DuperOrdi

What Are You Listening To?

of mer and men [Sheith Merman!AU]

Picking up the sea glass.. that was his summer. Brief pauses for cliff adventures and occasional trips into town or pity meals at the station aside, it's him on the dock, reading or watching the ocean or picking his way over tidepools. He needs time. That's what the doctors said, in so many words. There are worse ways to live with this unspeakable burden. Instead of feeling smooth waves against his chest--ones that rock softly against his heart--he feels rocks, shards of glass weighing him down and it slows his breathing, and his life. He's had this "illness" as it's called for years, and it took its toll over the simplest things that are supposed to make life beautiful. But the sea.. that was the one thing he could never tire of, or come to despise through sharp mood swings.

But, for the briefest moment of anger as he picked up the pebbles on the deck, Keith wondered what would happen if he tore off the necklace his mother had left him with before she was gone at sea, scale and all, and gave it back to the waves—but even as he wonders he knows he wouldn't. It’s the most foolish sentiment, but he can’t imagine he won’t live the rest of his days with it. And maybe it’s all right to want someone that much, to miss someone that much. He had his fair share of mourning and he came out of it relatively unscathed.

His mother is long gone now. No reason to remember that all over again.

He almost doesn’t pick up the last stone, but then he realizes he’s being ridiculous and grabs it before he jumps back from the water with reasonable speed, not at all scared. Not at all.
It’s the only one that’s white. It looks like a little shard of ice, frosted and glittering. He turns it back and forth in the dimly lit night, watching the soft reflected light play against his hand. It made him smile, the delicate color it gave off, and he'd already begun to imagine. Setting them on the windowsill in the kitchen, the one that faces the ocean and gets the most sun inside the small shack in the long afternoons. The stone casting a little rainbow over the floor at dawn as he falls asleep tracing it with his eyes.

But amidst the tranquility, reality began to set in, and Keith could feel his body blaring its alarms as a feeble attempt to alert him. He could sense a presence uncomfortably nearby, and his breath hitched. He'd almost wanted to put the stones back, take them out of his makeshift bucket, and run far away. His legs didn't move though, and neither did his head. He just froze, nerves beginning to settle in, even if there was no solid evidence that anything was around. It could have been all in his head, but he latched on to the many times when his gut feeling didn't turn out to be wrong, and he felt goosebumps on his cold arms.

He tried closing his eyes, desperately gripping onto his sense of hearing. Nothing but silence, and then almost imperceptibly, there’s a sound contrary to the waves, the splash of something slipping into water. Under the dock, he thinks and falls to his knees so fast they scrape against the rough wood of the dock. He braces himself on the edge and ducks his head under. The sense of being watched rushes back in full and hits like primal terror. What could be waiting for him down there?

of mer and men [Sheith Merman!AU]

@FalkiThomas HAHAHAHA OKAY I LOVE THAT
Maybe Keith says it as a joke when Shiro tells him about Zarkon and his fighters and at first Shiro doesn't get the joke but then he does and starts imitating a human laugh xD

of mer and men [Sheith Merman!AU]

OH MY GOD

of mer and men [Sheith Merman!AU]

Of Mer and Men (Sheith RP)

@DuperOrdi & @FalkiThomas

It’s the second time he’s been to the ocean. The city was the furthest from being silent, but it all paled out to white noise whenever he reached the sea. The water is and has always been different. He can feel it under his hands when he sits on the beach watching it. The waves are deceptive, quiet. Their white foam edges chase up the shore, grasping and hissing before they slip back, casualties of gravity, pulling all things in after them. He has the irrational fear that if he’s careless, if he lets them lap at his feet, they’ll pull him in, too. But whenever these thoughts get to him, he's left with only the thought of the way the sand would let out a soft sound whenever he sat. As if welcoming him.
After a month, he's getting the gist. Sometimes when he's sitting on the beach, there's a sense like the ocean is holding its breath for him. And sometimes when he walks up from the dock, he gets the cold, phantom drip of water down his spine that makes him feel like he's being watched.

But it's quiet. No one ever comes out this far.

The cliffs above the sea are white chalk and steep, but there's a trail from the shack he's living on his own in that he can pick his way up, lined in tall grass and little glassy flowers that cling to the rock with long tendril roots. He likes hiking. There's a studious care to it that means he can't think too deeply about anything but where to put his feet, and he's good at that. Or—he was.
He goes up to see the sunset. His dad talked about it once, the way the sun met its reflection in the waves and how if you were lucky and if the sky was clear and if you didn't blink, sometimes you could see the sun on the waves and then through them. Green fire, and the most beautiful thing he ever saw. He doubted anything else could ever top it. Nothing this universe could provide, at least.

By the top of the hill, he's more than out of breath, but it's old news. The sun is dipping toward the horizon when he starts; by the crest, it's low and bloody. He clears himself a spot in the rock and grass to watch and wait and breathe. He focuses on the sun and lets it burn against his eyes. The light starts to fade out on the horizon, a hemisphere of perfect light that glitters in the water. It sets without fanfare, a little, slow death. No green, but he didn't really expect it and the disappointment doesn't bite. It was worth it just to stretch his legs. And he did. Hours stole hours that stole hours and soon, Keith had gotten his fill and walked back to the shack, determination filling him.
He was going to pick up the supplies he'd need for fixing his dad's long forgotten boat from Kolivan, venture far into the sea. And maybe, just maybe, he won't go back to the shack. He'd find an island, live on it for the rest of his life. Surrounded by the tranquilizing sounds of the sea. It was everything he needed, perhaps more. Though, for the night, he decided to walk back to the beach, cares far away from him.
The beach stretches for miles. He walks as much of it as he can. The tidepools could probably keep him occupied for a full day. Most of his time is spent on the dock, reading. After Kolivan drops him off he grabs an apple and the wrinkle-covered and dog-eared tome he's been working his way through and heads out. It's a short walk: straight out the door and down the old wood stairs to the beach. There's peeling white paint on everything; it was a beautiful home once, though he was too young to remember it.
His hip smarts on the walk down, some other bruise making itself known. It distracts him until he’s almost to the dock, and then he glances up and his breath catches in his chest.

There’s something there, glittering against the wood. Keith can make it out as he gets closer: a line of sea glass, pebbles of blue and green and amber laid out in a row along the edge. He stops. It’s his dock. No one else uses it. No one else comes this far out. His mind scans through every possibility and comes up blank. Keith picks them up, rolls them between his fingers. They’re smooth in his hand, like little, frosted stones of perfect glass. They’re lined up one every few boards, all the way to the end of the dock. He starts gathering them, making his shirt into a makeshift basket. It’s only when he gets to the last one, perched on the final board of the dock that it occurs to him what he looks like: a child following a trail of candy, right to the spot where something can grab him.

But that was silly. There was nobody around. His mind was playing tricks on him.
Maybe he just needed sleep.