RP:One Good Brine Deserves Another

Cenril Beach

Hudson is in his and Sargaso's "yard," if it can be called that. It's really public property. The lads live right on the beach, more or less, right by the mermaid "infestation," ...if it can be called that. At this moment, Huds is supposed to be performing some kind of maintenance on the mermaid siren, but what he's really doing is lying back on the beach and smoking some kind of herbal cigarette that is definitely not tobacco-based. He's in his kickball gear. A jersey, trousers, muddied from a recent game. Sand clings to his hair. He gazes off at the stars cape, frowning after a long tail of smoke he's exhaled, and pushes himself upright to a seated position, flicking a burning ember off the butt of his joint.

Aptera is lurking just below the waves. The Mermaid Siren wasn't functioning, and oh what a blessing it was to get close to the shore again. Right within reach of those tasty little land dwellers. Her coral colored crown breaks the waves in the shallows, allowing her to observe Hudson's position on the beach. Could today get any more perfect? "Yooohoooo, Sailor booooy!" she called, with a lovely blend of siren's song magic and her own heart breakingly feminine voice. Bits of seaweed is woven into the long side braid she's wearing; a very attractive tangled mesh of red tresses, white seashells, and slick green seaweed as far as sea folk are concerned. One arm juts into the air, waving about thin clawed digits. Claws or finger nails? Impossible to tell at this distance. Not to worry though, she hardly looks a threat to anyone.

Hudson shifts his weight along his elbows, his gaze going behind the lit end of his joint to the womanly figure bobbing in the water. Just what he needs. A mermaid. Maybe mermaids. Sexiest and most deadly infestation ever. He blows out a steady stream of smoke, his gaze settling on Aptera, distinguishing from the only mermaid he's really familiar with. Nope. She's not Fairfax. Her hair is red, like Alvina's. Of course she's beautiful. That's par for the course. He'd be lying if he said it didn't warm him a little after the brutal loss his kickball team had suffered. "Not a sailor," he calls out back at her. He looks at the herbal cigarette in his hands, nearly spent, and has one more puff from it before snuffing it out in the sand. He feels way too indifferent to the world to deal with a mermaid at present, but it can't be helped. "Do you know Fairfax?" he asks her.

Aptera would have frowned if she'd been a less skilled hunter. "That's my mistake," she feigned ignorance, " I always assume handsome men are all sailors." Her index finger swirls the ocean water in front of her idly, "I do know her," she lied, "But she never mentioned anyone like you. Are you the cad in charge of these devices? Are they broken? Do you need a hand?" The tip of her tail flicked out of the water behind her. Mermaids were so tricky; they looked like beautiful ladies to the torso and then...it all turned to salt water and brine. Maybe a little bit of death mixed in somewhere. Surely not all mermaids were killing machines.

Hudson's chest fills with briny air, as he considers Aptera. She's awfully nice to look at, but he wishes she were Fairfax, he had a rapport with her at least. Not really sure what Aptera is about. Probably being hot and eating people, mermaid MO. But at least she knows Fairfax. "Yeahhhh, I'm supposed to be servicing the siren, but obviously it's not working if you're here," he comments, rubbing at his lucky 'beard,' which hasn't been so lucky as of late. She had the look of an intent woman, hanging on to his every word, and he feels a prickle of paranoia as he considers her and her poreless skin and perfect bohemian hair. He flips through his tattered scraps of mermaid knowledge. Time to make some stuff up. "Right, so, well I'm Fairfax's walker, so if you were thinking of eating me, maybe... can you not? I mean, I'm happy to flirt with you, but I've kind of had a bad day and don't feel like getting drowned and eaten by a beautiful woman, no offense. I just wanna sit here, really, and then I gotta fix the dumb siren."

Aptera held her tongue. What in all the depths was a walker? Did he mean to say he was her pet? How cute! It might not hurt to have a pair of land legs to run errands if she needed to…it might just end up suiting her better if she didn’t eat him. Check and mate, mate. “That’s just like her,” Aptera commented with a flourish of her hair, the way girls do when they talk about each other in a passive aggressive way. “I’m more the lover than the …eater type. Why are you having a bad day hmmm? I don’t mind to be a spot of company before you drive me away with these things.” But what’s in it for her? Who can say? She’s wily, and bound to think up some prize or another.

Hudson wonders if a mermaid can be trusted when she says she's more then lover than the eater type. Probably not. Ugh, he can't even, the kickball postseason series and now this. He sighs, all the same in the mood for some female company after such a brutal day. He'd shooed everybody else away out of pride, so in a sense this strange woman was a boon. "I mean you can sit with me if you like, but no touching." He wags a finger at her in a reproving manner. "I'm having a bad day because my kickball team just lost the world series. It's uh, it's a sport. Do you have sports? I mean besides breaking the mermaid siren. It's obviously you guys."

Aptera lounged in the waves, trying to give off the impression that she was actually harmless instead of deadly. “Is breaking the siren a…sport? Is it a sport for you to fix it? More like a chore and a hassle.” She pouted, but in that cute, spoiled girl way. “ What’s so important about moving balls around?” Her voice smoothes to a seamless melding of both her enticing song and her normal tone. Ah, the life and fluidity of being a siren-like monster. Driven off by…a siren. How ironic. Prey tasted better when it was happy, and this male humanoid was not happy. This situation was just getting worse and worse. “Touching is the fun part,” She fussed, making careful work of re-braiding her hair with a fresh piece of seaweed floating on the surface of the high tide. The claws worked through her hair with brush like precision. “ I already said I wouldn’t eat you, what’s the harm in a little fun? Had I legs, I would prove my intent but alas…” Her opal studded tail splashed a bit of water in his direction. “Everything has a price, if I can’t eat you, you should at least indulge me. Fair’s fair.”

Hudson chuckles ruefully in response to Aptera. "Yeah, a chore and hassle," he agrees, glancing the siren's way. He'd have to attend to it eventually. The melodic tenor of Aptera's voice is making him feel like she wants to hear all about his kickball woes, which maybe not the reality. "Nothing important, well actually important, but it's... a way in which men form tribes among themselves and establish dominance," he tells her, trying to dumb down sports leagues into their most basic element. Surely she could understand that. He watches her fingers pick through her hair, somewhat mesmerized by how absently she does it all, though the spell is broken by the sea water she tosses at him. She had been talking to him... He had really spaced out there! He has the sensation of everything being a series of snapshots, strung together, every moment at a great distance from the last. She's looking at him expectantly, and he, with difficulty, recalls her last words to him. "Aren't I indulging you by telling you that you're beautiful and letting you sit here illegally? Truce, woman," he tells her, falling back onto his elbows. He lets his gaze pass over her, and he shakes his head. "Always with the mermaids," he sighs.

Aptera gives Hudson a knowing grin. The explanation of sports makes sense, in some primitive and dumb way. "Sounds like there should be a side line of females for them to mate with at the ending." She laughs, her own joke striking a chord with her. Is it rude to laugh at your own jokes? No way. Not when you are use to people paying close attention to the fact that you -are- talking, as opposed to what you are saying. "Where is your prize for your sport? Do you not get one because you were not the most dominate?" It was a classic jerk move; insult, then compliment. "I'm a much better prize," she purrs, the ends of her eyelashes flicking off small droplets of salt water. Her gaze holds him heavily while she hums almost soundlessly, in the hopes of drawing him closer. "I'm more floating here, which makes it entirely legal. I'm really against getting dry sand in my scales. Talk about a nightmare." Mermaids? What was wrong with Mermaids? "Considering your luck so far, it doesn't sound like Mermaids have necessarily been a bad thing for you, Handsome...? Do you have a name to go with all those opinions?"

Hudson's mouth twitches into the ghost of a smile. "It's a trophy, a uh... shiny carved rock basically, that signifies your tribe is the most dominant, and no, we didn't get one," he tells her, canting his head to look at her. He - and every other warm blooded guy, he thinks - does so enjoy looking at mermaids. He isn't drawn closer by her humming, if only because he's in a rather lazy state of mind, after smoking up on the beach as he had. He thinks about how it might be nice - and maybe not crossing the line (if the line were drawn by men, not their girlfriends) - to have a cuddle with a slippery (half)woman, but ultimately he can't be arsed to move. "Hudson," he tells her. He reaches for a small handful of sand and flicks it weakly in her direction. "Fairfax says it like Hudssssson," he imitates her for Aptera's benefit. "And you're trying to get me in trouble. It's OK. It's kind of making my day."

Aptera grinned. The mixture of her singing and his own indulgence was lowering his guard. Even if she didn’t get her claws (Literal, not figurative) in him today, the sirens would always break again…and he’d always come back to fix them…until he wasn’t around to do it anymore. Humans were so silly. They liked to tease themselves with the idea of death before going through with it. One day, she thought with a glistening smile. “Handsome is very close,” she winked, “but Hudson might be better.” She mimicked Hudson’s Fairfax impression and laughed, the sound akin to soft bells in his ears. “Company is better than rocks, no matter how shiny. Trinkets oft aren’t worth their own weight.” The sand is dodged while she waggles a finger in faux disapproval. “If you get sand on me, this pleasant exchange is over and I’ll summon your handler.” She acts out the conversation she would have with one Ms. Fairfax, whom she had never met. “Fair, darling, your human pet is a rascal, got sand all over my tail.” The click of her tongue between her lips draws a smile. “We might as well eat him now.” At the end of the scene, she dives a small distance out and brings back a few more waves to cast at him. “You should be glad I’m mermaid, and not Kraken. At least I’m pretty to look at.” A pretend shudder strikes her spine, twisting her upside down to lie on top of the waves, looking at him “above” her. “I would never try. I either would or would not. So, am I getting you in trouble yet or not? Wait. I have an idea.” What a cheap ploy, she thought, diving down into the denser ocean floor to find a pleasantly shaped orb of coral. The ball breaches the surface, much like a kick ball (to her ignorance) and she presents it to Hudson like the shiny carved rock he’s clearly craving. “Tada!” she says with a flare.

Hudson slings Aptera a lazy smile of sorts. There's something in the way she says his name that boils his blood, and he knows that this is just biology of men responding to mermaids and that he should get off his arse and go inside, but this is the first non-terrible thing that's happened today, even if it is kind of terrible in its own right. "I feel like you saying my name repeatedly like that is somehow crossing the line, for Sven's sake, stop it woman," he tells her, in the moment meaning it. Erotic name repetition: CEASE AND DESIST. Her little play with Fairfax is utterly enchanting, and he makes a suggestion for her when she returns to splash him. "At the end, you and Fairfax kiss, yes? 'We don't need men, we have each other.'" He offers her another one of his lazy smiles in response to her querying whether she's getting him in trouble. "I don't think you're getting me in trouble, but I think my girlfriend - er, mate - might think so," he says, taking the coral 'ball' from Aptera and putting on the pretense of inspecting it. "Is this my trophy?" he asks her.

Aptera tries to imagine kissing an imaginary female mermaid then shrugs. "Who knows? We're both stunning." That was just the fact of the matter. Mermaids = beautiful. Done and done. "You are getting really bossy now. 'Don't eat me, make out with other mermaids, stop saying my name.' Next it will be, 'You're breathing too loud, stop being so beautiful, release my insides.' So demanding." She rolls into the shallows, letting her elbows plant down in the grainy sand. Everything felt better when it was just a little damp. "And yes. Sorry about your sport ball and lack of shiny rocks. Since you paused in repairing the siren, I will grant you this trophy on behalf of all the mermaids who have not eaten any people today. Which, as far as I know, would be me. And...Maybe Fairfax. Depending." This human has a female? How classic! "Your mate wouldn't approve of me saying your name? Or is it the speaking portion that's trouble? Maybe it's the way I'm looking at you...Hmm..I see how this can be troublesome." Her shaking head shifts her braid back into view over her shoulder, " Let's just call it even then, Handsome. And if Fairfax doesn't remember me, remind her I'm the prettier on." Her elbows drop, her palms digging into the pebbly shore to try another shoreline with less sirens and more gullible humans. This one was being a tease of an entrée.

Hudson rolls his mermaid trophy between his hands, feeling the strange porous texture of it. He rolls his eyes in response to Aptera's teasing. "I think she'd have a vague malaise about a half-naked woman breathing my name in an erotic way on a beach, yes," he tells her. "I mean I liked it, but," he puts a finger to his mouth, and shhhhs in the universal sign for secrecy. She seems to be heading her way, and he winks to her as she goes. "Sounds like a great idea," he agrees, although it's doubtful he actually thinks so. He waves to see her off. "See you around, or maybe not, since once I'm less stoned I'm gonna fix this dumb thing. Stay outta trouble!"

Aptera paused just long enough to give him a cocked grin that told him she would do no such thing. Thank goodness he couldn't see her teeth from this distance. "Like that'll happen." she calls, before disappearing into the murky ocean waves, the flip of her tail purposely showering Hudson in sea spray. A little brining for her future dining. Everything tasted better with a little salt rubbed into the wounds.