The Curious Mermaid

And then she started pushing him. She started slow at first, though he still fell forward onto his palms when she did. A moment later, she was pushing hard and fast, hard enough that she was churning water, fast enough that he could feel the wind against his face and naked chest. So much for a little girl, this mermaid could swim! He got down on his hands and knees and faced into the oncoming wind, glanced to the passing bits of debris, and winced. Jacob, the captain, Marters, everyone, dead and gone in a single day.

You have to respect the sea. He just never thought the sea hated them so much.

He looked back over his shoulder at Alandrial, his sudden and only shining ray of hope. The beautiful creature had a stern look on her face, which made sense given how hard she was pushing him. It couldn't have been easy. He got down low against the boards to try and get out of the wind for her.

Five or six miles meant just beyond the horizon, and sure enough, it wasn't long before he could see the dots of trees, and a minute after that, the edge of sand. They were swimming so fast, the front edge of the planks were raised up and hitting the air, and he had to lean forward to keep the raft from catching like a sail. He could see the land ahead grow larger before his eyes. Very fast.

Not long later, they arrived at the beach of the island. A small thing, not big enough for any real animals other than birds and rodents. Not even a quarter mile long. But it had trees, and trees meant there could be fruit. Insects too, for grub. Wood for a fire! All at once, the reality of survival sank in, and his smile returned.

"Land, sweet land! Sweet, blessed, dry land." When Alandrial came to a stop, a good thirty feet out from the shore where it was still a couple feet deep, he didn't hesitate. Like he'd never seen land before, he jumped into the water and ran through as best he could. Dressed in only his trousers and waving his hands in the air, he must have seemed like a madman to anyone nearby. Good thing it was only the mermaid and him, and he didn't care if she saw his joy. He threw himself down onto the shore, and laid down on the sand before rolling onto his back, and looked up at the sky. "Thank you! Oh thank you."

"You're welcome."

Her voice came from afar, so quiet he could barely hear it. When he sat up, he had to block out the sun again with his hand to see her; she was still out where she'd stopped the planks of wood.

"You — oh, right. Um... uh..." Of course, she had no legs, she couldn't walk up onto the shore. So, he got up, and treaded back out to her.

"What're you doing?"

"I have to thank you somehow! I was dead for sure."

"Thank me? I... was just..."

"Come on, you helped a total stranger, and a human at that!" Energy flooded him, and his smile grew until he could feel his cheeks cramp. "I have to do something for the mermaid who saved my life."

She smiled, and brought a hand up to her lips to cover her mouth when she giggled. Her voice was as light as air, and her skin hid nothing when she blushed.

"The island has a cove with some deeper water. Maybe you can... come with me? It'll be easier to talk there, and I want to ask you something."

"Sure! Sure, anything."

Alandrial giggled. Like a tweeting little bird this girl, so cute it was making his chest hurt.

She motioned to the side with her head, dove into the water, and started to swim. Eric had to get back out of the water to move at a faster pace than his snail's pace, but once he was, he kept along the shore at a jog. Glances to the left kept track of Alandrial, and glances to the right kept note of the island. He was right about the fruit, and rodents. There'd be crabs too, and maybe ways to fish. Even insects could be eaten if it came to it. Signal fires! He'd survive this, one way or another.

The cove was like a fairytale. The mouth of the cove was two raised sections of rock thirty feet high, and he had to get back into the water to swim around them. Inside, he found Alandrial waiting, swimming in circles in the large pool of water. The cove opened up into more beach, but the slope of sand was much steeper, and the water must have gone at least six feet deep. A few protrusions of rock dotted the pool, and Alandrial swam up behind one, poked her head out from behind it, and smiled at him.

He swam up to her, hoisted himself up on the rock in the center of the cove, and sat down. Food and shelter should have been at the top of his list, but the island seemed a safe enough, simple enough place. He could worry about it later.

"Alright Alandrial, I am all yours. Ask away." He tried his damnedest to not look at her naked breasts through the water. At least the tide and its gentle waves were distorting his vision enough to hide them a little.

"Alright, Eric. I... um... this is weird. You're the first human I've ever talked with, and I was sure I'd have many questions! Many questions, but now I... I don't know."

He tilted his head to the side and raised a hand to rub at his stubble. "Can I ask one then?"

"Sure!"

"You're a mermaid."

"I am."

"A real, live, genuine mermaid."

"I am!"

"You're the first I've seen. Other sailors say they've seen mermaids, but no one believes them. We're a superstitious lot. And you said something about a hundred years?"

Alandrial nodded, looked down, and frowned. She lowered herself when she did, until only her head was over water. "A hundred years ago, some mermaids were killed by sailors, and it caused a battle. Ever since then, we've... stopped helping, and... and that's made it difficult to..."

"To what?" He sat cross legged Indian style again, leaned forward, and blinked down at the tiny mermaid.

"Mermaids need to... mate with humans to have children."

"What? I... what? What about the mermen?"

"Mermen? There is no such thing. Mermaids are daughters of the sea! We live a long time, but without humans to mate with, we'll start to dwindle."

"Girls only?"

"Girls only."

"Oh, that's... you have to rely on men?"

Alandrial nodded, and started to swim around his rock in a slow circle. And she did it on her back. He gulped, and stared. No matter how much his brain told him to look up, be a gentleman like your dad taught you, he couldn't tear his eyes away from her naked body. Her fish half, gleaming in the sun with its blue scales, covered her hips, but the V crest of her hips, the Apollo's Belt was still human down the bottom of the V. She had no legs, so instead of between thighs, her sex sat flat along the bottom of the V of the human half. It was smooth, small, with the tiniest pink lips.

He gulped again, and adjusted his pants to hide his erection. Not even a day since his shipmates had all died, and he was already lusting after a girl. He was eighteen! What was he supposed to do?

"It's been a long time since we've talked with men openly, long before I was born. New mermaids are rare."

"I can imagine, I—"

"Oh, oh! I thought of something." Alandrial spun around atop the water and turned to face him, hands on the rock, eyes beaming. God she was cute.

"What?"

"What's your normal day like?"

"Normal day?"

"Yeah!" She smiled and started swimming around him again. "I know sailors send stuff to your cities across the sea. And you fish. But I mean, I don't know what you do when you're not on a boat."

"Oh. Well, I mean I just live in a fishing village near the city. What we do is pretty boring."

"Tell me!" she said, and she swam a little further out from the rock to start turning over herself. Like an excited dog, except most definitely not a dog. Her fish scales covered up where a human's butt would have been, but her human half was a young woman's through and through.

"Ok, um. Well, I'll wake up, and me and my dad will go out fishing. Mom spends the day at the mill, making clothes. My brother works in the nearby city in a factory."

"What's a factory? Or mill?"

"A factory? It's... it's a big building, where people go in and... and do very boring work putting things together for other people, for very little money. And a mill is... basically the same thing." Wow, dull lives, now that he thought about it. He'd known his was dull, but in perspective, maybe not so dull?

Alandrial frowned up at him, swam up to his rock, and put her hands against its base. "I heard humans go out on boats like yours, but instead of just sailing across the sea, delivering stuff, you leave the sea! And into the ocean." She shivered with the word, and blinked her big eyes up at him. "Is that true?"

"Ah, well, ocean trips are dangerous, and deadly. A lot of people die. We—"

"How big is it?"

"What, the ocean?"

She nodded, mouth open and eyes even wider.

"Ah, well." He scratched at his sandy hair, and thought about it. "It can take weeks to sail across the Caribbean. It takes months to sail across the ocean."

The mermaid gasped. "So huge! Caribbean... is that your word for the mother sea?" Nodding, she started to swim around him again. "The mother sea is where my mother and sisters and friends all live. The ocean is too big! Big and deep, deeper than we can swim. I've seen it! On the edge, deep endless blue that turns to black." Again the mermaid shivered, and she disappeared under the water, only to appear behind him. "That's where Jormun came from."

It was his turn to shiver.

"Come on!" she said. "Come in the water!"

"Water? But—"

"Humans can swim, I've seen it! And I can't really see your legs from down here. Humans have legs! My sisters talk about them, on some of the humans they've spied with them. And you wear clothes. Clothes is the right word, right? Clothes, to cover yourselves, which is just silly. That can't feel good."

Alandrial, he was starting to realize, was just a young girl, no older than he. Excitable too, but her bouncing energy was contagious, and it was making him forget about the shipwreck.

"Well, we wear clothes cause otherwise we'd be naked and staring at each other's parts all day." He didn't plan to take off his pants, not in front of a beautiful girl at any rate. But a swim with her sounded like just the thing to keep himself distracted. And procrastinate on building a shelter and finding food.

Stepping down from the rock proved more difficult than climbing it. One small slip and a loud yelp later, he crashed ass first into the blue. He gargled on sea water, rolled around to get his bearings, and forced himself to stand. At least the water was only four feet deep in the center of the cove.

Alandrial giggled and swam around him in more circles. "I've only ever seen humans from a distance, and always men. Do women look much different? Do they look like us?"

"They, uh... don't look quite like you, no."

"What's different? Tell me!" She squealed, ducked under the water, swam between his legs, and came out behind him.

"Um, well, they have less colorful hair. And their ears are like mine. And legs. And... well, they're not as pretty as a mermaid."

"Not as pretty?" She tilted her head to the side, blinked at him, and then squealed again. Giggles abound, she brought her hands up to her lips and blushed. "You think I'm pretty?"

He smacked himself in the forehead. "I'm sorry, I just—"

"I like that you think I'm pretty!" She giggled all the more, swam up to him and put her hands against his chest. "I... never get to see men this close. Your shoulders are bigger! And your arms are thicker." Blushing, smiling, Alandrial roamed her hands over his body. Eric was of average height, but a lifetime of fisherman's work had kept his body strong and lean. He never thought he'd be happy about fisherman's work, ever.

"I, uh... um..."

"And your chest is broad." She put her hands there too, and pushed against him. "And hard." She couldn't stand up without legs, and in the shallow water, she had to swim in place. But when she put her hands on him, she stabilized, and she smiled up at him with her little pink lips.

"Th-thanks."

She was hitting on him. Was she? She had her hands on him, and she was feeling him up and down. For a human, that was a pretty straightforward sign. But she was a mermaid, and apparently mermen weren't a thing. So maybe she did just want to touch him and see what a man felt like?

What would his brother do? Kiss her and sweep her off her feet — he chuckled. Good luck with that.

"What's funny?" she said.

"Nothing! Nothing, just thought about... nothing. So, no men? What's your day like?"

"My day?" She smiled up at him, swam around behind him, and put her hands on his shoulders to brace herself again. "We wander! The mother sea is a big place. We explore and find new, hidden things in the sand and depths. Then we come back to the great nest, and share and talk and stuff."

"Sounds exciting."

"It probably was, before we were banned from talking with humans."

"Banned?" He turned around with a jump away from Alandrial, and she fell down into the water until it was up to her neck. "You're banned from talking to me?"

She frowned again; which, on her face, looked more like a chipmunk frown. "It was a hundred years ago! It's dumb. My mom said don't talk to men, and my sisters only pretend to listen. One of my friends goes out to visit one all the time, and she always comes back smiling." She shook her head until her blue hair was flowing like waves in the water. "I'm old enough! I wanted... to meet one too."

"Oh." He scratched at his head again, and shrugged. Who was he to argue with a beautiful young mermaid? Especially one that'd saved his life. "I owe you, and I certainly don't mind the company."

"Good! But we should really do something about you, you have no food or shelter."

Ah drat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They spent the day working. Alandrial could only do so much, stuck in the water like she was, but she brought him things like rope and sharp rocks, jetsam from ships. Mostly, it was on him to build the shelter though. Hours went by, him lugging around sticks and branches and whatnot in large bundles. Without a shirt, he scraped skin more often than he wanted, but it didn't stop him. Carrying around big, heavy things was drawing Alandrial's eye, and being a stupid young fool, he wanted to impress her.

And they talked. They talked about his life as a fisherman, boring as it was. They talked about her life wandering the 'mother sea,' an interesting name for the Caribbean. Apparently, mermaids just wandered the sea, exploring and collecting. The sea was vast, deep, and filled with wonders he could not imagine; it would make for endless exploration. Wanderlust. He envied them.

The sun was setting. He'd managed to build something resembling a roof of sticks, leaves, and rocks. Nearby, he'd built a little fireplace, and found dry tinder for it. The hard part would be starting a fire.

"I've never seen fire," Alandrial said. "My sisters have described it, but it sounds so... so unreal!"

"Never seen fire?"

"No! I mean, I heard water kills it? I don't know what that means, or what it looks like, or... or anything."

He laughed, and sat down in the sand. Alandrial had crawled up onto the shore to join him, with the gentle splashing of the tide reaching her elbows.

"That makes sense. I'll try and show you, but without a proper bit of steel or flint, this will be tricky."

"I'm sorry! I looked, but I couldn't find any of your sailor knives, or anything shiny and hard like you said, and—"

"It's ok!" He laughed again, and smiled at the beautiful girl. She was just so damn nice, and energetic, and fun. Her smile was too cute, and anytime it vanished, he found himself trying to bring it back. "I'll get this working. It'll just take a while."

She'd found him some string, thank god, otherwise, this would be borderline impossible. He'd found a nice, hard, bending stick, and he'd tied the string to each end to create a bow. He'd also found a flat board, and he'd cut a small groove into the side of it with a sharp rock. After that, he got another stick, and a rock with a groove in it. The tools were assembled. All that was left was the hard part.

He wrapped the stick in the string of the bow sideways, then jammed one end of the stick into the groove of the board where it rested against the sand and a pile of tinder. He held the stick in place with his rock and left hand, while his right hand held the bow. The stick was stuck between the board and rock, and with the bow's string wrapped around the stick, moving the bow side to side forced the stick to spin in place between the board and rock.

"We just need to make the stick here rub into the board at the bottom long and hard enough so that it produces some smoke and embers."

"Embers?"

"You'll see... hopefully." And then he got to work.

And work it was. He had to press down on the rock hard enough to force the stick into the groove of the board with enough friction to make it hard to turn the stick. And then he had to turn the stick. The bow he moved side to side as fast as he could, so that it turned the stick it'd wrapped in its string. The harder he pushed down on the rock, the harder it was to turn the stick, but it was the only way to get the friction he needed. So he sawed, and sawed the bow back and forth for a minute, then another minute, and another, until his arm started to burn and he was sure the fire had started in his bicep instead.

He took a breath and paused for a moment. Alandrial was looking at him with a quirked brow, head tilted, and he smiled at her. Sweat was on his nose, and his chest, and unless his eyes were playing tricks on him, Alandrial was looking at more than the tools in his hands. She was looking at him, his body, and once again Eric started to warm. She was naked, and right in front of him! Propped up on her elbows, her small, pert, beautiful breasts were visible, and her pink little nipples looked so amazing.

Focus! Get the fire going, impress the girl, then you can stare at her more. With a loud humph, he got back to work, and started sawing again. Sure enough, a minute later, smoke.

Alandrial squealed, knuckles against her lips, eyes wide. Eric grinned, got down on his knees, moved the board away, and started to blow on the tiny flecks of burning black ash. Perfect!

Not so perfect. Eric, fool that he just realized he was, hadn't put anything underneath the tinder that caught the ash and embers from the board. And it went up in flames.

"Shit! Shit shit shit." He reached down, scooped up the pile of dead leaves and bark best as he could, and walked the fire a few feet up the beach to his circle of rocks. "Ow ow ow ow ow ow." Pride singed, but still intact, he got the burning tinder up to the fireplace, and got it underneath the twigs that awaited it. On his knees again, a few more controlled breaths into the growing flames and smoke raised the fire to life.

"Wow. I almost screwed that up," he said, and he stood up to wipe the sweat from his brow. With the sun setting, the fire looked radiant against the growing shadows and dark water.

When he looked at Alandrial, his heart almost jumped out of his mouth. The fire lit her face, and the sparkling green of her big eyes. Her blue scales shimmered, and her alabaster skin caught the fire as waves of red. Her eyes were wider than usual, gaze on the fire. He even waved a hand in front of her, but she didn't look away from the licking flames.

"It's... too far."

"Sorry! I had to keep it higher on the beach, so the tide wouldn't put it out."

"Oh, right. Water... but..." She frowned at the fire, as if the flames had thwarted her plans.

"I, uh, I could carry you?"

"Out of the water?" Whatever he said, it was enough to make her gasp, and rip her gaze from fire to him. "B-but I've... never left the water before."

"Come on, it's only a few feet. And there's no one here but us. You're practically out of the water already."