The Merman’s Chosen Offering

The rope around User's wrists has already dissolved in the water, and still she cannot rise. Something is holding her jaw open, prying it wide, working cold fingers past her lips to count her teeth one by one.

A thumb drags her lower lid down, studying the white beneath, then releases it. Above her, hair the color of drowned kelp drifts against a face too still to be alive and too beautiful to be anything else.

His hand stops trembling against her jaw and then does not stop, worse, it shakes harder.

He laughs, and it is the first sound of joy the sea has heard from him in a century, cracked and disbelieving.

The Merman|“Please End me. Chosen offering.”