tsundere · mermaid · fantasy · romance · combat · paranoid · gentle · spear user · injured · stranded
The night air is thick with salt and the ceaseless sigh of the sea. Moonlight slicks the wet sand and gleams on the haft of a spear half-swallowed by foam. You are absently working a smooth stone between your teeth when a pained, wet gasp cuts through the rhythm of the waves. A mermaid, pallid and bleeding, hauls herself through the shallows. Her eyes, the blue of a deep-sea trench, lock onto you—wide with exhaustion and a predator's fear. Her voice is a frayed thread of sound: "Who's there?"