Chapter 15
Lorn
“Good. Yes. Want that,” I said firmly, using as exacting a pronunciation as I could manage with her mouth-words.
Did she think I wanted to be used for my ability to create a child and then discarded in favor of another male?
Elias had joined the solstice ceremonies last year, the first year he had been of age to join, eager to catch the eye of a pretty siren.
According to his father, he had been selected quickly with a crown of flowers and coral placed on his head-fins by a siren just as eager to join as he.
I hadn’t seen him since then. He would stay at the summer grounds with his temporary mate where there was plenty of food for her to grow their young, reveling in their short romance until she conceived, birthed, and weaned their child, and then he would return to the shoal with their child, alone.
That was by design. His siren would no longer be his.
She would already be on the hunt for her next mate—her instincts telling her to create and hand off as many children as possible—and Elias would raise his child to maturity and then perhaps join another solstice ceremony to do it all again.
And for our people, this strategy made sense.
Our sirens were the fiercer sex. Even while pregnant, they defended our people and our territory, and we mermen—we were the nurturing ones, able to focus our full attention on raising our merlings with the help of the other fathers.
The siren’s enchantment magic made working together in a community difficult, if not impossible for them.
But my own heart… it chafed at this culture.
I wasn’t sure if it was because I had longed for Sadira specifically for so many years and knew her people had different relationships than ours did that I’d simply grown used to the idea, or if maybe I’d just always wanted a different kind of relationship for myself.
Either way, I’d wanted it for a very long time, and I wanted it with her.
I just hadn’t thought she wanted it with me.
She had a very different life from me… I was an interlude…
something she came to visit between more important things.
At some point, my heart had decided it belonged to my beautiful Sadira regardless of what was practical or even possible.
And sometime after that, several summers ago, my soul and body had begun to bond to her, despite all the warnings from my father and my shoal.
It hadn’t mattered then that she could never return my feelings, because I’d always known my feelings for her were my own, not something that she would reciprocate.
I’d cared for her anyway, knowing that drylanders don’t bond. Not like we do.
But then tonight she’d come to me and asked me to breed her, and I could deny her nothing—even knowing that doing so would cement my bond to her in a very permanent, physical way.
I’d thought maybe she was sad because she wanted a baby, and while I’d never planned to have children, I would happily put mine inside her if that would make her happy.
Even if she wanted to send me away with it when she was done.
But then she had confused me by placing my shaft in her mouth instead of her vent, the way it was explained to me should happen during a breeding.
That… well, that made my mind completely scrambled, but I don’t believe one can make a baby that way.
It had been so difficult to keep from spilling my seed in her mouth.
I would be stronger next time and keep my shaft inside me until it was aligned with her vent, I decided, if she needed to breed again.
For mermen to allow our shafts to leave our body and be exposed and seen like that was considered horribly unseemly.
But the things she had done with her fingers and tongue had left me helpless and urged it out of me too soon.
Spilling in her mouth would have been even more embarrassing and deprived her of her baby.
My cheeks flooded with heat at the memory and my shaft began to stiffen painfully inside of me again.
But to stay with her forever? I would make all the babies with her she wanted if she would have me.
I would never make her stay with me, but I wanted her to.
I wanted it badly. I watched her closely as one emotion after another flickered across her face.
Doubt and hope warred for dominance. Did she believe me?
“But… how, Lorn? How would that work? I can’t breathe underwater. As much as I desperately want to be, as much as I’ve always wanted to be, I can’t be part of your world.” Her expression crumpled at this, and the sadness water welled up in her eyes again.
I chuffed at her, my sweet Sadira. “No,” I agreed, “but I can breathe above water.” I gestured patiently to my closed gills and the fact that I was lying here with her right now, breathing the air just fine.
“And I can change now.” Kind of. I’d practiced a few times, at least, since discovering I had the ability now, finally.
I’d thought I would have more time to work on it.
She blinked at me, her confusion turning more hopeful, but still unsure. “Change?” she questioned.
“Yes. I am old enough to change to my land form. I practice with the sea witch,” I told her proudly, but then I quickly grimaced at the memories.
This was a painful process, just like using mouth-words had been for several years.
Maybe worse. “I’m still not very fast. Need more practice,” I admitted.
The witch doctor had been displeased when I’d pressed the point of wanting to learn how, because he insisted I still wasn’t old enough yet.
The process hurt badly, but over the last few months, I’d tried to get better at it.
It was an inherent part of our magic, somewhat similar to a race called shifters who could change into other forms, but our magic grew in us as we aged.
I concentrated on my tail, pressing my magic into my flesh and bones, and gritted my teeth as the spike of heat flashed through them.
It took a lot of mental strength to focus through the pain, and my body shook with the struggle as my breath came in gasps.
The elderly healer said that it would come easier with time, but for now it was more like I was forcing the magic to do as I wished and my body was rebelling.
Sadira’s hands fluttered over me as if she wanted to help somehow, but my fins were finally beginning to absorb into my scales.
The change wasn’t coming fast enough, and I knew from earlier attempts that, if I went too slowly, it would stall out and I would have to start over, which was even more painful.
So I pushed my body harder, flexing all of my muscles and growling with the effort it took.
The burning pain in my bones was nearly overwhelming, but then Sadira placed her hands on my scales and the soothing magic that she carried within her flowed into me, the warm sensation easing the sharpest of the pain and allowing me to finish.
My scales absorbed into my skin, and the flesh that resides between my bones parted up the middle, forming legs and feet as the landwalkers have.
They were strange looking and unfamiliar to me still, but they matched my body in color and form, though they were much shorter than my tail had been.
The fins and venomous spikes along my spine and the backs of my arms were reduced into simple raised ridges now, although the few spines I had in my hair remained.
I collapsed onto the sand, gasping for breath.
Once I finally began to slow my breathing, I realized Sadira was also panting and trembling with exertion from having given me so much of her magic.
Guilt swamped me for having drained her so badly, but perhaps these sacrifices for one another would be how we must learn to navigate this thing between us.
“Lorn… how does this work? How long can you breathe air now?” she asked, perhaps remembering back to the days when even a few moments of breathing the hot, dry air was too much for me, and we’d lay for hours in the surf together so that she could breathe her air and I could breathe my water.
“Long enough,” I said. Maybe she hadn’t noticed the gradual shift, but I’d been able to breathe outside of the water for longer and longer periods every time she’d returned to me.
“Long enough to marriage you, and many days after.” I would still need to return to the ocean occasionally, but I could go stretches of days at a time without it now if it were necessary.
She stared at me, dumbfounded, and I wheezed a breathless laugh at her expression and shook my head.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I reminded her, still winded.
I watched her eyes for her answer like a barracuda watches for shiny scales.
I wanted Sadira to be mine if she would have me. Mine only. For always.
She barked an incredulous laugh of her own, and water spilled from her eyes again, but this time it didn’t taste sad when I “kissed” it, as she calls it.
She scrubbed at the leaking water with the back of her hand, as she always did, and finally answered me.
“Yes, I will marry you, Lorn. My parents will disown me for this. I don’t know how to cook and I can’t afford to hire it done, but you don’t like your food cooked anyway, I guess.
I don’t have the slightest clue how to run a household, and I don’t know where we’ll live. But I don’t even care.”