Chapter Text
When he wakes it is to the sensation of burning.
But it’s damp—wet. Simultaneously, he feels his lungs as if they’re on fire as he coughs out the saltwater it’s been drowned in. It’s a stupid thought to be having first thing as you wake from what might have been a near death, but Diluc thinks he will never, ever drink Snezhnayan firewater again. Not unless Kaeya shoves it down his throat, and if he dares—well, he’ll see.
Diluc blinks his stinging eyes open; as if granting him a small mercy, they aren’t greeted by blinding sunlight but a soothing, gentle glow. He continues to cough a little as he brings himself up on wobbly elbows, and tries to reorient himself.
He’s in an alcove; perched on surprisingly soft sand by what seems like shallow water. Diluc has no idea what time it is, for the light encompassing the space does not seem like they seep from the outside, instead they seem to emanate from the water, a gentle blue-green that glows soft, reflecting off the jagged edges of the stones. As the burn in his chest dissipates, his head takes over to make him suffer: it pounds rhythmically, each beat bringing flashes of memory before he finds himself here.
A big ship, and an equally a big, stupid ambition. Bare necessities and preparations. A storm. And then, engulfing waves. Diluc shuts his eyes again—thereʼs something else.
Sounds of cannons and invasions of pirates fill his head.
Diluc opens his eyes again and looks down—his shirt is torn with a gash, washed red marring the edges of the tear. But underneath, nothing—no wounds. Absently, Diluc rubs on his chest, feeling the sand scrape on damp skin, and wonders if he truly did just got lucky. He stands up, slightly wobbly on his knees, and looks at his surroundings.
There is a soft rumble, and then a gentle tide. Diluc cautiously watches the glowing water ripple from the deep, dark end of the cove, taking a step back to plant his feet into the soft sand; in a split-second, he grabs the nearest rock he can lift, on high alert.
The ripple breaks, and from it, emerges something that Diluc thought existed only in dreams.
A head emerges—a human’s. It is of a woman’s, blonde-wet hair sticking to its—her face, and then, shoulders, body, arms of a woman’s; and in a flash, it disappears again as the creature dives her arms into the water and moves forward. Caught in his throat, Diluc watches her, and witnesses the curves of a fish’ tail bobs in and out, glittering blue scales all to the wide rear rays, that splashes the water as she moves. Diluc freezes in his spot as the creature re-emerges from the water and lifts itself to sit atop a jutting stone, just a little ways from where the water runs deep.
A merfolk.
As the shock finally sinks in, Diluc pauses to take in her form as she takes her hair and sweeps them to one side, exposing what seems to be small fins instead of ears. The blonde hair, darkened from the water flows to her chest, wavy and glistening. Her upper body wears nothing, but skin from her chest and arms are interspersed with glowing blue-green scales, almost as bright as jewels. The scales condense as his eyes travel downwards, wholly engulfing a single fish’ tail, darkening, until they end and flare to half-translucent rays, and they glitter in the muted colours of rainbow as they dip in and out of water. On either side of her tail are fins, equally translucent; they flop gently from the dampness, half-blanketing her tail like a beautiful, holographic curtain.
Her eyes are the brightest blue he’s ever seen, shining in the dim light of the cave.
It watches Diluc as he cautiously approaches, wading into the waters in a half-trance. When he is close, water drowning half his chest, she dives back into the waters, where her hair and fins all but flow beautifully around her. Diluc’s breath catches.
“I—” he coughs. His voice is hoarse, scratchy. The mermaid swims a little further away. “Wait!”
In the splashes of water, her head surfaces again. If he’s to wade further into the waters, he’ll have to swim. They look at each other, a distance between, and Diluc realises with a striking clarity how breathtakingly beautiful the mermaid is.
“I won’t hurt you,” Diluc blurts out, palms raised. “Please, don’t go yet.”
She blinks her sapphire eyes at him, seemingly understanding his offer of peace. The movements from her tail underneath the surface cause small waves around him. “Can you… talk?” He asks, already thinking himself dumb for asking. “Can you understand me?”
She simply blinks again, arms stretched around her in the water. Must be a no. “Did you… save me?” No answer from those beautiful, rose-blue lips as the mermaid tilts her head minutely, ear-fins twitching. Diluc stands still in the water, at a loss; he doesn’t want her to go, and yet, it is evident that his attempt in communication falls, and would continue to fall flat.
Suddenly, she moves toward him. Diluc freezes in place, and lets her swim around him, circling him once before stopping in front of him, far closer this time, barely an arm’s length. He can feel the push-and-pulls of the tide underneath caused by her movement. Idly, he notes that she has yet another flap of fin raising from her back, like a singular wing. The almost wispy ends of her fins brush against him, and Diluc submits to the urge to touch them.
Immediately, he regrets it.
The mermaid lunges at him with a hiss, though she doesn’t knock him off. Diluc is quite sure he’d drown if he slips, and realises that here, chest-deep in the water, he’ll be at its mercy. It reaches scaled arms toward him to push him away from her fins; and a sudden sting catches his hands. When he raises them in surrender again, he only notices twin gashes on his palms, red blood diluting in the crystal water, and nails as sharp as daggers jutting from her fingers.
Briefly, Diluc wonders if he’d just evade death to walk into another death door.
It seems to be minutes until she finally calms, and all the while, Diluc dumbly stays where he is, vulnerable to whatever fate awaits him; the water, thankfully, is lukewarm enough to not chill his bones. When the mermaid approaches him again, it does so more cautiously this time, and so does Diluc in moving.
This time, the mermaid reaches her arms—her scales glow, and Diluc realises her claws are no more, instead the dainty fingers of a lady greets him.
“I’m sorry,” he voices, “I won’t do that again.”
It seems like the slow blink of her eyes are of understanding and apology, this time. She surfaces higher, ear-fins fluttering, and gently takes his raised hands. Though he reflexively flinches, Diluc lets her. Truly, it seems as if he’s taken by a trance, mesmerized by the ethereal glow of her, the breathtaking beauty of her face, for him to throw all cautions out the window, lets himself submit in this tide, subjecting to her grace. Her touch feels like a simple womanʼs, gentle in the dampness.
Taking one hand up in her palm, she hovers her other hand over it and the sting from the wound is replaced by a cool breeze as magical light emanates from the tips of her fingers. When she takes his other hand, Diluc witnesses with disbelief at the sight of his unscathed palm.
When she is done, she releases his hands and blinks up at him slowly. From this lack of distance he can see the gems in her sapphire orbs, the colours of muted rainbow in her lashes, long enough the ones at the outer corners of her eyes stick to her cheeks. Fleetingly, she reaches out, butterfly fingers touching the skin on his chest, underneath the torn fabric. Diluc’s breath catches in his throat.
“You did save me,” he says. “Thank you.”
She seems to understand, because her beautiful face breaks out in a smile; wet lips curved in a way so lovely. Warily, Diluc reaches his hand out, half-expecting yet another cut, but she moves toward it instead, and slowly presses the side of her face to his palm, leaning on it, while her eyes don’t leave his. Diluc gently runs his thumb on the damp skin of her cheek, feels small tugs of scales and the membranous part of her ear-fins with his other fingers. She seems to like the tender movement—her tail moving in the water around him.
“Mesmerizing,” Diluc breathes.
She flicks her tail and lifts her head off his palm. She backs away only to dive back into the water, swimming around him in circles twice, letting her nebulous fins graze his body, almost twisting around him, and emerges back in front of him, eyes twinkling in mischief. If she is trying to wrap her tail around him like a snake, making him her prey, he would let her.
“Your highness? Your highness!”
The mermaid straightens, ears rising up, on high alert, her eyes and scales seem to glow. The sounds of men approach closer.
“Prince Diluc! Where are you?”
Hastily, she swims away to the depths, the dark end of the cave, leaving ripples of waves behind her. It sways him backwards, away from the deep. “Wait—” he calls out, but she’s gone, disappearing into the abyss. “Can I see you again?”
Only the sounds of gentle waves from her wake hitting the walls of the cave answer him.
+
“You’ve been… distracted, Your Highness.”
Kaeya says this with his usual air of ease, of nonchalance. Diluc only pays him a short glance before returning to sharpen the blade of his sword, letting the stinging sound of rock scraping against steel fill the air between them. “I have not,” he lies, knowing full well Kaeya would roll his eyes.
“Hmm, yes, I believe that,” there’s a soft rustle, and then, a cut through the air. Diluc reacts in time enough to draw his blade up to hold Kaeya’s, aimed at him. Steel meets hard-forged iron with a loud clang, and red eyes meet a blue one. Kaeya grins. “Good, at least you still pay attention.”
Rolling his own eyes this time, Diluc humours him, swinging his blade in a counterattack. Kaeya lithely dodges, and draws his toward Diluc’s side, and again, just in time, Diluc moves to make their blades meet. Loud clangs fill the courtyard air, slicing through the humidity, as they continue to spar for a while. It ends with their blades crossing between them, another tie.
With a flourish, Kaeya twirls his sword away, while Diluc huffs and pulls back to where he’s been sitting before. He doesn’t continue to sharpen it; it just proved to be enough. “Perhaps not distracted,” Kaeya concedes, “but occupied?”
It grows hot soon enough, and he takes his shirt off. “I’m neither,” Diluc tells him.
“Well, if you say so, my prince,” replies Kaeya, tone only half-mocking as he goes to grab a canteen of water from nearby, drinking a little part before throwing it to him. Diluc sighs as he catches it.
Kaeya approaches him, and sits on the other side of the bench, resting his sword on the ground. Silence settles upon them, stifling in the heat. “Do you believe of…” he trails off, “...creatures of the deep?”
The Lord pauses for some moments, and Diluc half-regrets the question. His sworn brother since childhood, over knighthood, until today, twists a little to permit looking at him with his uncovered eye. “As the storytellers of old and nannies told us?” Kaeya asks. Diluc slowly nods, and Kaeya hums. “Depth of the forests… or the sea?”
Diluc takes more water from the canteen, weighs on whether or not he should really tell, wonders if he should take back the step he already took. Kaeya, however, takes mercy. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. If one exists, the other would,” Kaeya shrugs, “what of them?”
“So you believe they exist?”
Kaeya laughs a little. “I say it’s foolish to think we live on our own in this world,” he grins, “but I’ve also never been known as a man of faith, have I?”
Diluc makes a face. Even after years of growing up together, Kaeya has always been too good at that—to talk in circles, to amount every single thing that he said into that’s-neither-here-nor-there. Has perfected it, even. “Always a waste of time talking to you,” he grumbles, and Kaeya simply chuckles. Kaeya relaxes on his haunches, leaning back on his hands, and Diluc thinks that this conversation is ending the way their swordfighting did.
Kaeya, however, opens his mouth again.
“I suppose that’s where you’ve been disappearing off to, on some nights?” He asks after several lapses of moments, and Diluc feels his shoulders tense. “To the fantasy section of the library?”
Irritated, Diluc opts to simply ignore him, taking his shirt and sword as he stands up to leave Kaeya and his relentless tangents on his own. Kaeya, however, reaches out to grab his forearm in a firm grip. Diluc would shake him off if it’s not for the sharp glint in his eye.
“Diluc,” he says, voice devoid of riddles nor jests, “what did you find when your ship was wrecked?”
Diluc’s words die on his tongue. Suddenly, memories of their childhood arise, of Kaeya’s arrival in the palace, staggering past the gardens in the biting cold of a stormy day. The eyepatch covering his right eye, that only Diluc knows how it looks—a molten gold, a sharp contrast to the blue of his left. He remembers the nights and evenings of them listening to their elderly tutor telling them stories and fantasies, how Kaeya sometimes said to him afterwards—
“No, they don’t look like that! Dvalinn isn’t a dragon, it’s a stag. It’s one of four brothers! ”
“The tree maidens—they’re not—nice! They harm you if you touch the trees.”
“They don’t always pull men to drown… a lot of times they save sailors. But sometimes they do! If the sailors bother them. This granny told me they also seduce men to sea, but I don’t know what seduce means, really.”
In the wake of warring lands and growth to adulthood, these claims have morphed into something more jaded, less sure. Heated rebuttal and arguments of their childhood heroes and creatures of legends turn into, do you still believe them, my prince?, and vague, ah, I remember this fairytale .
Diluc blinks. Kaeya finally lets him go.
+
He now knows by heart, every single rock and stone in the beach, the rising structures of coral and crags, and where to lead his feet to the cove. It’s far, and the wave outside of the hidden place is large and angry under this moonlight, splashing the rocks in a height far above him. If it isn’t the cove he’s after, he would drown.
Though drowning inside the cove is an option he doesn’t mind.
The entrance is a tiny one. Diluc has to bend to pass through; not once has he wondered what he should do if he is to bring her out of the cove. But that is a question for another time—a question he shouldn’t have asked anyways. And yet he wonders.
Met by the soft sand, Diluc walks to a corner, where he’s set a makeshift camp over the many times he’s been here in the past two moons. He has always been too good at sneaking around under the night, like Kaeya does with his words, and as Kaeya has perfected his talent, he has as well. Slipping out of his quarters and past the castle, going all the way to the stables to get his horse is all in a day’s—a night’s work. After all, he can’t afford to disappear during the day.
Though the cave is always lit by a glow from the water—an anomaly, it must be, for outside, the water is dark and murky—Diluc kneels down by the stack of firewood he’s brought. He takes his boots off and opens his satchel to take out the belongings—stones to start the fire, some little bread and a canteen of water, and, last, a tied handful of stems of dandelion flowers. They litter the bottom of his satchel with white-cottonish wisps, but as he brings them out, the light from the cave gives the bouquet of flowers a bluish glow.
It is foolish, he knows. He has been bringing flowers after flowers to this—creature—as if they’re proper offerings, and he knows all he can give her are offerings. It isn’t as if this is some sort of courtship, though he has never done this for another woman. Another human. But he still does it, bringing her handfuls of them, cecilias, lilies, lampgrasses, windwheel asters. For each and every flower he witnessed her stare at them in mute wonder, before trying to eat some. At the end of their meetings she would dive back into the deep taking the flowers with her, their petals floating like her fins in the water. Tonight the flowers are not the only thing he wishes to offer; but the other is gently resting on the small notch between his neck and his chest.
The dry rocks spark and fire is started. Diluc waits patiently, schools his breathing to adapt to the smoke, until he finally sees the water move.
She always shows up, without fail. Almost vainly, Diluc wonders if she comes here every night—at midnight, the time when he would usually arrive, as the moon is on the very top of the sky, pulling the tides outside to its greatest heights. Diluc stands up, taking the flowers with him and wades into the water.
When her beautiful face first surfaces, Diluc’s chest constricts with a fondness that drowns. Her smile and bright blue eyes greet him with something equal. She doesn’t bring anything, this time—sometimes, she does, usually bringing him what he assumes are her dinner: fishes, crabs. He’d gratefully accept them and wade back to the shore while she follows, now daring to go away from the deeper water. She would lie on her stomach as her body and tail remain half-drenched by the shallow water, watching him as he brings the fish to grill over the fire with childlike fascination. He’d offered her some as he ate, and she scrunched her face after the first taste, bringing him to a laugh. He’d have to help her back to the deeper water so she could swim away afterwards, and it brought warmth to him that she trusts him enough—trusts that he’d help her—to follow him halfway to land.
Diluc keeps the flowers dry above water, stopping short as it reaches his waist. “Good evening,” he greets, and she dives back in to swim to him, in what he can only label as excitement. Her movements cause the water to ebb and flow, and he thinks the way she circles him, tail and fins enveloping him, feels like an embrace. “I’ve been longing to see you.”
The mermaid stops in front of him, and reaches her hands out to touch his face. It’s only too fleeting, for she goes away and swims off to a place that by now, feels like a tradition for Diluc. There’s a jutting rock nestling by the eastern wall of the cave, right where the water gets deep, a large enough surface that they both can comfortably sit, accessible by a narrow path on the side from where he’s standing. It is a perfect place—the water below deep enough for her to comfortably maneuver, and there is enough land above for him to breathe on.
In a beautiful, lithe movement she twirls as she reaches the water below the edge of the rock, smiling at him. Diluc wades to the path, lifting himself up to carefully walk to the clearing.
When he arrives, she brings herself up onto the rock with ease, her fins spilling around her like an ethereal veil. Diluc ignores the way his breath hitches and lowers himself down by her, legs hanging over the edges into the water.
She reaches out to his flowers, but Diluc grins and brings it away from her grasp. Her eyes glint a beautiful danger at the refusal, but at this point, Diluc no longer fears it—or perhaps, he’s too far gone to care for it. “Wait a moment, I have to show you something about these,” he tells her, taking a stem out of the bunch. “These are called dandelions. See how different they are from the other flowers I gave you? This one here is the flower, but this, this is the dandelion seeds.”
Fascinated, though Diluc doesn’t know if she understands, she watches him point on both the yellow flower and the full puff of dandelion seeds. Gently, she lets out a finger to touch on each.
“The flowers—they’re just your average flower. But the seeds,” he plucks the seed off the stem, and blows, watching as wisps fly away towards the water, “they can fly away like this.”
Her eyes follow the movements from his mouth to the seed, mesmerized. Diluc takes another seed from the bunch and blows again, watching them float in the air and slowly descend to the water below, lost in the sparkling deep. He plucks another, and holds it in front of her face. “You try.”
She does, blowing gently on the seed head until each of them flies. Diluc watches with a smile as her eyes widen with wonder, and hands the whole bouquet to her. She takes them, damp fingers dragging on his skin, sending tingles all over. It’s been a long time since he saw dagger-like nails out of them.
Glancing at him with twinkling eyes, she returns to the bundle of flowers and blows all of them in one go.
Most the seed fly off from the air she blows out, dense at first then disperses, spreads wide over the cave, flying away high and far, and Diluc’s mouth slowly falls open. They float in the air like specks of stars, a feat for a cave that almost already feels like it’s full of stars. When the momentum’s gone, they begin to trickle and float down slowly onto the surface of water. It’s breathtaking.
Suddenly, she moves and dives into the water, playfully twirling around as the seeds rain down on her like snow. When she surfaces, twisting her body to smile up at him, her fins gently floating with lines that look like rainbow, Diluc aches.
He watches her play in the water happily, rained down by dandelion seeds, for a long time. Wonders what he would give to have—this. To watch, and, perhaps, know, this mesmerizing creature, to befriend her like this is one thing. But to have her, when he knows he would never be able to, to be with her—that’s something else, something he realises he yearns so deeply for.
“My dandelion,” he voices absently, thinking how alike she is to the flower. Beautiful, and so easy to float away.
Diluc is certain that he will never meet anyone, anything that can compare.
As if sensing his epiphany, the mermaid swims back to him, and this time, doesn’t come out of the water, instead stopping in front of his legs. Carefully she scoots even closer, until she puts her folded arms on his knees, rests her chin there. Diluc gently tucks her wet hair behind her ears, running the back of his finger on the membranous fin.
“I have something else for you; I hope you’ll be able to keep it,” he says, and she innocently blinks up at him. Diluc reaches to his neck, where a ruby pendant, encased in golden engraved rim, hangs off a gold chain, and takes it off. He carefully bestows it to her, putting it over her head until the pendant rests between the valleys of her breasts, the red a contrast to the sparkling blue-green scales dispersed through her skin. Gently, Diluc touches it, and her hand follows to case his own. He moves his hand to touch on her chin, making her look up at him, and Diluc wistfully smiles. “If only I just know what to call you, or hear a sound out of you,” he whispers. “So I can know if you like it, dandelion. So I can know your name.”
All of a sudden, she takes him by his wrist.
She takes him into the water, and while Diluc can swim, the urgency and force with which she does so is almost overwhelming as it takes him by surprise. Diluc barely has enough time to take a deep breath before she pulls him beneath the surface.
He wonders if this is his end, unable to see under the water past the soft glow of her form.
She takes him down under, deep, into the dark abyssal depth, and Diluc thinks, once more, as he had when he just met her, he is at her mercy. She pulls him as she swims fast through the deep, and Diluc closes his stinging eyes as he wills himself to be limp in her grasp, a willing prey. In the haze of drowning, when his lungs start to burn, Diluc, instead, feels flattered—happy, even.
Maybe just as he wants to have her, she does him as well—even if soon enough, it will be a corpse with water-filled-lungs that she drags into wherever her abode is under the sea.
Instead, when he gasps for air that he won’t be able to get, when he chokes as the water slips into his windpipe, he hears a soft sound, something that should’ve come from angels above instead of creatures of the deep,
“Þakka þér fyrir, minn konungsson.”
And suddenly, air.
Diluc gasps and coughs as he is mercifully met with oxygen. All the while, the mermaid holds him afloat, cradling his waist as she watches him gather his bearings with concern. It is, all in all, an embrace. Diluc feels dizzy and light, and there is nothing his feet can reach but to twine his legs with her tail, using her as a buoy. Air rushes into his lungs as water is coughed out, and Diluc needs a while to breathe. She holds him, all the while.
When he comes to, he realises they’re out in the open seas. The waves rock them in the water, and it is cold, though gentler than the tide when he first arrived this night. Diluc blinks saltwater out of his eyes and looks around—he can see rock formations in the distance, where the cove must be. Aside from that, he has no idea where they are. The sky isn’t as dark as it was when he departed his castle.
Gently, she touches his face, to return his attention back to her. Diluc realises he’s been gripping her shoulders too tight in his desperation to breathe, and as he relaxes himself in the water, he runs his hands down her arms gently to settle on her waist, where flesh meets scales. They have never been this close, this dear.
The soft skin of her arms graze past his shirt and she tugs the underside of his elbow. Under, her eyes say—and though his lungs protest, he follows her to dive back down.
Underneath the water, her eyes—and her—glows with an ethereal light. The pendant he gave her moments ago floats between them, a promise. Cupping his face in her hands, she brings his face closer, and opens her mouth, where the soft sound he heard before spills out again,
“Ég langar líka að hitta þig.”
He watches her eyes slowly blink as she smiles after saying the words he doesn’t understand, gentle and fond. No words have yet to come out of Diluc’s mouth as he opens it, for she pushes him back to the surface with care.
The sky is lined with the fiery cracks of dawn. The orange light bathes her blonde hair with a golden glow, reflecting specks of gold in her ocean-blue eyes. Diluc touches his lips to hers, and for yet another time, willingly loses his breath.
+