He knows that a lot of the cripples are 'paths. When they visit a village, it crackles against his skin, a brouhaha of whispers too soft and too tangled for him to get anything out of it. It's not a surprise that the mer would be, too; they're where the cripples come from, after all.
The mer only ever talk to their own people, and he doesn't know if it's a relief or not, to have the background so much more full, but all of it cautiously aimed away from him. Half the time it's good, the rest of the time he wonders what they're saying behind his back.
Lìadan never slips up. Sometimes he feels her dream, but only when she forgets herself. He's not one of hers, so she doesn't touch him.
Alarm/embarrassment.
Except now, apparently. He frowns, looks around -- there's no fear in her yet, and no wariness; it's probably not an enemy pod. He's not sure she's even sending to him, it's more of a general thing. Loud, though, a lot louder than the whispers of barely-rated minds.
Frustration/annoyance/feelsillynow.
... He blinks; the last concept was more complex than what he usually receives. More streamlined, not as static-y.
Help?/sillygirl/driftinglost/help?
He's on his feet, shotgun over his shoulder, and he stalks down the line of the island, looking for the source of the call. If she's anywhere but on the beach, she'll be fucked, because he can't swim.
Needyou/malemine/help?
His eyes widen a little. There's a quick flutter of anguished frustration -- not anything intentional, but he's a receiver, not a sender; intent makes little difference to him, he still feels it. Feels her. She's close now. She feels silly because she called to Blue (and Arun, okay, let's forget him for now) like she would call for her father or brothers or uncles, and Blue and Arun are not answering, of course, they can't; and she should know better than to think two-tails might be pod, even secretly, to herself; acknowledging it is even stupider.
He finds her only because the line at the end of the pier shakes in rhythm with her emotions. He leans over the edge of the narrow, moldy planks, wary; she looks back at him with wide, guilty eyes, with her hair like a gray cloud behind her, and the lines of the net thoroughly tangled around her body, digging into soft flesh.
He would laugh, but he has no clue how long she can stay underwater before she drowns. Too bad for the line; he cuts through the complex knot with one swipe, and drags the tangled mess of a net along as he negotiates his way back to the beach. The planks wobble and creak under his weight, and he grits his teeth and ignores the cold depths underneath. He's not going to drown them both.
She isn't sending anymore. She just breathes, when he manages to pull the net in a way that lets her reach the surface, and she waits.
He jumps in the water when it still reaches his thighs, and sweeps her up in his arms, lifting her chest over the waves. The net still tangles her, trapping an arm along her side and the other one curled just under her breasts, twisting her tail into a painful loop. The net imprints lozenges into her skin, and there's wet hair wrapped and tangled all over her chest, and it's the first time he sees her blush.
"Blue find me, thank you."
"Next time be more careful," he says gruffly as he reaches the beach. He's still aware of her -- hard not to, they're touching -- but it's all below the surface now, nothing he's privy to. He goes to put her down; the sand isn't stable under his weight and he ends up sitting in the shallows with a captive mermaid on his lap.
She blinks at him over the sudden change of altitude. "Blue?"
He shrugs, not looking at her face as he tries to untangle the net. It's frustrating, he thinks he might be better off just cutting her free. She'd protest, though. Good nets must be worth quite a bit on this world. So he ends up flipping her from face to back and feeling up her back and tail as he looks for the knot -- ah, there it is, a hook that caught onto a rope...
By the time he has her upper body free, she's laughing, acute embarrassment pushed aside for the moment. He arches an eyebrow; true, she looks rather silly right now. She tries to explain, but she doesn't know enough words and Blue isn't willing to pantomime enough to offer her guesses.
And then she offers him a memory -- children on the waves, throwing a ball at each other. Except today Lìadan is the ball and Blue is so serious! This is a serious game, yes. Ball-Lìadan. Most serious game of all.
Before he thinks better of it, he's laughing with her.
"Do I even want to know how you did that to yourself?" he asks, still chuckling; he gets a "Um?" and a didnothing/goodgirl/notsillyatall in answer.
"Sure, I believe you." And then he's kissing her, as an apology almost. It's soft and light. She tastes salty, slightly metallic, and he fails to be surprised. She's tense in his arms, confused; her mind once again out of reach.
"Giving breath," she says quietly, eyes wide with surprise. "Give breath to me?"
There are a hundred things under that word, a hundred things buzzing in her brain, just a little too complex for him to catch. She's not angry, though, so he grunts a "Yeah?" and shrugs, as if he doesn't care.
She stays quiet for the longest time, voice and mind both. He pretends he's not starting to feel nervous. When she opens her mouth to speak, he's expecting something huge, like maybe he just promised to battle all the sea dragons of the area for her hand somehow.
She just says "Okay," and she nods, and flips off his lap to squirm the rest of the way out of the net, and that's the end of it.
But now she pings him sometimes, I'mhere/areyouhere? And when he's not
busy and he goes to meet her, sometimes she brushes a kiss against his lips,
and she smiles.