Silverfin: The Little MerSir

1 Silverfin and the Red Pirate King

Silverfin and the

Red Pirate King

One night as I lay on my bed, I lay so fast asleep,

When the thought of my true love came running to my head.

And poor sailors that sail on the deep.

― Traditional Folk Ballad

DESPITE HIS NAME, SILVERFIN did not have a silver tail.

His tail was still quite striking, if he did say so himself, a tawny gray with dark stripes much like the large predatory fish that swam in the corals where he lived, near the vast landmass that the first bipeds had called Xaymaca.

But it was certainly not silver, a fact which rather irked him at times and was the subject of many a raised eyebrow.

Unfortunately, a name passed down from your father and his father before that was rather hard to shake.

What Silverfin did have was an unfortunate preoccupation with pirates. Which was also rather hard to shake.

He wasn't the only one of the merfolk to seek out the presence of bipeds. But there was little satisfaction for him in playing games with fishermen or hanging around in great seaports.

Not when there were grand sea battles to behold.

Not when he could scale the side of a boarded prize and peek through the portholes at the epic battles that were waged aboard. He would hang there, his tail stroking the slippery, wet side of the hull, safe in the knowledge that beneath him was the sea, and the sea was his home.

That is, until the day he saw the Red Pirate King.

That wasn’t his name (and, truth be told, Silverfin couldn’t be bothered with biped names), but rather what Silverfin had called him inside his mind, on account of his hair.

It was the color that one sees in some coral reefs on the algae, or when it washed ashore to be dried by the sun, and laid there in beautiful, golden threads.

It would have made magnificent merfolk hair. Not as beautiful as Silverfin’s, of course. His hair was long and lush, flowing all the way down to his scales, and had been the envy of the seven seas.

Then again, bipeds weren’t generally known to be very attractive. Their fleshy, knobby, scrawny lower limbs had none of the beauty and grace of a mer-fin. Not to mention the strange, flapping phallus that dangled between their legs like some repulsive barnacle.

Bipeds were grotesque, but part of Silverfin was convinced that the Red Pirate King must have been a man apart.

The clothes he covered himself with hugged the curves of his body like a second skin and were of obviously higher quality than those of the men under his command.

On deck, he exuded authority, his very presence glorious like the sun.

In battle, he fought with unrestrained ferocity, cutting down foes with sure strokes of shining steel. And in private....

Ah, in private. Silverfin felt a rush of pleasure at thoughts of the nights he'd sat on the hull outside the king's cabin, peeking through the windows.

Even with those strange “legs” he couldn't help but admire the pirate's body, the strength in his bare chest, also adorned with that silken, golden hair.

The cloth that covered these strange “legs” made them look glorious, hugging the curves of his rump, pulling along his muscles as he moved across the cabin.

Silverfin had spent hours watching the king alone, his attention focused on the flimsy paper and leather collections of writing that bipeds called “books,” his face peaceful and handsome in its serenity.

Surely the Pirate King read tales of the same thrilling battles Silverfin so loved to behold.

After all, how else would he have become so good at them?

Perhaps there were even tales of battle on land, though Silverfin couldn't imagine how that could possibly be nearly half as exciting, with the combatants trapped on the restrictive plane of ground.

Or perhaps the tales he read weren't of battles at all, but of people; of biped kings and queens, or powerful goddesses, or lovers, tangled in an impassioned embrace.

Sometimes the thoughts of what those flimsy books might contain was almost as enthralling as the Red Pirate King himself. Sadly, the few that Silverfin had managed to recover after shipwrecks inevitably disintegrated under water before he could read them himself.

But the Red Pirate King’s face was not always peaceful. At times, those lovely eyes that reminded Silverfin of the color of the shallows at sunset would grow dim. A faraway look would settle over the Pirate King’s features, a profound melancholy the cause of which Silverfin could not plunder.

He longed to. But of course, he could never dare reveal himself long enough to speak to the one who had so captured his imagination.

And even if he had, what would he say? The reason that merfolk had been so successful over the years - stealing from those who stole, at sinking ships, and acquiring lost treasures - was that their very existence was shrouded in myth.

To reveal himself was to doom all merkind.

And so, Silverfin would swim away, away from the coast of Port Royal, away from the hull of the Orca, down among the corals and the floating kelp, to his own kingdom where bipeds were fish food and Mami Wata reigned supreme.

Coming to Port Royal - taking on this identity, becoming a pirate - had always been hopeless.

If Captain Hawk was to be entirely honest with himself, which was in no way his forte, he’d have to admit that finding a life where he might possibly be happy again had been a dream from the very beginning.

From the moment he had set foot into that boat that took him away from London, he had been dying a little bit more each day.

Not in the way that was measured by 'time, with its bending sickle's compass' and so on, but in a way that ate at you each day, like the waves eroding at the foundations as they batter it. So too Samuel Wilkins’ soul had been battered, thrown and smashed upon the rocks, and from its ashes had risen Captain Hawk, a spectre, a shadow of a man.

At times he could push it aside, forget his pain in the savagery of the hunt, the bloodlust of battle.

The things that gave Hawk power. But he couldn't help but think in quiet moments, that it only made things worse.

That each prize the men took under his command sent him deeper into Hawk and took away a little more of the man he had been. The man Lucas had loved.

What would Lucas think of him now?

Lucas.

Hawk closed his eyes with a shudder of pain, remembering when the heat that had pressed to his lips was Lucas' mouth instead of the bottle. On a night like tonight, he'd have been in Lucas' bed, heated limbs tangled together as they gave in to their deep, abiding need for each other.

Lucas had made Hawk feel truly alive for the first time from the moment their eyes had met, lifted him from the gray mundane of the everyday and made him believe that his life could be more. Under Lucas' touch, Hawk's body sang, bright with golden happiness.

It had been all that he'd wanted in life.

To spend it with Lucas, reveling in their mutual desire.

In sun-bright afternoons filled with laughter with searing kisses and caresses as they tumbled into bed.

Afternoons of tasting him, worshiping all of his lover and taking everything Lucas offered him when he came undone.

Afternoons of Lucas astride him like Hawk was the finest of stallions, eyes bright with adoration and words of love on his lips as they both reached the heights of pleasure together.

Afternoons when they'd both curled together, lazy and spent, reading to each other books of poetry or meditation or philosophy, full of hope for the future.

But Lucas was dead.

Hawk had abandoned him, had left him to his persecutors, to his death.

Could he have saved him, if he'd stayed?

Hawk couldn't forgive himself for leaving.

Lucas, a saint, would never have wanted him to feel this way.

But no matter what he did, Hawk couldn't forgive himself for such a craven act of betrayal.

Hawk drained his cup and uncorked the bottle of rum on his desk. Rather than refilling it, he curled his fingers around the neck and lifted it to his lips, drinking deeply. Sobriety was too full of thoughts tonight for him to endure it.

Instead, he crossed the cabin and pushed open the great storm windows that lead to the sea, perching on the windowsill and looking out across the waves towards England.

Towards the place where his heart still resided in brittle, crumbled shatters with whatever remained of the man he should have never allowed himself to love.

Port Royal could not be saved from the oncoming banality of civilization. Not without means to do so. He could not bear it anymore, sinking lower and lower into the depths of the mask he'd donned when he'd become a pirate, it had become a guise he could not shake.

He could not bear piracy. He could not bear his crew. A part of him could no longer even bear the sea. But if there was one thing that he knew, it was that the sea always claimed its due. One day, it would devour him.

“Fuck it.” Hawk rose on unstable legs. The second bottle of rum had been empty - well, look at that! He did not remember finishing it. “Why delay the inevitable,” he said to no one in particular. The sky above, the sea below - just as allegedly, were God and the Devil.

Would the two of them sort it out, once the sea had pulled him to his final resting place?

Or would he be cursed to ride the currents of the ocean forever?

Standing unsteadily on the windowsill, Hawk wasn't sure which fate would be worse.

Or, as the world upended around him, sending him plummeting into the waves below, whether it had been the rum that had pushed him over the edge, or the sea rising up to take its due.