To Catch Fire: The Nixie

~Content warning: this story contains a depictions of drowning, starvation, and implications of suicide and death.~

He woke up on his hands and knees, hurling. Hit gut clenched and released, purging saltwater through his open mouth. He heard himself gasp and cough between guttural grunts, retching even after he was drained empty.

Dry.

He was so dry. His lips hurt. His throat stung. There was a broiling warmth on the back of his neck and his arms. Sunshine.

His palms were on hot sand, bright and white as the terrible sun. He could feel the endless, fine grains scratching the webbed skin between his fingers, lodging in the creases of his hands. But to his eyes it was just a flat, white sheet.

His vision was blurry. When his vomiting had subsided, he heard the slow, monotone song of the ocean's waves. He looked up. The wide beach stretched into the horizon. He lifted his body upright, resting on his knees, and rubbed the film from his eyes. To his left were the pristine gradients of azure and foam of the ocean beneath a stark, cloudless sky. To the right were muddy brows and deep greens of a lush jungle.

He tried to stand and, with difficulty, got his feet beneath him. He teetered a bit, his arms stretched out, as he gradually found his center of balance. Then, he was able to think.

What did he know?

He was a man. Looking down, he saw his hands were tanned and calloused. There was strength in his arms and shoulders, though it was weighed down by exhaustion. His thoughts were difficult to pick out, like his mind was still adrift in the distant horizon.

He was on a ship. That is, before he was on the beach.

There were bits of splintered wood littered here and there around him. A shipwreck? He tried to remember:

The ship groaned. It cried and writhed in darkness. Up and down, to and fro, crashing against the barrage of a storm. His clothes were drenched. Rain beat against his face, flooding his eyes and lips. 

(God, he was so thirsty.)

A storm. Lightning. Flashes of light and blasts of sound that rang through his chest. There was a terrible explosion, with shouting, and a final scream from the ship. There was fire. Then, there came a long, cold darkness.

But what came before? Where was he going? Who was he? There was nothing -- that horrible ocean storm was his entire existence, set in the middle of two boundless voids. Not even a name. Not even the face of a mother.

He began to hyperventilate. Looking left, right, and back, he started turning aimlessly, trapped in an abstract cage. Hot. Dry. Delirious with thirst. A stranded idiot. Better he had succumbed to the ocean.

Then, by reflex, he took a slow, deep breath, inhaling with his gut to saturate his lungs. He exhaled slowly, his lips pursed into a tight outlet, letting his chest deflate. He did this again, and then a second time. He listened to the rhythm of the waves. He felt his heartbeat. His mind cooled from its frothing boil to a simmer. 

What he needed, first and foremost, was water.

The dense treeline offered no obvious fruit. He could venture within -- but what lurked in that jungle? He brought his hand to his brow, shielding his eyes to look down the meandering beach. There was a fault some distance ahead. A silver crack in the streak of pearl-white sand. A mirage? Or an estuary.

One leg lifted, bringing its foot ahead, the upper body tilted forward, the center of balance shifting, calves and thighs flexing. The other leg swung forward, past the first, planting its foot. Then the first; then the second. Gradually, his muscles and bones remembered the locomotion of walking.

He awkwardly loped toward the distant stream with all his concentration. As soon as his mind wandered, taking attention away from his legs and feet, he would stagger and nearly fall onto the sand.

He came to the muddy sandbanks and began following the lush floodplain upstream. The wet grass felt nice against his bare chafed feet. The water gradually cleared. He dipped his palm into the shallow flow, the scars on his hands screaming with relief, and scooped it up to his mouth. The cold wetness felt wonderful upon his lips. But it was too brackish. He continued further up, stopping every several steps to try the water. 

Finally, he found a spot that tasted fresh enough. He knelt in the water and bowed down, taking in mouthfuls. The wetness pouring down his throat felt divine.

As he drank, he heard footsteps approach him, splashing through the shin-deep water. He looked up and saw a blue-skinned woman standing over him. Her shoulder-length, straight, wet hair was a chalk white, the same color as her nipples and moist lips. Red slit pupils sat like jewels in her golden irises. A long, flat tail swung to and fro behind her, catching sunlight with its rainbow highlights.

The man pointed up to her and said, matter-of-factly, "you're a nixie." 

She cocked her head, studying him with a curious smile, and then offered her hand to him.

His dark eyes looked detachedly at her open hand. The nymph -- the nixie -- had come just as his anxiety was returning, now that his thirst was settled. She saw how sunburned his neck and shoulders were, and said, "I know a nice, cool, dark place to rest in."

The man knew what she was. What she could do. And after a few seconds, he decided to take her hand anyway. She led him through the shallow pools into a cave.

They walked barefoot on the slippery stone. She held his hand tightly, careful not to let him slip or stumble. Sunlight streamed through scattered cavities in the ceiling. It was like being in a chamber of stars.

She brought him to a stream of clean, fresh water and bid him to sit and drink, which he did. She watched him for several gulps and then asked,

"What's your name?"

And the man, looking up at her, shrugged. "Don't know."

"You don't know your name?"

Another shrug.

"You don't know who you are?"

His dark eyes drifted away from her, peering into the void in his mind. The ship. The lightning.

"I washed ashore from a ship that sank. I came from the beach."

The nixie nodded, smiling, her sharp teeth stained yellow. "I know. I was watching you stumble on the sand! I'd come to find trinkets and nice things from the wreck," she explained, giddily, "because there was a great storm last night, and storms like that bring treats to my waters."

The nixie knelt down and set her warm, wet, webbed hand on his wrist. She cooed affectionately to him, "and what a treat you are!"

The man studied her slender blue hand for a moment. He wasn't thirsty anymore. Now, he was just tired.

He took the hand, rubbing his thumbs into her palm, and brought it to his face. Grinning with delight, she ran her pointed fingers along his jaw and scalp, gently tugging at tufts of his hair.

"I'll call you Edgar!"

"Edgar?"

"Mmhmm," she nodded, smiling gleefully, "he was here before you."

"But he's not here anymore?"

She shook her head, still grinning. "No. But that's okay, because now you're here!"

The man quietly scanned the cavern. The glow of the sun shafts washed the damp walls with gradients of blues, grays, and greens. Even here, he heard the crashing of the waves, but not loud and rushing like on the beach, but a quiet hum, like a prayer in an empty cathedral.

The nixie forced his head towards hers. She knelt down, face to face with him. Her bright irises bloomed, churning outward in rainbow swirls. He stared into them, and he couldn't look away, even when he felt a rush of vertigo, like currents of seafoam rushing into his head.

It felt like blacking out: the tingling numbness and tunnel vision before collapsing. He -- his body -- knew what that felt like, but he had no memories to attach to the experience.

He heard her voice when she spoke. It was a happy giggle. To him it seemed muffled but deafening, ringing through his head.

"I'm really glad you're here!"

The cave floor hit his back hard. The back of his head bounced against it, making him see double for a second. The nixie had pushed him down. She was on top of him now. He didn't remember his pants coming off, but now his hard cock was pressed against her soft, wet tummy as she slid herself up and down his body, gazing into his eyes, her irises endlessly pulsing and swirling.

"I love you."

Her words echoed through his mind, vibrating off the inside walls of his skull, as though his head was an infinite loop of a bottomless tunnel. And without even thinking, he felt his lips and vocal chords coordinate in a reply: "I love you."

And he felt it, the love: a foreign tingle in his fingertips. A rush in his head. Like her rainbow stare was injecting adrenaline into him.

"I love you," she cooed, and he echoed again, much faster this time, "I love you."

He had come. The pleasure came and went before he even realized he had experienced it. His sensitive cock twitched as she continued rubbing her body against him.

His ears felt clogged, as though filled with muddy water. Now he was inside her, holding her hips as she bounced atop him.

"I love you."

"I love you."

Her eyes kept staring into his, the swirling colors spinning his mind around and around. It felt like being trapped in an undertow, sound and current all around, the body having lost track of what was up and what was down.

It was brainwashing. The nixie was brainwashing him. But he'd known that. Somehow, in the core of his soul, he understood that this was the right outcome for him.

The nixie was laughing as she rode him, fucking him. He'd come again. When -- he didn't know, but he could feel his fresh spunk coating his cock as he slid against the walls of her warm, wet, slick walls.

"I love you so much, my Edgar."

"I love you."

Now he was on top. There was no memory of a transition. Just a single blink, then he was lying between her spread legs, holding himself up with one arm, thrusting into her as his other hand roamed around her body: gently rubbing her, caressing her inner thigh, feeling her hips and stomach...

Everything was distant. All sensations reached him as though pressed against an impenetrable membrane. The nixie clenched. Laughed. Another orgasm. Her eyes closed, hiding the rainbow swirls of her hypnotic gaze, and for an instant he felt an onrush of sensations -- the afterglow of two consecutive orgasms and the nearly-painful throb of his shaft, the fatigue in his hips, the stone floor coarsely rubbing the skin of his palms and knees...

When her eyes opened, it all submerged once more.

While they made love, a strange thought rose to the surface, born from somewhere deep within him. He uttered it aloud, in a slow and unsure voice:

"All the lady's ladies

"Pluck round red cherries,

"Stepping and twirling,

"Around the tall white daisies.

"Praying to their lady

"'Forgive us our follies.'

"Who then stands up with knife and cup

"And says--"

Says what?

The nixie giggled, "that's a fun little song," and dug her fingers into his thighs, pulling him deeper into her, asking, "how's it end?"

And he didn't know, so he said, "I love you."

This made the nixie laugh. "But that doesn't rhyme!"

Says... what?

The man blinked.

Now he was being led down the beach. Now he was sitting on the sand, watching the waves, watching her bound and course through the blue waves, vanish, re-appear, leap from the water, dive in, the waves coming and going, her laughing, gazing into his eyes, her hips and tail swaying, watching her, back in the water, gone again, back again, her yellow teeth, her rainbow eyes; and soon, there was a screaming in his nerve endings, distant and faint, an echo from far away, screaming about thirst and heat, flesh red, peeling, and she returned, and her eyes swirled, and the screaming faded, and the lady, who stands with knife and cup--

Said what?

He was walking. The sand on his soles was wet and cool. She led him into the water. The sudden cold upon his ankles, then thighs, made his heart race. She pulled him into the waves, warming him with her body. Arms roamed over slippery flesh. His. Hers. They blended together. He suckled a spot on her neck, gently licking and nibbling it. Pinching her earlobe between his front teeth. Her white hair felt like silk against his nose and lips.

He said, "I love you," but no sound came out. Her nipple was hard in his mouth, but softened as he tongued and suckled it, heating it with his breath and saliva. His thumbs charted the contours of her back, roaming down to her thighs, where his fingers traced her hamstrings.

At some point, he entered her. It felt rough in the water. Lots of friction. Their bodies tensed in discomfort. But soon enough, it all felt smooth and tight and wonderful. She felt hot and he was enveloped in cold, so they held one another as close as they could. The nixie grew hotter still. Her nipples hardened again, pressing into his flesh. Her lips sucked on his tongue, massaging it between her teeth. Her eyes were shut tight. They squeezed one another. Everything became so tight.

They came together. He sighed, took a deep breath, and felt the cold rush into him, heavy.

He was surprised, but felt no fear. He began to black out, gazing into her rainbow eyes. Bells in his ears, chiming forgive us...

And then, he was beneath the hot sun. His stomach was tight and straining, aching as he retched the water from his lungs. The nixie was kneeling over him, her face vibrant with relief. "Oh Edgar! I thought I lost you again!"

Between deep, hoarse coughs he replied, "I love you."

He blinked. Darkness. He blinked again. Black. Death? Not yet. No, his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

Back in the cave. Between her legs. Her blue lips pressed against his mouth. A soft, smooth mound against his nose. Tonguing her. She was watching him. Rainbow eyes. He said into her, between her legs, "I love you," but it was muffled by her sex. The eyes swirled, pouring into him.

The nixie's eyes guided his mouth. His lips. His tongue. Kissing. Licking. Suckling. Stepping and twirling. Knowing exactly how to please her. His hands, wrapped around her legs, holding her tight, like she wanted, tonguing, her wetness a relief on his burning lips, beads of her running down his dry throat, pain, ache, fatigue, licking, licking, sucking, kissing, tonguing, pain, pain...

Round red cherries.

Raw fish in his mouth. Eyes open. Her smile. Her rainbow eyes. No more pain. "Eat, Edgar. Sweet, sweet, Edgar. How I love you so..."

Chewing. Mouth full of bloody, scaly fish, coughing "I love you," chewing, tall white daisies, relief in his empty stomach, he blinks--

Fucking. Hand against hand, his calloused palms pressed into hers, wet blue webbed fingers intertwined with his, she was pressed against the cave wall, her legs were wrapped around him, kissing him, staring into him, he was kissing back, drinking her precious spit, drinking the swirls of her hypnotic eyes, lady's ladies, thinking in his numb mind, why am I thinking "said what?" while holding her up against the wall, thrusting, kissing, fucking, coming.

It wasn't working. He knew something was horribly wrong, because he shouldn't be able to think by now.

"Time to sleep, Edgar."

Rainbow swirls.

"Sleep, Edgar. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep..."

His eyes snapped shut. Cold darkness. Hours of

"All the lady's ladies

"Pluck round red cherries,

"Stepping and twirling,

"Around the tall white daisies.

"Praying to their lady

"'Forgive us our follies.'

"Who then stands up with knife and cup

"And says--"

Repeating, repeating, repeating.

Said what???

Sunrise. Sex. Beach. Thirst. Heat. Hunger. Darkness. Sex. The ladies and cherries and daisies and follies. Rainbow cascades of orgasms, split lips, raw gums, that damned rhyme.

How much longer?

"I love you."

"Sleep, Edgar."

And hours more of ladies and red cherries twirling tall white daisies, their lady, follies, knife and cup, and says--

"Hang on. He's still alive."

A different voice. He felt fingers grab his chin, turning his limp head left and right. His eyes opened and he tried to look through the film of his vision.

"Get him some water. From that stream, there," she said. He could make her out in the haze: a woman with brown hair. A human woman, looking down at him, morning sunlight filtering through the cave ceiling, burning in her hair like hot embers.

A flask was brought to his lips. He drank eagerly. Gulping, filling his mouth, coating every bit of his tongue and gums in it -- too much, having a coughing fit, pausing, drinking more. When the flask was empty, he finally breathed, gasping for air, appreciating the irony of being a weak, delirious, dehydrated thing so close to a stream of crisp, clean running water.

"Let's get you up. Can you stand?"

The question was rhetorical, as he felt her yank him up by his emaciated arms, stiff with what was left of his muscles. "There you are," she said, balancing him atop his legs.

He felt like something a child would cobble together out of driftwood. But he could stand.

The other woman was in view now. She also had brown hair, but her skin was much darker. He lifted up his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes, the cracked and splintered skin of his knuckles like sand against his eyelashes.

One of them, the one that gave him water, was holding something large and dazzling: the tail of the nixie. Its rainbow sheen ended in a jagged stump of blood and meat.

"From your sea wench friend," she flatly said, "quite a pretty thing, eh?"

The one holding him up gently smacked his upper back. "You alright, fella?" And without waiting for a reply, she cheerily introduced herself: "I'm Sam. And this is my good friend Rena."

Rena nodded. After an awkward silence, Sam asked, "you got a name, friend?"

"It's, uh, Edgar."

"You're a lucky man, Edgar," Rena said, smirking, "I don't think you would've lasted much longer under the sea-maid's care."

Sam chuckled, "Aye. As a matter of fact, we only stopped here to refill our canteens, which we accidentally spilled a few clicks back. 'Lucky' doesn't do you justice, I'd say."

"We're pretty lucky too," Rena added, looking at her friend, "the nymph took off in a hurry when you stumbled upon her and her little man-friend here." She gave Edgar a playful nod and continued, "by accident, I was out towards the beach. I managed to tackle the thing, and sliced off this little treasure before she slipped away, screaming like a banshee." She held the tail forward, pleased with herself. "Might fetch a decent coin, I'd say."

Edgar gave her a troubled look.

"What," Sam asked playfully, "you feeling sorry for your former captor? God knows she'll have another tail in no time."

Without pause, Edgar shook his head and said, "that's actually a myth." And he was briefly puzzled, knowing that fact with conviction, but unable to recall how he came to know it. "A nixie's tail doesn't grow back. In fact, without it, she can't swim. She can't catch fish, or..." He trailed off, looking outside the cave, thinking about the estuary, the nixie's domain, all the life within, flourishing in a refined balance. "She can't..."

"Well," Rena shrugged, "fuck her then, right?"

Sam nodded. "I'd say that's a good place to leave it. Let's head out. Care to tag along, Edgar?"

Rena shot Sam a look, to which the latter quickly answered, "Fortune's blessed us with that fine piece of tail you're holding. And so we're gonna pass the blessing on to our new friend here. We're gonna drop him off at the next village is all." She grinned at Edgar. "It's the right thing to do, I'd say."