and her name meant sorrow

{TWO//bodysnatchers}

deirdre pushes her hair behind her – sometimes she wishes she had shorter hair, but she knows all too well how the other mysts would react to that. with both hands she hauls the body out of the water. said body is heavy like a sponge, and with that curly mess atop its head, deirdre really shouldn’t have been surprised. simply going off the length of the hair and the silhouetted shape of the sea-weed-ribboned cadaver, it was a girl. a teenager, maybe early twenties, at least in the years of the humans. deirdre spares a thought for the poor girl’s parents, friends, maybe boyfriend. she wonders absently to herself how such a girl ended up on her shores.

the job of body-snatcher isn’t altogether too glamorous but deirdre always tells herself she’s thankful for it. while other merfolk and sea-mysts use their angelic voices and goddess-like bodies to attract sailors, deirdre would stand on the beach, keeping an eye out should a stray cabin boy wash up. mostly she has seabirds; albatrosses, gulls, that sort of thing. deirdre dumps the new girl’s body on the sands with a huff. it isn’t pretty work, but deirdre would be lying if she said that once in a blood moon she found something wonderful.

the girl’s body is covered in a combination of seaweeds and soaked cloth – deirdre recognises the visual texture of the girl’s denim jeans from the sailors’, which rise high on her waist (unlike the latter). she has a sort of peasant blouse in a faded sky colour that frills at the hem. whatever this outfit is, deirdre knows it isn’t sailing gear, or she isn’t a proud myst.

the rules usually call for deirdre to bury the body somewhere on the island where no rescue-team humans can get to them (should they accidentally stumble upon evidence of the mysts), and also calls for deirdre to under no circumstances become familiar with such body, but she’s so curious. she pulls on the corpse’s thick hair and turns her over – met with a dark face and freckles, eyes under thick eyelashes shut tight. the poor girl must’ve died in horrible pain, deirdre thinks.

she mustn’t mourn the day away, though. it’s almost moonrise and deirdre still has to bury the girl. grabbing a fistful of her hair, she tugs hard, dragging her limply across the sand.

that is, until she screams.

▲