Waverider Expedition - Kai'ono
The storm struck without warning.
Waves towered higher than the ship deck, their crests lit by lightning that turned the sea white and blind.
Selene clung to the rail as a surge slammed across the deck, tearing her loose. She fell, tangled in the heavy satchel of salves and bandages she’d been carrying, its strap biting her shoulder as it dragged her down. The water swallowed her whole.
Salt filled her mouth, her ears. Above her, the ship’s lanterns blurred into green fire. She kicked, struggled, but the bag pulled her lower, its weight a drowning hand.
Through the dark, a glimmer moved. A tail, silver-blue, flashing like hope itself.
A mermaid, she thought wildly. The stories were true.
She tried to cry out, bubbles rising instead. The glimmer drew closer, slow, circling. She reached toward it, heart hammering with desperate relief.
Then it moved.
Too fast. Too straight.
The face that came out of the gloom was wrong. The eyes were black and depthless, the mouth impossibly wide, teeth crowding in rows like shiny knives.
Selene barely had time to flinch before the siren struck. Pain ripped through her arm as the jaws closed. The sea went red. Her scream tore the air from her lungs, letting the sea in, her heartbeat roaring louder than the storm.
Then, light. Sudden, sharp.
Two spears flashed through the water, sinking into the siren’s flank. The creature convulsed, tail thrashing, and vanished into darkness trailing its own blood.
Hands, cool, strong, seized Selene under the shoulders. A mermaid and a merman, their scales flashing green and gold, bore her upward. The stormlight grew brighter until the air broke over her, cold and blinding.
They dragged her onto the shallows of a narrow beach. Her vision swam: the two merfolk in the waist-deep water, framed by waves. The merman raised his head and gave a keening whistle, long and piercing, that carried across the wind like a flute made of coral.
Figures appeared along the treeline. Islanders, skin inked with spiral tattoos, skirts of woven grass clinging to their legs. They moved cautiously, spears in hand.
Selene turned her head toward the sea again, searching for her rescuers, but the merfolk were already gone, slipping beneath the surface without a ripple.
Her last thought before the world went dark was the echo of their cry still hanging in the storm air, not song, not speech, but something between prayer and warning.
Selene woke to the sound of waves breathing against the shore.
Light filtered through a wall of woven palms, soft and green. The air smelled of salt and fruit, of life and sea rot. Her arm ached, wrapped in cool cloth that smelled faintly of crushed herbs and smoke.
When she stirred, a voice spoke beside her. “You do not move yet. The fever hasn’t left.”
A woman sat by the door, skin sun-browned and inked with spirals that climbed her arms. Her eyes were calm as tidepools. She held a bowl of green paste and a length of smooth coral.
Selene tried to speak, but her throat was sand. The woman smiled and lifted a cup to her lips. The drink was bitter and sweet, thick with honey.
“The sea cut you,” the healer said softly. “Now it mends you. It always takes something when it gives.”
Outside, Selene could hear laughter and the thud of tools. She turned her head and saw through the open doorway a column of smoke rising, a signal fire, built high with driftwood and oil. Children ran around it, feeding it shells and flowers.
“They make the fire for your ship,” the healer said. “It tells the sea you are wanted back.”
Selene looked down at her bandaged arm. The pain was there, but softened, distant. No sharp sting of magic, no burning light. Just the gentle coolness of the sea and the faint hum of the woman’s song.
“How long have I been here?” she asked.
“Three nights. You spoke in dreams. You said the sea was screaming.”
Selene smiled faintly. “It was.”
The woman dipped her fingers into the paste and spread it over the wound. It tingled, and Selene saw small flecks of crushed coral glinting in the light.
“When I heal,” she said, “it hurts. It burns and tears. But this... feels kind.”
The healer shrugged. “Pain is a thing that must be balanced, not fought. We ask Hina’are to take it away, or share it.”
Selene closed her eyes. “I should learn to do that.”
“You will,” the woman said simply.
Days passed. Her fever broke, and strength returned with the tides. She walked the beach at dawn, her arm bound in patterned cloth marked with spirals like those on the healer’s skin. The sand burned warm beneath her feet, and each step felt like reclaiming something lost.
The islanders spoke with her easily now, teaching her names of plants, of shells, of winds. Children followed her with shy curiosity, and once, she saw the merfolk again, distant figures beneath the waves, watching but not approaching.
That evening, as the sun fell red into the sea, she climbed the headland and saw it: a dark shape on the horizon, sails bright against the dying light.
The Waverider.
The villagers saw it too. They shouted, beating drums and tossing palm fronds onto the fire. Colored smoke rose into the sky. Canoes slid into the water, paddles flashing silver as they raced to meet the ship.
The Alaka, tall and solemn, placed a hand on Selene’s shoulder. “The sea returns what it takes,” he said. “It remembers those who walk gently upon it.”
By nightfall, the Waverider lay anchored in the bay. Torches burned along the shore, and the smell of roasting fish filled the air.
The Alaka had prepared a feast. Fruits, taro, crabs steaming on leaves, drink brewed from palm sap. The crew joined the celebration, their laughter loud and unrestrained after days of worry. Venera embraced Selene, shaking her head.
“You fall off the world, and it gives you a festival,” she said.
Selene smiled. “It gave me teachers.”
Music rose, drums, shells, voices. Dancers moved by the firelight, their tattoos shining with oil and color. They told stories with their bodies: of gods born from volcanoes, of the sea that both kills and saves, of those who return from the depths.
Solonex sat cross-legged in the sand, quiet and watchful. Otto the Dwarf, drunk on local palm wine, tried to match a dancer’s steps and promptly fell over, sending children into shrieks of laughter. Even Severin smiled, clinking a cup against the Alaka’s gourd.
Selene watched the dancers, her arm resting in her lap. The bandages were gone now, replaced by a thin scar shaped almost like a wave. The healer placed a small shell in her hand, smooth and white, saying it was a tear of Kala’noa, to remind her that mercy, too, is a form of strength.
She held it in her hand as the fire crackled, whispering, “For mercy, not for power.”
The sea beyond the torches glowed with starlight. The drums softened. The night became a slow heartbeat of warmth, laughter, and surf.
And as the tide crept in, Selene thought that perhaps the sea had not tried to drown her at all.
It had simply taught her how to rise again.