Chapter Text
“Look out, lad, a mermaid be waiting for you in the mysterious fathoms below”
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“Some people like to say the seas are alive. A spiteful mistress more than willing to swallow up anything that crosses them into its bottomless blue embrace. Your fate up to a coin toss, constantly walking the knife’s edge between life and death. Never sure if the waves or storms will be your end. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you’ll forget the fact you're sailing over the reminder of what happens when luck is not in your favor. But get too close to rocky shores and you’ll see it. Planks of wood that once were mighty pirate ships, the remains of the crew scattered around like flowers in springtime.
“Despite the sea god’s insistence to remove you from his domain, the raging tempests are not the most dangerous part of the seas. Sure, they destroy their fair share of ships. Most of them sailors who’d been parted from their homes for far too long already.
“But the real danger is something you’ll never see coming. Powerful enough to capsize ships, dragging the souls of the crew under before they have a chance to escape. Your only warning, a song riding on the wind in the dead of night. Whispering in your ear like a lover’s caress, tempting you to jump into its arms and not resist its lure. And you’d native to mark it off as just the wind. No, it’s not the winds and storms, it’s not even the sea itself that should scare you.
“It's what lurks in the fathoms below.”
The young man sitting across from the Sailor telling his tale nearly choked on his mead. The Older Sailor raised an eyebrow as the Young Man struggled to regain his composure.
“You alright, lad?” The sailor asked.
After a couple more failed attempts to catch his breath, he finally was able to catch a hearty one as the pub’s obnoxiously loud residence lulled to a drunken buzz that could be easily ignored.
“Fine,” The man lied. “It just seems-”
“Unbelievable?” The sailor finished for him.
“Well, yeah. I mean, there’s no evidence of such things even existing. I know, I went to university with the most brilliant minds in the world.” He said carefully. Both not to brag or to discount the Sailor’s feelings. Afterall he was the first to approach him, “If there was something out there we would’ve found it by now.”
The Sailor shrugged, adjusting his hat to expose more of his fine lined face. The young man had to guess he was at least 40, yet his green eyes looked far older than his years. The thick, unkept beard didn’t help anything. A faint pale scar stared at him from the Sailor’s chin, no doubt from an altercation with pirates.
For a moment the man wanted to turn back and blame the alcohol for even gathering to approach the Sailor in the first place. But the unanswered questions that plagued his mind kept him rooted to the seat. He’d all sorts of whispers on the streets about this specific sailor. How he’d been in town for too long, how he lingered too close to the shore for comfort, how he sat in the same dark corner in the local pub and stayed until the witching hour. Some residents say that afterwards he just goes back to the shore. Not to jump in. Not to leave on his ship wherever that was. No, he just stood there. Just watching. Waiting for something. Maybe someone?
Call it dangerous (Which many did), but the Young Man longed to know why. Why did he want to know? He wasn’t exactly sure. Morbid curiosity maybe? So here he was, the night before he returned to England talking to a sailor who might as well be crazy instead of enjoying his last day in the village of Berk.
“Now, I know how that sounds.” The sailor continued, his voice gaining more strength as he went on, “I always lose the most skeptic hearts at this part. Because there’s not a chance that what I’m suggesting is true right? Mermaids, sirens, krakens, all made up stories to keep children away from the shore. The shadows that lurk in the water are dolphins, sharks, and other normal things that can be explained away with facts and logic.”
“Exactly!” The Young Man exclaimed, half buzzed by the mean. While the Sailor did not crack a smile, an amused twinkle danced across his old green eyes.
“But part of being a sailor is believing the myths, legends, and stories; no matter how outlandish they might seem at first.”
“But my mum always said that not every story is true,”
“She’s not wrong. But as one of my most trusted friends has told me several times, that every story, every legend even, rings with truth. Sure, you’ll get a really wild one now and then, too exaggerated to even be considered as fact. But buried deep, deep within it is the truth of what actually happened.”
“But how-?”
The corner of the Sailor’s mouth turned up into a smirk, “How do I know so many? Or how do I know there’s truth? Well, I can answer both of them pretty easily: I’ve been a sailor for a long time. I have many stories from my travels. Some great fun, some burdened with unimaginable sadness. But my favorite tale is the one that no one ever believes. It has all the workings of what most would consider a fairytale.”
“How bizarre could it be that people confuse it with a fairytale?”
“Well you tell me. There’s mermaids, underwater kingdoms, deals that shouldn’t have been made, curses, monsters that lie and cheat, and the most important of all: the love that grew despite it all.” The Young Man stared at him gawking, causing the Sailor to draw into himself, “I’m sure I’ve lost you already, it’s unbelievable I know. Impossible even.”
“Then why are you telling me?” The candle flickered with trepidation as the Young Man asked his question.
The Sailor hesitated for a moment before leaning in, the lines on his face becoming borderline grotesque. Almost reminding the Young Man of a ghost, “Because you asked me to tell you a story. And nobody has dared to even look at me, let alone approach me since I arrived a couple weeks ago. So I owe ya one.”
“Why’s that?”
“Eh, they probably think I’m mad. ‘A washed up lunatic past his prime’ is one of my favorite insults. Sometimes I get ‘damn good storyteller’, though that’s- that’s a pretty rare one. My partner is the better storyteller of the two of us. What I’m saying is that I’ve heard it all.”
A pang of guilt stabbed through the Young Man’s heart as he heard those familiar but painful jabs, “I’m sorry,”
“Don’t be. As I always told my father and how he always told me, it’s an occupational hazard.”
“So it is true.”
Something flickered behind Sailor’s eyes before his face turned up in a tired but cheeky grin, “Without a shadow of a doubt. Truth is strange like that. I’ve found that most times, it’s stranger than fiction. But if you keep an open mind and, more importantly, an open heart, you’ll be able to see that. And maybe years down the line you’ll come to see I was right.
So listen close and give this old sailor a chance to tell his tale. Believe me or not, at least you’ll know what awaits for you beyond these rocky shores,”