Chapter 2 #2
The mermaid’s skin is a tapestry of survival. Beneath the new wounds, she is riddled with the jagged white lines of older net scars. Lady Leviathan traces one lightly. “This has happened before.”
“It has.”
“How often?” If these treacherous, netted graveyards were everywhere…
“Too often,” the mermaid answers quietly. “This was the first time I couldn’t get myself out. I saw the other nets in time and didn’t get caught so deep. But this one, I never saw.”
Lady Leviathan continues working to free her, ruthless strand by ruthless strand. “I did see the corpses and thought their placement was strange—neither rising nor sinking—just floating in place. So many denied the Final Fall.” Sorrow slices through her like barnacles against skin.
The Final Fall is a creature’s last descent into the abyss.
It’s an honor, a glory, to reach the sea floor upon death, to be enfolded into the ocean’s embrace.
The body provides sustenance for deep-sea organisms as old as the ocean itself.
Making the Final Fall meant a creature could live on for all eternity through others.
Never truly gone. The spirit commended to the sea.
There’s no crueler fate than to be netted, except perhaps being taken from the sea by surface dwellers or washed ashore, away from the ocean’s touch. Lady Leviathan’s not sure which nightmare she finds worse. Once upon a time, she wouldn’t have needed to worry about such things.
“I didn’t realize what it meant until it was too late.” The mermaid winces through the extraction of a particularly deeply embedded thread. “I was already tangled in the net. The more I struggled the more it trapped me.”
“And your pod?”
“Couldn’t say. I was trying to find a new food source, away from our usual swim routes and hunting grounds.
Whole fish schools are disappearing, and we don’t think they’re migrating.
” The mermaid tugs anxiously on a lock of billowing brown hair.
“I’m certain my family looked for me, but I couldn’t hear them.
Not that I’d want them anywhere near that cursed place. ”
“How long have you been here?”
“Days.”
If Lady Leviathan hadn’t awoken when she did, this being before her would likely be dead. Just like countless others. She would’ve starved, tangled in the surface dwellers’ refuse.
Freeing the mermaid is a long, arduous process, but when the very last piece of netting is plucked away, relief floods the water thick as squid ink.
“Thank you,” the mermaid effuses, flexing her limbs and tail. Beneath gray, semi-translucent skin, her skeletal structure glows faintly, drawing attention to how sharply her ribs poke out, and how her skin is paler, duller than is healthy for her kind.
“It’s the least I could do.” Far from enough, truth be told.
Almost too little too late. Lady Leviathan needs to do more.
While the surface dwellers are to blame for the abandoned net, her centuries-long slumber allowed them to go this long unchecked.
This never would’ve happened had she stayed awake.
She twists two tentacles into the ball of netting she collected behind her back, furiously pulling on opposite ends, even though it cuts into her skin and the hurt does nothing to drown her guilt and rage.
The mermaid’s stomach grumbles, and it snaps her attention to where it’s needed most.
Poor thing is starving—they’d need to resolve that soon—but at least her kind are blessedly quick healers. Some of her injuries are already beginning to seal over into angry, pink lines. They have to in the unforgiving salty grip of the sea.
“What’s your name, sea maiden?”
“Ianthe.”
A pretty name for a pretty creature.
All three of Lady Leviathan’s hearts flutter.
“Twenty-Armed Goddess, I owe you my life.”
“Now there’s a name.” She smiles. “Simple, true. But a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”
“It’s our name for you.” Ianthe shrugs sheepishly. “Has been for as long as merfolk have passed down stories. Though I don’t know that anyone’s ever dared to ask.”
“Can’t say that anyone has.” A wonder, that.
Billions of years and she never questioned it.
Others knowing her true name just never seemed to matter, not when their lives were so much shorter than hers.
She cares to know them. She’s always felt deeply for the creatures she serves.
It just never occurred to her that she might also let them in close enough to know her in return.
“So, not the Twenty-Armed Goddess then.” Ianthe tilts her head with a curious, expectant expression. “To whom do I owe my gratitude?”
“Many have called me the Great Devourer, but Lady Leviathan is the name I’ve given myself.”
Ianthe perks up, lights flashing merrily. With a deep bow, she says, “Great Devourer, it has been an age.”
Still clinging to titles, Lady Leviathan thinks bemusedly. Will have to change that.
The mermaid’s reverence is broken by her stomach grumbling—louder and gurgling more aggressively than before. Twin dots of blue illuminate her cheeks.
“You must be terribly hungry.” It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Her body has every reason to protest and demand after the ordeal she’s endured. And yet, there’s nothing Lady Leviathan wants to do more than make those sounds stop.
Hunt for her. Feed her. Until she’s happy and full.
Harsh rumbling above jerks her attention to the surface. It’s louder and more piercing than the constant drone she woke up to and only worsens the closer it gets.
Ianthe’s head snaps up. In an instant her whole demeanor changes, instincts flaring to life. Clawed fingers flex. Teeth gnash together. Ready to slice and rend. Ferocity transforms the bashful mermaid Ianthe was just a second ago into a fearsome predator. She recognizes this sound. Despises it.
There’s only one group of creatures in this world capable of creating something so horrid and persistently destructive. Anger barely contained at the floating graveyard resurfaces, and this time, Lady Leviathan welcomes it.