Just a Man and his Rowboat [DragonSong][M]

[Goldie]

He looked over his shoulder at the boat and shrugged, "yeah....my bad..."

With a sigh, he flipped around and started floating on his back and letting the gentle waves lap against him causing him to bob up and down in a calming motion. He had been rowing for awhile and his arms were definitely already tired.

"The stars are nice." He sighed, "Wouldn't have looked up like this if the boat hadn't tipped."

[DragonSong]

"...Mmm." Humans are so odd.

She circled around behind him, keeping just her head and shoulders above the water. "And you have no interest in retrieving your supplies?" she pressed, quietly baffled by this strange sailor.

The water wasn't all that deep here. She could likely collect whatever had sunk easily enough, if he asked. Of course, that would be yet another favor, and she didn't think she was much interested in doing something else for him for free--

She felt movement beneath her tailfin and went still. Something was circling under them. Something large. At least as big as she was.

"Get on top of the boat," she snapped abruptly. "Now."

[Goldie]

It took a moment for his to hear her through the lapping waves and the water that filled his ears. The urgecy was clear even if her words were muffled and he quickly moved towards the capsized boat.

He had questions, but those could wait for now. He was a strong swimmer, so he moved quickly and his muscles rippled as he pulled himself effortless onto the bottom of the boat.

But not before something circled around his leg and yanked.

His hands, still wet, slipped off the boat and he was dragged under the waves with a surprised yell before he disappeared. Only bubbles remained on the surface where he had once been.

[DragonSong]

Well.

Shit.

With a sigh that was more exasperated than anything else, Morgana dove beneath the swells.

Despite the dark of the night above them and the water around them, her eyes pierced easily through the gloom to see the sailor's figure being dragged down, streaming a trail of bubbles.

It took a moment for her to recognize the creature that had him--at first it was just a dark shape--but then she could see the slick edges of it, shadow on shadow in the water, and she cursed silently.

Gorlith, creatures that looked something like a cross between an octopus and a sea snail, usually didn't grow big enough to be much more than pests. This one was easily half again as long as a human was tall. It was using the shell that protected most of its body as an anchor to drop itself and its prey to the seafloor as quickly as possible, while six of its razored tentacles tried to draw the sailor in toward its blade-sharp beak.

Morgana flipped herself around and dove at it, smacking the broad side of her tailfin against the shell before darting away again. It wouldn't do much more than disorient the thing, but hopeful that would begin to loosen its grip. She arced backward and came in for another pass.

[Goldie]

Nik's human eyes burned for a few moments after going up, but soon the saline in his eyes adjusted to the salt in thr water and the burning stopped. He could feel little razors digging into his leg, but he couldn't focus on that now more than just to recognize that pulling himself free would probably lead to some serious bloodloss.

Instead, he used his free leg to kick the thing as hard as he could. Multiple times. Over and over. Hoping it would decide he was too much effort for a snack.

The siren was much more lithe and continuously wacked and smacked the thing.

Nik could feel the tenticals loosening and the sea salt began burning the lacerations on his leg.

Dammit.

He hoped she was far away....

His lungs were burning. There hadn't been time to take a good breath before being rudely pulled below and he was exerting a lot of energy with his blows. A minute or two more and he would be no help to anyone other. He'd make a handsome paperweight, though.

He kicked again and the creature recoiled.

Now!

But he was far below the surface and black spots were filling his eyes. His body was pushing to breathe but he had to fight it. Opening his mouth was certain death.

He swam. Following his bubbles. Please let the surface be close. His limbs slowed. One more kick...just...one...

Instinct won and water filled his lungs.

[DragonSong]

Under the onslaught of both feet and tail, the gorlith seemingly thought better of what it had assumed would be an easy meal and released its prey to sink back down into the depths, using it's trailing tentacles to propel it even faster through the water.

Morgana drew herself up, not bothering to pursue the creature. It had only wanted a meal, after all, she couldn't exactly bear it ill will for that. She turned to look at the sailor, expecting him to have reached the surface.

...Except apparently she'd overestimated human lung capacity.

She watched his instinctive gasp, the way he drew in water rather than air, and there was a long, frozen moment where she just stared. She could let him drown--she'd considered hunting him herself. What difference did it make if he died here? Humans died all the time.

But he'd given her candy.

I'm going soft, she lamented to herself as she shot through the water to catch the sailor around the shoulders and tow him toward the surface. She curved around him as she did, bringing her mouth to his--both to prevent him from inhaling more water, and to blow air from her own lungs into his. Though she didn't use her lungs in the water, her body still stored the air. It should be enough to prevent him from drowning between here and the surface, at least.

A few powerful thrusts of her tail sent them gliding upward. She adjusted her grip on him so that his head was cradled against her shoulder as their heads broke the surface, allowing him to expel the water he'd breathed.

[Goldie]

Moments passed. So many it felt like an eternity. Nik remained still in the siren's arms while his fingertips turned blue as water replaced air.

Then, when all seemed lost, his chest convulsed and spasmed. A wet, gurgling cough erupted from his lungs and seawater burst from his lips. He tried to breathe, but the ragged coughs kept coming until as much water as his body could expel was emptied. He breathed on his own; short, wet breaths, and continued to cough. But the coughs eventually slowed and his breathing steadied.

He remained still for quite some time just focusing on the air he needed. His head aches, his fingers were tingling painfully as oxygen slowly reincorporated itself with his appendages.

"Fuck....me...." he finally coughed out. Then, realizing that his new friend was clearly to thank for his current not-dead situation, "What...the hell....was that?"

[DragonSong]

"Steady." Morgana tried to finagle him into a more upright position, which was not an easy task to accomplish while free floating in the water. "A gorlith," she answered his question, frowning down for a moment at the water beneath them. "They're usually solitary--then again, they don't normally get that big, either."

Perhaps best not to risk it.

She towed him over to his capsized boat. "You should keep out of the water," she noted wryly, trying to help boost him up.

[Goldie]

Nik didn't argue and he grasped clumsily onto the capsized boat and heaved himself up. He didn't even try to make himself comfortable and just drapped himself over the center and rested his cheek onto the wood slats while his hands gently skimmed the water.

His leg was bleeding steadily where the sea creature's razor tentacles had grasped him, but he didn't care. He was alive, all thanks to the siren who happened to be passing by.

"Thank you." He said after a time, still refusing to move from his spot. Gods air was terrific. He loved how it moved through him. Uuuuup and dooooown....iiiiiiiin and ooooooout.....ahhhhhhh.....ooooooooh

"I love air." He sighed dramatically with only a slight cough as his body still worked to get the last of the water from his lungs.

[DragonSong]

Morgana watched him settle himself with a slight frown. She didn't respond to his expression of gratitude, her attention on the blood that was steadily dripping into the water.

"You need to take care of that," she noted. If she could smell it, other ocean predators could too.

She glanced over her shoulder, in the direction she'd initially been towing his little rowboat. "The islet isn't far--you need to get off the water."

[Goldie]

Nik sighed, still feeling very little motivation to move, but the siren wasn't wrong. His blood dripping into the water was like a giant homing becon for all kinds of unsavory...critters.

Unfortunately not the cute kinds usually. But....maybe they'd be cute this time....?

He rolled onto his back with a groan and pulled his legs up fully onto the bottom of the boat. With a swift swipe of a knife from his belt, he cut away his pant leg to reveal the extent of his injuries. There were very obvious lacerations that circled his entire calf and shin in perfectly structure little gashes. They were clean at least, and would probably heal nicely with time. Hell, he might even get some cool looking scars if he was lucky.

Nik pulled off his shirt and began cutting it into strips which he then tied tightly around his wounds. The moonlight caused a set of five long silver scars along his back to glimmer. They extended from his shoulder all the way across his torso to the opposite side and looked very similar to scratches that might be made by human fingernails, but clearly the severity of the scar suggested something other than human and with much sharper claws.

After finishing the last of the wound binding, he reached into his pocket and cursed, pulling out a handful of very wet, very slimy candies.

"Fuck. Not you, too!"

[DragonSong]

Morgana watched in silence as he struggled the rest of the way up onto the capsized boat. There was a moment when he cut away the fabric of his pant leg and the extend of his injuries were visible that she actually started to reach toward him--and she didn't know herself exactly why.

In rather short order, she had somehow grown quite protective of this silly human sailor. Usually, that only happened when she had picked a hunting target and didn't want one of the ocean's other many dangers to get to him first.

...But he'd given her candy.

It was the one thought she couldn't get out of her head. It wasn't even the candy itself--she hadn't particularly cared for it, honestly--it was the fact that he'd just given her something. Not bartered or finessed or expected something from her in return.

An odd thought, one she didn't entirely know what to do with. And one that was quickly shuffled to the back of her mind when her eyes lit on the scars over his back.

Oh.

Ohhhhhhh.

Now that was interesting.

She smirked and drifted close enough to the rowboat that she could fold her arms on it and rest her chin on top of them. "I see I am not the first of my kind that you have met," she noted with a pointedly raised eyebrow. Tail waving lazily back and forth through the water behind her, she tipped her head to the side a bit and cut a quick glance toward the waterlogged candy. "Is that really what you're most distressed about just now?"

[Goldie]

He blinked down at her, real tears pinching at the corners of his eyes. "I bloody well am distressed about this." He waved the sticky mess dramatically towards her, "This is made special by a wonderful little lady who owns a candy shop on and island I can't go back to right now. I'm going to have to eat fruit or something like a pauper."

He dropped his head onto his knees and dumped the ruined candiea into the sea, "Goodbye my loves, may the fishies treat you nicely...."

Another sigh left his lips and he turned his head to look intently at the siren while purposefully ignoring her question about his scars. Of course she'd recognize them, but that didn't mean he had to divulged his secrets. A gentleman didn't kiss and tell, after all.

"I'm Nikkolai, captain of this magnificant upside-down boat."

[DragonSong]

Morgana rolled her eyes.

"You're a pain in my dorsal fin is what you are," she muttered, before slipping off the capsized canoe to swim around to the stern. "Just...hold on."

She braced her hands against the wood and pushed, setting them moving first gently, and then more swiftly through the water. If he wasn't concerned with getting himself to the islet, it seemed she would just have to do it for him.

"...Morgana," she said after a long moment. He'd given his name, after all. "I'm called Morgana."

[Goldie]

Nik smiled and enjoyed the wind that whipped through his sandy-blonde hair. It had long since broken free of the hasty plait he had done and now sea-soaked tendrils began to dry in that slightly-hardened-way only salt could manage.

"Nice to meet you, friend." He called down to her, "I greatly appreciate not being your dinner."

[DragonSong]

"I'm not your friend," Morgana responded bluntly. Then after a moment, she added in an almost petulant tone, "But...you're welcome for not eating you. Yet."

She stroked her tail more firmly through the water, increasing their pace slightly. The islet she was seeking started to come into view: a lumpy shadow settled on top of the dark water, a dark patch that reflected neither moon nor stars.

She continued to serve as propulsion for Nik's capsized boat until she felt the bow of it scrape against sand, when she finally let go and allowed the slight drift of the surf against the islet's shore to push him the rest of the way out of the sea.

Her eyes flickered down to his injured leg as she bobbed head-and-shoulders above the surface. "Gorlith aren't particularly clean creatures. You'll want to find some sort of disinfectant for that."

[Goldie]

"Ahhh but I could be. I'm quite an agreable person with a...generally...pleasant demeanor." The boat tipped slightly as the bow brushed against sand.

Instead of going straight onto land, he slid down from the capsized rowboat into waist-high water and just....stood. His wounds burned terribly, but it was probably the best way to clean them out given his severe lack of supplies or even and oar to row to someplace more occupied.

He'd just hang out here until the burning stopped.

[DragonSong]

The water was so shallow here that Morgana had to curl her tail beneath the rest of her body--almost serpent-like--in order to keep herself mostly submerged. As it was, she was a bit more than head-and-shoulders above the surface, revealing that even her "human" half glittered with pale scales in the moonlight.

"...There is a plant," she said abruptly, jerking her head back out to sea. "It sometimes grows in these waters. A seaweed, with veins of silver through it. It can help with infections."

She didn't offer, exactly, but the considering tone to her voice and the way she eyed him with a combination of wariness and curiosity indicated that she may in fact be willing to go searching for this seaweed, if he asked.

[Goldie]

He looked down at her from under the waves and cocked his head to the side pensively. She was warming to him, it would seem, though if that came with ant strings remained to be seen.

"For someone who claims we're not friends, you're being awfully friend-like. People don't just help you often, do they? Like....without expecting something in return?" He smiled a genuine smile, "I hope I can show you that it does indeed happen pretty frequently amongst us two-leggers. I'd also greatly appreciate any help you can offer." He glanced over his shoulder and saw some village lights off in the distance quite a walk away, "it would help if I ever wanted to make it to a human settlement."

[DragonSong]

"We are not friends," Morgana reiterated, perhaps a tad too defensively. Then she sighed, flicking her tail through the water in an irritated twitch. "...But I owe you for the candy."

At least, that was what she was going to tell herself.

She slipped back beneath the surface of the water, and soon was no more than a long, dark shape swimming swiftly back out into the open ocean.

She was gone for a little less than an hour. When she returned to the spit of sand where she'd left him, she was clutching both a bundle of silver-veined seaweed--and the pack from his rowboat that had sunk when it capsized.

"Here." She thrust it out toward him, fabric dripping. "It was near where I found the lutsara--the seaweed. I'm not sure what might have drifted away, but this is what I found."