Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’ll tell you the tale of the bottomless blue,”

Waves triple the size of a horse were plummeting down on every side of them. The ship rocked from side to side, bopping and bouncing about as the wind blew through their sails. The sun was shining pure white light onto the blue waves of the sea, which bounced back into a blinding gleam against the sailors eyes. Not that they’d complain. Most of the sailor’s eyes were squeezed shut anyways as they drunkenly danced around. Letting the ocean’s rocky hold on the ship slide them around as they danced and shouted.

The sea shanty sparked glee across every sweat soaked sailor. Rolling off the tongues of the men hauling the black chorded nets, as well as those tying the thick, braided ropes to the sails. It loudly was shouted by those skipping around to the music with their arms linked together, for these sailors it hardly sounded like much of a melody. But every soul on board was singing or shouting with the enthusiasm of a fat king.

“An’ it’s hey to the starboard, heave-ho,”

“HEAVE-HO!”

Rum spilled onto the deck running across the hard wood planks before a breeze of sea mist seemed to wash it away. The winds were strong today, and favorable for their journey. Not to mention the rum brought on board today was stronger than normal. With royalty on board, they could well afford to not dilute it into grog and let themselves enjoy the strong freeing taste of alcohol and salt air.

For Cole Brookstone the day was as perfect as can be. The ocean wind was cool against his face, relieving him of the heat from the blaring sun. The breeze was tousling through his dark hair carelessly as mist from the waves around him hit his skin. A happy sailor leant his entire body weight on tugging on Cole’s arm to point to the bow of the ship as he recited the next line.

“Look out mate, a mermaid be waiting for you’

Cole’s eyes followed the man’s hand to the bow of the ship where a merman was carved out of wood, decorating the hull with a mysterious outline of a scaled tail and the chest of a child man on top with wide open eyes and hair that was carved to blend back into the wood of the ship. It was commonly known maritime mythology- mer creatures that ruled the ocean. This ship seemed to speak into the legends more than most as they let the creature be decor for the ship’s front.

“In mysterious fathoms below,’

Down in the dark depths of the sea floated down an empty corkless bottle made of glass, it washed upwards briefly with a wave before ultimately sinking down into the darker mysterious waters. Waters where no man has a clue what hides inside it.

“I’ll sing you a song of the KING OF THE SEA,” Cole bellowed as he stood to balance on the side of the ship, shouting louder than the rest. Sure he was being slightly obnoxious. But no one out in open waters really cared to be embarrassed or judgemental. They were loud, they were sweaty and they were free.

“An’ it’s hey to the starboard, heave- ho,”

“Heave Ho!” The sailors loudly whooped in support of the young future ruler, enjoying themselves along with the rest of them.

“The ruler of all of the oceans is he,”

Cole had precautionary arms at the ready for him as he jumped down to the main part of the deck, chuckling along to the carefree dancing in the light of the sun.

“In mysterious fathoms below,”

A tall wave crashed down onto the singing sailors, the heavy water making everyone including the prince fall right on their ass or tumbling to the nearest wall. It left them slipping and sliding as they grabbed each other’s arms to come back to their feet.

“Heave ho! Heave ho! Heave ho! Heave ho!”

Uncle Wu was currenty heaving his tea off the edge as he clutched his stomach, his face had practically turned a pale green. The poor advisor was given an aggressive pat on the back by the young prince, which did little to ail him in any way.

“Isn’t this amazing Wu! I mean the sea spraying the deck and the wind in your hair,” Cole sighed in contentment. “This is what it feels like to live,”

Wu wiped his face with his sleeve. “Delightful. However I am concerned of your lack of fulfilling your princely duties when you’re out here fooling around at sea,”

“You mean getting married,”Cole sighed. He’d been given this kind of conversation far too many times. Sure he guessed it was kinda important for being royalty to get married to some other royal, but with every suitor he’d met he just didn’t click with them. He didn’t really feel the need to rush into marriage. He was still young and having fun on a boat and being out at sea felt like where he belonged. Not some kind of ballroom with a random princess telling him about some fancy dress. Marriage tied him down to his castle. Not a lot of royalty liked to sail the way he did and he just wasn’t ready to give that up.

“There aren’t any young princes or princesses aboard this ship. Just really rocky waters,” Wu had good intentions. The prince knew that but he really couldn’t bring himself to care to listen.

“Ay cheer up mate! The wind is strong and friendly today, Queen Maya must be in a good mood,” A nearby sailor piped up.

“Queen Maya?” Cole asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Aye! The queen of the mer people, lad! Every real sailor knows her name. She has power over all the waters below us, guiding our ship. Destroying those who displease her with her mighty waves or deadly trident. A strong woman indeed, the sole ruler of the ocean,”

Wu was still in the process of wiping bile away from his beard. “Merpeople, ha!”

–

Lying thousands of feet below the ship the name Queen Maya was striking much more fear than simple mystery for the creatures below. Frightening Jay Walker most of all as he checked the sheet music for the thousandth time. It was supposed to go great. And of course everything would go great, he had practiced this exact piece to absolute perfection for an entire month. So it had better freaking be perfection! This was Jay’s moment, where his musical career would be acclaimed by the entire kingdom once again, and he’d prove all those jealous critics wrong. This performance was arranged perfectly with the background vocals, the clams and lobsters along with many other shellfish were on percussion, and the squid and octopus on strings had spent the entire day from moonset up until this evening in preparation for this very moment.

A dressed up sea horse loudly cleared his throat. “And now presenting the esteemed composer and conductor and advisor of Queen Maya herself, is Jay Walker!”

With all of these band members being so talented and so prepared there should be no reason for Jay to be freaking out so much. But Jay was completely losing it. He trusted the band well enough. He trusted Nya to absolutely put on the performance of a lifetime, but the event's beloved star however… Let’s just say Jay wouldn’t trust him with a pillow. He put on a cheeky smile as he walked sideways onto a seashell chariot. The blue crab was envisioning the fifty five million things that could go wrong, but just hopped on anyways. The chariot’s rope was lined with shined pearls and the tropical fish guiding it had the vibrant colors matching Jay's auditorium decor, and the perfect speed to get the crab to the sand pit at his director's stand. He had invented it himself so that it rose a shell upwards by use of an underground shallow geyser to lift him up so the entire orchestra could see him.

“A one, two, three,” Jay led them off using one of his pincers to guide the beats. On the countdown the sea creatures broke into a perfect harmony. The tune was happy and light and every note was exactly on count. Jay could almost calm his nerves when he saw Queen Maya happily humming along and nodding her head contently.

Next swimming out from a large cyan clamshell was the beautiful mermaid. With a sparkling cerulean tail with a flowy, deceivingly delicate looking fin, the mermaid was a sight to behold. She looked like the spitting image of her mother, with long flowing black locks, tanned skin and stormy, but kind eyes. Her voice was music in itself, a slightly raspy but wonderful sounding voice singing out to the audience. “Tis I am the daughter of Maya, great mother who loves us and named us well. It’s Nya!”
She followed with a series of high pitched notes following Jay’s favorite scale, as she swam in circles above the creature's band. The princess smiled graciously at the crowd, every movement graceful and well planned. She was the perfect young mermaid princess.

“And now you’ll meet the youngest in his musical debut. My younger and annoying brother, we’re presenting him to you. To sing a song Jay Walker wrote, his lovely voice can make you cry, it’s my younger brother Kai!”

And now Jay’s insides hurt as the second clamshell opened. A beautiful, bright red shell that had been bedazzled by different pearls opened to reveal an empty clam. With no merman in sight. Jay wanted to pinch his own neck. Of freaking course. Why did he even try at this point? If there was one thing Jay could trust that merman to do it was to be late or in this case- horribly absent. The entire orchestra stopped staring at the empty shell, with no young prince to grace their ears. Ah- humiliation. It stung time and time again. The stares of confused, bewildered merfolk in the audience hurt Jay’s eyes more than boiling water.

Nya facepalmed herself as she looked in disappointment at the empty spot. She swam over to Jay flipping her sparkling tail in the process as her voice lowered to a whisper. “I”m going to kill him,”

“Not if I do it first,” Jay said through the side of his mouth, as his eyes focused on the now enraged queen of the ocean.

Maya uprooted from her throne, her silver trident now being clenched in her hand which was turning white with force. She glared at the scene below, no longer caring of making a dignified appearance to her people as she shouted in rage “KAI!”

Chapter Text

A bright, cardinal red tail flipped through the pressure of the dark water with incredible ease. His long flowy fin was a V-shaped fish tail with additions of fins cascading what looked like bright red and orange scale-crafted ribbons. The long fire-like tail whipped around to flip him upside down and backwards to return to the yellow and green fish struggling to keep up pace.

“Now you're just showing off,” Lloyd grumbled.

Kai chuckled as swam on his back for a bit, lazily flapping the tail and making a show of yawning as he traveled at the tropical fish’s pace. “I wouldn’t have to show off if you could speed up just a little. Now hurry, it's just up ahead right over that small dune!”

Lloyd kept flipping his tail, which Kai did not seem to notice was significantly smaller than his own and thus required a lot more effort to travel fast and far. Lloyd was already exhausted and his merman friend seemed to have energy for weeks. “Are you sure we should be heading this far from the palace? We do have to swim this whole long ways back too,”

Kai just easily swam in a circle next to Lloyd once again. “I can always give you a lift,”

Lloyd considered it and hated himself for even thinking about it. Kai’s ‘lifts’ were helpful for sure in getting them places, but the mer had way too much fun with it. Going so fast Lloyd got scared his gills would clog and it would always leave him so dizzy he wouldn’t know what way the surface was. “Yeah I’m not that desperate yet,”

“Suit yourself,” Kai shrugged before fiddling with the little bag over his shoulders. It was a leather satchel like bag, with a bunch of pockets for extra protection for any more additions to his collection. Most mers had bags made out of seaweed or netting, but Kai’s was one of his favorite collected pieces from humans up above. Someone had dropped this beautiful piece of leathery convenient craftsmanship from a small rowboat by the beach. He’d treasured it ever sense, using it to carry stuff just like humans original intention for it.

When Lloyd finally made it over the dune Kai couldn’t help himself from swimming in a spiral shape as he presented it to his fish friend.

“Isn’t it the coolest thing you’ve ever seen in your life!” The merman marvelled.

Shades of blue grayed the color of a wooden ship wreck of a grand pirate ship covering the sand and rocks of the ocean floor. Large rounded planks made up the body of a vessel so large it could fit a sea cave inside of it. It had been overgrown by time now, with sea vegetation of kelp and a large city of mussels making their home in the hull of the ship. The sails had withered apart like all the others. Rope netting covered over the ledges of the deck, some of it having landed many feet beside the ship.

The wreck had left some of the wood split into large sharp bits of wood pointing itself upwards. The front half of the ship was barely stringing onto the larger rounder half, as most of the planks had been destroyed. Near its bottom half were these perfectly circular glass windows about as thick as Kai’s head. It looked so intact still, Kai could almost picture the sailors walking and laughing amongst themselves on that now mussel covered deck.

Lloyd was normally down for any adventure with the merman, but the extreme distance they had traveled to get here was a bit worrying. He was also the only one between the two of them who took notice of the fallen apart bits that could easily deteriorate on them and trap the fish inside at any moment. “Cool! That sure is uh something! Pretty cool. Now we should probably get back to the palace,” the mahi-mahi chuckled out nervously.

Kai only swam closer, giving Lloyd nothing more than a teasing glance. “Oh, so you’re getting cold fins, huh?”

Lloyd really didn’t see how anyone could look at something as spooky looking as that structure and NOT get cold fins but there was no way he was gonna outright admit that/ Kai would be such a cocky shit if Lloyd chickened out, despite the clear safety issues. “I just think we maybe shouldn’t poke around in really ominous looking ghost ships, when we’re super far away from the kingdom,”

“Mmm,” Kai hummed in what appeared to be agreement. “Yeah makes sense, here’s the plan then. I'll take a quick look around and you can- I don’t know- watch out for sharks,” Kai said before that cardinal red tail flipped, and he was off through a broken circular window streamlining through.

“Sharks?!” Lloyd was hurriedly following. “You don’t think…”

Kai was humming to himself as he searched the inside. He was in a room with abandoned maps the water had bleached all the color out of. There was some wooden cube-like structure built into the floor with the ruined papers on top of it. The humans seemed to be able to craft just about anything with wood. He swam over to it and found it had little miniature rectangular doors on half of it with small handles. Kai delighted in finding out that they slid open to reveal a hidden compartment of more ruined papers. It was simply fascinating how they could just slide open and closed like a secret compartment. Perhaps this was the human storage version of putting stuff in closed clamshells.

“Kai, you don’t think there’s actually sharks around here right? Cause if there’s any chance-”

“Relax Greenbean, don’t be such a guppy,”

“Hey- am not!”

Kai just snorted before a glint of blueish light caught his eye. Gasping in awe, he swam over to the next room swiftly and he saw it glinting from a patch of sunlight poking through a hole in the ship. It was a purely silver object with four prongs and a long rounded flat part acting as the base for the thing. It resembled a tiny trident with an extra prong, and Kai couldn’t possibly imagine what the humans used it for. But it was breathtaking. It was made of such pretty, silver metal that gleamed so brightly from the little light that had made it down here. It was so delicate looking but so strong nonetheless.

“Woah,” Kai’s eyes were wide as he grabbed its handle, examining every point and rounded edge on the metal. The metal was completely seamless as if a cave had naturally spawned it itself.

The mahi-mahi poked out beside him. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, but it’s sick!” Kai grinned widely at Lloyd. “Maybe it’s a human version of a trident, for their little ones,”

Lloyd looked doubtful.

“Well whatever it is, I’ll bet Dareth knows,” Kai said before shoving it into his bag. He then promptly gasped again as he saw another mysterious trinket. This one appears to be half wood and half metal with a large circular wooden part spoking out of a thin metal curled straw.

Behind him Lloyd seemed to be distracted with something. “Um- Kai,” The fish’s voice was shakier than normal. Kai was used to Lloyd being consistently worried so he didn’t turn until he released a high pitched shout.

Kai’s head snapped up. Eyeing him was a huge shark, with nostrils only a few feet away from Lloyd. It’s hungry eyes staring blankly at Kai. He was grinning to reveal rows and rows of jagged, triangular teeth that could rip Kai’s tail off clean. Poor Lloyd looked like his eyes might bulge out of his skull.

Kai moved before he thought. Launching himself upwards to fool the shark before immediately diving down to grab Lloyd and shove the fish out a hole of the ship. The shark then seemed to focus on Kai, which he much preferred over his green friend. Kai swam through rooms and rooms of the boat as the Shark just crashed through the beautifully crafted walls.

Kai shot through a broken window of the ship to get back into the open ocean, it only took seconds before the shark’s body broke through the wall. There goes that being the most well maintained shipwreck Kai’s ever seen.

The shark seemed to then turn away from the mer and was busily swimming to the ships front.

Kai frowned, confused until he saw Lloyd’s green body swimming desperately upwards.

Kai’s breath hitched. “Hey ugly! Giving up on me already?” Kai shouted at the shark who seemed to have already figured out he wasn’t going to out swim the young merman.

The shark ignored Kai’s insult and was still focused on Lloyd. Kai’s tail drove up and down as fast as he could as he followed the predator. The shark was ginormous, could fill up the main ship deck with his size alone. But Kai couldn’t focus on his own terror when the shark was currently gunning for Lloyd.

Trying to think wildly, Kai realized he was running out of options and he took his favorite satchel and threw it as hard as he could at the Shark’s side. The shark turned now, it’s face as angry as ever as it once again launched forward as Kai dove down. He needed to get this thing as far away from Lloyd as possible.

The shark was following him and then seemed to turn towards the satchel which was currently sinking down into the sand. Kai moved desperately downwards as he tried to reach it before the shark. Not caring about the risk in the action, he grabbed it by the strap and then quickly flipped back upwards finding some strange circular piece of metal to swim through before the shark’s teeth could snap down at him. He poked his spiky head of hair up through the rusted window as he watched the shark now charging at full speed at him. Right at the last moment Kai dove again just in time to dodge the teeth and giggled to himself as the shark’s head rammed straight into the metal leaving it trapped.

The shark’s tail helplessly flailed as he tried to unjam his head, and Kai was swimming off to find Lloyd and get out before the shark managed to get to freedom. Frightening as they may be, sharks were intelligent creatures that merfolk respected greatly, but this one had just tried to kill Kai’s friend so his respect for this specific one had diminished. The merman decided to stick his tongue out at it immaturely for the sake of his own victory. Kai’s adrenalin rush was still feeling strong but slowly giving away to childish amusement at his near-death experience.

“Hey, Greenbean, how are you doing?”

Lloyd was gasping still, his little heartbeat probably still super high. “Oh, y’know just peachy,”

“Yeah sorry about that,” Kai said genuinely. “Well since we’re both alive and have all our fins, let’s go find Dareth!”

“After all that you don’t wanna just go home,” Lloyd laughed in disbelief.

Kai took another look in his satchel and the brand new trinkets he had acquired. “I can go drop you off, but I’m not about to miss learning what these things are. The sooner we find out we can hide them before mom finds out,”

Lloyd groaned for the sake of being dramatically exasperated but it didn’t stop him from eagerly swimming with Kai as they made their way over a bit closer to the kingdom and up close to the beach.

Swimming up to the surface made Kai feel warm, the sun hit the water so beautifully and when he broke his head through he got the treat of seeing the sky without water to cover it. It was a baby blue today, with only a few of those fluffy white tufts decorating it.

“Dareth!” Kai called out as they made their way on the surface to a dark gray rock. “Dareth!”

A loud squawk soon made Kai perk up. Flying towards them was his absolute favorite seagull, squawking it’s hello.

“Hey kid, it’s been a while,”

It had only really been a day but Dareth wasn’t the best at timing stuff like that. Kai couldn’t care much about that, Dareth’s knowledge on more important topics greatly outweighed his sense of time. Dareth's specialty was invaluable to him; knowledge of the human world.

“Hey Dareth! I was hoping you could check up on some stuff I found,”

The seagull bobbed his head around casually. “Sure thing, kiddo. Let Dareth the human expert extraordinaire give you the high down,”

Dareth knew all the expressions and lingos humans used, and Kai tried to wrap his head around as many as he possibly could. Kai searched through his bag finding the silver extra pronged trident first.

Dareth eyed it knowingly, waddling around with great confidence as he examined it. “Why, this is real cool stuff kid. Real unique for humans even.You got yourself a dinglehopper!”

Kai looked at it again in fascination. “A dinglehopper?”

“Yep! Humans use this thing all the time to style their hair-do.” Dareth grabbed it with his wing and used it at his top bit of feathery fluff on top of his head. “Yeah you just give it a little twirl and a twist and a few strong yanks and voila!”

Incredibly Dareth’s hair-do arranged itself to be much more fluffy and stuck out at all sides. Completely changing the seagull’s whole look. “You got yourself an aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair, humans go crazy over. Tho none of them can rock a do like Dareth,”

“That’s incredible!” Kai ignored the boast and took the dinglehopper back for himself and tried weaving it through his own wet hair for a bit. It amazed him how humans had such unique hairstyles, and how they got it to sit in so many different ways above water. If Kai had been a human he’d spend forever on his hair each day. He’d style his to be spiky all around his head. Kai then cleared his mind as he remembered that wasn’t his only new prize. He pulled out the second object and watched as Dareth carefully took it in his wing and examined it. Kai leant his elbows on the rock, resting his head in his hands as Dareth hummed and looked all around it.

“Now this is fascinating stuff too. This is the snarfblat- dates all the way back to prehistoric times when humans used to get really bored and stare at each other all day,”

Dareth put his beak practically against Kai’s nose as the two made incredibly close eye contact for a very long moment. Kai was just blinking at the bird’s beady eyes, raising his eyebrows as he waited for the bird to get to the point already. “It got very boring.” Dareth poked back up. “So they used these fine fellows to make music! Allow me,”

Dareth blew into the front part of the snarfblat and a tune of bubbles and an odd little croak and hum escaped the instrument.

“Music!” Kai gasped suddenly, panic quickly filling him. “Holy shit the concert,” he facepalmed. “I totally forgot. God, my mother’s gonna kill me, if Nya or Jay doesn’t do it first,”

“That was today?” Lloyd gasped.

Kai was then hurriedly grabbing the snarfblat and putting his new treasures into his bag before swimming off. Poking his head above the surface not soon after he left. “Thanks for the help Dareth!” he waved.

“Anytime kiddo!” The gull responded, waving back.

So the red merman swam deeper towards his home with Lloyd at his side.

-
In the glow of a silver crystal ball the merman and the fish appeared to a mysterious observer. The sea witch Aspheera was chuckling as she watched the youngest child of Maya swim towards his scolding by the ruler.

“Ah yes go home little prince, swim on home and don’t worry about a thing,” She said her two electric eels at the side of her were hissing in amusement at her words.

“I wonder how angry Maya must be that her own son missed her grand celebration concert,” She mused as she applied lipstick with a bright red sea slug. “How very unfortunate. Bah! In my day celebrations were much more grand, with much more appetizing food,”

The octopus-like woman took a terrified live shrimp and threw it carelessly inside her mouth. She was a frightening looking creature- considered terrifying even to the deepest of sea creatures. She had large ash colored tentacles forming her bottom half that were always reaching around in all directions when Aspheera herself was relaxed- moving constantly ready to strike any unfortunate sea critter that got too close. The top of her body was made of orange scaled skin, forming the head of a human with an unnaturally large and cobra shaped skull. The krill fought for his life the second he had made it in his custody, but once Aspheera had you- there was no escape. Enjoying the way it squirmed around before her teeth snapped it dead in two pieces.

“Maya doesn’t even appreciate the glory of all her control. She just basks in it with silly and obnoxious music fests while I waste away- banished to whither here for eternity,”

Her eels run to her side and she pets them as they nuzzle against her in sympathy. “But this pretty little merman is so rebellious, so headstrong. Maya worries about him so often- he just has the perfect potential to act as the revenge against her that I need,”