Chapter Text
There was a quickness to the cold, an insidiousness that had it sinking in between the next breath and the last. She floated there, as wisp of a thing in the water, her tail wriggling like it still wasn’t quite sure what to do with itself. Gura wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself, meanwhile, so she just waited. For what, she didn’t know that either.
“Do you get it yet?” Fauna asked from behind her. Gura didn’t turn around, couldn’t turn around. Her muscles were locked up and her eyes were trained on the distant, undersea horizon.
“No,” Gura managed somehow, bubbles crowning her head as they swiftly rose to the surface. “I- I don’t.’
“Do you want to?” Saltsweet, Gura could practically taste Fauna’s mouth. A hand, webbed and terrible, with too long nails and familiar scar on the third knuckle. On her cheek, searing cold as it slowly began to turn Gura’s head towards Fauna.
Gura stayed mute, teeth feeling too big in her mouth. She closed her eyes when she saw the glimpse of Fauna in her peripheral vision, instead held on to the image of her in the sun, laughing, hair tumbling over her shoulders like water and her hands like birds fluttering around her in their meager garden.
“Won’t you look at me?” Fauna said in a voice that broke Gura’s heart. “Sweetie-”
“I can see you,” Gura said thickly, darkness behind her eyelids. “Don’t worry.”
Fauna was silent for a moment. “As I am or as I was?”
This caught Gura off guard. She wasn’t sure how to answer. Fauna’s hand stayed on her cheek, thumbing over the jut of her cheekbone with a tenderness afforded to things about to die.
“As I want you,” Gura said honestly; flayed open in the water, seasalt sting as her eyes opened. “However you are.”
- - -
Gura walked into the coffee shop with the strap of her bag digging into her shoulder, a nervous tension to the clasping of her hands. It wasn’t really a coffee shop in the first place, Gura noted this as soon as the first whiff of herbal, honey, flowers in the rain hit her nose. Quaint little cups of steaming tea sat in front of the few patrons who had already found safe harbor in this little tea shop nestled within the heart of the city.
“Can I get you something?” The barista at the counter smiled at her, curiously sage green hair tied back in a ponytail. The tattoos winding up her arms were of waves and plants, an odd mix that she made work so well Gura’s mouth had lost all cohesion.
“Tea?” Gura said faintly, and the girl, Fauna, laughed like it was the funniest thing.
“We’ve got that,” she said playfully. “What kind?”
“No clue.” Gura hitched her bag higher up on her shoulder. “I’m not a tea guy.”
Fauna, gasping in mock offense, responded: “I was going to give you a discount and everything, and you tell me you’re not a tea guy?”
The chuckle bubbled out of her, molten with her joy, and Gura felt warm under the collar. “Can I keep the discount if I let you pick for me?”
“Smooth talker,” Fauna said, ringing her up with a drink that already had Gura dreading the typical dirt and bitterness of an herbal tea. “You’re lucky.”
“If you say so,” Gura said, and was pleasantly surprised at her drink not tasting of dirt, nor was it bitter. Fauna laughed at her expression, she laughed a lot. Gura loved it, it was an easy thing to draw out of her.
So she came back to hear it again. And again. And again, and she was given her discount every time.
“They’re going to think I’m your favorite,” Gura joked one time, jerking her head towards Fauna’s other patrons.
“You are.” Fauna leaned against the counter as Gura’s tea brewed, a new blend especially for her. She was always so honest, disarmingly so, kind of like when the light first hits your eyes when you leave a dark room and you’re forced to blink, readjust. Gura didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feeling, and she didn’t want to.
“Happy to be your favorite,” Gura said in a totally normal voice.
“It’s a real honor.” Fauna nodded sagely, making the silvery tinsel in her hair catch the light. “You should pay me back.”
Gura snorted. “I should pay you back.”
“There’s a park a few blocks from here,” Fauna said, and it was only then that Gura realised she was getting asked out. “I can close up early and you can walk me there?”
Her face felt so hot, a humid pink to her cheeks that Fauna could definitely see and was definitely judging. So Gura took her cup of tea as soon as Fauna handed it to her and took a sip to cool down, like it hadn’t been brewing for the past five minutes under a cloud of steam. When her tongue and throat burned and she coughed so badly that Fauna ended up walking her to the hospital, her face felt even redder.
“Sorry,” Gura rasped through a mouth full of ice chips. It was a soothing feeling, but the water was tinged with salt in a way she didn’t like. “You didn’t need to do-”
“I wanted to,” Fauna interrupted. She held Gura’s hand and it was warm. She held Gura’s hand and it was warm and the flimsy hospital blankets clung to her legs like netting, or seaweed, and Gura felt trapped in the best way. “Thank you is a good start. Then we could go to the park?”
And it was only just then that Gura recognized this look on Fauna’s face, the tender hope of it, the quiet terror, the sunlight shining through the hospital windows like how it would filter through water, rendering everything in a haze of dreamy unreality.
Gura crunched through the chip of ice even though the nurse told her not to, and squeezed Fauna’s hand. “I want to go to the park with you,” she said quietly, like it was a great big secret, it would shatter the dream if she said it too loud for others to hear. A beat where Fauna smiled so big and wide that Gura couldn’t take it, her heart couldn’t take it, like the warmest water was flooding her lungs and she couldn’t breathe through her murmured “Thank you” before Fauna kissed her.
- - -
“I think I’m losing my mind.”
The bed was still warm. It was a rare moment of lucidity, the soft haze that enveloped the world giving way for a moment to reveal the sharpness of everything; the wear in the walls and the splinters she had to mind when she went to get a glass of water in the middle of the night. Fauna was sitting on the edge of the mattress facing away from her, Gura staring up at the water damage on the ceiling and bouncing between thoughts of fixing it and thoughts of the smooth pale skin of Fauna’s back. The way strands of hair stuck to it from sweat and how it outlined the muscle like how shadow outlined a reef. If she tried, if she pressed her fingers in deep until the skin, the everything gave way, would Fauna’s heart fit in her hand?
“Is it bad to lose one’s mind?” Fauna asked. When she breathed, she did it like she was monitoring how the breath moved through her body; slowly.
Gura blinked, because that wasn’t the response she was expecting. It was a bad thing, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t exactly say why it would be. It wasn’t dying, but maybe it was the fear of no longer being herself that made it so daunting. But then again, her tail wriggled underneath her from where it was pinned by her weight to the mattress, the world fluttered like her gills did under her shirt, she wasn’t sure if she was herself already.
“It’s still you, is it not?” Fauna turned her head imperceptibly towards Gura, and Gura imagined the slight crook to her lips that was her shy smile. “You, but different.”
“Then that wouldn’t be me.” There was a tackiness to the sheets, their cheapness shining through in how Gura’s fingers wore through the threads and made a previous hole even bigger. At least, until Fauna’s cool hand clasped her wrist, stilled her fiddling and made her swallow hard the lump in her throat.
“Do you think,” Fauna said slowly, and oh, Gura could already feel her ribs opening up to take it. She turned onto her side, she’d been uncomfortable anyways with how her tail got squished underneath her when she lay on her back. Gura got a better view of the dimples on Fauna’s lower back, and welcomed the heat in her cheeks as she admired the slope of her hip to her waist to her shoulders to the soft line of her throat, her golden eyes directly on Gura’s.
“Do you think I won’t want you if you aren’t as you are?” Fauna’s horns had to be wrapped in cloth to prevent the prongs from poking holes in the pillowcase or in Gura’s face. Gura thought it looked adorable, and had yet to convince Fauna to let her take a picture. “You loved me before you knew what I was.”
And of course she’d known before Gura had, of the love that swirled like a riptide in her chest to jostle her organs this way and that whenever Fauna smiled at her. Dirt on her cheek, worn gloves on her hands, kneeling in their garden and Gura was too in love for it to not show on her face.
Would it have mattered, Gura wondered silently, if she’d known what Fauna was while love sank its teeth into her? Fauna reached out to hold her hand and Gura took it. Her hand had a wear to it that Gura hadn’t expected, thought it would be irritated by the callouses on her own palms from a hard life at sea. But Fauna’s hands were a gardener’s hands, a worker’s hands, and there was softness and steel in equal measure in the way she thumbed over Gura’s knuckles.
“If you’d have told me earlier,” Gura murmured, even though she still wasn’t quite sure what Fauna was, “I think I would’ve loved you anyways.”
Fauna lay down next to her, pressed her lips to their intertwined hands and smiled until Gura could feel the rasp of her teeth against her fingertips. The reverent urge, beaten back only by sudden terror and tiredness, to press her fingers against Fauna’s soft palate till she gagged, until she bit down to taste Gura, the meat of her, her heart beating so hard to feed Fauna everything, every drop.
“Let’s lose our minds together,” Fauna said with her fever bright eyes. “And see what happens.”
And when Gura swallowed down her shiver, Fauna kissed her into a place where her prior worries didn’t seem to matter as much anymore.
- - -
She began collecting seashells. There was something soothing about it, padding along the beach with her feet sinking into the warm sand, the cool saltwind in her hair. The shells rustled in the basket, pale and lacking in color. Fauna thumbed the smooth insides of them, the creature that would have made its home in there leaving nothing behind.
When Fauna looked out to the sea, she could see a few boats bobbing in the horizon, gliding along like ghosts do. The water was dark and deep, a Smoke Sea trait, and smelled faintly of absence. She wondered where Gura was, if she was fishing near the Lost Man’s Hands, or the Broken Teeth. She hoped Gura went to her own favorite places, felt the urge to linger in the blank waters of the Bellowing Deep.
She imagined Gura coming home with her battered ice box filled with a few leftover fish, the rest sold for meager coin. Fauna would take the first one, descale it with a steady hand as the eyes blinked up at her, mouth pouted open with needle-like fangs and dark tongue. She’d hold it tenderly, though, so that it would know it was loved by her when she flayed it open, placed it raw on Gura’s plate just the way she liked it.
And she’d watch, small smile, clasped hands as Gura dug in greedily, tired from her long day. Her tail stuck out from between the slats of her chair, the middle section removed to make space. Its tip brushed against the floor as Gura ate, barely a breath before Fauna slid the next prepared fish onto the plate.
There was the crunch of bone and gristle, the quiet little pop of the eye between teeth that made Fauna’s mouth twitch. When she leaned in to kiss Gura, she got a bloody lip for her trouble, her meat indiscriminate from Gura’s meal. Gura blinked at her, pupils blown wide, and murmured an honest sorry before leaning in to lick her mouth clean.
The basket of shells was on the counter and it was dark outside. Fauna wasn’t exactly sure when she got home, and when she started calling it home, but she wasn’t complaining. The in-between time from morning to night was boring, Gura out at sea and leaving Fauna behind.
One of the fish, when split open from gill to tail, spilled eggs over Fauna’s hands. They were marble-like, small, with a sweet scent and a dark red oil sticking them together in clumps. Fauna was busy trying to figure out how to transfer the mess to Gura’s plate before she felt her weight behind her.
“More?” Gura rumbled, claws pin pricking into Fauna’s hips as she held her. Tenderness became pain, and Fauna didn’t mind, the ghost of Gura’s teeth over her hot with life throat only made her sigh.
Gura ducked her head and lapped the eggs up from her palms, a slick swallow accompanying every mouthful. Her chin was wet with it, dark, dark red, trickling down to smear over her pale neck.
“What’s it like?” Fauna asked, fascinated. She reached out to thumb at Gura’s mouth, pressed it into her own. Salt and bitter and lightning sharp, a sting to her taste buds, electric smear over her hard palate.
“‘S good,” was what Gura managed through the last drag of it. She licked her chops, preening pleased, tiredness softening the jut of her shoulders as the toil of the day hit her all at once. “Bed?”
“Brush your teeth,” Fauna said gently, taking her plate and bumping Gura with her hip affectionately to scootch her out of the way.
Gura’s teeth were sharp when she smiled at her, acquiesced with no complaint, curled up in bed and only left a little red on their pillows.
- - -
The flooring of Gura’s boat hurt her back as she awoke, staring at the dark sky of the Smoke Sea. The stars were so high up, how the light reached her was a science that made her smile. Her jaw ached less and less as the days passed, as her teeth settled into their new positions, no longer as crowded as they were in the beginning. Her tail slipped to a neutral position when she sat up, its surface reef-rough to Gura’s palm.
The dreaming was new. The ghosts of places beyond the Smoke Sea, where the air was lacking in the usual bite of brine, where the ground beneath her feet was solid and immutable. The fish was dead and lying on ice in supermarket displays, and she stood there amidst the waves of people who acted like it was normal for everything to be wrong.
She stood, her balance automatically adjusting for the added weight of her tail. Maybe she should be more scared about how easily it came to her, how she slipped into the freezing water of the sea with only her shirt and pants tossed to the side. Her gills rippled in the rough current, the breath coming sudden and oddly. Gura couldn’t describe the feeling, she didn’t think about it enough.
The silt of the ocean floor met her bare feet like silk, fish swam past her shins in odd shapes. Their fins were long and trailing, like ribbons. They were eyeless, unblinking, mere shapes in the water that Gura brushed her fingers over to feel the ripples when they darted away. It was easy to grab the one that was lagging behind, unaware of the escape of its brethren.
She was unsure of where to start, so she started with the head. It had a good crunch, good give. The rest of it went quick and she couldn’t recall much about the experience. Gura didn’t eat more than one, Fauna was making dinner and she wanted to leave space for it, so she swam back up to where the surface was indistinguishable from the deep.
But she stopped, nose brushing against the break of the water, bobbing slowly in the waves. Like a window, the world beyond was distorted by the sea’s edge. The cold had given way to pleasing numbness nearing on lukewarm. She could stay here in the dark, in the absence of heat because that was all cold was, and be whatever she’d become. Without fear.
Like a clench in the throat, water down the wrong way, Gura pressed up and out back onto the now alien surface of her boat, and recognized nothing of everything.
- - -
How the body gives way was something Fauna was still learning.
Gura floated on her back, a wisp of a thing in the water. Her tail squirmed behind her, moving her forward as Fauna knelt in the foam of the waves, watching her. The sun was curtained by clouds with only a few spears of light reaching through, glittering on the Smoke Sea’s surface like stardust in oil.
“I think I've loved you for a long time,” Gura said, only spluttering on water a little bit, and was grateful when Fauna didn’t laugh.
“Ah,” Fauna said, her mouth like pomegranate; plush red with a fragility, an ease to bleed. Gura remembered the taste of that, at least. She wouldn’t forget it. “That sounds nice.”
Gura breathed in real deep, her hair halo like the seafoam in lines. “It is.”
Fauna sounded, for the first time in Gura’s time of knowing her, like she was unsure. “I’m sure.”
“Like I know you,” Gura continued, her eyes big and bright and meeting Fauna’s with nary a flinch. “So well.”
She held Fauna’s hand and Fauna was still to her touch, eyes wide and so gold like sunken coins and it was like Gura didn’t know what to do with herself anymore except to smile at her. The ocean murmured against the sand in a meeting of old friends, the constant repulsion and return, a love story in the ripple of the sand.
“That’s all I've ever wanted,” was said with a quietness that made Gura’s heart stutter.
She reached up, webbed wet hand catching the light, and she was used to it now, found herself in the body that was once alien. The Ship of Theseus dilemma felt simple all of a sudden, and Gura had never been anything but Gura but Gura but Gura with sharper teeth and a liking for cool dark places and preference for fish that still moved like it wasn’t moments from its end by swift bite.
Fauna leaned into her touch, the skirts of her dress a jellyfish cap floating around her, darkened pink in the water like how blood weakened to the salt of it. She had her own fangs, slight, but there, Gura was obsessed in her own wanting to pluck them out like they were seeds in the flesh of fruit, hollow them to rings.
“All I’ve ever wanted,” Fauna repeated, and kissed her, horns nicking her forehead a little bit to bloom blood in the water. But it dissipated quickly, and they were left in the midday dark, in the water, together.