Chapter Text
Nori was in trouble. He was usually more careful than this. He got careless, that’s what. And now, here he was, caught in a fishing net and staring, face to face, with a two-legged.
Surprisingly, this two-legged was nothing like he had heard them to be. His ears were softly rounded, not sharp like the stories told. His brown hair was braided into three low braids that arched upward at the end and a weird hat sat upon his head, unlike Nori’s impeccably styled hair, which was now a mess. His eyes reminded him of a dusky damselfish, brown in the way that was hypnotizing. His face was dirty, but handsome. It didn’t have any freckles, unlike Nori did, He had a weird moustache, but Nori found it rather cute. Wait, cute?! He needed to get out!
Nori started thrashing around at this realization, his beautiful tail writhing against the net and the unfortunate fish that had been caught with him. He needed to get back into water! If he didn’t… well, he didn’t know. None of the merfolk where he lived had been out of water long enough to tell, at least that he knew of, but what happened was rumored to be painful.
The two-legged seemed panicked at Nori’s thrashing and cried out something in his tongue, though Nori couldn’t understand. Unless… Nori thought, ceasing his writhing and narrowing his eyes. I hope this works, he thought as he beckoned for the two-legged to get closer. Nori’s gills flared as the two-legged slowly approached; he was running out of time!
The two-legged got closer, close enough that Nori could have ripped his throat out, but he didn’t. Instead, he reached though one of the holes in the net and pulled the two-legged into a tight lip lock. The two-legged squeaked in surprise, but Nori persisted. Finally, after a few seconds, Nori let him go, gills flaring once more, although this time in impatience. “Release me,” Nori hissed in the two-legged’s language.
The red-faced two-legged nodded frantically and pushed his net, which contained Nori and the rest of his catch, out of the boat and back into the water. Thank Mahal that worked, Nori thought.
He gasped when he felt the familiar, soothing feeling of salt water rush back through his nigh dried-out gills. He popped his head out of the water and glared at the two-legged, who just stood there, hand ghosting over his lips. Nori snorted and swam away, a semi-clear bottle he had taken from the vessel clutched in his hand.
The two-legged sat there for a few minutes, his face still red, trying to process the fact that he had caught, been kissed by, and released one of the handsomest beings he had ever laid his eyes upon. He chuckled. “Bifur won’t believe this,” he muttered as he began his trip back to the shore.
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Nori watched the two-legged operate his carrier, he believed they call it a boat, away and, eventually, out of sight. He frowned. No two-legged has ever come this close before, he murmured to himself in his native, musical tongue. He frowned and inspected the thing that he had managed to nab from the two-legged’s boat(??).
It was a transparent container that housed a strange, translucent yellow-orange liquid inside. Nori wanted to open it, but knew that if he did, it would mix with the water and be lost. He examined it for a few more moments before he shrugged and sped back to his village. He was fast, navigating the currents and slipping in and out of them like he was a part of the water itself.
When he got back to town, he snuck back into his room through the window so Dori didn’t see. He was supposed to be working on finishing a carving, not surfing the sea-top ‘like a delinquent’, as Dori often put it. He has just barely finished putting the strange liquid-filled bottle away and was going back to his desk when Dori entered his room with a polite knock.
Dori was almost always polite, even when he was angry, which was thankfully not often. He enjoyed carving and marking oysters and bore his bicep tattoo proving that, an oyster with a carving knife, proudly. Nori, on the other hand, relished the adrenaline of taking other’s things and the profit he could gain from selling them. He was also a messenger, so he had his craft tattoo show just that, two dark lines that curled in on themselves on his bicep beneath his black band that showed that he was, in fact, an adult.
He and both of his brothers had the dark lines on their biceps that marked them as adults. Ori had gotten his of age tattoo just a few years back and Dori had cried for an hour, blubbering at how ‘grown up’ Ori was and had only stopped an hour or two after they had locked him in his room. Speaking of that, Dori was staring at Nori, an unreadable expression on his face. Which probably means that he had heard Nori did something that he ‘ought not have’.
Nori looked up from his desk, a grimace-smile on his face. “Hello, Dori. Can I help you?”
“Nori…. Where were you?”
“What?”
“Where were you? I came to ask if you wanted to go to the market with Ori and you weren’t here. So, where did you go?” Dori had a steely note in his voice, one that suggested that he would find out some way, whether or not Nori told him.
Nori tried to lie. “I was out looking for shells.” He said, trying to appear confident in his words.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Mahal, how do you do that?! Fine, I went to the surface.” Nori said, irritated that Dori had seen through his lie so quickly.
At this, Dori’s face went red, like a pufferfish… Nori thought, and he gasped. “Nori!”
“Whaaaaaat?”
“You know you’re not supposed to go there! What if you were caught?!” Dori shrieked, making Nori wince.
“But I wasn’t!” He replied, swimming to his chest to put away his carving knife.
“But what if you were?! By Durin’s beard, Nori, at least tell me you were careful!”
“I was! Now stop screaming at me!” Nori shouted back at his older brother.
Dori swam out of the room in a huff, leaving the seaweed curtain dividing his room from the hall floating a bit out of place.
Nori threw himself onto his bed, the soft moss rubbing soothingly against his skin. Whenever they fought like this, it was best for them to avoid each other. They would come around in a few hours, tops. But it still didn’t erase the argument.
Nori sighed, reaching underneath his bed to pull out one of the other oddities he had collected. He pulled out a small metal ring and fiddled with it, spacing out. He was curious, would the strange two-legged come back?
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Ori was confused. He wasn’t normally confused. Dori, his nadad, commonly said that he was one of the most intelligent mermen in their village, if not in their ocean, so he shouldn’t get confused all that easily. He was confused by the strange contraption he held in his hand. It was a small, semi-sharp contraption that had a cut line going through most of it. When he pressed it down onto something, it spread a bit. It seemed to be made of metal.
Ori was sitting on a rock a bit a ways outside of town, trying to figure out its purpose. Maybe it was for marking something? Fine details in a carving of some sort? That wouldn’t make sense, this wasn’t sturdy enough to make any carving details……
Ori eventually gave up and swam back to town, toward his house. Maybe he could ask Nori. After all, Nori seemed to know a lot of things about a lot of things. Maybe it was a two-legged thing….
Ori got to his house that he shared with his brothers just as Nori exited through their front door, a satchel tossed over his shoulder. They ran into each other with and ‘oof’ and both of them dropped what they were holding. This was much to Ori’s dismay, for he looked down to find it and it had seemingly disappeared. “Nonononono!” He cried, spinning around to see if he could spot it anywhere. He couldn’t.
“Ori what’s wrong?” Nori asked, trying to stay calm through his younger brother’s panic.
“I had something I wanted to ask you about and now it’s gone!” Ori wailed, still spinning to see if he could spot it.
“Oh, is it this?” Nori asked, holding up his bag to show Ori the thingamabobber stuck to it.
“Yes!” Ori said with glee, racing to it and prying it off carefully. “Thank you for finding it, Nori!”
“No problem. So, you said you wanted to ask me about it?”
“Oh, yes! Do you know what this is? I think it might be some sort of carving tool.”
“It could be, though it doesn’t look like it would do a good job...”
They moved inside and continued their conversation, talking on and on about what it is and what it could be until the water started to darken and the glow-algae started to shine. Nori’s craft tattoo stood out against his pale, freckled skin as he rose, reminding the younger mer that he had yet to pick a craft. “Ah, I gotta get goin,” Nori said, grabbing his bag from its resting place on the floor.
“Where are you going? Can I go with you?” Ori asked, curious.
“Out, and sorry, nadadith, I’m goin’ alone,” Nori said.
He ruffled Ori’s head and was gone. A couple minutes later Dori swam in, tiredly mumbling a goodnight and hugging him before swimming to his room.
Ori swam to his room soon after, beginning to feel the effects of tiredness seep into his head. He entered his room and placed the small pointer, that’s what they decided to call it, into his small bedside chest. He sank into his bed, pulling the woven kelp blanket up and over himself. He tried to stay awake, to be conscious when Nori came back, but he eventually succumbed to his exhaustion.
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Nori peered at the familiar two-legged in his boat. It was nighttime now, and the two-legged had come back. He was looking at the stars, gazing up at them while he carved away at something in his hands. Nori swam a bit closer trying to see what it was. He couldn’t put a name to it, but he noticed how the two-legged gazed at the stars and couldn’t help but look up himself.
He gasped. The stars had been beautiful from underwater, but without the interference he could see every star individually and how they glowed brighter than anything he had seen before. He must have gotten too close or his gasp must have been a bit louder than he thought, for the two-legged snapped his head down to look at Nori.
Every bone in Nori’s body told him to flee, but he couldn’t help but stare back. His eyes were still a rich brown, though now Nori could make out hints of green and grey. They made Nori’s amber eyes seem dull and lifeless.
The two-legged waved his hand awkwardly. “Uhh… hi?” He said, snapping Nori out of his astonished daze.
Nori thought for a moment before carefully replying in the two-legged’s tongue. “Hello.”
The two-legged seemed surprised that Nori hadn’t done anything yet. “I’m Bofur,” he said.
“Nori.”
“Well, Nori… I’m sorry for catching you earlier. Had I known you were there, I’d've left.”
“Thank you.” Nori said, pleased to have gotten an apology.
Bofur still looked awkward though. Nori frowned. “Have I done something wrong?”
Bofur jumped and looked away, blushing. “Well… not really, but...” He turned back.
“Why’d ya kiss me?”
“You mean the lip-lock? Oh, it’s the easiest way for- er... to learn a language for my kind.”
“Ah,” Bofur said and looked away. “It’s just that, to most of us up here, it's ah-," He groaned, rubbing his face, "intimate gesture usually shared between two lovers…”
“Oh,” Nori whispered, his face burning red. “I’m sorry.”
Bofur nodded and said, “It’s alright.”
They didn’t say a word to each other for the rest of the night. They just watched the stars dance overhead until the sun began rising in the east.
Nori left quietly, for Bofur had fallen asleep sometime near dawn. He didn’t know why, but he liked Bofur. And who knows… maybe they would meet again…
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