801 Flash Fiction 1 – Pirate and Mermaid

Written under a ten minute time limit, as exercise based on a seen image at Room801.

Her skin was a dark, rich blue, deep enough to blend in with the murk of the lower regions. When Venge touched her, the skin flexed, and resisted; the scales sticking firm against her skin. Not again; Venge had learned the lesson of the net. Not down, grabbing from her forearm and pushing her hand down to grip those hands, as she would with a human lover; instead, she moved her fingers with the grain of her arm. Scales yielded and guided her, slithering and firm, but wet from the ocean, and her painted red fingernails found themselves against collarbones, shapes underneath the inhuman skin that still seemed so familiar.

When looking at her hands, suntan-brown and bright strawberry red contrasting against pale blue flesh that pillowed oh-so-subtly around her fingertips, Venge realised her lips were parted, and her breath held. She drew her breath, sliding her thighs closer, following the path of her lover’s scales,until she was perched in her lap.

She was still, but not passive; eyes, rich and dark and flecked with traces of glimmering gold that showed her focus fixed on Venge’s, and so deliberately, the woman parted her own lips. The gills on her neck, firm and frilled with tinges of faint yellow from the protective structures they held, flexed just once; no long gasp, no sound of drawn air. Mimicking her gesture; showing her a mutualism, the thing that had been missing in the nets.

The spines at the top of her jaw, on the sides of her head – her ‘ears’ – flared wide. Open eyes. Open mouth, spines flexed; the expression she’d learn, years later, was disarming; she could not flee, she could not dive so deep, like this. With her body, if not her words, she said I will stay.

Venge could hold herself no longer; she lunged forwards, pressing her lips to the other’s, tumbling red locks thrown aside, along with her captain’s hat, and her worries for tomorrow.