#finally have a dolphin y/n (i know orcas and belugas are dolphins but this one is more 'traditional')

[naffeclipse]

I've been musing over a few thoughts inspired by this ask about a mafia-ish style of Apex Polarity without it being too close to Pearl Eye, and after watching a few videos of Orcas hunting their prey (which included dolphins), landed on a sort of Mafia inspired Apex Polarity AU

Also not to add another Y/N to Orclipse's growing collection but this Y/N is a white-beaked dolphin. Look! They're so beautiful!

Sirens are cunning, brutal, and take everything with teeth and claws. The strongest kill and maim at a whim. As a siren who's not particularly strong, though incredibly agile, with a tail streamlined and dark gray with white patches, fins curved and mostly black, you're somewhere at the bottom. You're doing your best to survive and avoid trouble. You pick your battles and you pick your escapes, and most importantly, you stay alive.

But then you do something really stupid: you venture where you shouldn't have.

You don't usually swim so far up north but you're hungry, and the thought of a few tasty squids distracts you from the silent waters and vast, blue emptiness. You realize a bit too late that you're not the only one hunting.

You catch the first orca siren in the distance as a dark figure, and then another. Two who immediately cut through the water, charging straight for you like shadows. Though you turn tail and bolt, you quickly spot them in the corner of your vision. They easily keep pace, their size and strength overwhelming as they flank you on both sides, wide grins flashing their deadly teeth. You can hardly look at the mismatched color of their eyes as you dodge and weave, diving down only to be cut off by one with midnight blue colors at the tip of his flukes, and shooting off to the left just to almost be snatched by the black-bone claws of a siren with bright yellow fins framing his head.

They're toying with you. You know that for a fact in how they just barely keep back, corraling you onwards, draining your already spent energy, and picking at your panicking pulse. You have no choice but to avoid the edges of their jaws and the tips of their talons, and swim in the direction they want.

You near a field of ice floes floating on the water, and though you cut into the jagged structures dipping into the sea, the orca sirens never lose you. A desperate need for air pushes you onward. One small drop of hope still burns in your chest. Despite the aching of your muscles, you steal a gulp of oxygen and dip back down once more, charging away—

Only to run smack into a third orca siren.

This one grabs you, his burning red and orange colors filling your vision. The other two orcas join to help their kin keep you in place long enough for you to truly regret ever venturing here. Between the three of what you can only assume are brothers, hands hooked over you shoulders, claws clutching your wrists, and palms pressing into your hips, you're a fish caught in a net.

You brace for a voilent end. It never arrives. Instead of digging into your sweet meat, the sirens offer you a deal. The tips of sharp fingertips trace your jawline and the soft inside of your arms and down your slick tail while they explain.

You keep watch for human ships and report back when they're getting close, and in exchange, you get the best food you can imagine, the entire Arctic Ocean to swim, and anything else you'd like. The best benefit? You're under their protection. Of course, they expect utter loyalty from you. You are no one else's. Failure to devote yourself to this work and the brothers would mean a grisly fate, but hey, you're nothing if not eager to not be torn apart. So you agree.

You have a few questions about this whole arrangement, struggling to understand why they, powerful orca sirens, bother with a smaller fish like you when they could rip you limb from limb and be done. What's with the human ships? Why task you to this? Are you just fodder so they can keep their fins nice and unscabbed? They reassure you that they'll explain in due time (the sunny one booping your nose, much to your chagrin), but for now, all you know to know is that the human ships are a problem, and you are their solution for it. You've never really encountered humans before, but they've never really encountered sirens, or so you thought.

The burning red one lets you go, but you don't slip away too far before he tugs on your flukes and tells you to follow him. It's not a request. The darker blue one leaves for a moment, jetting away as the other two guide you to a nice resting place on an icy shore. They introduce themselves, and then their brother reappears with a squid in hand, half dead, and an insistence that you eat—they could tell during the chase that you didn't have all your energy.

And that's how you unwittingly join a very powerful pod of orca brothers who may or may not be teasing and taunting you simultaneously.

[drowning-in-dennor]

Sea Spell

@dennorweek‘s penultimate entry, brought to you extremely late and with the theme of “mermaids”! This theme reminds me of the Waterfire Saga, a book series that I loved as a kid. This is set in an Another Colour AU, and the pairing is nyo!DenNor.

[To fit the underwater theme, Denmark’s name has been changed to Mette, and Norway’s has been changed to Eyvør.]

  The princess of Norsjo looks nothing like her people.

  When she swims out and onto the rough-hewn stage of the Kastala theatre, Mette can hardly believe her eyes. Eyvør wears the silver circlet of royalty and holds the jeweled sceptre a princess must carry, but she herself sticks out like a sore fin.

  The mer of Norsjo have the tails of orcas, black, white and sleek. Eyvør is different, with her soft white tail that resembles a beluga’s. Unlike her people, her long, brown hair is kept braided and has never been cut short, and her azure eyes never cease to sparkle with silent joy. She smiles, she laughs, and she cries whenever, wherever she wishes.

  The mer of Norsjo are cold, reserved and uncaring. Eyvør is none of those things.

  To children, she smiles and indulges in their antics, fleeing from guards who try to chase her back. To lagging mud-sharks, she offers a handful of food. Whoever is overlooked by her father, the king, she stays to take care of.

  Mette finds her strange.

  As the general’s daughter, she has front-row seats to whatever Eyvør is planning today, and she watches as the princess floats in place with that shameless smile. She curtsies, gray dress swirling around her, and raises her head to look at the surface.

  And she sings.

  Magic through song is nothing new, and almost everyone with a voice can cast their spells. Eyvør, with her strong, sweet voice, sings an aria that reminds Mette of whalesong, beautiful and wise. She finds herself frozen in place, immune to the currents as she listens to Eyvør.

  Hitting a high note effortlessly, Eyvør raises her hand and sends an icicle crashing down, breaking it up into a million pieces that fall like rain. She bends the sunlight, over and over and over again until it explodes into a burst of light that leaves Mette’s vision clouded in spots.

  Eyvør doesn’t skip a beat as she sweeps up silt from the stage floor with her tail, letting her magic shape the cloud into a human girl that dances around her. It shifts into a leaping dolphin, a lumbering whale, a lazy sea turtle before her song reaches its climax and the silt transforms into a school of saury that swim away and out of the theatre.

  She conjures images of her sister, her father, her friends, all of whom she looks nothing like. She calls down another icicle and sculpts her castle with it, before a powerful strike with her tail shatters it. Eyvør sings, she pours her soul into a song that leaves Mette wanting to hear more when it ends.

  The audience cheers, and Eyvør smiles again, laughing and swimming off the stage to accept handshakes from the mer and embraces from the children. She makes her way around the theatre before noticing Mette, pausing for a moment. “Oh,” she says, “hello.”

  It takes a few moments before Metter remembers to bow. “Good afternoon, your grace,” she says, “that was a lovely performance.”

  Eyvør laughs again, swimming closer, close enough that Mette can see the gleam of her white scales. “Thank you. My father told me it’d be good to practice, especially since I’ll be turning sixteen soon.”

  “Hm?”

  “I don’t really know why; he keeps quite a lot of things from me. He says that’s how we Norsjons should act, all secretive like we’ve all secretly killed someone.” Her brown hair floats around her hypnotically, and she gets even closer, somehow heating up the frigid waters. “You’re general Dansen’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, your grace, I’m Mette Dansdatter. How did you know?”

  “I’ve seen you train a few times,” Eyvør says, “and most of the court knows about you. Mette, the genius soldier who can strike fear into the hearts of any mer. But you’re far less scary and far prettier in person than you are in those portraits.”

  “Thank you, your grace.” Mette doesn’t notice how Eyvør looks down, avoiding eye contact for a split second.

  Swishing her tail playfully through the water (and almost hitting Mette’s tail with her own), Eyvør says, “please don’t call me ‘your grace’. Friends can call each other whatever they want.”

  “We’re friends?”

  “If you want to be.”  She takes Mette’s hand, holding it far too gently for a Norsjon mermaid. But Mette squeezes back, finally giving in and returning Eyvør’s smile, even though her mind screams that Norsjons do not smile in public and especially not at the princess.

  Even when Eyvør swims away, her tinkling laughter and gentle smile fail to leave Mette’s mind.

…

  A servant calls for Mette a few days after Eyvør’s performance and leads her through the icy castle walls and into the king’s quarters. There, she finds herself standing before king Njord and, to her surprise, Eyvør. The princess has her hands on her hips, glaring at her father with an intensity Mette has never seen before.

  “Good evening, your graces,” Mette says cautiously, “how can I be of service?”

  The king sighs, gesturing at Eyvør. “Eyvør has been talking about how she wishes to call off the betrothal with Renassia’s prince.”

  “Prince Emilio is foul-tempered and shallow,” Eyvør protests, “the last time we met him, I caught him joining in on a fight between two merboys. I heard from his brother that he spreads rumours just to watch the brawls.”

  “Eyvør,” Njord scolds, “your marriage with Emilio is crucial to ensure relations with Renassia are well. Think about Norsjo.”

  “Think about me!” She cries, “Emilio calls his father a fool and his mother an anglerfish. If he’s not kind to his parents, how will he be kind to his future wife?” Her hands form water vortexes as she speaks, spinning rapidly and threatening to grow in both size and strength.

  “And therefore,” he says, looking at Mette and raising his voice over the vortexes that Eyvør tries to disperse, “I proposed that her sister Hildr be the one to marry Emilio once she becomes of age, and for Eyvør to marry someone else.”

  Finally making the water vortexes fade away, Eyvør looks at Njord curiously. “And who’s that?”

  “The Norsjon military’s task is to protect both the mer and the royalty of Norsjo,” he begins, “and so what better way to show that than to bring the royalty and the military to protect the mer together?”

  This time, Njord’s stone desk begins to freeze over with ice as Eyvør grabs it in surprise. “You want me to marry the general?”

  The king shakes his head, melting the ice on his desk as he does so. “No.”

  “I want you to marry his daughter.”

  Mette feels like she’s been bitten by a sea krait, frozen in place with shock at Njord’s statement. “Y-Your grace,” she manages to say, “I’m going to be betrothed to the princess?”

  Eyvør turns red, whirling to face her father. “Njord, I… I…” she points at Mette. “I have nothing against this, but what about her? What if Mette doesn't want to marry me?”

  Clearing her throat and forcing herself to look at Eyvør, Mette says, “Eyvør, it would be my honour to accept your betrothal.”

  Her eyes light up with the sparkle that makes her so different, and Eyvør smiles. “On one condition.”

  Locking gazes, Mette feels her lips curl into a smile. “Which is?”

  “Let me hear you sing, Mette,” Eyvør breathes, “and I will be yours.”

…

  Unlike Eyvør’s performance, Mette’s has an audience of only one - her betrothed, floating right in front of the stage with that smile of hers, in complete silence as Mette opens her mouth to sing.

  It’s been a while since she sang and cast magic at the same time, and so Mette can’t bend light or send icicles down from the surface like Eyvør can. But she sweeps up a cloud of silt and makes an image of Eyvør with it, then an image of herself. She shows them together, swimming through Norsjo and fighting side by side.

  Her voice grows stronger as she thinks of Eyvør, smiling at children who almost never smile back and singing even in dead silence. The princess who doesn’t look like one, the little spark in the ice.

  The water starts growing warmer, and Mette doesn’t realise what’s going on until she sees the ball of flames swirling in her open palm.

  Fire in water - an act of magic that defies reality and all common sense and able to be cast by almost none. But Mette watches, still singing, as the flames grow and singe her scales, turning the water boiling-hot and turning the theatre walls into water.

  A water vortex tears through the ball of fire and disperses it, and Mette watches as Eyvør runs her fingers over the half-melted walls of the theatre, singing softly and freezing it over again. When she finishes, she looks at Mette, wide-eyed. “Did you forget that every house, every structure in Norsjo is carved from icebergs?” She says, “and that fire does a great job at melting ice?”

  She floats in shocked silence as Eyvør continues fixing up the walls. “What did I just do?” Mette stares at her hands, devoid of burns and wounds.

  “You lit a fire underwater,” Eyvør replies, “something that even I can’t do.”

  “So…” Swimming towards Eyvør and taking her hand, Mette asks, “did you like my singing?”

  She takes Eyvør’s kiss as a yes.

...

A/N: Note that Eyvør is not a registered name in Norway, but is based on the Icelandic name Eyvör, which means “island woman” (and thus would’ve been a more suitable name for Iceland). However, I changed the name from Eyvör to Eyvør since the letter ö does not exist in the Norwegian alphabet.