that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - Silent

The ocean was placid and sleepy, as if it had been worn ragged by today's regatta and the rain, which had thankfully passed quickly, and it needed time to regain its strength. Percy and I sailed back out and watched the Mermaid Festival fireworks from a distance, but we agreed not to talk about the regatta, about what the loss meant, about what tomorrow or the next day would bring. So after the smoke faded from the sky, after we shared a sailor's meal of canned stew and oyster crackers, Percy and I floated wordlessly above deck, shoulder to shoulder, fingers intertwined as we watched the stars blink to life in the deep blue sky.

When the moon was high over the marina, we retreated to the saloon, sitting again in comfortable silence. I thought of the first night I'd met him, how I'd watched him at the Solstice party, jealous that he and Artemis seemed to have so much history together. I'd been wrong about them, of course. I saw it now, felt it, knew it by heart. The sign of a deep connection wasn't necessarily outward affection, but silence. The ability to sit still with another, wholly aware of him, neither needing nor desiring anything but his presence, the shape of him, his breath in the air between you.

A wave jostled our little vessel, and I finally stirred, looking up to meet Percy's eyes. He'd been watching me, I realized, and when I rose from the cushion, his smile turned wolfish. I grabbed his hand, leading us both to the berth.

Despite the exhaustion of the day, my body was wild with wanting, my own breath ragged and rough as I slid my hands inside his sweatshirt. My touch lingered only a moment before I pushed his sweatshirt up, slipped it over his head, and tossed it on the floor. The rest of our clothing quickly followed, and then he was, blissfully, inside me.

His kisses were more hungry, more desperate, more devouring than ever.

Our time together, we both knew, was finite.

I closed my eyes, searing this moment into my mind, committing his touch to eternal memory.

Hours later something tugged me from a deep sleep, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that it was the moon, shining down on me in a silver beam. I rose from the bed, careful not to disturb Percy as I slipped out from our warm cocoon.

In the saloon my mermaid dress hung from the hook where I'd put it before the race, blue silk spilling down the wall like water, just as shimmery. For a moment I thought I could put my hand through it, feel the cool wetness run through my fingers. But it was only my old familiar dress after all, and I lifted it carefully from the hook and pulled it up over my nakedness. If the night air was chilly, I no longer noticed.

I crept out through the companionway, silent as the stars on the sea. Out on the deck, alone, I heard nothing but the gentle lapping of water against the hull, and beneath the vast diamond sky I felt both all important and utterly insignificant, the goddess and the damned in equal measure.

I thought about Candy's tarot cards, the deceiving moon, the call of something deep within, and wondered for a long moment whether looking at a reflection of the moon in the water made it the opposite of deceiving. I wanted to trust this pale and lovely moon, the flicker of starlight that seemed to glow from the bottom of the ocean. The sea was so impossibly still, so dark, that the longer I stared, the more uncertain I became. Was the night sky reflected in the sea, or was the sea reflected in the heavens? Had they switched places as I slept?

How had everything I'd ever known been turned upside down?

When I'd volunteered as Percy's first mate—despite my reservations about sailing—I truly believed I could help. That we might actually win this thing, prove his father and the mayor wrong. Show them all by saving Candy's house, Percy's house, the fate of the entire mystical town.

But again, the ocean had other plans.

Again, I'd failed. The people I loved. Myself.

And again, everything would change.

The night was so calm, the ocean so inviting, offering none of its usual warnings and threats. Entranced, I reached my fingers out and trailed them through the black soup, through the moonlight, as though I could capture the stars beneath the sea.

Soon I was in up to my wrist. My elbow. The tender skin of my underarm didn't register the cold, though I thought it should.

I am a mermaid, goddess of the sea.

Midnight is upon me.

Her lover is near.

Death, come to take me home.

And then I was slipping into the void, a tipping forth that seemed both uneventful and inevitable, not even a splash to mark my descent.

Silent, as ever.