but she kind of liked it.

When the radio finally switched to static, which she definitely felt sorry for because that was just a little bit her fault, the fisherman had frowned. Had given it an old thump or two to hear just a few cut off words before the static swallowed it up again.

Feeling rather remorseful, she’d rushed off to the Deep, caught a little bit of the sound that she let herself sing oh so long ago, that still echoed in the lava tubes down below. Hurrying back, she pressed the song into the radio, a thing that no mortal could truly hear. 

It was only a snippet, maybe just the cracking of a neck, a gush of a cut, a sound lost in empty, desolate space. She smiled when she heard it alongside the static, near imperceptible, watched the fisherman gaze at the radio with an odd look in their blue blue blue eyes that she so wanted to have like a treasure in her cave. 

Not that she’d take them. That wasn’t nice. 

The fisherman let the radio play on with its static as they fished. That was nice. A little bit of the Deep’s song brought to the surface again.

- - -

"The human element is increasingly acknowledged as an important factor contributing to accidents at sea. What is infrequently considered however, is the extent to which social isolation, and its effects on seafarers, contributes to both marine incidents and to the problems of seafarer retention currently experienced throughout the industry as a whole. This paper draws on the findings of several related studies undertaken at the Seafarers International Research Centre (1999-2002) along with a number of published studies on seafarer health. In doing so it considers both the causes and potential effects of social isolation on seafarers. These areas have not traditionally been subject to systematic scrutiny and analysis. As such they are substantially under-researched and are often under-emphasized by policy makers and practitioners in the maritime sector." 

- Sampson, Thomas. 2003. “The social isolation of seafarers: causes, effects, and remedies”

- - -

The real kicker was when the radio went dead silent. Gura knew for sure it was on, she did the whole shebang of technological repair, known by all; she turned it off and on, checked the batteries, and thumped it real good. 

It did not work, for some unknown reason. 

Adrift at sea, with a nasty knotted lump of seaweed tangled up in her engines, Gura stood out on her ship’s deck and watched the sun set. She hadn’t been out this long before, the inky darkness of the sea seeming to bloom outward from the depths. 

She tried to flick on the lights again, the new halogen ones she’d installed less than two months ago. They spluttered to life, then shut off again, this time with much more finality. They didn’t turn on anymore.

Slowly, panic started to rise. Boots squeaking on the deck as she paced back and forth, Gura stared up at the pitch black sky, squinting for the small patch of stars she’d marked. She really needed to invest in a compass, but in the meantime, tried to remember the almost eye shaped constellation’s placement.

A little bit to the left of the boat’s prow, was a light. It wasn’t high enough to be part of the sky, maybe some low flying plane. But no planes flew over the Smoke Sea, especially at night with its incredibly low visibility. 

The light flashed.

An animal thing in Gura’s chest told her the light was watching her.

“Please,” she managed to say, eyes wide with her hands gripping onto the railing of her boat. She didn’t know why she said it, maybe some prayer out to the universe for nothing to happen at all, for it to just be the lighthouse back at the Drain undergoing some technical issues.

The light went out.

She could feel the boat rock underneath her feet, caught in a small swell, pushing it even further away from the Drain. Air hissed through her teeth, sucked in along with rising nausea, the bitter burn of bile in her throat. Gura ran a hand through her damp hair, squinting, for the light to maybe come back-

-the light came back, red, pulsing, at a rhythm that grew faster and faster and faster-

-it was matching Gura’s heartbeat, her frantic steps as she booked it into her small cabin on board, locking the door and sitting beside the captain’s chair and dash-

-there was a sound with the light, a wail of the wind through jagged rocks, the rattling of chimes. A whisper in Gura’s ear, “It’s alright-”

“It’s not!” Gura cried. Her teeth worried at her bottom lip, threatening to pierce and draw blood. Gura was rather glad she’d painted her ship blue instead of red, she was pretty sure she didn’t want to see that color ever again. 

Her knees brought up to her chest, her hand fiddling with the shark keychain of her boat’s keys, the jingle drowning out the scream of whatever was watching her before it died out, guttural, choked to death on its own air. But the light remained. Not that Gura could see it from where she was.

As Gura’s breathing slowed and her panic faded, the light outside grew, larger and brighter, illuminating the inside of her cabin and deepening all the shadows inside, until Gura’s panic was rising again, until the light was swallowing up the sky and replacing it with-

The Smoke Sea’s normal night time constellations; barely any. The light fizzed out like a particularly boring party, one where everyone had left. Now it’s just you and your boat, floating out at sea.

Gura felt, with an odd shiver down her spine as she stood, throat hoarse from screaming, though she was pretty sure she hadn’t, that she still wasn’t entirely alone. 

- - -

They’re hidden from view, their bright hair dimmed by the low light. They had run into her ship’s little room and locked the door, and then their head disappeared out of sight from the windows. She could hear them scream.

It made her frown a little, hands cracking apart the shell she was holding. The tender meat inside was a soothing snack, running cold and liquid down her throat. She really did think that her fisherman would like the lights. She’d liked the radio’s song, after all. So as an afterthought, she let that play along too, murmured by the ocean’s swells and the groan of the fisherman’s hull. The screaming didn’t stop. She tried to whisper something soothing through the small chip of whale bone the fisherman kept pierced through their ear, but they just shivered, their scream breaking into a plea that she couldn’t really define.

Strange, really. She didn’t think she’d ever understand mortals.

Then she watched as the fisherman’s boat ran aground on a small island, hitting no rocks after a little interference from herself. A moment, and then the head of snow white hair peeked out of the door, looking around the deck of the boat like they were searching for something.

Almost nodding to herself, cheering her fisherman on, she watched as they took cautious steps onto the deck, still keeping their head on a swivel. Carefully, they jumped off the side of the boat into the shallow waters, stepping onto the sand.

Horrible. She’d never know what was going through their head when they made the conscious choice to go on land. Something about them went quiet, harder for her to ascertain. A stone to your ear instead of a shell, with only the salt water soaked into their skin letting her listen to their worries as they stumbled around the beach in the dark.

But still, she watched, as they sat on the beach with a haunted expression and waited for the sun to rise again.

- - -

[a low, mellow voice speaks, perhaps a young man. His voice crackles with static interspersed throughout his statement, sometimes cracking his voice into something alien, off.] 

“Meteorological data suggests the differing temperatures and humidity of the split areas in the Smoke Sea region lend a hand in its odd seasons and strange weather patterns. Sometimes temperate, sometimes a roaring typhoon to strike fear into the hearts of the most experienced sailors, sometimes doldrums, did I say that right? Yeah? Great , doldrums to leave sailors wasting away in the middle of nowhere. [pause, crackling static, possibly cut out information] Whew, that’s our ocean! This is a real interesting thing, I gotta say. Check back in at nine, for now we-” [radio cuts out into static]

-Broadcasted out on November 13, 1964. The information itself is never released, nor is the source. The broadcaster, a radio station on the pinky of the south-east Hand, sank along with the whole finger ten days later.

- - -

At night, a fog would rise, heady and thick, practically another liquid atop the surface of the sea. Gura watched it roll into the Drain’s bay from the safety of the docks, feet firmly on solid land, only giving one forlorn glance to her boat before she turned and walked deeper into town.

The fishmonger had become a rather helpful resource, telling her which parts of the Smoke Sea had the best fishing spots, what types of bait to use for each one, and so on. Their business relationship had reached a point where Gura could tell him a crappy joke and he wouldn’t kick her out immediately. An improvement from before.

She wandered further, knocking on certain doors to deliver requests (because the old man didn’t want to do it himself), as well as little trinkets they’d asked her to find, if she could. Strangely enough, they always did turn up at some point or another. 

Throughout this, her mind was in a haze, still trapped on that island the night her engine died, as well as everything else on her boat. She had to throw out all the fish she had caught, because they stank of rot the minute she stepped back onto her ship at the first sight of dawn. Her lights had to be replaced again, costing a pretty penny, though her engine was repaired. 

The strange thing was how the shipyard worker had stared at her when Gura had explained the seaweed that had gotten caught on the propeller. 

“That’s Blistering seaweed,” they had said in the low drawl that was the Drain’s main accent. They sounded like they’d been smoking since birth, with the teeth to match. “Only grows in the Bellows.” 

“But I’ve never went there,” Gura said, quite confused. “Don’ have the equipment.”

The shipyard worker had shrugged, picking another piece of the seaweed off and setting it on a metal tray before tugging their thick gloves off. “Well, whatever happened, good thing you didn’ touch it.” They leaned in close, conspiratorial, breath stinking of fish. “Real bad for you.” Then they turned and lumbered off to get the replacement propeller, having deemed Gura’s current one a lost cause with how much ‘Blistering seaweed’ was still tangled up in it. 

Gura had figured that much out, with its bright red color and distinct smell of something spicy, with the added aroma of rot. When her engine was finally repaired and her ship was back in the water where it belonged at the docks, she headed over the small, cramped building that was the Drain’s library.

There, after being scolded by the elderly librarian for ‘walking too loudly’ and ‘disturbing the other patrons’ (of which there were none) Gura found a small corner of the room to settle into with a small book in hand she’d managed to get after doing entirely too much apologizing to the librarian.

The book, old and worn with a dark blue cover that was turning black in some spots, smelled like Blistering seaweed itself. It detailed various fish and aquatic plants in the Smoke Sea region, along with some recipes. Funnily enough, the book described all recipes as tasting ‘like the ocean, meant only for those with a proper sailor’s stomach’. 

“Rockin’ review,” Gura muttered to herself, sinking deeper to the creaking chair. Then her eyes were drawn to the passage she was looking for.

The Blistering seaweed species is an offshoot of the Broken Teeth’s tamer, Cold Noose seaweed, notorious for getting caught up in nets and other fishing equipment. The seaweed itself grows in the Bellowing Deep, at the more shallow parts of the Deep’s edges. 

It is oily and red, with a pungent flavor. It can only be consumed after proper preparation, but even then cannot be trusted wholly.

“Wholly?” Gura muttered to herself, and tried to ignore the stink eye the librarian gave her. She read on.

To get the oil on one’s bare skin leads to itchiness and redness. If not scrubbed off quickly enough, sores will begin to open up on the skin. These sores soon swell with pus-

“Nope, nope, nope.” Gura, feeling queasy, skipped forward a little.

The oil itself also works as a hallucinogen, both applied through the skin and orally. Once ingested by sailors in the early 19th century as a cure for headaches and toothaches. Most accounts claim that ingesting the substance leads to ocean related hallucinations; of large fish swimming underneath their boats, ropes unfurling in their hands as they transformed into wet, amputated tentacles, the eerie songs of sirens ringing in their ears. 

Sailors who ingested large amounts of the substance all drowned themselves, walking into the ocean in droves, sinking into the ocean to be lost forever.

“Ah.” Gura tapped her fingers on the worn tabletop. “That’s great.”

The seaweed itself is a food source for the few marine creatures found in the depths of the Deep. Some studies have been held under the theory of the seaweed affecting the toxins and properties of the wildlife there, making them unsafe to eat. All studies were suspended under law XVII section VI code- 

Again, Gura skipped ahead.

Preliminary findings did indeed suggest the effects of the plant on native wildlife were not benign, leading to strange mutations and odd behaviors. However, denizens of the Smoke Sea actually consider these mutated fish to be a delicacy on some occasions, and do indeed still ingest the oils of the Blistering seaweed, especially those on the Broken Teeth.

The seaweed has been found to be spreading to other regions of the Smoke Sea, caught in fishing equipment or uprooted from the Deep’s oceanic shelf and dragged to other locations as an invasive species. It is unsure of whether or not if its effects are wholly-

“That word again, huh?”

-myth or reality. In any occasion, its tangled maroon vines hold a mystery, one which always leads back to the sea.

There was a moment where Gura stared at the faded lettering, thumbing over the rough paper. Her chair creaked again as she got up. She left the library, heading back to her boat with her head held high, a weight like an anchor in her heart. The book was tucked underneath her arm.

- - -

She hadn’t realized the seaweed had gotten in there. Perhaps it would work as a little, inadvertent push, bringing her fisherman closer to the Deep’s song. 

The depths of the Bellowing Deep itself were cool and dark. Fish floated by; bloated, blind, barbed. Terrifying things with oversized teeth and pulsing cysts, milky eyes, gaping mouths. She loved them like how a shepherd adores their sheep, guiding them with a careful hand to the tall stalks of red seaweed she grew like wheat, a farmer at the bottom of the ocean.

With them eating, fat noses bumping against the swelling sacks on the stalk of the plant, she amused herself with all the treasures she kept in her cave. Bracelets, necklaces, rings, uncut and loose gems, books, mortal instruments and furniture. She fancied herself a bit of a collector, she supposed.

There was a sapphire that reminded her of her fisherman’s eyes, light blue, like the sky she so rarely saw. She’d been going up to the surface more to watch them, a doting smile on her face as she sent her untainted fish, not wanting to scare her off until they were more receptive.

Slowly, hunched over, horns modeled after the carcasses of deer that made their way into the ocean, dangling algae and seashells-on-thread into her face, she bit down into the sapphire. Her teeth cut through cleanly, though the sharp edge cut her tongue. Dark blue blood spilled out into the water, flecked with gold.

Still, she swallowed, a bit more carefully though, and smacked her lips.

“Pretty good,” she said as she smiled, and the ocean quaked at her voice, a sailor threw himself into the ocean to hear it again, all the fish around her went stock still like a knife had slipped into their spines, leaving them dead in the water.

Crooning, petting one of the paralyzed fish gently, she bit down again, lips now cut and bleeding, and dreamed of the fisherman in her boat up above.

- - -

“Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”

“The ocean is a cruel thing, and its cruelty is mirrored and replicated in the human experience. To eat and be eaten, to fight and tear for survival, to pin one’s sins at the cross of necessity, perhaps to drown is the most karmic fate of them all, that god has no place at sea.”

- Moby Dick, lost edition #47.5, by Herman Melville with commentary by Enoch Berbay.

- - -

Her business was good, Gura knew. She caught a perfectly satisfactory amount each day, with enough stores in her various marked out spots that she had no fear of ever running dry. She kept them sustainable, dredged when she wanted to give them time to replenish themselves, moved to other areas for other species according to requests from the fishmonger. If she wanted any extra cash, she’d simply hunt around the Clogs for washed up ships and cargo, taking little trinkets to sell or materials to use for her boat. 

However, a little part of her asked ‘what really was in the Bellowing Deep?’ The only places she’d really been to were around the Clogs, and a little bit of the Lost Man’s Hands. Some islands she marked down to not go back to, old sailor superstitions poking through after one too many nets snapping, water disturbances, lack of fish. At the very least, Gura needed to increase her variety of fish before she went insane looking at another Gulf Flounder. 

The net she had now was a thick type of metal, still flexible and light enough to use though. Her engine powered through the water, Gura’s boat skipping over the waves. Her lines were designed to handle high temperatures, though that was mainly for the Broken Teeth region, if she ever went over there. 

Her boat slowed as she reached the dark blue of the Deep, her radio shutting off on its own. That made Gura frown a little, but it turned out that the batteries had just died. 

She set up; her waterproof overalls thrown over her clothes because it got too hot if she wore it all the time. Her boots given a little shine from a rag, gloves pulled on, net thrown over, a line cast. And Gura settled in, hairs prickling at her neck, the sky the lightest blue it has been since Gura got here.

When she leaves, with a partially full net with squirming, ill-looking fish, Gura looks pale. Something clings to her, invisible, a weight, a glow to her skin? Her boat leaves ripples in the water that are much too large for its size. Her wrist is smeared red, the static of her radio flickering on, a hiss in her ears, a crooning song she is learning the words of.

- - -

A dark wood table, lit by a spluttering candle before the flame steadies. Two photographs, grainy and dull, black and white and yellowing. There is a name on the back along with a date, both are blotted by time and water. The only legible thing that remains is a large ‘F’ in cursive. 

In the first: A boat, two men standing aboard, brothers. Their arms around each other, one is a little bit taller than the other, with a beard. Behind them is the old harbor of the Drain, before it burned down for the first time in 1932 from a lightning strike. It’s obvious to tell by the design of the store fronts, and the fact that there are store fronts.

Sitting on the edge of their boat is a woman in a lacy dress. It is white, untouched by time and the photograph’s age. Her smile is small, like she knows a secret. Her hair tumbles down her shoulders, seashells laced throughout. There are bracelets on her wrists and ankles; she is barefoot, feet dangling down the side.

In the second photo: The brothers stand a little ways apart. Their sickness is obvious; gaunt faces, dull eyes that stare into the camera, greying beards, now matching. Their clothes are worn and patched. The harbor behind them is being rebuilt, evidently some time after the ‘32 lightning strike. The boat no longer has its sheen of shiny paint, the windows of its cabin are covered over with flat boards.

The woman sits in the same place. She is wearing the same dress. She looks almost the same, but her hair is a bit shorter, there are bones arranged like a crown around her head. They are more like antlers, with the swirling pattern of a narwhal’s horn. Something dangles off of them, algae possibly, turned black by the photograph’s monochrome. Her hands are folded in her lap, small and dainty and with a few rings, none shine like a kind of metal. Her smile is small and sharp, like she knows a secret. Her eyes are very, very dark. 

The back of this photo has a legible caption: ‘The last photo taken of the Brandy brothers, last surviving descendants of the Drain.’ There is no mention of the woman in the photo at all.

Chapter Text

Gura was pretty sure she was hallucinating. The world seemed shaky and not quite right, put through a fun house mirror and a too fast carousel. Her nails dug into the side of her boat, the only thing keeping her upright as she heaved over the edge, spit foaming at the edges of her mouth.

The ship was holding onto her tightly. Wooden hands wrapped around her wrists to hold her steady, to which Gura gave a loopy; “Thank ya kindly”, as she finally pushed away from the railing.

They saluted, happy with their purpose served, melting back into the blue hull. Gura hummed, like the tune of her radio, rising and falling like the waves. She noticed a smear on her wrist, bright red, and frowned. She didn’t quite remember where it had come from, only that it tingled on her skin like how hot sauce felt on her tongue; numbing with only the slightest bite of pain.

The rest of her boat seemed inanimate, the cabin with all its messy supplies and maps and charts, her various fishing lines neatly lined up next to the crab pots she needed to repair. Even her extra pair of boots, a dull green which was why she didn’t wear them often, sat neatly by the sliding door.

“Okay, okay,” Gura pushed air through her teeth, palms pressed to her temples like they could push the ache away, could press through her skull and knock whatever was going on with her brain back to rights.

Then she turns. There’s a girl tangled up in her dredging net. Her green hair is strewn over the deck, the line of her jaw is sharp like a broken seashell. She is the most beautiful girl Gura has ever seen, to the point where Gura is on her knees with a buzzing in her ears, staring at how her eyelashes kiss her cheeks when her eyes flutter open. They are gold gold gold, the sun melting over the ocean, the shine of a coin still glimmering through the muck. 

Gura drowns in her iris, loses herself in the swoop of her bangs. Her teeth are sharp when she smiles. 

“You’ve been sitting there so long, I was wondering if you were just going to let me lie there.” Her voice is the radio, the song Gura has been hearing for so long out on the ocean; it’s the gentle woosha - woosha of the waves lapping against her boat’s hull. 

“Sorry darlin,” Gura squeezed her eyes shut for one, two, three beats before opening them again; the colors of the world still overly saturated and the lines of everything still slightly wobbly, but at least she didn’t feel like her brain matter was attempting an emergency escape from her skull. “Are you alright?”

Gura felt like her voice was a bit too raspy, like she’d smoked too much, when in reality it was just because she had nobody to talk to. It was nice getting somebody to talk to.

The lady grinned, elegance and smooth movement even when dripping with seawater from nearly drowning. She brushed Gura’s bangs away from her sweaty forehead to press the back of her hand against it, as if she were checking for a fever. “I should be asking that of you.” Her voice was light and airy, angel choir and light rain on the ocean, the latter being Gura’s favorite sound. “You look quite sick, my little fisherman.”

Gura frowned. “‘m not little.” The way the lady acted so familiar with her slipped off her mind like water over a duck’s back.

She smiled wider. Whatever was on the seaweed that had tangled up in Gura’s line was still working, because it looked like she had too many teeth in her mouth. “You’re not.” She poked at Gura’s bicep, appraising, impressed. “My strong fisherman.”

That made Gura preen, standing there with her boots filled with an inch of water, not minding the horrid sensation one bit. “Why thank you miss.” She tipped her hat for good measure. “Gura’s the name. Gawr Gura.”

“Fauna.” The lady beamed, and Gura felt like her body parts reoriented themselves just to make her even clumsier when she attempted to shake her hand and instead grabbed her wrist. “Fauna is fine on its own, I think.”

“It is! It does.” Gura frowned. “It, it sounds nice, I mean.”

Fauna’s laugh was a thunderstorm and a sailor’s longing croon all in one. “Why thank you.” She winked. “The stutter means you mean it.”

Gura nodded, cheeks burning as she muttered some garbled response about getting back to work, settling Fauna back on whatever island she was from, or just helping her get wherever she needed to go, no trouble on Gura’s part, no siree. 

Fauna watched her fumble with the net, untangling it while shooting glances back at Fauna that she probably thought were discreet. Fauna tried to replicate how people smiled in the pictures she’d found, before they faded and ripped to shreds from the ocean.

Her eyes were a dreadful gold. 

- - -

The land hurt her. The pressure of her body on it had pain lancing up her feet through her bones. The land hurt her with its rejection, as if it knew her ‘true nature’ and wanted it gone; back into the slimy depths it had banished her to long ago.

Not that she hated the sea. It had grown to be her home and her love and her weapon for revenge, one landsman at a time dragged down into her embrace, their bones cracking at the pressure as she tried to make them hers. Their scales flaked off too fast and the gills she tore into their skin didn’t seem to work the way she wanted to.

But she had years. Decades. Fueled by the human urge and flaw to discover, she had the resources for trial and error. And this one seemed special, shaking off the Blistering seaweed faster than she expected, smiling and helping Fauna into her little cabin to rest for a bit. 

Do you need anything? Her fisherman had asked, head cocked to the side, hands all a-fumbling and fiddling in front of her. It was flattering, the blush on their cheeks, the bashful smile. The rational part of her smiled and said no, watched her head back to work as she traced the line of whale bone sitting on the small table, a small piece of a piercing with the hook still attached, apparently removed for some reason, judging by the simple silver piercing in the fisherman’s ear. 

But the hungry part of her whetted its teeth on her patience, trying to wear it down, humming a little tune about how their fisherman would taste, how they would look underneath the ocean with their body forged to her whims, their eyes (blue blue eyes) staring at her in worship, and oh dear that is a bit too much, push that down.

It’s showing out through her smile, probably, with too much shine and teeth. 

- - -

[Naval dispatch, third knuckle of the Southwestern Hand, now sunken. Decoded for ease of access.*]

January 27th, 1931 

This is the S.S. Heron, we have an unidentified stowaway on board. Lieutenant Truman, code pound-four-zero-three-H-G-Q, has been charged with keeping them hidden in his cabin. Requesting docking for interrogation of stowaway and Lieutenant. 

[Naval Document, Declassified and put in the Smoke Sea Historical Collection]

February 14, 1931

Stowaway found aboard S.S. Heron. Description, BLANK BLANK BLANK BLANK BLANK BLANK BLANK.** Rather airheaded, responds to questions with more questions, but they appear to be presented out of curiosity rather than rudeness. Occasionally presents a more serious front, stating the locations of secret naval bases and technology development. It is unknown where they got this information.

[Report from a sailing ship from the area, published in the Daily Drain, Issue 7, 1953. Jane Huskin interviews spokesperson Edward Whiskey***]

“I dunno, they were all just dead. Floatin’ in the water and shit, eyes wide and mouths blue, puffed up like how whales get when they die, ya know? My kid found the first, he was all up an’ screamin’ before we started gatherin’ up on deck. They were in a line, seagulls resting on them. Fuckin’ strangest shit I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to the Bellows.”

He laughs, scratches his chin. He has a cut on his cheek, scarred and faded, an old injury. He is the typical sight of a sailor; tan skin and calloused hands. He has a knife on his hip, he boasts about the whale bone handle, made by his great-grandfather and passed down to him. 

Mr. Whiskey, throughout the interview, presented himself as an amicable man, joking and nudging shoulders with his crew as we chatted in the only pub available in the Drain. His mouth goes thin, here, and his shoulders tense. He stares off at something I can’t see, far off in the distance.

“The song was louder, where they were. ‘S usually blaring at the Deep, started leaking into where the Teeth brushes it, yeah?” He nods, eyes still unfocused. “My crew says the song is spreadin’. I believe ‘em, most of ‘em have been out on these god forsaken seas since before I was born.” Mr. Whiskey laughs, blank mask shattering, or maybe he put the mask back on. His smile isn’t as wide as it was before. 

“You hear the song and you want to jump. You want to join that marvelous, sweet tune. Calls for you like your mother, a lover. It holds your hand as it drowns you.” Mr. Whiskey sighs. I can tell we’re nearing the end of the interview. “I need to retire soon. It’s gettin’ louder for me too. No matter where I go.”

* Most naval messages were encoded for typical security reasons, however in the Smoke Sea, most ciphers used are rather simple, to account for how signals can’t travel as far in these waters. They get drowned out, garbled, corrupted by static, leaving simple ciphers the only option as to prevent mistranslations. There is the silver lining of there needing to be a specific radio frequency in order to broadcast in the first place. The ocean wants you to tell the truth, plain and simple, no time for codes. 

** Description in the document is blocked out with thick ink. A footnote states that all reports on the stowaway conflicted with each other, describing completely different people even with witnesses all in the same room with them. The only people who appeared to describe the stowaway with a hint of cohesion were those who were stationed in naval bases at the Deep.

*** Edward Whiskey was a distant relative of the Brandy Brothers. He retired a few weeks after the interview to settle down with his wife and child. A few weeks later, he drowned himself, after going on an impromptu fishing trip with other retired members of his crew, of which none survived. His note stated that the song had changed in tune, and the rest of the message was not released to the public.

- - -

Her boat bobbed by the harbor deck, all moored up and prepared for tomorrow. The sun had set a while ago, leaving an inky darkness that Gura couldn’t see through, with only the sound of the waves lapping against the pilings. 

She stopped by the fishmonger right when he was closing up shop, leaving the crumbling structure with the sound of the brown paper he used to wrap the fish still crinkling in her ears. When it came to the fishmonger at the Drain, Gura usually gave him everything she’d caught. Fish of all kinds, crabs and octopi, squids too. He had a liking for the odd ones, the ones with an extra fin, or the ones where the gills wrapped around their body like it had been flayed alive, strips of meat and rolling, glassy eyes. 

Gura was glad to let those ones go. 

Tonight, though, her icebox was tucked under her arm, not as light as it would have been if it were empty. She could feel it as if its heartbeat still went on, incriminating. 

Her little home was in the center of town, rented and ratty, boards creaking even if the wind only whispered against it. She opened the door carefully, tiptoeing into her tiny kitchen while side-eying Fauna, who lay on the couch.

She was sleeping, dressed in Gura’s old pajamas. The shirt isn’t oversized on her, neither are the pants, and the blanket pulled over her didn’t cover her feet. Still, she slept with a smile on her face, shifting every so often to manage the lumps and bumps of the cushions.

Gura found herself smiling too as she watched, her hands no longer shaking as she took the wrapped fish out of the icebox and put it in her small fridge. The paper was stained dark, and smelled terrible even though she was pretty sure it wasn’t rotten. The electric light inside was bright, and Fauna snuffled a little, leaving Gura’s spine to stiffen as she watched her warily for a sign of her waking up.

Fauna stayed fast asleep. Gura let out the breath, closing the fridge door quietly before padding off to her small bedroom, prepared to pass out the minute her head hit the pillow.

- - -

She still feels odd here. She can still feel the hiss, the bite at her heels, the judgment that banished her so long ago to the deep now pushing her back to her domain, murmuring in her ears how she doesn’t belong here at all, now, go back home, now, you’re lost.

She stoutly ignores it. Her fisherman is on land, after all. There’s a routine, where Fauna waves goodbye to Gura when she goes out in the mornings, and is there at home to greet her when she comes back either in the evenings or late at night. She feels almost tame, sitting in Gura’s home and reading a book, walking around town and stocking up Gura’s kitchen for her to come home to.

Domesticity was not a word that should apply to her, but she was growing into it slowly.

Still, the ocean called. She could hear her masterpiece, the chorus roaring from the Deep, calling her back. It missed her, obviously, she’d been gone longer than she’d ever had been before. The fish that she swam with and the seaweed she cultivated all ran wild now probably, without her steady guiding hand. Her work was being put on the backburner as she busied herself with the life of Gawr Gura.

She went out with her occasionally, now the person on the boat instead of the observer in the water. It was an odd experience, feeling the sea right underneath her feet and yet so far away, a fish squirming on the line as Gura whooped. She guided Fauna through the sound, until their voices drowned out the silence of the Smoke Sea, and Fauna’s lungs ached from the strain.

It was a good ache, a new ache.

So Fauna helped her little fisherman, swabbing the deck and organizing her icebox to better fit all the fish she caught. When Gura wasn’t looking she fiddled with the radio, adjusted the tune until fish swarmed up by the sides of their boat and suffocated themselves in the crowded horde, leaving Gura to just scoop them out with a net.

Amazing, Gura would say, hat thrown to the side, hair gleaming. Her whale bone piercing was back in, humming with energy that Fauna could just reach out and touch, fiddle with until Gura was staring off in the direction of the Deep, contemplative, turning the wheel of her boat before she caught herself and headed back home.

Gura would tell jokes, and splash water on Fauna, and would show her how to tie knots with rope. She taught her how to cast and how to reel a fish back in, how to tell where the best fishing spots were by disturbances in the water. Fauna humored her, much too enamored by her laugh and smile to reveal how she already knew all this.

Tame, is how she feels. Letting someone put their hand in her fanged mouth, being trusted to not bite down. Fauna wondered if she could, how Gura would taste, and in the next moment she shuddered, feeling as feeble as fish bones.

The ocean was cold around her ankles, trying to pull her in. She stood stoutly at the shoreline of a small bay she’d found on the Drain. She liked coming here to think. The earth at her back and the sea in front of her. The current tickled her shins, making her laugh.

Her laugh had changed , no longer a meek giggle meant to ensnare, something inherently fake in the action. Now it was shaking shoulders and her head tilted back, birds flying up into the sky at the sound. Fauna’s domain implied change, erosion of the land by sea and the evolution of all creatures within. She never expected herself to change.

Fauna felt remarkably human when she laughed in this way.

So she let her bones shift to sea foam, sinking into the ocean so quickly she was already at the edge of the oceanic shelf. Her horns were an almost unfamiliar presence on her head, and her weightlessness was something she took a bit to get used to.

The darkness of the deep spread out in front of her, her domain, her home. Behind her, Fauna could almost hear Gura’s calling, wondering where she was. It was louder than the call of the Deep, a siren song. A few days on land had her feeling like a stranger here, staying with Gura even longer than that was a shift in something that was always considered by Fauna to be immutable.

In her turmoil, Fauna took in hand a small fish that had been swimming by, separating it from its shimmering school. She inspected its wriggling form, the eye rolling in its head, its fluttering gills. How it clung to life with the fervor of something that knew it was about to die.

Cradling it in her palms, pinky running down its spine soothingly, Fauna bit its head off cleanly, a jerk of her head to make sure it died quick. Then, thumbs first, she split it, sucking the needle bones out to eat the flesh, organs let loose and floating free. She pinched its tiny heart between two fingers, a final prize as she cleaned her teeth of her meal.

There. Better. Complacency kills.

And innocence doesn’t survive the pressure of the ocean either. She squeezed the little heart till it spilled out on her fingers, and she licked them clean. When she rose back towards the surface, with only one glance back at the abyss, she thought of Gura swimming alongside her. 

- - -

Beware of the currents by the Broken Teeth, a ship that relies on sails will easily be pulled into the rocks due to the deadly combination of doldrums and powerful waves. 

The most notable ship that went down here was The Saint Faun, 1922. Supposedly, it carried a large amount of pilfered goods from countries west of the Smoke Sea’s islands. Various fictional stories have been written about this event, most concerning the possibilities of what the ship could have had as cargo.*

.

.

The Bellowing Deep is notorious for its seaweed delicacies, rare fish, and ominous depths. However, proper equipment and self-awareness while fishing in this region makes it much safer to navigate.** 

Odd noises and sounds have been reported in the region, usually with the addendum of having caused many a suicide, so it would be best to bring a radio or machine of some kind to drown out the noise.***

.

.

Designate a member of your crew to stay awake during the night if you spend it out on sea.^ Make sure they keep a lookout for odd lights in the distance, and always believe them no matter what they say. If there are lights, follow these instructions.

Green: Gasses from the Broken Teeth islands break through the caverns they are trapped in and ignite. If they appear to be close, move, the fumes are toxic.

Purple/Maroon: A ghost light caused by deep sea creatures rising to the surface during the night and their lights being refracted by the moisture in the air. Maneuver away from them, as most species that generate this sort of light stay close to sand bars.

Red: Go home.^^

• Guide to the Smoke Sea, sixth edition, with updates. 1975. Melanie Whiskey. Asterisks denote footnotes in the margins of this specific, tattered and dogeared copy.

*Chances are the contents of the ship that went down did indeed have an impact on the Smoke Sea. Not enough info during the time period for a proper theory to be made, however most experts on the subject agree, along with those who attempted to dive down at the supposed shipwreck site, that the contents were not natural.

** All equipment fails in this region. Best solution is paper notes of safe locations and fishing areas. Use ink. Pencil can be faked and altered. Remember, you are not alone in the water.

*** Radio frequencies no longer work in the area. Drowned out by static. Addition, late January, 1982. The static feels different now. Have elected to no longer use radio as means of protection. Addition, early September, 1995. Range of radio black out has spread, has reached beyond the Deep. A quick test shows that the blackout extends towards the Clogs and Teeth, but doesn’t cover the regions south and west of the Deep.

^No. Do this and they won’t fall asleep ever. If anything, trade shifts during the night. Don’t let anybody skip. Any mention of a sound accompanying these lights, moor on the closest island, lock yourself into the largest room on board with your crew, and sing. Drown out the noise.

^^Don’t go home if the light is red. It will follow you. Shut off all lights and stay still. Make no noise. If you hear something, you didn’t. If somebody is on board with you, no they aren’t. If somebody is calling for help, let them die. 

- - -

Gura had yet to spend a night at sea. When the sun got low and the sky darkened, Gura turned off her radio and headed home. Usually this would be accompanied by heavy feet and a lowered head, every chore that needed to be done to get ready for tomorrow being completed with only the intention of getting it over with.

Now, Gura had something to look forward to. She tied off the ropes as neatly as she could in her haste, packed the fish as delicately as possible so that their delicate flesh wouldn’t get crushed, to not ruin the meat. Her fancy boots were locked into the cabin along with her equipment and the blinds were drawn shut. She swabbed the deck only once before throwing the mop into the maintenance shed at the end of the dock meant for use by sailors.

She moved with a skip in her step and her heart in her throat, shoving the box in front of the fishmonger and pacing impatiently as he counted them out, wrapped them, and handed her the money with her already halfway out the door.

Her door opened with one excited thump of her shoulder against it, dragging against the floorboards with a wretched sound as Gura looked around with a smile. If she had a tail, it would be wagging.

“Fauna?” She called, coat shrugged off and haphazardly placed inside the closet that stored cleaning supplies, umbrellas, and an extra pair of shoes. 

Her footsteps seemed so loud in the quiet. Fauna wasn’t there. Slowly, the excitement drained out of Gura like water out of a tide pool, where the poor creatures left inside would suffocate. 

“Fauna?” Gura called one more time. The couch had the blanket neatly folded atop it, and the counter had been wiped down. All the doors and windows were closed shut, the windowsills dusted too. 

In the silent, lonely living room, its emptiness quickly swallowed up Gura’s timid, “ Oh .”

She left the fish where it was in the fridge, still unwrapped, untouched, and unspoiled. Instead she took out the milk carton and a box of generic cereal, shipped in from the mainland and definitely overpriced.

Taking one sniff from the carton, Gura immediately turned to dump it in the sink, instead pouring some cold water into a cup along with a spoonful from her sad tin of powdered milk. Still mixing it as she walked over, she slumped onto the couch and spooned some into her mouth, nearly gagging on the flavor of cardboard flakes and the clumped up powder.

This was rather sad, she mused, punching a lump out of a cushion so that it didn’t dig into her back. Maybe one of Fauna’s relatives had stopped by and recognized her. Maybe Fauna had just decided to leave. It wasn’t any of Gura’s business to care about what happened to a stranger who had wound up on her boat one day out of the blue.

That wasn’t enough to stop her from feeling very, very small.

.

.

There was someone in her home. She sat on the couch, back ramrod straight, her breath losing its way out of her throat. Her hands shook in her lap as she stared at the wall opposite where she sat. it was a normal wall, painted an unassuming color, Gura didn’t spend enough of her time looking at walls to name its exact shade.

Maybe they weren’t in her home just yet, because there was a knocking at her door. One, two, pause. Another, two in quick succession, and then silence. Was it a code that she was supposed to know? Was the local HOA finally cracking down on her by pulling something out of the handbook, prepared to wag it in her face as soon as she opened the door?

Not like she could anyways. She was stuck. 

The couch was swallowing her, pulling her into the dark crevices between the cushions where cutlery and keys went to die. The wall jiggled as if it was jelly, and an irrational laugh tore out of Gura at the urge to poke it to see how it felt. 

The couch took this as a good reason to get up, and it finally let her go. In a rather hazy state, Gura walked forward, hand outstretched, dazed smile as she wondered what the texture would be like. The normal hardiness of a wall, the give of a fish underneath a knife, another long, long sinking down into darkness. There was an odd pattern of violence in every possibility Gura thought of.

“What are you doing?” 

Gura whirled around, eyes wide. Fauna stood there, behind the couch. She was dripping wet, with the distinct tang of saltwater hitting Gura’s nose head on. It pearled down her cheek and ran down her neck, under the collar of her shirt, so old and faded the graphic was just a gray smudge.

“Oh, Fauna,” Gura tried to smile, “Was worried ‘bout you. Where were you?”

“Out.” Fauna continued to stand there, still. Gura coughed to clear her throat, heart rate finally starting to calm.

“I already had dinner, well it wasn’t really dinner, but I could make you something? If you want?"

Almost instinctively, Gura shrank in on herself, animal hindbrain kicking in as Fauna stepped forward. Her shadow was far too long, dousing Gura’s face in darkness. The lights in the ceiling flickered. Prey instinct, deeply ingrained knowledge screamed at her to run, to leave, to hide somewhere far, far away from whatever was advancing upon her.

Fauna inclined her head. “That sounds nice!” Her voice was sweet, sincere! It had to be, the shivers were from the cold, the dark spots at the edge of her vision from her terrible dinner. Fauna reached out to cup her cheek and Gura’s bones vibrated in her flesh like they wanted to leap out for the offered touch.

Gura continued backing up until she hit the wall, and yes it was cold, wrapping around her body and sticking to her skin, gross and congealed, like the sour milk from earlier. Fauna seemed to move like she wasn’t used to walking on land, her steps were too long and forceful, like she was expecting more resistance from the air.

“Fauna?” Gura mumbled, looking up at her, as the wall closed in over her chest, leaving her head the only thing free from its embrace. “Is that you?” She knew her voice was shaking, it was on the edge of cracking into a desperate whimper. If anything, even while suffering this, Gura was just glad she wasn’t lonely .

“It’s me,” Fauna caressed her cheek like a lover, like how one ran a knife down the grain of meat to judge its tenderness, how it would bleed when it was finally cut. Gura’s breath caught, she leaned into the touch, the corner of her mouth brushed against Fauna’s palm and she tasted salt. “I’ve got you.”

It was with a great gasping groan, a whale’s sonorous roar, that Fauna leaned over with a wide gaping mouth and too many teeth to crunch down on Gura’s head.

.

.

Her room smelled like the ocean. Like that time Gura was so tired she came home with her boots still on, and when she was toeing them off one fell over and spilled its contents all over her floor. Gura struggled to breathe, struggled to do anything, still raging against the constraints of the wall that had swallowed her up until she realized she was merely tangled in the sheets.

Sheets that were soaked in salt water. Gura opened her mouth to scream, to say something, to call for Fauna (should she do that?) but then with the mixed taste of bile and brine, water bubbled up and out of her throat, splashing down on her lap in a dark, discolored wave.

She hacked and gagged, an alley cat choking on its last meal, until finally, with a terrible wriggling, slimy sensation, Gura coughed up a fish. She stared at it. She couldn’t even muster up the energy to widen her eyes.

It sat in her lap, wriggling only occasionally, sandy brown with splotches of white. Its head was caved in, red and dark, its mouth gasped for air. It died there, still twitching, feathery gills rippling like it was still swimming in whatever depths it came from.

Gura couldn’t even throw up. There was nothing in her stomach for that. Instead she shoved the sheets off of her, falling hard on her knees as she pushed out of bed, half crawling, half stumbling towards the bedroom door, a ragged cry in her throat.

The door pushed open and Fauna was already there, a savior in blue graphic tee and khaki shorts, the smell of whatever breakfast she had whipped up wafting inside the room with her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth was a small ‘o’, and she looked so separate from the wicked, terrible dream version of her that already Gura was reaching for her.

Fauna sweeped her up in a hug, hand holding the back of Gura’s head, the other rubbing circles on her back. She was murmuring something, rocking her back and forth, and Gura felt it like a shot through the heart, the utter wish to be on her boat right then, an odd sort of homesickness. 

“You’re alright,” Fauna’s mouth brushed against Gura’s temple, an attempt at a kiss? Gura sighed, accepting it either way, tension trickling out of her shoulders. “I’m here. It’s me.”

Even though she knew Fauna didn’t know about the dream, the phrase still sent shivers down Gura’s spine, death rattling her spine a notch tighter until Fauna had to again coax the strain out of her shoulder muscles. Gura kneeled there, on the ground in Fauna’s arms, her neck so close to Fauna’s mouth she could feel her hot breath on her skin. The teeth still closing around her neck to bite down.

Chapter Text

[Recovered video from a collection of diver’s gear at the Bellowing Deep. Some equipment found having drifted further away, to the edges of the Broken Teeth. Some corruption in the digital film.]

[Video starts, Timer in corner says 1:00 (minutes)]

No sound. The camera faces towards the reflective gaze of the diver’s goggles as they wave, before they turn it back towards the boat they stand in. Their gear is assumed to already be on them.

[Video cuts, Timer in corner says 9:23 (minutes)]

The water is bright blue and clear, the sand below is littered with bits of shell. The diver goes deeper to pick one up, pinching it between two fingers and turning it side to side. The inside is pale pink and cream, the outside is dusty brown. 

A clump of seaweed drifts by and the diver jerks, fins come up into view as they kick away from it. It’s a rather dark red, and one of its bulbs appears to have been popped, leaking an oily substance into the water. The video stops as the diver swims away.

[Video cuts, Timer in corner says 24:45 (minutes)]

It’s a bit darker where they are at now, the sand appearing to be more shallow now, pushed to and fro by the current over the dark rock that the landscape shifts to. The diver lets the camera pan over the sight; the shimmering fish, the creatures digging into the sand, the rocky ledges giving way into deeper and deeper waters.

The video jerks, the camera spins end over end. The screen cracks, some parts of the screen devolve into reds and blues but aren’t noticeable enough to truly degrade the quality. After a few seconds, the camera is lifted again, turned towards the diver as they check over it.

Bubbles pour out of their breathing apparatus, their shoulders heave from what must have been a scare. A large fish swims away, tail moving lazily as they disappear from view. The diver calms after a few moments, bobbing in the water as they thumb over the camera lens a few times. 

Their hand rises to their forehead, where a small cut was made. They poke at it and flinch. They look up at where the surface is, debating whether or not they should leave.

[Video cuts, Timer in corner says 35:?? (minutes, digits denoting seconds rendered unreadable by damage)]

The diver looks terrible. The skin around the cut is red and inflamed, they poke at it constantly before shaking their head firmly, turning the camera around again. They direct it towards a small nook formed by rocks, where something shiny peeks out from the sand. Dusting a hand over it, a coin comes into view.

It looks as if it is brand new, with no scratches or ocean growth on its surface. The only sign of wear is the faint divots surrounding the outer edge might have been words at some point. The coin disappears offscreen, tucked into the diver’s pocket. 

The video sparks.

[Video cuts, Timer in corner says ??:?? (video quality has degraded, most of the scene is unclear/not visible. Only flashes of color remain)]

A dark cave. Bubbles. Shadow. The faintest glimmer of light. A coin. A smile. A hand wreathed in scales, the diver’s own. The smile grows bigger. It is a gash in a face, it is an affront to whatever god lies above the surface. 

This is not god's domain, this is something else. 

Red seaweed. Lumpy fish. Dying fish. Fish that look wrong; warped and disfigured and trailing dark ink into the ocean behind them as they swim weakly, decomposing even as they live. They are beautiful in a twisted way, in how they fight to survive even as their organs dangle outside their body.

Green. Organs. Yellow fat spilling into the water. The video cracks further until it is nothing but white and a glimpse of gold eyes and sea green hair.

The ocean is god. Pray. 

Gura says she’s fine. She insists she’s fine. She stomps out to sea and fishes with a vengeance and comes back to a worried Fauna with the word ‘fine’ locked and loaded in her throat, ready to be spat out at whoever tells her she looks, in the most polite way possible, like shit.

But Fauna doesn’t do what the fishmonger did (“Take a break kid.” I’m not a kid.) or what the other fishermen did (“Boat rock you too hard?” Actually, it was your mother.) or what the retired deckhands and regular townspeople said at the bar when Gura tried to catch a drink and a quick breather one time (“You look like a dead man walking.” Gura didn’t know what to say to that.)

Instead she looked at Gura with an odd expression, eyebrows drawn up, second eyelid blinking, scales shimmering at her throat, and she would draw her in for a hug. That was enough for Gura. That was enough.

She says she’s fine, but in a weird self-aware way, she knows what is happening. She adds a lock to her bedroom door, and gives only Fauna the spare. Her windows get latches too, and by the third sleepless night it is deemed not enough, and Gura boards them over.

But her house is not enough. Her house is surrounded by other houses of the same make, surrounded by possible entry ways. Her house is not enough, what she has is not enough.

Gura throws herself into her work.

Her nights bleed over into the mornings, until she is one of the tired, red eyed sailors stumbling into port like they’re drunk, and wandering further into the pubs ready to get drunker. She loses track of the days, they melt into each other like putty. Gura feels squeezed, crushed and reaching her limit, an odd pressure in her brain just waiting to give way.

Gura drowns herself in her work.

Fauna watches her, sadly? Disappointedly? Angrily? She watches with an unreadable face, the only anchor in Gura’s life, because she’s the only one on the island, in the entirety of the Smoke Sea, who will agree with Gura when she says that the days don’t feel right.

“Yeah?! They don’t, they don’t,” Gura gestures into the air, her chin is wet from saltwater and spit, she feels like her fingers are going to fall off from how many moorings she’s tied off, how many back-and-forth trips she’s had to make for deliveries. “They don’t line up, they don’t make sense, it hasn’t been two weeks, has it?”

Is she yelling? The world feels hazy. Sleep is a far away thing, a mirage on the horizon, a siren sweet promise that will only come true when the world stops watching and the ocean stops singing. Fauna smiles, pets her head tenderly where it rests on her lap, and oh, now sleep feels like it's about to beat her over the head into blissful unconsciousness. 

“I don’t believe so,” Fauna said, kindly. “I think it’s been just the right amount of time.”

“Right amount of time for what?” Gura’s tongue flops around in her mouth, she’s pretty sure nothing coherent came out of it.

She falls asleep for the first time in days, and she doesn’t dream, and it is wonderful.

Fauna can’t tell if the land doesn’t hurt anymore, or if she’s just grown numb to it. Every step feels solid, every movement feels balanced. Her body is acclimated, finally, and she uses it to her utmost advantage. She walks the entire length of the island as she waits for Gura to come home, she dips her hands in the sea and refuses to go any deeper. It was a slip, what she did a few days ago.

In the sea, it is too cold to dream. Sleeping is a synonym for comatose, a synonym for braindead. Sleeping there is floating in the water until something dead and moist nudges your foot, or until you are gently and lovingly forced by a current into a wall.

Fauna much likes sleeping up here, on a bed, on land.

She wonders why she never experienced this on her previous excursions onto land. Granted, those did have the taint of her goals to distract her from true enjoyment, but still. A little bit of pleasure would have gone a long way.

She sits on Gura’s couch and waits for her to come home. 

This doesn’t align with her goals; sitting and waiting. She should be something horrible, something that earns the title of monster, abomination. Fauna should be doing something, something other than this.

Fauna sits on Gura’s couch and waits for her to come home.

SHE WOKE UP. SHE DID NOT WANT TO WAKE. SHE WANTED TO SLEEP UNTIL THE SUN DRIED UP THE OCEANS AND SHE HAD NO MORE BALL AND CHAIN KEEPING HER HERE IN THE SMOKE SEA. SHE WANTED TO GO HOME, SHE WANTED A CAT THAT WOULDN’T BAWL AT THE SIGHT OF HER NOW; JAGGED TEETH, WICKED GLARE, MONSTROUS AND LOVELESS.

SHE WANTS TO FALL BACK ASLEEP. THE OCEAN WON’T LET HER. LOVE ROLLS THE DICE AND GIVES HER SNAKE EYES, AND NOW SOMETHING TEARS OUT OF HER SPINE, WAITING.

Fauna felt a little raw like this. Worried. A little furrow in her brow that didn’t leave. Gura looked at it and laughed, smoothed it out with her thumb and somehow, it didn’t come back. 

When things give way in the ocean, that means something broke. It means a tectonic plate grated against the earth and made a new home for itself, an inevitable movement, one of many in the billions of years of the young planet. It means a new volcano was birthed, spat up magma, superheated the waters below until again, and again, and again the creatures had to adapt to it. Forced into new shapes. Adaptation was creating a new body for yourself to die in.

When things give way in the human body, that means something broke. It means your heart stopped beating and instead decided to be inanimate meat. It means your lungs stopped breathing and decided to be sacks instead, holding water, holding fragility in their concept. It means your bones gave up and stopped being strong and instead went limp like overcooked noodles. It means you are dying. It means, you have to find a new home for yourself to live in, as you are twisted into a new shape.

This is Fauna’s bread and butter, this is her bible, this is her scripture and holy prayer and synopsis, book end, summary, apotheosis.

This is the moment Fauna realizes something in her is giving way.

she wanted to be loved. she wanted to be happy. she wanted to fish and drink and fish again, bob out on her boat in the sun with the wind in her hair and a toothpick between her teeth, as picturesque as a postcard.

the postcard would read; ‘greetings from the smoke sea!’, and whoever received it would laugh and write something long in return. 

she thinks sea green hair is cool, she thinks antlers are cool, she thinks to be eaten alive doesn’t sound that bad at all, and to be eaten alive by fauna fauna fauna makes her heart lurch in the bottle its in, the bottle in the other room in the other house in the other boat on the other planet in another ocean in another god’s mouth. it should be in her god’s mouth, nobody else’s, she thinks. 

unfortunately, GAWR GURA thinks she’s also going insane.

She’s lying on her lap, twitching. Her hair is oily and dank, her skin is pale like a pearl, sickly. Fauna knows this much; humans shouldn’t look like this, even if those humans are indeed touched by her.

Panic panic panic. This hasn’t happened before. All other transformations were glorious, skin tearing, blood and bone and reincarnation and a love wrought of change. Instead, Gura squirms like she’s dying, breathes like she’s dying, and already Fauna is mourning.

Mourning?

Good mourning. I’ve waited for you for hours. You come home with a hunched back ailed by split lumbar vertebrae and nails that trapped the scales of the fish you had for lunch. Dinner? I made you dinner. Would you like some? I changed other people for myself. I’m changing myself for you.

Oh. 

Fauna understands now.

When Gura wakes up, she kisses her. It is something brought on by fear and sick misery, by feelings that have been stewing in her breast for so long that they’ve turned sour like spoiled fish. But Fauna doesn’t seem to mind. She hums, she kisses back, she leaves Gura breathless on the couch and ready to come home before night falls. 

“I have to go to work,” Gura rasps. Fauna pauses like she wants to stop her.

“Okay.” She says instead. Gura kisses her again. Gura is late to her boat.

After this, Gura decides she can never be late again. Losing track of the days is one thing, losing track of the hours is another. She needs to be home in time for dinner-

(“I’m making dinner.” Fauna, smiling, green hair done in a braid that Gura did for her clumsily, in part from lack of skill and in part of the claw-like shape her fingers have gotten stuck into. 

“You are?” 

“I am.” Fauna looks so proud. Gura can’t say no. She kisses her, oh she can’t stop kissing her, tastes the meat of her tongue on her own and feels hungry.

Gura recoils, jumps to her feet, to her coat, already out the door with an, “I’ll be ready!” thrown over her shoulder.

She can’t hear what Fauna said back. She’s too busy gnawing on the knuckle of her thumb, the only thing to soothe her being the rocking of her boat.)

She needs to be home in time for dinner. So somewhat manically, she calls up an old friend.

“Clocks?” Ame raises an eyebrow. Kronii side eyes her until she puts on a more professional expression. “How many?”

Gura realizes at some point that to buy this many clocks is an issue. By the third, Ame is asking if she’s alright, if she needs to get Calli in to check on her. Gura waves her off, scratches her neck with a claw because it’s been feeling quite itchy lately, and just says that the seas have been so rocky they’ve been falling overboard.

Ame doesn’t look like she believes the excuse at all, but Kronii was glaring daggers at her to just get to work. Gura shrugs, and leaves, going back to her boat to be surrounded by the cocoon she’s made of ticking clocks.

They help, oddly enough. If one breaks, another is working, and soon Gura has a routine that almost feels normal. Like when she’d first arrived to the Smoke Sea, bright eyed and ready, excited to work.

She left her radio at home for Fauna, so she can open the door and see her dancing, to be swept up in her clumsy rhythm and to forget her day at sea. Gura feels normal down to her bones, brushes her finger down Fauna’s horn and settles down to eat the dinner she made.

A placebo is described to be anything that can be considered a ‘real’ medical treatment, but is in fact, not. Whether its pills, a shot, or some sort of treatment, all placebos do not actually contain an active substance meant to affect health.

Studies show a relationship between how strongly a person expects to have results and whether or not results occur. The stronger the feeling, the more likely it is that a person will experience positive effects.

Just because the placebo effect is connected to expectations doesn’t reduce its capacity to impact the human body. Some studies show actual physical changes that occur with the placebo effect, one example being the body’s increased production of endorphins, a natural pain reliever.

One problem with the placebo effect is that it is tricky to distinguish it from the actual effects of a real drug. This leads to issues on determining whether or not the genuine drug itself is effective. 

The cultures of the Smoke Sea all have their own values and traditions, some including the consumption of various sea creatures and native plants in order to ease ailments or to treat diseases. While some do hold genuine medical merit, others work in the aforementioned placebo effect, with no real changes taking place.

Be it consuming raw fish or drinking complex mixtures of fermented fruits and sea salt, the majority of this treatments are rather dangerous, with a few deaths being reported each year from these practices. The ones that do work often leave the patient with numerous side effects, such as vision impairment, trouble breathing, and visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations.

A few side effects have even earned themselves names, with Scale Rot being one of the most common. Named for its uncanny similarity to the disease that affects most creatures with scales, the skin flakes off in pieces until it reveals the muscle beneath. The muscle then begins to wither from the inside out, unraveling from the bone until the whole limb is lost. In rarer cases, Scale Rot can affect the face and torso, and with no cure available, will most certainly lead to death. 

- Alternative Medicines of the Smoke Sea, Matthias Elanzo. Anchor Publishing Company, 1994. Discontinued, banned on some islands.

Gura woke up to a book falling on her head. She groaned, pressing a cool palm to her throbbing temple as she scrambled to stand. Her maps were strewn about the small table inside the cabin, the clocks all ticked in unison. The sun was rising in the distance and the boat’s engine was silent.

With a hard lump in her throat and her tail hanging limp against the floor, Gura gunned the engine, loud in the still morning air, and turned homeward.

Her boots thumped on the wood of the pier a brisk few minutes later, the current having drifted her ship dangerously close to the Clog’s various sandbars scattered around. But she is racing through the typical tasks, she is throwing the packet of fish at the buyer and yelling “I’ll take payment later!” behind her. 

Her teeth glint in the morning dew, her hair is long and reaches her shoulders, she doesn’t trust herself to cut it. It is too easy to slit a throat. You learn that when preparing a fish. You learn that when realizing there isn’t much difference between meat and meat.

Her tail moves, sinuous, it’s a second arm that Gura is barely aware of but uses anyways. She use it to bat away rocks that get too close when her boat starts drifting, and it’s strong, muscle and sandpaper skin, a nice blue. 

She bashes the front door open and slams it closed again, thankfully not on her fin. Her gills flex under her sweat stained shirt, her smile is delirious and delighted. Fauna stands in the kitchen.

“You’re late.” She says. Still, she plates the food. It’s warm and steaming in the morning light, it’s dinner from the night before and Fauna is pulling Gura’s chair out for her.

“I’m sorry,” Gura breathes, she’s in love, you see, pardon her insanity and scramble to put on the clean clothes Fauna already put out for her. “Fell asleep on board, I’m sorry-” She trips when putting on her pants and falls on the floor. Her new reflexes have her hands on the ground before her head hits the wood boards.

Fauna helps her up while laughing. Gura knows it’s a kind laugh, she can read it in the lines on her face and the curve of her horn. Her eyes are coins, priceless, Gura wants to pluck them out of Fauna’s head and wear them on a chain.

“Did you stay up?” Gura asks. Guilt sours her stomach, and the mouthful she speaks through. The food is good, anyways.

“I did.” Fauna’s face crinkles at the edges of her eyes. She’s so happy, Gura wants to eat her like this. Running her tongue over her sharp, serrated teeth, Gura takes another bite. “But don’t apologize,” Fauna insists, she can see Gura already preparing to say sorry again. “I did it because I wanted to.”

“Thank you.” Gura means it. She chews on a piece of fish, and imagines Fauna’s fingers down her throat.

Later, after their dinner-for-breakfast, Gura rests her head on Fauna’s lap. She looks up at her, the positioning of her head letting her see a smidgen up her shirt, the line of fur up her stomach. It looks soft, forest green and fluffy. Gura adores her like this, she feels like she was placed on this earth for worship and Fauna’s hands in her hair.

“You’re taking the day off?” Fauna asks, though it’s obvious.

“Two days off.” Gura grins, proud, cat with the cream and the pet fish to boot. “Stickin’ with you, darlin.”

Fauna flushes. Her pupil swallows the gold of her iris, gold burns in the center of the ink and spreads out as a ring until her eyes are normal again. “How sweet.” She bends down, spine popping to accommodate the cramped space, to kiss Gura on the mouth. She tastes like apples and sea salt. Gura has the urge to bite her lip.

Gura shifts a little bit, uncomfortable, pushing down the feeling and instead managing to get the new outcropping of bone on her back to not dig into Fauna’s leg. She sighs her thanks, and Gura melts a little bit more, a cat lazing in the sun. 

“I like your horns,” Gura says, almost shy.

“I stole them.” Is the prompt response.

“Well I like them anyways.”

She hasn’t been in the ocean in days. She only remembers it in her dreams; the free floating, the coolness on her skin, the light filtering through above. But it feels tainted, like whatever is calling her back through the rumbling in her bones only wants her for what she can do. 

The way it calls reminds her of a lost child. It wails, it cries, it rages. It tries all the tactics it knows, tries to get her attention, tugs on the membrane of her skull like a child tugging on a dress. Once upon a time it would have been amusing, it would have made her coo and fawn over it, the thing she grew from infancy, a sound she wove all the things she knew of into, and things she only understood in a vague way, like the concept of herself.

It’s become its own thing now, capable of surviving. It should be smart enough to understand its independence, that Fauna is busy with something new. But, Fauna supposes, its intelligence is quite limited in the end, it can’t comprehend something outside of the parameters of its purpose.

Fauna sits on Gura’s couch and thinks.

She’s grown acclimated to land. She doesn’t stumble anymore, and her feet no longer hurt with every step. She has found routine in making breakfast and dinner, of walking to the library to read, of going to the hill where the first lighthouse was.

Fauna remembered that lighthouse. She remembered bringing it down. It’s a distant memory in rain slicked stone, it’s a gravestone to her purpose. She stands there in a sundress that’s patterned with flowers, almost in a hazy awareness to the grass tickling her ankles and the tree branches swaying in the wind.

“Fauna?” Gura calls, somewhere nearby. She’s wandering around in her blue boots, overalls modified to accommodate her tail. Rain flattens her hair to her forehead. Gura catches Fauna’s gaze and smiles. 

“I’m here.” Fauna says, a bit late. She steps away from the edge of the cliff, away from the ruins, towards Gura.

Behind, the Deep calls, distraught. Fauna leaves it behind, taking Gura’s hand and running her thumb over her scarred knuckles, the rope burn on the inside of her thumb. It’s one of Gura’s lucid days, one where she isn’t rambling in paranoia and lurching like she’s caught in a storm, drooling on Fauna’s shirt and biting at everything that twitches.

“Let’s go home?” Gura asks. Her mouth is pink, rain makes it shine, Fauna kisses the sweetness off it. 

“Okay,” Fauna says. Gura tucks her hair behind her ear, pricks a finger on one of her horn’s prongs and lets Fauna suck away the blood. 

Another thing in Fauna gives way. Another thing in the ocean moves.

Hold them close and tighten the ropes
The ocean will take us home
Suck your teeth and mourn your hopes
The ocean will take us home

The storm is keen, the eye is bright
We hope and pray to survive the night
Hold them close and let go of the ropes
The ocean will take us home

- Old sea shanty, originating in the Broken Teeth. Sung during journeys between the islands transporting Blistering Seaweed and fish contracted with scale rot, a delicacy in these areas. Most sailors who made these trips did not live past twenty five.

Chapter Text

There was a quickness to the cold, an insidiousness that had it sinking in between the next breath and the last. She floated there, as wisp of a thing in the water, her tail wriggling like it still wasn’t quite sure what to do with itself. Gura wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself, meanwhile, so she just waited. For what, she didn’t know that either.

“Do you get it yet?” Fauna asked from behind her. Gura didn’t turn around, couldn’t turn around. Her muscles were locked up and her eyes were trained on the distant, undersea horizon.

“No,” Gura managed somehow, bubbles crowning her head as they swiftly rose to the surface. “I- I don’t.’

“Do you want to?” Saltsweet, Gura could practically taste Fauna’s mouth. A hand, webbed and terrible, with too long nails and familiar scar on the third knuckle. On her cheek, searing cold as it slowly began to turn Gura’s head towards Fauna.

Gura stayed mute, teeth feeling too big in her mouth. She closed her eyes when she saw the glimpse of Fauna in her peripheral vision, instead held on to the image of her in the sun, laughing, hair tumbling over her shoulders like water and her hands like birds fluttering around her in their meager garden.

“Won’t you look at me?” Fauna said in a voice that broke Gura’s heart. “Sweetie-”

“I can see you,” Gura said thickly, darkness behind her eyelids. “Don’t worry.”

Fauna was silent for a moment. “As I am or as I was?”

This caught Gura off guard. She wasn’t sure how to answer. Fauna’s hand stayed on her cheek, thumbing over the jut of her cheekbone with a tenderness afforded to things about to die.

“As I want you,” Gura said honestly; flayed open in the water, seasalt sting as her eyes opened. “However you are.”

- - -

Gura walked into the coffee shop with the strap of her bag digging into her shoulder, a nervous tension to the clasping of her hands. It wasn’t really a coffee shop in the first place, Gura noted this as soon as the first whiff of herbal, honey, flowers in the rain hit her nose. Quaint little cups of steaming tea sat in front of the few patrons who had already found safe harbor in this little tea shop nestled within the heart of the city.

“Can I get you something?” The barista at the counter smiled at her, curiously sage green hair tied back in a ponytail. The tattoos winding up her arms were of waves and plants, an odd mix that she made work so well Gura’s mouth had lost all cohesion.

“Tea?” Gura said faintly, and the girl, Fauna, laughed like it was the funniest thing.

“We’ve got that,” she said playfully. “What kind?”

“No clue.” Gura hitched her bag higher up on her shoulder. “I’m not a tea guy.”

Fauna, gasping in mock offense, responded: “I was going to give you a discount and everything, and you tell me you’re not a tea guy?”

The chuckle bubbled out of her, molten with her joy, and Gura felt warm under the collar. “Can I keep the discount if I let you pick for me?”

“Smooth talker,” Fauna said, ringing her up with a drink that already had Gura dreading the typical dirt and bitterness of an herbal tea. “You’re lucky.”

“If you say so,” Gura said, and was pleasantly surprised at her drink not tasting of dirt, nor was it bitter. Fauna laughed at her expression, she laughed a lot. Gura loved it, it was an easy thing to draw out of her.

So she came back to hear it again. And again. And again, and she was given her discount every time.

“They’re going to think I’m your favorite,” Gura joked one time, jerking her head towards Fauna’s other patrons.

“You are.” Fauna leaned against the counter as Gura’s tea brewed, a new blend especially for her. She was always so honest, disarmingly so, kind of like when the light first hits your eyes when you leave a dark room and you’re forced to blink, readjust. Gura didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feeling, and she didn’t want to.

“Happy to be your favorite,” Gura said in a totally normal voice.

“It’s a real honor.” Fauna nodded sagely, making the silvery tinsel in her hair catch the light. “You should pay me back.”

Gura snorted. “I should pay you back.”

“There’s a park a few blocks from here,” Fauna said, and it was only then that Gura realised she was getting asked out. “I can close up early and you can walk me there?”

Her face felt so hot, a humid pink to her cheeks that Fauna could definitely see and was definitely judging. So Gura took her cup of tea as soon as Fauna handed it to her and took a sip to cool down, like it hadn’t been brewing for the past five minutes under a cloud of steam. When her tongue and throat burned and she coughed so badly that Fauna ended up walking her to the hospital, her face felt even redder.

“Sorry,” Gura rasped through a mouth full of ice chips. It was a soothing feeling, but the water was tinged with salt in a way she didn’t like. “You didn’t need to do-”

“I wanted to,” Fauna interrupted. She held Gura’s hand and it was warm. She held Gura’s hand and it was warm and the flimsy hospital blankets clung to her legs like netting, or seaweed, and Gura felt trapped in the best way. “Thank you is a good start. Then we could go to the park?”

And it was only just then that Gura recognized this look on Fauna’s face, the tender hope of it, the quiet terror, the sunlight shining through the hospital windows like how it would filter through water, rendering everything in a haze of dreamy unreality.

Gura crunched through the chip of ice even though the nurse told her not to, and squeezed Fauna’s hand. “I want to go to the park with you,” she said quietly, like it was a great big secret, it would shatter the dream if she said it too loud for others to hear. A beat where Fauna smiled so big and wide that Gura couldn’t take it, her heart couldn’t take it, like the warmest water was flooding her lungs and she couldn’t breathe through her murmured “Thank you” before Fauna kissed her.

- - -

“I think I’m losing my mind.”

The bed was still warm. It was a rare moment of lucidity, the soft haze that enveloped the world giving way for a moment to reveal the sharpness of everything; the wear in the walls and the splinters she had to mind when she went to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. Fauna was sitting on the edge of the mattress facing away from her, Gura staring up at the water damage on the ceiling and bouncing between thoughts of fixing it and thoughts of the smooth pale skin of Fauna’s back. The way strands of hair stuck to it from sweat and how it outlined the muscle like how shadow outlined a reef. If she tried, if she pressed her fingers in deep until the skin, the everything gave way, would Fauna’s heart fit in her hand?

“Is it bad to lose one’s mind?” Fauna asked. When she breathed, she did it like she was monitoring how the breath moved through her body; slowly.

Gura blinked, because that wasn’t the response she was expecting. It was a bad thing, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t exactly say why it would be. It wasn’t dying, but maybe it was the fear of no longer being herself that made it so daunting. But then again, her tail wriggled underneath her from where it was pinned by her weight to the mattress, the world fluttered like her gills did under her shirt, she wasn’t sure if she was herself already.

“It’s still you, is it not?” Fauna turned her head imperceptibly towards Gura, and Gura imagined the slight crook to her lips that was her shy smile. “You, but different.”

“Then that wouldn’t be me.” There was a tackiness to the sheets, their cheapness shining through in how Gura’s fingers wore through the threads and made a previous hole even bigger. At least, until Fauna’s cool hand clasped her wrist, stilled her fiddling and made her swallow hard the lump in her throat.

“Do you think,” Fauna said slowly, and oh, Gura could already feel her ribs opening up to take it. She turned onto her side, she’d been uncomfortable anyways with how her tail got squished underneath her when she lay on her back. Gura got a better view of the dimples on Fauna’s lower back, and welcomed the heat in her cheeks as she admired the slope of her hip to her waist to her shoulders to the soft line of her throat, her golden eyes directly on Gura’s.

“Do you think I won’t want you if you aren’t as you are?” Fauna’s horns had to be wrapped in cloth to prevent the prongs from poking holes in the pillowcase or in Gura’s face. Gura thought it looked adorable, and had yet to convince Fauna to let her take a picture. “You loved me before you knew what I was.”

And of course she’d known before Gura had, of the love that swirled like a riptide in her chest to jostle her organs this way and that whenever Fauna smiled at her. Dirt on her cheek, worn gloves on her hands, kneeling in their garden and Gura was too in love for it to not show on her face.

Would it have mattered, Gura wondered silently, if she’d known what Fauna was while love sank its teeth into her? Fauna reached out to hold her hand and Gura took it. Her hand had a wear to it that Gura hadn’t expected, thought it would be irritated by the callouses on her own palms from a hard life at sea. But Fauna’s hands were a gardener’s hands, a worker’s hands, and there was softness and steel in equal measure in the way she thumbed over Gura’s knuckles.

“If you’d have told me earlier,” Gura murmured, even though she still wasn’t quite sure what Fauna was, “I think I would’ve loved you anyways.”

Fauna lay down next to her, pressed her lips to their intertwined hands and smiled until Gura could feel the rasp of her teeth against her fingertips. The reverent urge, beaten back only by sudden terror and tiredness, to press her fingers against Fauna’s soft palate till she gagged, until she bit down to taste Gura, the meat of her, her heart beating so hard to feed Fauna everything, every drop.

“Let’s lose our minds together,” Fauna said with her fever bright eyes. “And see what happens.”

And when Gura swallowed down her shiver, Fauna kissed her into a place where her prior worries didn’t seem to matter as much anymore.

- - -

She began collecting seashells. There was something soothing about it, padding along the beach with her feet sinking into the warm sand, the cool saltwind in her hair. The shells rustled in the basket, pale and lacking in color. Fauna thumbed the smooth insides of them, the creature that would have made its home in there leaving nothing behind.

When Fauna looked out to the sea, she could see a few boats bobbing in the horizon, gliding along like ghosts do. The water was dark and deep, a Smoke Sea trait, and smelled faintly of absence. She wondered where Gura was, if she was fishing near the Lost Man’s Hands, or the Broken Teeth. She hoped Gura went to her own favorite places, felt the urge to linger in the blank waters of the Bellowing Deep.

She imagined Gura coming home with her battered ice box filled with a few leftover fish, the rest sold for meager coin. Fauna would take the first one, descale it with a steady hand as the eyes blinked up at her, mouth pouted open with needle-like fangs and dark tongue. She’d hold it tenderly, though, so that it would know it was loved by her when she flayed it open, placed it raw on Gura’s plate just the way she liked it.

And she’d watch, small smile, clasped hands as Gura dug in greedily, tired from her long day. Her tail stuck out from between the slats of her chair, the middle section removed to make space. Its tip brushed against the floor as Gura ate, barely a breath before Fauna slid the next prepared fish onto the plate.

There was the crunch of bone and gristle, the quiet little pop of the eye between teeth that made Fauna’s mouth twitch. When she leaned in to kiss Gura, she got a bloody lip for her trouble, her meat indiscriminate from Gura’s meal. Gura blinked at her, pupils blown wide, and murmured an honest sorry before leaning in to lick her mouth clean.

The basket of shells was on the counter and it was dark outside. Fauna wasn’t exactly sure when she got home, and when she started calling it home, but she wasn’t complaining. The in-between time from morning to night was boring, Gura out at sea and leaving Fauna behind.

One of the fish, when split open from gill to tail, spilled eggs over Fauna’s hands. They were marble-like, small, with a sweet scent and a dark red oil sticking them together in clumps. Fauna was busy trying to figure out how to transfer the mess to Gura’s plate before she felt her weight behind her.

“More?” Gura rumbled, claws pin pricking into Fauna’s hips as she held her. Tenderness became pain, and Fauna didn’t mind, the ghost of Gura’s teeth over her hot with life throat only made her sigh.

Gura ducked her head and lapped the eggs up from her palms, a slick swallow accompanying every mouthful. Her chin was wet with it, dark, dark red, trickling down to smear over her pale neck.

“What’s it like?” Fauna asked, fascinated. She reached out to thumb at Gura’s mouth, pressed it into her own. Salt and bitter and lightning sharp, a sting to her taste buds, electric smear over her hard palate.

“‘S good,” was what Gura managed through the last drag of it. She licked her chops, preening pleased, tiredness softening the jut of her shoulders as the toil of the day hit her all at once. “Bed?”

“Brush your teeth,” Fauna said gently, taking her plate and bumping Gura with her hip affectionately to scootch her out of the way.

Gura’s teeth were sharp when she smiled at her, acquiesced with no complaint, curled up in bed and only left a little red on their pillows.

- - -

The flooring of Gura’s boat hurt her back as she awoke, staring at the dark sky of the Smoke Sea. The stars were so high up, how the light reached her was a science that made her smile. Her jaw ached less and less as the days passed, as her teeth settled into their new positions, no longer as crowded as they were in the beginning. Her tail slipped to a neutral position when she sat up, its surface reef-rough to Gura’s palm.

The dreaming was new. The ghosts of places beyond the Smoke Sea, where the air was lacking in the usual bite of brine, where the ground beneath her feet was solid and immutable. The fish was dead and lying on ice in supermarket displays, and she stood there amidst the waves of people who acted like it was normal for everything to be wrong.

She stood, her balance automatically adjusting for the added weight of her tail. Maybe she should be more scared about how easily it came to her, how she slipped into the freezing water of the sea with only her shirt and pants tossed to the side. Her gills rippled in the rough current, the breath coming sudden and oddly. Gura couldn’t describe the feeling, she didn’t think about it enough.

The silt of the ocean floor met her bare feet like silk, fish swam past her shins in odd shapes. Their fins were long and trailing, like ribbons. They were eyeless, unblinking, mere shapes in the water that Gura brushed her fingers over to feel the ripples when they darted away. It was easy to grab the one that was lagging behind, unaware of the escape of its brethren.

She was unsure of where to start, so she started with the head. It had a good crunch, good give. The rest of it went quick and she couldn’t recall much about the experience. Gura didn’t eat more than one, Fauna was making dinner and she wanted to leave space for it, so she swam back up to where the surface was indistinguishable from the deep.

But she stopped, nose brushing against the break of the water, bobbing slowly in the waves. Like a window, the world beyond was distorted by the sea’s edge. The cold had given way to pleasing numbness nearing on lukewarm. She could stay here in the dark, in the absence of heat because that was all cold was, and be whatever she’d become. Without fear.

Like a clench in the throat, water down the wrong way, Gura pressed up and out back onto the now alien surface of her boat, and recognized nothing of everything.

- - -

How the body gives way was something Fauna was still learning.

Gura floated on her back, a wisp of a thing in the water. Her tail squirmed behind her, moving her forward as Fauna knelt in the foam of the waves, watching her. The sun was curtained by clouds with only a few spears of light reaching through, glittering on the Smoke Sea’s surface like stardust in oil.

“I think I've loved you for a long time,” Gura said, only spluttering on water a little bit, and was grateful when Fauna didn’t laugh.

“Ah,” Fauna said, her mouth like pomegranate; plush red with a fragility, an ease to bleed. Gura remembered the taste of that, at least. She wouldn’t forget it. “That sounds nice.”

Gura breathed in real deep, her hair halo like the seafoam in lines. “It is.”

Fauna sounded, for the first time in Gura’s time of knowing her, like she was unsure. “I’m sure.”

“Like I know you,” Gura continued, her eyes big and bright and meeting Fauna’s with nary a flinch. “So well.”

She held Fauna’s hand and Fauna was still to her touch, eyes wide and so gold like sunken coins and it was like Gura didn’t know what to do with herself anymore except to smile at her. The ocean murmured against the sand in a meeting of old friends, the constant repulsion and return, a love story in the ripple of the sand.

“That’s all I've ever wanted,” was said with a quietness that made Gura’s heart stutter.

She reached up, webbed wet hand catching the light, and she was used to it now, found herself in the body that was once alien. The Ship of Theseus dilemma felt simple all of a sudden, and Gura had never been anything but Gura but Gura but Gura with sharper teeth and a liking for cool dark places and preference for fish that still moved like it wasn’t moments from its end by swift bite.

Fauna leaned into her touch, the skirts of her dress a jellyfish cap floating around her, darkened pink in the water like how blood weakened to the salt of it. She had her own fangs, slight, but there, Gura was obsessed in her own wanting to pluck them out like they were seeds in the flesh of fruit, hollow them to rings.

“All I’ve ever wanted,” Fauna repeated, and kissed her, horns nicking her forehead a little bit to bloom blood in the water. But it dissipated quickly, and they were left in the midday dark, in the water, together.