Work Text:
Caleb, Caleb, Cay-leb. Caaaaaleb. Jester turns the name over and over in her mind, silently mouthing it to herself as she swims down to the wreckage below. She flips around and watches Caleb swim behind her. Very inelegant. Doesn’t look like he spends much time below land.
Everyone should swim more, Jester thinks. Everyone should make it their goal to swim for as much time as possible and not ever have to go up to land and spend time with mean land people until they learn to be much nicer and friendlier. Caleb is a land person but he seems much nicer than the other land people she’s had to deal with before.
He threw around pretty magic and tried to sound threatening, but Jester has dealt with real threats before, and Caleb was waaaaay nicer than any of the mean land people with threats. Most land people hurt you without talking first. Caleb gave her little fireworks and conversation, and she knew he would be the one to help her. If she can get him to loosen up a little and accept her help in turn.
She swims towards the wreckage, making wide loops so that Caleb is never too far behind her. She fans out over the surrounding area, over coral and anemonines and ooh! Some stinging jewelry fish, excellent. She grabs a bite to eat as she goes, picking over the little dropped debris on the ocean floor while Caleb catches up.
She sees a flash of something from the corner of her eye—a pearl maybe? Caleb cast his pretty water-breathing spell on them with a pearl. Maybe she could help him find some of those among the wreckage, and then he can come with her to deal with her mean land people!
She swims toward it lazily. Caleb is still making a beeline for the ship, and she lets him go. She’ll surprise him. He crests the first of the wooden hull as she reaches the shiny something she’d seen. Her eyes flash purple, then red, then black, then blue. She feels blood in the water, tastes it with her antennae. She looks back to the shipwreck. She hears no sound of distress. The smell of blood is coming from the direction of the shininess.
She drops low, swimming just over the bottom floor of the shelf she’s on, using all of her senses to focus on the scent of blood and trying to catch what had drawn her attention earlier. It takes her further from Caleb, to an area that is about to drop off much lower. She looks behind her, but she cannot even hear Caleb from this distance. She reasons he’ll be down here for a while, searching. She feels a pull downward and turns back to her quarry.
Just before the drop of the shelf, she finds a satchel. A scavenger’s satchel, like one her mama had given her. She squeezes the strap around her middle, ensuring her own was still with her, before reaching for this other one. The clasp half open, a pearl rolling on the soft cover. The flash that had caught her eye.
Opening the satchel she sees other treasures within. Ingredients, food, pearls, more. She throws the bag over her middle, tucking it away with her own satchel. More to go through later. She needs to find the source of the blood, still. Her senses are telling her its coming from below the shelf.
She hovers mid-water, aligning herself best she can with the source before opening her eyes, flashing yellow, then red, then black, as she throws herself through the water and down, searching.
Too far down she hears faint, ragged breathing, and the source of the blood, and the overwhelming smell of decay meets her. A mermaid hit, struck by unknown weapons, mortally wounded. But somehow still alive.
Jester rushes to their side, brushing their antennae from their face, fingers lightly dusting over their body, searching for the worst of the wounds, for the best way to help. Their body is partially covered by an enormous sealskin, clutched so tightly in their hands they’re leaving indents in their palms despite the layer of blubber between their nails and skin. Jester carefully lifts the sealskin and sees a mess of blood and torn skin and scales. Sees why exactly she smelled decay.
She lowers the sealskin back down, wraps them with it, and as gently as she can, places her hands under their body, lifting the mermaid up and swimming towards the distant light. Towards the shelf she’d been, when she’d found their scavenger’s satchel. The shipwreck filled with mean and evil men of the land, who shot and hurt and nearly killed the first other mermaid she’s ever met, besides herself and her mama.
The mermaid in her arms moans, and it’s so pitifully weak, more of a whimper than anything else. She brings them up gently, keeping the sealskin tight around them, making sure it’s as smooth a rising as she can make it.
She calls out for Caleb as she gets closer, wary of the dark spot in the water they’d descended from.
“Caleb, come out here, quick,” she calls through the water. She sets the mermaid down just outside of the wreckage, a space clear of debris, just sandy shelf.
“Please, I am busy in here, I have found—“
“Never mind what you’ve found,” Jester calls. She hears something drop within the ship and feels the shifting in the water as Caleb clambers over the driftwood and spots her. He swims to her as if pulled magnetically.
She pulls back the sealskin again, carefully revealing the messy remains of the mermaid.
“You need to help me help them, Caleb.”
Jester doesn’t have eyes for Caleb right now, but she hears the intake of breath he makes at the sight of gore below her hands. She feels the way his body shifts minutely in the water around them, the tense hold to his frame. She pushes the sealskin between her own body and the shelf, carefully disentangling one of their hands from it so it wouldn’t get in the way. But if it as so important to cling to as they sank, then she should keep it close.
She brings up both scavenger’s satchels, pouring out the content of the found one to the floor, rooting through her own and pulling out a long cord of a very rare sea-flower—the vine of it, from which the flowers bloom.
“I need you to help them, Caleb. They will not survive and I do not have enough hands on my own. Hold this-“she passes him the vine into his hands, not looking at him, “and hold it to their chest, wrap it around their shoulders and put your hand over their heart. Do not let go, no matter what happens,” she commands.
Caleb’s mouth goes slack but he nods, follows her instructions immediately. She corrects the position of his hands once, moving to center them over the heart, and then refocuses back on the worst of the damage. At the base of their waist, where scales begin to sprout and connect body to tail, is a wide, gaping wound. Probably a harpoon, looking at the damaged area. Ringed around the edge of scales is bright pink scale rot, molding over and encroaching on their flesh.
First to clear out the rot. Then to make sure no detritus is within their body. Then clean, bandage, and hopefully revive them.
-
When all is said and done, Jester’s covered in their blood. Caleb has specks of it over his own coat and on his hands and on his chin. But he’d done as she said, and never moved his hands, not even once, not even to wipe away the drying blood flecked in his beard.
Jester has scale rot scraped and rolled into a roll of moss she’d taken from their satchel. She had to use tooth and claw and tail and every fiber of her being to bring healing to this mermaid. She spoke to them as she went, trying to bring soothing healing energy as she worked. She pulled materials from her own satchel, things she would have been reluctant to use on any other. But meeting her first other mermaid, and they can’t even talk because they’re dying, so close to the edge,--no. Not on her watch. Not when she can do something about it.
They haven’t woken up. Their breath evened out, their body is less ragged, but they are still so low. Nothing to do but wait, now.
Jester cleans the beautiful sealskin off as best she can, and re-wraps it around their body. Mermaids are meant for the cold of the ocean, but hopefully the warmth the skin provides will keep their body from wracking itself into tearing open their stitches. Scale repair is so fragile, so easily undone until it is healed.
“You are free to return to your search, Caleb,” Jester says softly, floating away from him. Not too far from the other mermaid, but further back from the human.
Caleb let go of the mermaid, clumsily moving his limbs, possibly haven fallen asleep in the position he held the entirety of the healing Jester had tried to give.
“What magic did you place me under?” Caleb asks, voice tight. His hands have disappeared within his coat.
“Suggestion,” Jester says, swaying the word around as it flows through the water to reach Caleb’s ears. “Do not hate me for it, please,” she asks, looking down to the mermaid between them. “It was to save their life. I needed your hands.”
Caleb takes a few tight breaths. “I will return in a few minutes.”
Caleb swims towards the dark shadow over the water, away from the remains of the ship, away from Jester and the mermaid huddled under a sealskin cloak. If he brings his people down, there is no distance she can travel, either alone or encumbered with the other, that they would not catch up to her and kill them immediately. The healing would have been for nothing. Everything within Jester is telling her to flee, stay safe, my love.
But she holds the hand of the mermaid and pets the edge of the cloak wrapped around them, and hopes Caleb will not betray her as every other born of land has.
Caleb returns alone, a few minutes later. “I had to check in. They would have sent someone soon. About nineteen minutes, give or take the impatience of an idling crew. We have three more hours to renew our search.”
Caleb speaks to the left of Jester, not looking her in the eye. But he turns and swims toward the wreckage, and does not demand her come or go. Does not demand anything of her.
She pats the mermaid on the forehead, whispering a “Rest,” to them, and swims toward the wreckage, easily overtaking Caleb and diving among the ruins.
Caleb remains tense the rest of their search. And becomes even more so when he finds a cage, and rope, and dark stains on the rope and broken teeth nearby. But besides the bodies of nasty, defeated men of land, there is nothing to be found.
After nearly three hours of searching, Caleb returns to the site of the injured mermaid, Jester, immediately checking them over, finding no change.
“I will return at first light on the morrow. Stay or leave, I have a job to do here. If any of the men above spot either of you, I will not be able to help you. And I will not risk myself for you, either.”
Jester nods, looking Caleb over. The shoulders wound tight, the hands twitching and pulling at the edge of his sleeves. The low, nearly unnoticeable broken lilt in his voice. Regret. Over what? What part of his words give him regret. It could be any.
“Tomorrow, Caleb. May your mind find comfort in sleep, tonight, and your soul find rest at the end.”
Caleb swims up to the lengthening shadow overhead. Jester swims around, trying to make the fallen mermaid more comfortable as they continue not waking up. She watches over their body and changes their bandages again that night, getting rest when she can, huddling beneath the sealskin with them.
Tomorrow, maybe a solution will come for them. For all of them.