But a difference in slight pitch showed that the water was not alone in its rippling serenity. One of its many children was a'fin, dancing and drifting far from what was permitted or told by the other Daughters. But she was armed with a hefty sling of a sack made of stained and burnt canvas. She was on her way for another adventure without the others. Maena was always one to be apart from the others.
A loud rolling clattering whip of angry water spat out the young girl, covered in a canvas mixed with diamond netting to coat its hugging nature to her petite little body. Maena had it wrapped crookedly, horribly, with bulges showing poor folds overlapping. She push, push, pushed herself to stand. There was pain, and exertion. It was no easy deed, and the water made her heavy instead of light. She had become quite attached to the excursions instead of their simple sing-and-pull technique. This was new. This was promising. This was fun.
"Fishy fishy, do you have a three?"
Whispered Fleck as she watched the show like a TV land viewer watching a sitcom, detached somehow in her drifting interest. She pulled the man closer to the water with arching of her arm and released his collar.
Stringy black hair, tangled with shards of bone and clumped together by still warm blood, fanned along the water. That wet patch quickly became the sort of dull pink that only sharks would dream happily of. Fleck smiled at the girl, her eyes such a dark blue that they almost appeared black in the moonlight. Even as Maena struggled to free herself from her watery home, Fleck only thought of the present and the reaction that she hoped it would give.
"I brought you something," she confessed,"it's still alive but it's dinged up. I hope you don't mind, Minnow."
Startled, Maena looked to Fleck with eyes that read and gauged. Just because her eyes were now so dry that she was struggling to see her hand in front of her face. But she finally recovered and slowly walked to her on shaking legs. The blood that trickled in a tiny mixture touched the flesh of her ankles causing her head to roll with delight, as if tasting the finest flavor that Heaven had to offer.
Gills tore to open and breathe in the spiced water and she opened her eyes again with a glee no human would live to see.
"For me?"
She walked a little faster, and recklessly with that drunken shuffle most
sailors sported when at port. Flaky crusts of sand peppered her legs and ankles where the gills had vanished again. She finally came to the dying man, dazed and hot with life.
"I don't mind at all, Friend," the mermaid continued," You are kind."
She came to crawl onto her knees and approached her.
The net of Fleck's attention was a pitiful thing indeed but she focused what she could on the sea devil.
"For you, Minnow. I felt very, very bad because I haven't seen you around and I thought you were grounded."
Nothing about the way Maena moved or the way that she acted seemed to disturb Fleck. She viewed it all as if it were an everyday occurrence, and perhaps in her head it was.
"I was scolded by my Father," Maena told her friend, "he is very strict, and I have rebelled time and again."
Including that very moment. She came to the face of the man and stroked the streaks of blood to clean it. She smiled into that dribbling face and the hands at his face gained sharpness that pierced the poor man's face, rendering him motionless.
"Thank you, Friend."
And she tore the flesh, revealing the muscles of his cheeks and jaw. Her teeth extended to long pincers laced in blue gel that made his screams mute and his convulsing body so very still. Black blood swam and infested his face and trickled down to stain the sand. She tore an arm off of him, ripping it like a simple chicken drumstick, and stuffed the flesh into her mouth. She was eerily silent. A meal was good when there was little conversation.
Fleck slowly sunk to the ground and sat there with her legs bowed up Indian style. She couldn't take her eyes off of the scene playing out before her even if she had wanted and what evil lurked behind her eyes, primitive and wild, sparked with the confusion that she had poisoned it with. Blood, why are you giving her the blood" Eat. Eat. EAT!
She clasped her hands against her ears as if that would drown out the rock rough voice bouncing around in her skull. An involuntary, useless breath dispelled a long string of bloody saliva from her mouth and it hung there in the air for a brief second before lighting on her chin.
Her lips never opened long enough to allow even a keen to escape, but the inside of her skull was full of screaming and howling and the slurping crunch of a mermaid and her meal.
Meanwhile, Maena tore and ripped and stuffed until there were red ribbons all over her skin and face. Thicknesses that trickled into thick
beads were raining back down on the incomplete form of the dead man.
Tangled hair turned black and clumpy with the added red polish that was made silver by the moon. She did not eat bones, she left those in tosses of debris, thrown into those sandy hills that disturbed rocks from their sleep.
She laughed after many long licks of redemption had her gills flare like fans and little fanned webbings sprouting from her ears to tremble and stiffen in an animalistic manner that was a hymn of the evil that lied in the Deep. And after, flared gills spread open and those fans of webbed netted red fish flesh withdrew into the hidden nest of hair and decor.
"Yes...Good."
The false breathing turned into a rattlesnake's hiss and Fleck's fangs were white in comparison to the sick pink color covering the rest of her teeth. She pressed harder and harder against her ears until she could hear bone cracking beneath her palms. The copper scent of blood hung in the air as thick as a curtain and Fleck felt as if her insides were boiling over. Though her eyes were still on Maena, she was no longer looking at the creature. With a bone sliver dangerously close to puncturing an eardrum, Fleck let her arms fall as limply as if they were broken to her sides.
There was nothing but the gentle song of the waves and the delighted, fulfilled laughter of a freshly fed mermaid. Calm and calming, the breathing stopped as quickly as it had begun and she crawled toward the girl on her hands and knees as if the horror in her head had never happened.
"I'm glad that you liked it. I could bring you more, but you can't tell anyone."
"I would not want to impose," said the mermaid as she called back to her friend.
Maena raked the sand and covered the remains of her meal with sand. It was habit, for her. This was the ritual, and she loved the sweet tune of the ocean after a nourishing feast. Her own voice joined the crashes of the waves in a happy hum that was so simple and alluring. Hypnotizing and reminiscent of the pretty feeling before the first bite. But there were no bites to be inflicted upon her friend.
Father would never approve of such an unlikely pal but she cared not as she crawled to Fleck to the shore. She splashed some sea water into her face and shook free the blood soaking her skin. Her gills revealed themselves in silent rips that revealed the sapphire and orange tinting to her skin beneath.
Maena may have not seen Fleck as an item on a menu, but that wasn't the case with Fleck. The act of seeing Maena feed had stirred the pot of some sickening soup in her brain but there was something that beat even the urge to lunge at her only friend in the world. A voice that told her to buckle down and ride it through. She rocked steadily from her balled up position on the ground, suddenly not too sure if Maena was real or make believe.
"Problem. No. Please God," she pleaded, "I'm sorry. Minnow, bugs. Claw. Do you think it hurts?"
Maena was so blind to pain. She knew only the screaming, and not the agony on the other side of the fence. She returned from her superficial cleansing of a sin that could never know or suffer from committing. She knew no gods, but only parents and relatives in the sky that watched as she and her kin chattered around the coral reef's twists and turns.
"Sometimes.." Sheepishly, she shrugged and smiled brightly with the glow of a happy stomach.
The sea devil's voice was the only thing keeping her from making the fatal error of attacking her. Maena drifted in and out of focus, her image momentarily hidden behind a sheen of red before Fleck banished it with the filthy hem of her dress. She forced herself to her hands and knees and crawled toward the girl, more pitiful puppy than mad monster.
She didn't know what sort of affection, if any, that Maena could provide. For all she knew, the mermaid could have ripped her asunder.
"Sometimes. I'm sorry. I'm sick and I didn't mean it. It's not working like it used to, Minnow. It breaks more now and I don't know what I'm trying to say."
Maena watched her approach, and could see the mad-dog distress she was feeling. It was what escaping looked like, or the attempt to escape something. She sat up on long limbs that still had no way of knowing where they should have been placed. Some postures hurt, others felt strange, and none of them felt comfortable except for when she finally sat on her rear with her legs splayed on the sand in front of her. The canvas had red stains on it, along the edges, fresh but faded. Her clothes were still wet, but so was she.
Fleck broke the silence again,"I fed Baby but I broke it. It doesn't know anymore because of me. I confuse it and make it think the stars are away when they aren't. Ti iklde ti what you did."
She happened to glimpse the woman's eyes and suddenly the water seemed more than a little bit inviting. Lonely and broken like the waves it produced, the ocean lapping at the legs of the pier almost seemed to call to her. It wasn't alright and it never would be, but she curled into a Fleck shaped ball barely a foot away from where the mermaid practiced being human.
"I'm glad..I'm glad you liked my gift."
Maena watched the woman tighten and curl and become something that did not look like Friend Fleck. It was fascinating to watch her fold and turn into something else. She watched and stayed still while finally lowering for her head to press the sand, and after a moment she crawled to lay beside her, and peer at her over her arms with only the moon as her lantern.
"Don't be tired, Friend. The moon's watching you."
