#then black out the sides of it and put things into her enclosure for enrichment | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

llamagoddessofficial · 4 years

Text

Got hit by my first wave of inspiration for a while, and decided to ride it out instead of fighting it. So, for anyone who wants it... have Mc’s first meeting with Zoo!Naga Skull. (Yes, the one that ended in kidnapping ;) )

Nervous was an understatement.

“Keep track of him at all times. Always make sure you can get to the door, never let him cut you off. Don’t underestimate him just because he’s blindfolded.”

You could feel your heart hammering in your chest so loudly it was getting hard to pay full attention to Maggie, the senior zoo staff member in front of you, hard to keep a grip on the large and heavy bucket of meat clenched tightly in one hand and the hooked feeding pole in the other. You weren’t even supposed to be doing this, you were too low down on the zoo staff ladder... you should’ve been feeding the little snakes or the herbivores, you should be years away from this level of care! The naga were already leagues above your pay grade, and now they wanted you to feed the biggest one of them all!?

I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be doing this. You cringed- but I can’t refuse, I need this job!

“Talk to him, move loudly, make sure he knows where you are because the last thing you want is to spook him. I know you’ve had good experiences with the other two naga but that doesn’t mean you should ever let your guard down, understand?”

“... Yes.” You said, voice barely above a whisper, grip sweaty on the feeding pole. You couldn’t help it, your eyes flicked down to her left hand- the one she didn’t have anymore, the one that had just a wrist stump remaining.

“... You’ll be fine. We’ll all be watching, if something does happen for some reason we can get in and help you.” She took on a slightly more comforting tone, noticing your line of sight. Her injury was the reason she wasn’t the one bringing the naga his food, given her senior position and superior experience. “I got this when I was young and cocky, and because I followed the safety protocol I lost a hand and not a neck. So long as you stick to the rules and don’t do anything stupid, you won’t have a problem with him. Ok?”

“A-are you sure I’m...”

“Yes, you’re ready. You’ve dealt with the other two.” She cut over you, turning you by the shoulder. “Now go, before Skull gets hungrier.”

And just like that, you were pushed through the door of the enclosure, that shut firmly behind you. The secondary door opened... and despite the fact that every part of you was cold and shaking, you had no choice but to go forward. As scared as you were, someone needed to get the naga fed... someone needed to go straight into the beast’s den.

... You stepped into the enclosure.

It was built to resemble a near-surface cave; the walls and floor were made of slightly uneven smoothed stone, with a few windowed ‘cracks’ in the fake stalactite ceiling providing enough daylight to see by. There were some interesting objects to provide a little enrichment, like ‘boulders’, patches of fake grass, a little filtered waterfall dribbling into a relatively shallow pool... and a small tunnel, leading to a den with no windows he could juuust about curl up in so he could have some privacy.

... Inside that den, you could see a hint of a steely blue-grey... scales.

... You sucked in a tiny breath through your nose, and stepped further forward, following the zoo protocol of tapping the metal end of the pole lightly against the bucket of food to let him know it was feeding time. It took a moment for there to be a reaction, but... slowly, surely, the mass of muscle resting inside the den began to shift.

Giant claws hooked over the stone edges of the den entrance, bone hands as big as your head... the thing about Red and Sans is they were very vocal naga, Sans regularly hissing and snarling and Red making curious rattling and purring sounds. But with Skull... there was nothing but the low sliding sound of scales against rock, that sounded long and oh-so heavy.

... He emerged, head moving into the light, vicious cranium crack and tight fitted black blindfold plain to see... with just his skeletal torso out he was already almost as big as you. A shot of panic doused your system and you had to clench your teeth together to stop yourself from crying, or dropping everything and bolting back through the door. The rest of him followed after; the long snake tail that made up over three quarters of his body length coiling behind him as he raised himself up, gathering like a loosened rope, thicker than you were wide... faded blue and littered with scars that just didn’t seem to catch the light in the same way the other two nagas did.

He was... huge. You knew this already, but there was something different about seeing him with nothing in the way.

... You had to swallow the terror again, no longer able to tap on the food bucket as your hands were shaking too much. I’m fine. I’m fine. The door is right behind me.

... He was keeping his distance from you, head turned downward slightly, facing in the direction of the bucket. A flash of blue around his mouth- his forked tongue flickering rapidly, which could either signal curiosity, hunger or both. The pounding in your chest became more intense.

“... H-hey, big guy.” You stammered, keeping your voice as gentle as possible, as low and soft as you could in order to not spook him. He reacted immediately, his head cocking a little, raising to face directly at you instead of the bucket as if making eye contact despite the blindfold- just get this over with, (y/n), just get this over with. “... I-I’m... supposed to talk to you, to let you know where I am... talking worked with the other two, I... h-hope it works with you, too.”

You put the bucket on the ground, sliding a decently heavy chunk of the special treated naga-friendly meat onto it. Skull had a unique feeding hook; it was much longer than usual, slightly difficult to handle, but reinforced along the inside to facilitate easier feeding from a distance. You raised the pole with the hung meat and slid it slowly closer to him, keeping careful watch of the way his tongue would flicker toward the food... you were so ready to bolt. You just needed to get this done.

“I’m, uhm...” You felt like an idiot. You could feel all the other staff members watching. “The food’s on the hook. You probably know that already, but...”

... He moved forward and caught the chunk straight off the hook, swallowing it without any chewing or pausing, then going immediately back to sitting there, patiently, watching. Waiting for more. You brought the hook back, putting on another piece, moving it toward him again... careful to keep hold on the pole despite your sweaty palms.

... He was eating as quickly as your unpractised snail-pace would allow, but most notably.. without issue. You finally felt a droplet of relief in the sea of fear; he was eating normally, he wasn’t being aggressive or trying to approach... this was going pretty well, for your first time feeding the moodiest naga in the zoo.

“... There we go. Good, this is going good. Please don’t eat me.” You half-joked, repeating the process. Retract pole, hook meat, offer it out. Starting to get into a rhythm. “... I hope you’re always this relaxed with me. That would be really helpful.”

He took the meat again, obediently. You let out a tiny sigh; the more he just did what he was supposed to, the calmer and more comfortable you felt. He’d probably learned by now that it was just best to get the food offered, instead of biting the hand that was feeding him.

... Or biting it off.

“... Everyone’s watching. I think they’re waiting for me to mess up. Do something dumb and get kicked out.” You mumbled. You felt... surprisingly not-awkward? Sometimes, when you spoke to the animals, you felt weird because they clearly didn’t care... but in this case, you got a strange feeling from the way his head would twitch and follow you despite the meat, how his tongue would flicker only when you’d stopped talking. It felt like he was... actually listening?

Besides. Nobody could fault you for talking to the naga to keep it calm and not-murderous as you passed him food from as large a distance as possible, right? If it worked, it worked, and you kept your limbs.

“... There we go.” You said, as you passed him the last piece- you then tapped the side of the empty bucket with the hook like you’d been told to, so he’d hear the hollow sound and understand there was no more food, before you picked it up again. You felt... a lot less terrified? Still nervous, but not like you were about to throw up.

“... Uhm... thank you.” Your voice was still pretty small. “For... being calm. I appreciate it.”

... He stayed where he was. You felt, again, like he was watching you, despite him having no vision.

...

You took a step back, ready to go back through the door and throw up... but as soon as your foot sounded against the stone floor...

Everything about him changed.

His lips and teeth parted... and the most powerful hiss you’d ever heard filtered out, filling the room, tearing through the air and right through your body. Like someone had set off a huge firework but it just kept hissing and hissing and hissing, deep and loud and intertwined with an open-mouthed growl, it echoed off the walls and shook everything inside. It was as if someone had flipped a switch in his head, something inside him had snapped; his shoulders rose, tail beginning to move across the floor and rearrange itself. It sounded like... a warning.

You froze, heart dropping into your stomach, all the warmth and colour draining from your face.

...Oh no.

... The hissing stopped, but he kept his new position. He’d stopped in a more aggressive, coiled posture like a tightened spring, tongue now flickering constantly.

...

“... Maggie.” You said, voice cracking, essentially calling for help. Your eyes were locked onto him, you couldn’t remember any of the safety protocols for aggressive naga, every part of you was petrified, you couldn’t feel your hands or toes you could only feel the pounding in your own head. You were afraid to blink- it was going TOO well, I’ve used up my luck, it’s all gonna go wrong now!

“... Okay, just relax.” You heard her voice over the exhibit speaker system but you daren’t turn your head away to look at where she was. “He probably just doesn’t trust you yet, and is getting possessive over food he thinks might still be in the bucket. Okay? Use the pole to push the bucket toward him.”

You swallowed, following her advice; you set the bucket down without taking your gaze off him as if your feet were glued to the earth, and then used the end of the pole to push the bucket across the floor. It made an ugly scraping/rattling sound as it moved.

... He wasn’t even turning toward it. He wasn’t paying attention to it. His attention seemed steadfastly on you, if his head direction was any way to tell. You were sweating, your neck hairs were prickling.

“Alright. Now back away slowly.”

... One step back.

He immediately started hissing again, even louder this time, with deafening aggravation... he lowered his head.

A strike position.

You didn’t hear Maggie’s shout over the speaker system, you could hear nothing but your heart and his hissing. The rabbit-like urge to RUN overtook your whole body, something in you shattered, and you staggered backward with the intent to turn and dive for the door.

... The speed at which he crossed the entire enclosure would’ve been incredible in any other circumstance.

He lurched with all the power readied in the wound muscles in his tail, striking forward so quickly it was like he vanished from his spot, and suddenly you were screaming as the pole was knocked out of your hands. Suddenly something huge and hard was gripping you and your clothes and your legs went out from under you, the world was dark and turning and you brought your hands up over your head in an instinctive defensive posture, you faintly heard the sound of dozens of voices shouting out in synchrony but everything was ringing, the heels of your boots were dragging so quickly across the floor it felt like the friction was going to burn through them and kicking your legs into nothingness as a pathetic attempt at attack/escape did genuinely nothing, you cried out...

... And then just like that, your body came to a halt; you’d stopped moving.

You opened your eyes, forcing in deep terrified breaths, finding yourself in almost total darkness and taking only a few milliseconds to realise you were inside his den. It was so cramped and the floor and walls were moving, why were they moving, you put out a hand to try and steady yourself or get to your feet...

...

That wasn’t the floor or walls. Your hand landed on smooth, hard scales.

You were on him. You were on his coiled tail.

You made a sound you could only describe as a broken whimper-cry of fear and tried to sit up and get some control, but it was almost impossible as he was still moving, his body shifting and writhing underneath you and forcing you to only sink deeper into his scales, deeper into his hold. Something wound around you, starting from your chest and moving down to your knees, binding your legs together- and the scariest part was that you could feel the power as he shifted, you could feel the strength behind the scales when they pressed against you. He was a living muscle, and with little more than a flex he could squeeze, and you’d go squish.

That’s what’s going to happen. He’s going to constrict me to death! Your breathing was getting so fast your chest was heaving, you tried to push the coils on your middle but it was like pushing the unmoving floor, you were getting dizzy with panic, you started to beat them with your fists, S-someone help me-!

His face came into view. Hovering over you, only just silhouetted by the light creeping into the entrance of the den.

... Once again, everything in your body just... stopped.

All thought, all movement, everything froze, as you stared up at him with wide eyes.

... He’d removed his own blindfold. A bright, blood red ring was gazing down at you... fuzzy around the edges, the hole in the centre nothing but a dot.

... His own movements were slowing, as he apparently settled on the position he was in. You were almost horizontal, your head lifted up ever-so-slightly, everything lower than your chest totally bound and covered and crushed under more of his body. He was so close.

...

He was warm. Like summer’s day. And he was... just staring.

...

You could hear absolute havoc breaking outside of his den. But even so, your breathing was slowing... you were calming, despite it all. Something about his eye... the way he was hanging his head... how his tongue just ever-so-slightly peeked out of his mouth, as if only curious...

... How he hadn’t killed you yet. He wasn’t squeezing. You felt so, so very tiny, trapped in the coils of a giant naga...

Why hasn’t he...?

...

A single, sharp phalange moved over to your face. You naturally flinched leaned away at the sight of such huge claws coming close, sucking in a breath... and as soon as you did, he... paused? He took a moment, with his your-head-sized hand just hanging there...

... Like he was giving you a second? He held your eye.

... When he started moving again, he moved so slowly. So gently... and he turned the hand over, brushing the back of his thick knuckle across your cheek with a feather-light touch. His hands were warm, too.

...

It was a like a cat, the way his eyelight widened, blowing to fill his whole socket.

He seemed to lose whatever self control was making him move slowly, and instead his massive head leant in, before you could so much as muster the energy or presence of mind to squeak he pressed his face flush against the side of yours with his teeth just under your ear. Instead you just let in another tiny breath of shock and felt a shiver travel across the whole length of your body- he was nuzzling, with an unmistakable joy, parts of his tail moving ever-so-slightly like he just couldn’t contain himself. In amongst the gleeful nuzzling he took a few inquisitive breaths in your hair, his tongue flickering out and surprising you with how ticklish it was- you brought your shoulder up in defence but he seemed to like that tiny reaction and did it again, chasing your sensitive spots.

“G- ah, stop!” You said, but less out of fear and more out of ticklishness- you couldn’t get away from him, it was like being fussed by a giant overly affectionate puppy. He was breathing right down your ear, and his breath and tongue made everything prickle, you tried to put your hands over your neck but he wasn’t having it. “... G-guys? Guys, are you out there?!”

You distinctly heard someone mutter ‘oh my God, she’s alive’, before a sharp “Play dead! We’re coming to get you!” sounded pretty close to the den.

... You saw Skull’s reaction- and by saw, you meant heard and felt. As soon as he seemed to realise they were approaching the entrance to his hide, he stopped nuzzling, face still against your neck... and a slow, upset snarl began to filter out of his chest, and seeing as you were surrounded by him it was deep and so close it was vibrating your insides. At the same time, his snake body shifted and started to tighten, slowly moving to cover you more, bring you in further into his coils... trap you underneath.

“N-no, no!” You said, panic at possibly being constricted to death rearing its head again. “Don’t come any closer without sedatives, please!”

“... What the hell’s going on in there?!”

“H-he’s just... he’s just got me wrapped up.” You stammered, swallowing, wishing you could see them instead of the den ceiling right now; your voice had a strange, echoing quality inside the small space. “I-I can’t move. When you come closer it agitates him and he squeezes. Don’t come closer. Please just go get sedatives.”

“... Are you sure you’re okay in there?” You could hear them backing up, thank fuck. And he could definitely hear them too, noticeably relaxing. “It’s gonna take us a while to get anything strong enough for him.”

... Skull let out a strange, deathly soft hiss, apparently really liking your hair... so quiet, only the two of you could hear it. His scales were warm, and although you were trapped, it almost felt like he’d deliberately trapped you in this reclined position in order to make sure you were comfortable in his grip.

...

“Y-yeah, I... I think I’m fine for now. Just please don’t take too long.”

#llamagines #llama writes #naga au #naga sanses #heeee #local monster just wants to kiss pretty face- please stop running

715 notes · View notes

hardheadedbighearted · 3 years

Text

Since Hayley is dying of no-Covid juice and I don't have any other watermelons stuffed with hamburger meat to chase around my enclosure for enrichment right now, I thought it might be a good chance to talk about some of my characters' relationships with gender.

(eta: Apparently it's non-binary people's day so I'm going to pretend that's why)

So, it doesn't get many opportunities to come up, but while most of my characters use the pronouns given to them by canon, that doesn't mean all of them are binary; it just means they all have binary pronouns (for various reasons, which I'll get into in a second). Along with "not really coming up much", another reason is that the characters themselves aren't really there yet, or because even I don't know what their gender will do once they actually get there.

Anyway, all that said, here are some of the characters that I know are non-binary, or who otherwise lack what we would think of as a traditional relationship with gender (which I'll explain in a minute).

-Neopolitan {Redacted}: Neo is the most obvious example, and the only one I've been able to have come up on screen that wasn't an oc. Neo's gender is "all", and "all your gender are belong to us", and "this gender is mine", and "gender: yes". When it comes to pronouns, her stance is not so much "I use all pronouns" as "all pronouns are equally correct". Most people default (herself included) to she just because she is to all appearances a woman, but if someone were to break out a he or a they or a xe or a hir or etc, she's not going to care or likely even notice unless a big deal is made.

However, Neo does at times take on personas in order to do her job, and her personas will sometimes have very different stances on their genders. Gideon, for example, uses exclusively they; if memory serves, the sphynx cat from the raid was a he, and the black cat with the green eyes that is underneath Neo's many illusions is exclusively a she. (There's a reason for this, but she informs me it's none of your business.)

(In before, the black cat with the green eyes is not Neo's "true" identity; insofar as she thinks of any of her personas as the "true" self, that would be Neo, the black cat with the green eyes is just her natural form. This is why the black cat with the green eyes doesn't have a name and is usually referred to using the name of the strawberry calico. The reasons for this are, again, none of your business.)

-Yang Xiao Long and Weiss Schneebird: I'm listing both of these together because they're both in the camp of "haven't gotten there yet" with a healthy dose of "I don't know what they'll do when they do get there". I know that I, personally, don't see either Yang or Weiss as binary girls, nor do I feel the urge to rub my trans man fingers all over them (that's for Ruby... maybe. we'll see). I think Yang will likely end up somewhere on the Butch side of the Butch/Trans cusp; I've been reading a lot of blogs from trans men and transmasc individuals recently and them talking about their experience, and I feel like Yang will probably settle in somewhere in that arena. Weiss, on the other hand... look, okay. Honesty time: years ago during an event I won't talk about, I threw out "nonbinary Weiss" as a counterexample to a point I shouldn't have even had to make, and that single, throwaway suggestion has lived in my brain rent-free for years. Now that I have finally moved past the part of me that is still bitter about what happened (okay.. I'm still bitter, but not as much as before), I feel safe to explore that without the negative associations. Also, I saw an edit last year of Weiss with short hair, and it unlocked something in my brain. I think Weiss will end up somewhere unadjacent to binary (contrary to Yang moving along the feminine to masculine line), with an attachment to certain specific identity labels as removed from the context of a binary identity. Also given how long this turned out probably I shouldn't have made them the same bullet point. (Side note, this early gender questioning is why Yang took care to ask Neo's pronouns.)

-Qrow and Raven: Okay, so this one is the one I meant when I alluded to "non-traditional relationships with gender". While both twins do exist on what we would think of as a binary axis (while not identifying either as binary or nonbinary man/woman, respectively), they didn't get there in the traditional "assigned at birth" or "transition" way.

See, here's the thing about ravens: they don't have much sexual dimorphism to speak of. Males are typically larger than females, but with such a broad overlap that even size isn't that reliable. From this, I headcanon that in DT society, ravens (and other birds that have matching genitals and no dimorphism) don't really have a concept of "assigned at birth gender". You find out what sex you are once puberty hits, and gender is something that ravens just explore, sometimes settling very quickly into one thing and sometimes trying on lots, sometimes moving fluidly throughout their entire life.

When it comes to their actual sex, we know that Raven is female. Qrow... I genuinely don't know. I know based on certain things coming down the pipeline it's a high probability that he's also female, but those are just loosely based on my assumptions about how those loose ideas will play out, and are irrelevant and unlikely to come up anyway.

As far as their relationship with genders go, Qrow settled into male sometime during childhood, while Raven tried on genders for awhile before deciding sometime in her twenties that female was "close enough". However, for both of them gender is about how they're perceived externally, and doesn't mean much as far as their internal relationship with gender goes (which is basically nonexistent).

Will also say that there was a time when Raven was absolutely prepared to try on male for awhile to see if it would get James into bed with her, but that was more out of horniness than anything else. When it's been awhile and your best friend is hot, just got fitted with a metal dick he should probably take for a test run, and is pining for your identical twin, a girl will consider anything. Apparently.

Note regarding Yang re: raven genders, Yang is half-tanager and appeared more tanager than raven until adolescence, so Raven kind of got vetoed by Tai and Summer (not in a deliberate way, just sort of happened like that). However, both Yang and Ruby were raised to think of their assigned gender as a "default setting" that they could change at any point they so chose.

-Reese Chloris: This one will come up as soon as I get the opening for it; Reese is a transmasculine woman, and is in fact early into hrt (this is why I took care to specify her as a peahen when she first turned up). She is also a straight transmasculine woman, something that she's only recently come to accept about herself, because of course a woman who wants to look like a man to the point of taking hormones to make that happen has to be sapphic, right? Reese is still on a journey when it comes to her gender and identity; the three things she knows for sure positive are: 1, wants to kiss boys, 2, doesn't want to be boys, 3, wants to be mistaken for boys.

-Emerald Sustrai: Listen, Mercury's comment that "Emerald's not a girl, she's Emerald" is easy to dismiss as Mercury not thinking of his partner as a potential romantic pursuit until you remember that Mercury and Emerald share a dreamscape and a mental connection and that Mercury is trans, and you start to wonder if maybe he just knows something we don't.

Anyway, Emerald's not a girl, she's Emerald. What that will mean for her... well, that's actually one of the ones that I already know, but Emerald hasn't gotten there yet. Give her time. :)

-Lie Ren: He's never actually onscreen, but I always sort of envision Ren as menderfluid- never a woman, not always a man. He's also aro-ace, but that's unrelated. I just wanted to put that out there. ("But Theo! What about Renora?!" What about Renora?)

-Neon Katt: Nonbinary woman. There's not much to say about this one; Neon just considers the box of "cis woman" to be too stifling for her taste. Strictly speaking she's a she/they and even has a pin advertising this, but it's never come up outright.

-Roman Torchwick and Robyn Hill: Binary man and woman, just not in the traditional way. Not gonna elaborate, they just belong on the list. Don't worry about it.

1 note · View note

insomniac-arrest · 7 years

Text

The Glass Window

genre: gay mermaids, original piece

words: 5k

Summary: A lagoon mermaid spends her days in her zoo lounging and diving for pearls, her keepers can’t explain when she starts sulking at the bottom of her cage and blowing bubbles

Paria knows, she knows there is something in the next the cage over and she can’t stop looking at it

The first one they put in her cage was a Scorpiea, a fiery youth with bright red hair to match his thrashing stinger tail and scorpion torso.

He looked like he would set fire to every bush and tree in sight just to watch the visitors gape and bask in his own flames, which he did. Paria watched him flash his hundred watt smile her way and scorch the sand into a charred goo, almost glass and almost nothing.

She wrinkled her nose at him and waited for the creature to tire himself out.

The satyr across the way, Foloi, snickered at her like he knew, he always knew something, she makes a face at him and squares her shoulders, he just plays a jaunty tune on his pan pipes back.

She doesn’t even bother to learn this Scorpiea’s name before raising the water level in one flick of her finger and letting him flounder, he tries to evaporate the waves before they hit them but Paria jerks her chin up and sends him capsizing.

Her caretaker, Sydney, gives her a sharp look as the other mythic is pulled into the undertow.

Sydney wasn’t amused.

Paria just fluffs her dark hair, she wasn’t going to share her enclosure and she wasn’t going to be mated or bonded or subjected to whatever it is they were planning.

Foloi plays the tune of some cartoonish theme song a little girl had been singing at him earlier, Paria gets a headache and dives down to the bottom of her cage.

They fish out the Scorpiea with a crane later and they leave her alone for another week.

--------

Paria had to take the second one out by hand. He was a Jengu and surfed the waves like a slick oil spill, his gills fluttering open and closed as he gave her a placid curious look. He tried to smile her way when she surfaced and gesture at her shells and long brown hair.

She sticks her tongue out at him and he just throws her a kiss with some suggestive hand gestures.

She wasn’t interested.

Paria practically took him and threw him over the glass wall, she was hoping to get her point across. Her second caretaker, Maya, groans as the guests scatter and jump and point as the water splashes over the sides of the tippy-top, a Mythic crashes over the glass.

She wasn’t lonely like they thought.

The Jengu is out before sunrise the next day.

-----

Paria didn’t know why they kept bothering, she managed to take out the naga and kinarra with a swish of her tale and little creativity with water on feathers. The naga almost strangled her but they basically struck a deal.

He wasn’t interested in being paired for show either, they both turned the tank upside down until Sydney intervened and signed to Paria that she might as well knock it off.

Paria had a feeling it was the zoos idea to make an exhibit of two different mythics pairing off, but she wasn’t going to have either Sydney or them walking all over her. It wasn’t their business if she stares out her tank window and blows depression bubbles to the top of the surf.

She didn’t need any more strange zoo-transfer boys pushed on her with fanfare and a poem to her long dark hair and pretty eyes. Paria knew she was pretty enough and she didn’t need a second opinion.

She sat at the bottom of her tank and blew fine crystalline bubbles to the surface one by one, let them never know.

------

The ‘issue’ arose around two months earlier.

She saw her the first time when the moon was a slim crescent up above and the hallways next to her were an echoing ghost walk, Paria liked being awake during those times. The halls were empty and she was alone with her thoughts and so many other things.

Or at least, she thought she was.

Paria always assumed there was something huge and ominous in the tank next to her, it was lower than hers and there was only a large plexiglass window separating the bottom of her tank with the top of theirs.

Perhaps a miniature kraken or an electric squid, she always figured the deep water creatures would shine their fanged teeth at her at one point and she would have nightmares. She avoided that dark five foot of glass on most nights, but maybe she felt like having nightmares that evening.

Paria was swimming back and forth on the bottom, running her hands over oysters and counting in her head how long another pearl would take to form in there. That was one of her enrichment programs: diving for pearl and collecting shells.

She figured the zoo thought those were appropriate activities for her, now all she needed to do was sing for them and listen to their money buckets fill. She didn’t sing for them.

The pearls themselves could be lovely though, she wasn’t completely opposed to the smooth misshapen lumps in her hands and off-colored sheen. It made her want to start a hoard and pretend to be a dragon instead of a nascent mermaid.

She could be a pearl dragon, ten feet, no, twenty feet tall and sitting on her growing hoard until she reached the sky and no one could see her anymore. It was a pleasant dream to pass the time.

Paria ran her hands along the spine of one of her oysters and her eyes unfocus, this one would be ready soon, perhaps she would weave into the seems of a belt.

Her eyes are distant and blurry when she catches a flash of light in the corner of her eye, a bright color that struck her across the face. She turns her head slowly, feeling her skin prickle as she turns in place, an electric surge flared in the cage next to her, she frowns.

She didn’t know much about the cage next to her, on some level she never really wanted to know. She waited for a moment, pausing as she gazed into the pitch dark waters of the deep sea cage, deep and unknowable.

The water was still and calm, fathomless, she felt a prickling down her spine, the same light sparks through the dark like a beacon. Paria raises her eyebrows, she doubted the glowing light from there could be anything too good.

Despite herself, Paria pushes off the cage floor and tentatively approaches the edge, she could only live in the shadow of this place so long, she was drawn to the side.

She waits for another minute and starts to wonder if it was her imagination, if she had just seen the strip of lightning brightness in her head. She hums for a moment and thinks about turning around.

A white light like a landing strip lit up a long twisting figure, Paria raised her eyebrows. Something was definitely in there, and close.

Paria had better eyesight up close than she did in her fine lagoon light, the murky outline of something curved and long takes shape in front of her. She presses herself up against the glass and tries to make out as much of it as she can.

It was long, with a mop of something swirling around it’s head, like kelp or a storm halo. She couldn’t make out the full form, it wasn’t huge like she had expected.

Paria waits and purses her lips until the next brilliant flash and a blip of light seeping into the deep water enclosure and lighting up the creatures face.

Paria’s breath hitches, it was humanoid. Humanoid with a long scaled tailed and slits of gills on her neck.

Paria takes in the breadth of her profile: she had wild flowing red hair that swirled around her like it was alive. Her skin was a similar brilliant red against flushed black stripes on her sides and arms. Her tail was a flashing dark maroon and she had eyes like gaping holes, Paria’s mouth was open, another mermaid.

They didn’t bother to cover her up with a shell bra like the did Paria, she hovered naked and raw in the water, coiled muscles and bright white fanged teeth. She was made of hard edges instead of soft brushstrokes that were expected of Paria.

The mermaid had a series of spikes along her spine and a tail that whipped around the water like a razor, her face was something sharp and almost alien. She had the same mouth and a lovely round nose but a pair of wide faded eyes took up a good portion of her face.

It was ghoulish and breathtaking in one gasping vision. Paria’s thoughts spark and run into each other, she couldn’t help but feel her heart squeeze, almost painfully.

What was that?

----

Paria had no idea what that was.

She had a sense of it deep in her bones but she couldn’t put a name to it, that was another mermaid, another mermaid filled with pointed teeth and something electric (literally).

She tried to dismiss it for the night, the figure disappeared in one bat of her powerful tail and Paria rose quickly to the surface and gasped the sharp cold air of the night. She let the air shock her into clarity and she panted breathlessly, staring at the moon until her senses came back to her.

It’s just another mermaid, she reminds herself. We’re separated even.

Despite herself, the image starts to haunt her waking thoughts anyway, she closes her eyes and they play like a movie in the back of her head. A dark and red mermaid that glowed, Paria would like to glow. Paria would like something.

She starts picking at her food and dismissing all the new nightmares from the deep sea enclosure. Something was in there, and the dreams weren’t precisely nightmares.

She starts hanging loosely by the glass window at the bottom and watching the nothingness of the next cage over.

It was mostly still dim and empty, but some faint lights were turned on in the cage during the day so the guests could see into entertain themselves and get some sort of brief thrill. Maybe that’s what Paria was looking for too anyway.

She waits at the side by her oysters and swears she keeps seeing the frame of wild red hair and a lightning spine. She sees that and nothing else, she sees nothing.

Paria starts to eat less and blow bubbles from the bottom of her cage.

---------

Paria decides to suck up her pride by the tenth day and float up to her caretakers after feeding, she could tell they were discussing her but she tries to ignore them. She mostly wanted to ignore them for the rest of a very long time, she was known for being moody anyway.

She pops up quickly and starts signing furiously before she even knew if they were watching, Sydney focuses on her with an even look.

Paria moves her hands, ‘Who is that?’ She points to her left.

Sydney raises an eyebrow, Paria rarely signed to them, her mother had been the talkative one, she only learned from her- didn’t embody her.

Sydney knelt down and signed slowly back to her, as if they were rusty, ‘who?’

Paria sinks a little lower in the water with her eyes narrowed, she smothers her ego and points more clearly to the far wall, the next cage.

She sees Maya raise her eyebrows behind Sydney and whisper something to Brienne, Brienne just shrugs.

Sydney seems to smile gently, as if she knew something now and Paria’s shoulders tensed as she wonders if she was giving something away.

‘That is Riga. She lives with the other hadal zone creatures.’

Paria pushes herself down in the water and watches Sydney with just her eyes showing- waiting for any more information, Sydney just smiles down at her and Paria gnashes her tale.

Paria rises again, ‘Who is she?’

Sydney signs back right away, ‘a mermaid,’ she expresses quickly, ‘like you.’

Paria bites the inside of her cheek and is torn between more questions and going to go hide underneath a rock.

“Is Pari being friendly today? She is such a beaut in this light,” Paria clenched her jaw as she heard the manager of the zoo's aquarium section approach, Brian.

She narrows her eyes and swims down before she can read anymore of the words from their lips. She didn’t need anymore.

Riga, the mermaid over, the deep sea Riga.

------------

Paria saw her again by the light of the high noon sun, she almost didn’t expect it as the sudden closeness and wide-eyed stare. Riga rose like a mirage from the depths.

Paria was situated with her belly on the sand floor and chin propped up, her vision was glazed over as she kept her usual watch and ignored a steady tapping of a toddler on the glass next to her. Her perch was more routine now than anything, she occasionally blew another bubble to form a thick sea foam above her.

She was in the middle of a long thought about fashioning a long rope out of the flowers they gave her and then there it was.

She saw a river of violent red hair before she saw anything else.

A river of impossibly long hair and that ghoulish barely-there face, Paria can feel her mouth making a small ‘o’ shape. She was lovely.

Lovely in the dark and glowing gently against the bright sheen of Paria’s lagoon water, she was staring blankly ahead, directly at her and unmoving. Statuesque.

Paria opens her mouth uselessly and all she can look at is Riga’s long jagged stripes across her body and her spindly muscled limbs, a jagged torso ending in a powerful tail. Riga probably wasn’t made to dive for pearls.

Paria goes to sign something, to do anything, but her muscles tense and she can only feel her temperature rise slowly, slowly, and then she feels like she’s burning up all over. Riga is still looking at her with something like an expressionless gaze and then Paria is turning around.

She wasn’t ready, she was having day-nightmares now it felt like, she swims to the top of her enclosure with five strokes and her face on fire.

This didn’t feel normal, this didn’t feel like just a hobby at that moment.

She beaches herself on the sand bank and plants her head facedown in the dirt. Visitors inquire on whether or not she was sick.

--------

Paria had her regularly scheduled doctor's appointment the next week, she was almost relieved. She hadn’t seen Riga again, or at least, not in person, she had just relieved the second of closeness and hot tingle throughout her fingers and skin.

Paria was willing to give her doctor another chance.

She lets him examine her pulse and lungs compared to sea bladder and scales, they weigh her with a great effort to get her on the scales (they liked to keep the weight low apparently). She was ‘easy’ for once and even Dr. Schlotman seemed piqued.

He took her temperature last and hummed thoughtfully as she sat on his sturdy metal table.

Maya cleared her throat and Paria paid attention to their mouths, “I know, right?” She says with her palms up, “this is barely Pari.” The doctor seems to hum again.

“We just have to know if anything’s wrong,” Sydney chimes in and Paria is gratefully for a short minute.

Dr. Schlotman slowly, carefully, takes out the thermometer from her underarm and looks at it thoughtfully, “It’s not that unusual,” he shakes it, “though truthfully I never thought this one would ever show.”

Maya gives him a concerned look, “show like what?” The doctor chuckles, “I thought you would know.” Sydney clears her throat, “we would be very interested in knowing fully.” He nods briefly, “she is showing all the signs of something akin to, well, heat.” Paria’s cheeks flare and she hopes none of them were paying any close attention to her. Sydney’s eyes go wide.

“That’s impossible,” she finally says, “she’s never been exposed to any pheromones. She’s never even had a fecundity ceremony with a school.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows, “she’s more than mature isn’t she?” Maya sniffs and glances at her, “more than mature, yeah. But…” “These things happen,” the doctor stands up and looks between all three of them, “of course, she’s not showing all of the symptoms, but her temperature and hormones are evidence enough.” Sydney seemed to swallow thickly, “we can’t introduce any new merfolk to her tank. They’ll attack her.” Sydney and Maya both glance at her (missing) right fin. “She gets around fine with her hydrokinesis but others will have that too. They’ll try and take her out.” From what Paria understood, not from experience, unrelated mermaids did not tolerate weakness or being ‘defunct’- it would slow down the school. Her stomach sinks, and maybe all other mermaids would feel that way too.

She looks at her hands bitterly for a moment.

“Who said anything about male merfolk?” Paria looks up pointedly at that and a quiet thinking buzz overtook the room.

“I suppose we could try other magical creatures,” Maya finally spoke up slowly, “just to pair with. Nothing more.” The room shared a glance and Paria glared at them and signed something angrily, they ignored it.

They introduced a water-centaur to her cage first. It didn’t end well.

-----

Paria spent another couple weeks brooding, kicking suitors out and trying to manage her temperature. She hesitantly approached the glass window again. She practiced in her head what to try to say, to communicate with her, try something.

For some reason, Paria had a notion Riga had answers of some sort, and it’s not like she could attack her through the glass. She waits, she almost gnaws through her bottom lip, hoping this might be the night. It takes two days.

Riga takes another two days to appear once more from the depths of her vast cage.

She was turned away from Paria this time, it was once more in the middle of the night and her long body and spine was a light up shock of brightness. Paria flares her gills and tries to steady her own heartbeat.

Riga doesn’t pause in her distant motion but Paria gradually, slowly, went to press her hand against the cool glass, keeping her eyes on her. She steadies her shaking fingers, she taps.

She manages a single firm tap, loud and distinct.

The glowing white bioluminescence doesn’t cease but Paria begins to tap again and make it more distinct. Her mother taught her this, human sign language first, and then a universal morse code from her own people. The pacific language- though it applied everywhere.

She lets out a rusty series of taps, etching a sloppy ‘hello’ in three syllables.

The light stops, it’s flickering increases, it stops and turns around.

‘Hello’ she taps again and feels her heart pound in her wrist, she didn’t know what she was doing.

The next moment feels like an eternity and she freezes when the light turns around, it starts to come back toward her. The flaring red hair come into light, she was seeing her.

Riga approached with ease, her movements sure and unhurried as she made her way to the side of the glass and Paria earnestly searches her face. She goes to tap on the glass again but Riga had already put her hand there.

‘Hello,’ she taps back.

Paria could practically do a summersault, there it was, and she wasn’t even glaring at her, she was just looking pleasantly ahead, curiously, Paria knew the other mermaid could understand her.

‘Who is this?’ Riga finally taps with deft easy fingers, Paria tries to put her mind to working out her unclear knowledge of pacific language.

She hesitantly makes a couple more clumsy sounds, ‘like you.’

Riga tilted her head to the side and her huge milky eyes flick down, Paria jerks her powerful tail at the look.

‘You have a tail,’ Paria translates her communication slowly, Riga blinks, ‘are you from...the trench?’

Paria shakes her head but isn’t sure that reaches her, ‘I’m from here.’ She finally taps out with a frown, ‘my mother was from a reef though.’

She watches Riga make a sharp pointed smile, Paria’s heart flutters, Riga touches the glass, ‘a lagoon swimmer.’ Riga looked strangely entertained, ‘of course.’

Paria squirms back and forth, ‘and who are you?’ She really did only know the basics.

Riga’s smile faltered, ‘the trench.’ She says back basely, ‘I thought I was all alone here.’

Paria slowly, tentatively puts her whole hand over over the thick plexiglass, it almost matches up with Riga’s, ‘you aren’t.’

Riga gives another bright and surreal smile, she taps slowly.

They begin to talk.

Her name was Riga. She was from the ocean, the real ocean, she pierced one of her lungs in a fight with a mershark and woke up here. She wished they hadn’t.

Paria’s name was after a small ocean, as all of them were. Her mother and her were taken in almost immediately after Paria was born, after she was injured. Her mother had adored the caretakers, the pearls, the faces of the passing stranger.

Riga smiles fondly at that as she taps, ‘you must miss her.’

Paria’s mouth tightens and she looks down at the sandy bottom, ‘do you miss anyone?’

Riga paused and her large milky eyes stare on ahead, ‘they’re gone.’ She said slowly, painfully, ‘they cast me out before I was attacked.’

Paria flinched at that and just nodded, she only begins again after a long pause, ‘what’s the ocean like?’

The faint smile returns to Riga’s face, ‘big.’ Paria laughs at that and Riga’s chest shakes as well, ‘wonderful. Cold and warm. It smells brisk and every part of the far reaches of the current.’ Riga seemed to make something like a sigh, ‘though I miss breeching as well.’

She seems sad and Paria could only sit up straight, ‘they don’t let you up?’

She shrugs and then looks away, ‘let me tell you more about the ocean.’

She begins to spin tales of large angle fish and epic waters and diving below her wildest dreams, the ocean was vast and chilled and dangerous. Paria can only stare on ahead at her and sigh as well.

Her smile was still tugging at the edges of her mouth.

‘Maybe you can go back.’ She finally taps and Riga nods.

‘Perhaps,’ she tilts her head, ‘though I’m not sure I’d like to be alone out there.’

Paria lifts her chin to study her face, ‘well.’ She taps one by one, ‘you aren’t in here.’

Riga presses herself up against the glass, ‘you are too sweet young one-’

‘Hey,’ she narrows her eyes at her.

‘It’s good!’ She looks both ways, ‘the morning lookers will be here soon.’

Paria nods, maybe she didn’t need the strangers gawking at their communication. Who knew what they might think it means.

‘Maybe I’ll ask my trainers to give you extra tuna,’ Paria jokes with a slight clip to her taps, ‘as thanks.’

Riga presses her fingers lightly to the glass, ‘no,’ she says easily, ‘no thanks needed.’ She smiles, ‘I’m the one that’s glad to meet you.’

That’s when her face heats up again, they both say goodbye and Paria has to go bury her head in the sand again. This time she couldn’t stop smiling.

-----

Paria wants to talk to Riga every moment of every day if she could, she wants to ball up her fists and break down the buried in a hundred little glass shards. She doesn’t however, she restrains herself to just their night time visits and then sleeping during the day.

The aquarium managers were not happy about that, mermaids were supposed to be awake.

Paria was still too floored to care, she started to tell Riga everything, about her trainers, about her mom, about the satyr across the way that annoyed her but was still basically her friend here.

Riga slowly tells her about her fight with a beaked squid that punctured her lung, she told her about sharks and starfish and riding the currents all across the world. Paria can just watch her face twitch, her body tread water across from her. Riga.

Her trainers liked that she was smiling more, they didn’t like that her temperature was rising, Paria didn’t know what to tell them- so she doesn’t tell them anything. Her body heat was none of their business she figures.

It’s only when Riga mentions something offhand that Paria pauses to consider her caretakers. Riga mentioned the sun.

She taps her words to Riga, ‘what do you mean about seeing the sunset?’

Riga tilts her head to the side and then taps back on the window, ‘during the dark months. I would go to the straits and the sun would go down across the ice. It was,’ she pauses, ‘lovely.’

‘Straits?’ Paria was thinking.

‘It’s like the ocean, but smaller. More land around us.’

‘I thought you were deep sea?’ Paria asks curiously as she takes in her fearsome features and deep stripes, the idea of seeing her anywhere near top waters felt strange.

Riga’s shoulders shake as she pauses to laugh, ‘of course we breech,’ she shakes her head, ‘I’m still a mermaid. Have lungs for a reason.’

‘Oh,’ Paria feels a little silly now as she thinks about it, ‘they don’t let you go up?’

Riga looks the other way, scratching her chin thoughtfully, ‘only with the prodders. No.’

Paria begins to clear, ‘idiots’ she taps a couple times.

Riga laughs again, ‘it’s alright.’ She says, ‘from what you’ve told me I at least get to hide in here. All the watching they give you!’

Paria shakes her head, ‘they’re idiots too.’

Riga nods with a small twitch, ‘I’m sure it’s just cause you’re very pretty.’

Paria’s whole body felt like it was on fire, she taps idiot again and her insides are in a frenzy by the time the visitors arrive. There was only so much she could handle.

----

Paria beaches herself next to her handlers the next day, preparing herself mentally for the scenario she wanted: a quick talk. Some bargaining.

She makes a pointed look at Maya first, she was the softest and gave her extra trout on odd days.

“Something up Pari?” She asks slowly, both signing and talking at once.

Paria is fast, ‘Riga.’ She says several times in a row, ‘Riga.’

“Oh,” Maya blinks, “I forgot we told you about her, what about Riga?” ‘She needs to come up.’ Paria signs with a slow clarity.

“Come up where?” Maya tilts her head to the side.

“What’s all this?” Brienne asks next as she brought Paria’s bucket of chum for the day.

Maya glances at her, “Pari is talking about Riga.” “What?” Maya turns back to her, “Where does Riga need to go?”

Paria searches the air, ‘up.’ She points, ‘she needs to breech.’

“Huh,” Maya puts her hands on her hips, “never seen her concerned like this.”

“She wants the deep sea mermaid to come to the surface?” Brienne was giving her a look.

‘She’s still a mermaid,’ Paria signs with a fierce flick of her wrists, Brienne chuckles a little. ‘Lungs.’

“Guess that’s a good point.”

“What’s got into you Pari?” Maya whispers to Brienne before signing to Paria, “where’s this coming from?”

Paria begins to push herself back into the water, ‘just do it.’ She glares, ‘or it’ll be..,’ she pauses, ‘bad.’ Paria goes to submerge her head.

“Hmm,” Maya turned to Brienne before Paria fully went under, “I guess we’ll be talking to the deep sea handlers.”

---

Paria has to wait another week before anything happens, she keeps talking to Riga but she doesn’t mention what she did.

Riga tells her about some changes on the sixth day, ‘my handler’s are acting funny.’

Paria tilts her head, ‘how funny?’ She grins, ‘They good at it?’

Riga rolls her large blank eyes, ‘haha.’ She taps, ‘no, they’ve been doing my vitals twice this week and they were talking about some ‘cage,’ a new one. Maybe.’ Riga concentrates, ‘I’m not great at reading them.’

Paria looks to the side, ‘I could talk to them? I know human language well by now.’

Riga shakes her head, ‘not for me. I’m sure it’s nothing big.’ She leers a little with her pointy grin, ‘maybe they just think I’m getting old.’

Paria wrinkles her nose, ‘nonsense!’ She taps with gusto, ‘I could watch you take down a whale.’

Riga laughs, ‘just for you then. A whole whale.’

It’s a very good night.

The next morning Paria sees a cage for her too, roomy and placed just outside her exit tunnel, Paria scowls at it and signs to Sydney that she didn’t need another check up.

Sydney rolls her eyes and tells her ‘get in the tube silly girl. It’s a surprise.’

“Ugh,” Paria makes a sharp noise at her and everyone else plugs their ears at the squawk, Sydney just gives her a blank thumbs up. Paria sniffs and slows the slowest she can into the next cage.

Sydney shook her head, ‘don’t think I haven’t been watching the night tapes girly,’ she winks.

Paria’s mouth falls open, her hands move clumsily, ‘what?’ Sydney just turns around.

The transport is slow and rocky, taking it’s time sloshing her back and forth across the hallways in the early morning, she sees a wooden fence next, it just says ‘exhibit in progress.’

Paria scowls, this was the old wishing well trout exhibit, she makes a face at her handles as they walk besides the dolly next to her. She crosses her arms across her chest stubbornly.

The wishing well exhibit was deep and filled with rocks, she knew that much, and the old talking fish Jeremy had passed away three months ago. She pushes her hair back, and they were probably just going to take her out to add another frilly chair to her enclosure or a harp for her to play.

She does angry tail lashes as they open up the side of the transport cage and she seems reluctantly into it. ‘Ugh,’ she lets them know she’s less than happy.

Sydney nudges her forward and just signs, ‘go.’

Paria does a small little circle in her new rocky enclosure before she sees another round pool next to hers, her eyebrows raise. It was an exact pool like hers separated by a stone wall, she looks at curiously.

Her handlers turn to leave and Paria tries to peer into the depths. A slash of white comes from down below, Paria practically gasps.

She scrambles away as a fiery red head surges up and flips it’s hair back in one swooping movement, Paria almost falls over. Riga does a happy little turn in place and then stretches her arms up to the sky.

She smiles widely and then turns when she must notice a blur of Paria next to her, she swims up excited and taps on the rocks. Paria can only gape at the closeness.

‘You did this,’ she taps excitedly, ‘I know you did.’

Her face was on fire and she can only just shrug and tap hesitantly back, ‘it was just the right thing to do.’ She wiggles back and forth on the rocks, ‘you wanted it.’

She jumps as she feels a touch, callused hand grab onto her own, Riga’s face was wild with something. ‘Paria,’ she taps next to her and leans forward, ‘nice to meet you.’

‘Nice,’ She goes slowly, ‘nice not to be behind glass.’ She inches a little closer, ‘I never dreamed we could…’

‘Yes.’

Paria’s fever almost breaks into a volcano when she feels a pair of lips peck on her cheek. Oh, her jaw goes slack, Riga kisses her cheek again, a little more to the center now.

She can feel a dopey grin spring across her face and she flips her hand over to hold Riga’s properly, feeling her rugged bright skin and closing in closer and closer.

She leans in, the glass is gone.

#original story #wlw #sapphic #mermaids #gay mermaids #original writing

1K notes · View notes