Eye Sea You

Malloki Tuwile

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Darkness… toxic air… the faint pulse of magic which kept him alive… these were the things the Dullahan knew for far too long. The head trapped within the enchanted golden box had long resigned itself to an eternal slumber. The pain of suffication became the norm, the pain of starvation and the pain of dried lips, a tongue like chalk, and cracked eyes long since dried had all become normal to the man as well.

At first he had wished for freedom. The wish for death was next, but with unknown time passing that too faded. It would seem that after some time, the human mind would grow bored of praying for an end. What came next was perhaps the worst phase of all. Crushing, agonizing, endless…. Boredom.

Dullahan was absolutely, undeniably, incurably bored every waking moment of his agonizing life. Once upon a time he would simply count as high as he could, but somewhere in the millions he had actually fallen asleep despite the pain he suffered. Rare was such an occurrence, and even when it came it was brief and unsatisfying. At one point he had attempted to erode the golden plating by licking the nearest wall, though it only resulted in an aching muscle that felt close to crumbling to dust already.

“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty…

“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty one…

“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five thousand, nine hundred thirty two…

“Nine hundred twenty one million, four hundred fifty five --the HELL?!”

The box had shifted, slamming the Dullahan’s face into a gold plated surface. The shift was violent enough that the prisoner immediately knew this was not the usual underwater current pushing the box along the seafloor. Not to mention, that occurrence had stopped long ago, supposedly when it had caught on something, or found itself buried. Something else had moved the box.

Sure enough the jolt came again. Once more is all it took before the gold-lined prison felt as if it were drifting along, swaying as it moved in one direction or the other. Dullahan could only assume up, but his sense of direction had long since vanished in his pitch black cage. From through the thick barriers he could hear nothing of the outside world.

At least, until he could. The wooshing of gentle water caressing the box’s stone exterior had left its captive deaf to the sound, but when it was gone the Dullahan could hear his ears ringing. The sound of silence was oppressing, but something eventually broke through. Muffled voices were just barely audible outside the enclosure. Someone had discovered the box!

Safe! I’m saved! Thank the gods, I’m SAVED! The first reaction was an overwhelming sense of joy. This was quickly squashed when he realized two factors. The first; it was this box that kept the disembodied head alive. The second; who was to say his saviors would not immediately end the macabre creature’s life on sight?

CLANG! The reverberating noise brought a new wave of pain to the Dullahan’s ears. Clearly, suffering as long as he did had not render him immune to pain one bit. CLANG! A hiss escaped the severed head - the first sound he had made in ages.

CRACK! The lock fell onto something that sounded vaguely wooden. When the lid of his prison slowly opened, the wave of fresh air almost did more to suffocate the Dullahan than the lack of breathable air. The smell of salt water and shadows dancing above backlit by the blinding sun brought an instant pounding headache as his long since unused senses were overloaded.

When his vision cleared, he saw the horrified wide eyes of a young woman. Sea-green hair, large eyes nearly pitch black, gills like cuts along her neck and webbed fingers trembling as they held open the heavy lid.

Ancient lips, chapped and shriveled, uttered Dullahan's greatest plea. “W-water…” and then his eyes rolled up as a new form of darkness consumed him. Without the magic keeping him in stasis, the headless creature began to truly die.

* * * * *​


When Dullahan awoke, it was with a groggy sense of surprise simply at the fact that it woke up at all. When his eyes opened, the first thought was sinking disappointment. Once again, he saw only darkness. A mind already bored with hopes of freedom simply thought it had been put back in the box.

Except the smell of salt water still lingered, and his own breath was not felt heating up his prison. The odd numbness that he felt was almost foreign. When one grows accustomed to a certain breed of pain, what did the absence of it feel like? Well… like this.

His tongue felt moist and his mouth filled with saliva, his lips were still chapped but no longer crackled like shifting gravel. His lungs - metaphorically speaking - did not burn from lack of oxygen. Only his eyes still ached, and this was simply because he had opened them beneath a rough rag that sank with the weight of the cold water soaked in it. As the addled mind of the Dullahan finally processed all of this, and the lack of what it had grown used to, he hissed in pain and shut his eyes tight once again.

His slight motion and the sound were followed immediately by nearby shuffling. Someone was there. Come to think of it, just before he fainted there had been that one woman. Some sort of mermaid, though he had been unable to see if she was naught but a tail beneath the waist.

“H-hello? Is… Is s-someone th...There?” His tongue still felt clumsy. How long had he actually spoken? “I … I won’t… hurt you…”

The shuffling slowly moved closer. A small, rounded and soft pressure touched his cheek, followed almost immediately by something a bit smaller, but pretty identacle otherwise. “Is… that your … f… foot?” the plosive F sound hurt his lips immensely, far more than the scratch his pride suffered from being tested with someone’s dirty toes.

There was a long pause before he heard a reply. “Maybe…” Which of course meant yes… “What are you? Where’s your body?” Had he any experience with socializing that he could remember, Dullahan might have expected this question. “Are you a zombie?”

“Talk… later… P...Painf….Hurts a lot…” It was his lips that ached the most. The moist towel over his eyes helped sooth their burn, but he could feel the sun beat down on his face. The skin nigh mummified did not enjoy the baking sunlight. Only the high humidity actually made it somewhat tolerable.

The unseen woman shuffled closer to the point he could feel the coolness of her shadow cast over him. The new wave of cold that washed over Dullahan came as a brisk shock. For a moment, he felt as if he were drowning as a wave of water seemed to slowly splash over his face. After a brief moment of sputtering and blowing his nose, he realized the pain in his lips felt significantly less.

“Now?”

…. “Yea, I suppose that works.” Dullahan knew immediately that water was not normal. Either she had some sort of magical substance, or she was magical herself. Either way, she had questions. It was in the hope she would not immediately dispose of him once answered that he gave a brief but precise explination;

“I’m Dullahan… a headless corporeal spirit-being.” He answered the first question without using what he had come to know as ‘local folklore’ terms, or mixing in too much of his family history. “I don’t have a body… I sort of summon one, via magic.” She had shown a supernatural power to heal, so he felt she would more easily understand that Poof, Magic! was a thing.

Again, more silence as the woman apparently considered the words. When she spoke, it came with a light pat on the disembodied head’s forehead. “Zalenka. Sea-Witch.” Apparently the head pat was in place of a handshake. “You evil?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Probably not.”

“Then yes… by my liniage, you would call me a creature of evil.”

The quick back and forth ended with a pause. Apparently, this Zalenka woman was considering the head’s choice of words. “But not you?”

“I don’t think of myself as evil,” Dullahan responded simply and earnestly.

So loose were the Dullahan’s words. More consideration and more silence came before the sea-witch had collected her thoughts. “Do you kill people? I felt your eyes… it was like being stared down by the kraken itself.”

Now it was the Dullahan’s turn to pause. The disembodied head pursed his lips as he contemplate how to best answer. “Once… when someone tried to destroy my head… I have my father’s eyes, I can’t help it. They are why I had to defend myself, and why I was imprisoned in that box.”

“So you’ve killed in self defense?”

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“No.”

The conversation came to an end abruptly. The sound of shuffling and the burning sun announced his company had walked off. He was left there to simply listen to the waves in the distance, stare into the darkness of the back of his eyelids, and wait for who knows how long.

Not too long, as he heard the woman’s voice in the distance. “Can you eat?”

Food? Had he a stomach it would have growled. “No meat…. Except fish and eggs.” Those were the only two he had found to lack the taste of death. The answer was apparently accepted considering the silence once again fell.

Food…. Water… Fresh air… The head bit his tongue just to remind itself that it was still alive and awake. It was not in an overwhelming sense of joy. He was not just happy to be free, he was questioning his sanity. At this point he was repeating a mantra in his head. He had found a new hope.

Please don’t let this be a psychotic breakdown.
 

Malloki Tuwile

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It felt like he had merely taken a breath before the woman had returned. The shuffling sounds followed by a gentle nudge earned a response; “What are you doing now?”

“Oh! Uh… I was just checking if you were alive!” She responded awkwardly.

A small frown twisted the man’s recently healed lips. “We were just talking a moment ago. I doubt I would keel over just because you left me in the sun for a few seconds.”

“That…” There was hesitation in her voice. “That was two hours ago…”

“Oh…”

“Yea…”

The awkward silence that followed was perhaps more painful than living in the box. “So… can you move me out of the sun?” Having lived in total darkness for who-knows-how-long, he worried of burning beneath the unforgiving light.

There was a shuffle of bare feet across wood as the sea-witch moved closer, but again there was that damnable hesitation. “Um… How do I…?”

Oh right. He was a severed head and this woman had no idea how to handle such a thing emotionally, much less physically. “You can use two hands, or you can hold me up by my hair, like a lantern. That’s how I hold it when I have a body.”

“Right… Do you still need the cloth? If I hold your head like… like you do…”

“Cloth?”

“The thing on your eyes.”

“Ohh…. right… No, I think it can come off.”

Having grown used to eternal darkness, fainting to the first douse of sunlight, and then awakening back in darkness, he had almost thought the flash of light was a dream. When the cloth was removed it felt like a whole new world had opened up.

The evening sky was so broad and bright his head spun. When the hand took a bundle of his long, black stresses and lifted the sensation doubled. Motion was just as forgotten it would seem. Of course, it had nothing in its stomach to evacuate so for the moment all was well.

“This is weird…” The seawitch stated with a cringe in her very voice. “Hey, d-don’t look at me!”

The Dullahan had nearly forgotten the power of his gaze but it all washed back in an instant. Immediately his eyes averted to stare at anything else. In the small glance over of the woman, he had deduced a few things. First; she was not the mermaid of legends. Her fingers and toes were webbed and various fins sprouted from her limbs to aid in swimming, but she definitely had legs instead of a single tail. Her hair was not seaweed either, though it held a tinge of green in the long curly locks.

With his gaze now turned elsewhere, he came to realize they were nestled on a very large looking ship. They were on a higher tier of what seemed to be a large floating village upon a calm sea, perhaps why the waves felt nearly nonexistant. He could see in the distance a few people were milling about on other tiers built like haphazard towers, though he quickly turned eyes onto less living things. Even a glance had the unknowingly watched victims peer their direction.

“Sorry…” He sincerely murmured.

Passing through a doorway with no actual door, he found the interior of this sea-witch’s home to be rather simple. Wooden all over, with a clay cook stove lit by some ethereal green fire with no fuel in sight. Atop it was some weird metal device that whistled.

“You’re fine, I just… I don’t like your eyes.”

“Understandable…”

“You can’t turn them off?”

“Can you turn yours off?” That stopped the line of questioning quite swiftly. “You can sit me on wherever, my neck doesn’t bleed or anything. It’s about as hygeinic as your hands.”

The sudden motion had the room spinning as the sea-witch took a peak under the proverbial hood. All she saw was a flat black surface weakly emitting some sort of shadow-like mist. “Huh. I’ll be darned.” Still, she placed a smooth cloth beneath Dullahan upon the table. Whether it was for his comfort or to preserve her own furniture was questionable.

“So, uh… you’re… vegetarian?”

“Vegewhat?”

“You don’t eat meat.”

“I don’t eat what tastes like death. So far, fish and eggs are things that I can tolerate.” Though his gaze was averted to the space just beyond her head, he could see the way her expression changed. It was somewhere between curious, grim and disgusted.

“It’s very bitter and sour, with a texture like sand on the tongue.” There was a solemn nod as clearly he had guessed her next question. “There are hints of other flavors, depending on the creature’s life, death and its soul… I once had beef from a cow that was raised as a family pet. It was coddled like a family pet, fed treats and was played with and loved. It was killed in its old age to end suffering. The flavor of its life would be the finest thing you could imagine… but adding salt to stone makes it no more edible than any other stone.”

The words spilled from him almost without his control. The ability to talk - no, the ability to be heard was simply a gift. “Fish, though… I don’t taste death from fish. Or from unfertilized eggs. Or from insects, but their taste normally isn’t all that wonderful.” The topic of tasting death was ended on a lighthearted joke complete with a disarming smile of cracked lips.

Zelenka slowly nodded at the rambling and even replied with a smile to his touch of humor. “I see. I’m not one for insects either, but you can probably guess fish is our life out here. Fish and whatever plantlife we can grow on the ocean or harvest from beneath it.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It would be if you had to eat it your whole life. Spice is the variety of life, you know? And we don’t even have much of that.”

There was a moment where he just had to chuckle. Immediately a flush passed through the tanned flesh of the sea-witch’s cheeks. “But I guess I can’t complain. Some people clearly have it worse.”

“So… May we have dinner?”

The flush immediately deepened as she realized why she had brought the severed head into her home in the first place. The chair she sat on nearly toppled to the floor as Zelenka bolted to her feat and rushed off to the partially seperated kitchen area. Not a word was uttered as she brought the plates to the table. They had already been prepared, the conversation simply stole her attention from the task at hand.

Another problem quickly arose… One that had both of them staring at the plate in front of Dullahan awkwardly.

The Dullahan had no hands.

“Well…”

“Yea….” Dullahan replied with a sigh.

“You said you can summon a body, right?”

“Only in the dark.”

“Ahh…” In a room bathed in natural sunlight from multiple windows and sunroofs, there was no darkness to be found. With no means to summon a body and the plate of filleted fish resting right in from him.

“You know… for a creature with eyes of death, you are hopelessly pathetic…” The Dullahan’s eyes could not help the instinctive glance to the sea-witch’s face. Though she cringed, she did not immediately recoil from the sensation. “Case and point.”

“I like to think of it as childishly endearing… Now, we can sit here awkwardly, or you could help me with dinner and once I summon my body I can pay you back.”

The sea-witch muttered something under her breath as she reached across the table. She began to cut up the fillet and feed the helpless head, confident her muttered words had been unheard.

Except that the Dullahan’s ears were still quite acute to even the slightest sound, and the relative silence of ocean living had made Zelenka word’s clear as day.

‘I know something you can do without a body,’ she had said.

Dear gods, she’s a pervert!
 

Malloki Tuwile

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Dinner was a memory that the Dullahan would only hope he could forget. At first the exchanges were awkward glances as Zalenka cautiously fed the severed head at her table. Her awkwardness eventually faded to a tenderness and, combined with her previous muttered words, had the helpless man seven shades of uncomfortable.

While Zalenka was not harsh on the eyes with her tanned skin, modest chest and wide hips, the sea-green hair, gills, pitch black eyes and various webbed digits were the start of something off-putting. Moreover, it was this woman’s smell. While the smell of the ocean was not entirely bad, this woman smelled of low tide.

It was not her fault, he imagined. Having seen a majority of the floating village, he was willing to bet that most of the inhabitants smelled of the sea, seeing as it was the only water for miles around to bathe in. Though he had little room to talk, having been trapped in a box surrounded by years-old bad breath probably had the man wreaking of his last meal some unknown time ago.

Still, the food was an absolute dream. It could have been dropped into a pig pen and rolled into a mudpie and the Dullahan would have still consumed it, but this was a well prepared fillet coupled with an oddly tough but very filling salad-like side. He imagined this being some sort of seaweed or kelp, but he had no experience with sea-vegetation to pin it down. Though he had no literal stomach, he felt the full sensation and politely denied anymore.

The sea-witch was happy to return to her own meal with a grin far too chipper. She had grown to enjoy feeding the helpless head, while the Dullahan in question still felt increasingly uncomfortable. Mainly, he questioned this woman’s motives. Maybe he should not have revealed how innocent he was so soon, having her caution was a bit less unnerving than questioning what thoughts ran through her head.

When Zalenka finished her own meal, she let out a hearty sigh. Though they ate in silence, she was quick to break it once dinner had been properly savored. “So… it’ll be night soon. What all do you need to summon your body?”

“A human sacrifice and three heads of baby lambs.” The response was quick… but even quicker was the small grin that followed. “I jest. I just need space. It’s just meditation and chanting.” The true explanation brought relief to the tanned sea-witch’s face, who had instantly stiffened under the joke.

“Oh… I thought it would require more uh… costly reagents…” She mused in a quiet, thoughtful tone.

“Well, it requires a combination of darkness, the breath of life and a soul to conjure a body normally by the ritual, but since it’s just an extension of mine… I supply all but the darkness.” In reality, the ritual was pretty straight forward.

“So what should we do till then?” Zalenka’s gaze drifted to one of her numerous windows. With Dullahan’s back to the sunset, he could not gauge the time till nightfall, but apparently Zalenka had a handle on timing. “We have about an hour or so until the sun’s fully set.”

“I don’t know… Enjoy the fresh air?” While Zalenka giggled at first, her face immediately fell into a frown. She realized only a moment too late that this was not a joke. Dullahan had been sufficating in his prison for who-knows-how-long.

After a brief pause to think up something a fair bit more entertaining, the sea-witch wordlessly dashed into what the disembodied head could only assume was her bedroom. From the size of her home, it was probably the only other room in the sea-borne shack. When she returned, she held what looked to be a wicker basket with arm straps. “I could carry you around town!”

…… “Why?”

Her black-dominated eyes turned from the head, to the basket… then to the door. The box was no doubt still sitting on the wooden stoop just beyond. “Right… Maybe we should wait.” She was full of belated realizations today. The head had just escaped one small enclosed space. There was no doubt he wanted to avoid another. A sigh escaped her dark lips as she tossed the basket haphazardly back into the other room. It landed with a light rustling of shifting … whatever it was made of.

“We could watch the sunset together?” She asked tentatively. The woman was ill equipped to handle boredom. Normally she would paruse the sea-village she lived in to cure it, but leaving the head alone did not seem right.

Again, this brought to question the woman’s motives. Was this woman actually trying to bond with the bodiless Dullahan? “I honestly think I’d rather just rest. I don’t think I’ve really been able to sleep in a long time.” While no doubt an excuse to avoid furthering a nonexistant relationship, the Dullahan’s words were no white lie. The man felt as if he could hibernate for years now that he was well fed, hydrated and no longer surrounded by a golden prison.

“Would you like to use my bed?” Wait, no, backup! Before he could figure out a proper response, he could feel the webbed hand take up his hair and lift. Motion no longer caused the world to swim, but as he was carried into the second room he immediately regretted his decision.

All complaints were lost the moment he felt the soft pillow pressed against his cheek. ‘No… don’t fall asl……’ The world went black yet again. This time, the drifting into unconsciousness was far more peaceful. Even if it was an instant dip into unconsciousness, the lacking world of pain coupled with the fullness of a non-existant stomach made this particular sleep the true highlight of the Dullahan’s newfound freedom.

And so he dreamed.

* * * * *​

Once again the head awoke with a sense of drowziness. This time, he welcomed the groggy sensation with open non-existant arms. Only when the pieces of reality fit together into a comprehensible puzzle did the head realize his position had changed. He had fallen asleep on a pillow, but awoken upon two.

Eyes snapped open and instantly he was turning them to the far right, downwards. Sometime during his slumber, the man had been cradled by the sea-witch.

Well… this was awkward.

A link to the dream HERE.
 

Malloki Tuwile

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He dared not say anything. On one hand, the situation the head had found himself in was incredibly flustering. On the other, the woman's warmth and the softness was something he could not complain about. The arms wrapped around his stub of a neck, the bossom pressed against his face, the slow up and down with each breath - had he not just awoken, the Dullahan may have been lulled right back to sleep. He could hardly remember the last time he had felt such warmth.

No. That was not quite true. Inklings of his dream came to the surface of his mind. His last warm embrace was one not returned. It was vague, but he remembered feeling the warmth sap from his mother a lifetime ago. He stared at the wall his face had been pointed at as he willingly dredged up the memory. It was sad, but not entirely. Kind words from his parents, and their happiness gave the dream a bittersweet flavor. It was not the worst way to see off one's parents. After all, these things happened all the time to humans and they survived.

While his current embrace came from a woman smelling distinctly of the bad part of ocean dwelling, there was somewhere in the back of his mind where he was thankful for the warm embrace. Her motives may be in question, but she had done so much to help that he could not fault her. This Zalenka had a good soul. Perhaps perverse, but not a perversion of nature - no matter her aquatic mutations. The sea-witch was his savior, and he would have to find a way to make it up to her. Dullahan would like to do without catering to her supposedly private joke of a request, of course.

"Hmmmm.... You're finally awake." The soft voice of the sea-witch was groggy yet filled with a content song. "I was starting to get worried. You must be hungry." Starved, actually. He felt like he had slept for... for...

"How, uh... how long was I out?" His eyes darted to the window of the woman's bedroom. Daylight had broken. The chance for a new body had passed in his sleep.

Zalenka slowly rolled over to place the head upright on her bed. "Two days. I spoon fed you a bit of water--"

"TWO DAYS?" Two days of solid sleep? In retrospect, it was nothing compared to the amount of sleep lost. "Why didn't you wake me on the second night?'

The tan-skinned woman slowly slid off the bed. She rested on her knees, arms crossed over the plush comforter of unknown material. "I thought about it, but you started crying.... so I just held you." Maternal instincts were a difficult thing for the Dullahan to argue. "Nightmare?"

Could he classify the dream as a nightmare? Hardly. It felt more like a memory twisted only slightly by the dreamscape. The horse in the house and the mist never played out that way in reality. It had been evening, before sundown, and his father was in a human appearance. Everything else was pretty close. "Not exactly. I guess I just needed the sleep." The words rang true, despite not being the entire truth. In reality, the Dullahan felt like a million g... g... pieces of currency.

Zalenka slowly nodded before rising to her feet. The Dullahan's eyes glanced her way for a brief moment before his ears began to burn. "ZALENKA! PANTS!" While she wore a simple poor-quality top, the woman was bare from the waist down. Dullahan's eyes slam close like iron doors. "I may be a head, but I am STILL a man!"

Meanwhile the sea-witch peers down at herself... then casually gathers her trousers and dresses a bit more appropriately. "Well SOR-RY! I didn't know you were going to wake up today!" Her tone was not accusative, but the sarcastic playfulness of a teenager prodding at a situation she had perhaps intentionally manufactured. "Anyway, what's the big deal? It's not like it's nothing you haven't seen before. Webbed toes, but still the same ol' no-no's." The joke came with a giggle... but her smile fell.

The Dullahan has not opened his eyes, but the redness across his flesh remained. "You... have seen a woman naked, right?"

"Right?" She echoed a moment after, having received a stony silence.

Suddenly, her face was flushed. "Oh great beluga!" Though he could not see her, the hasty sounds of footsteps told Dullahan that his shameless savior had ran out of the room. He was left there, trapped once again with his own head. This time, by his own free will.


Just a few seconds later, he heard Zalenka's voice once again at the bedside. "Breakfast is ready... Hey, about earlier..." Earlier? "I didn't know."

"I'm a disembodied head with eyes like death incarnate. We don't get much attention." His response was a bit more snippy than he intended. Slowly his eyes opened. "What do you mean by earl..." The room was considerably brighter than when he had shut his eyes. Had he to guess? It was already noon. "Ahh, fuck."

It would seem that he still lost track of time so easily. Long ago had his biological clock died. Time was irrelevant in that prison, and he had yet to get used to its impact now. One blink seemed to fast forward time immeasurably. "So... now that we're all clothed... breakfast sounds great."

* * * * *
Being spoon-fed some sort of small, black beads by the sea-witch was just as unnerving as the previous time. She did not seem to mind, as she held a smile the entire time. Was this woman really so quick to attach herself to a creature such as the Dullahan? The woman almost did not even flinch under his gaze. Almost. Hesitation still lingered whenever his eyes crossed her, but for some reason Zalenka powered through. Why? What was driving this sea-witch to tolerate such a creature?

"Do you have a fetish or something?" The thought suddenly burst forth into words that surprised even the Dullahan. That definitely was not how he planned to approach the question.

The woman nearly choked on her poor-man's caviar. "EXCUSE me?"

"What I meant was..." he desperately tried to correct his error. "I heard what you said about... not having a body... and the thing this morning... You're not just being nice to me. You seem to be quite... lewd..."

Though his face was warm on the topic, hers positively radiated heat. "HAH! As if! I wouldn't... I wouldn't DREAM of... doing... such things." The way the Dullahan's Piercing Eyes bore into her stated without words he saw through the lie. "FINE. Fine... Hahhh... Fine." The woman lowered her spoon to the plate along with her gaze. She could not bear to look up at the disembodied head. "In simplest terms... its mating season. Women of the tribe are in prime ovulation. Men are in short supply...."

"Your tribe has an underabundance of males?" His brow furrowed. To some, that might have been a wet dream.

"No," she offered hesitantly. "Just ones interested in me. Oh. That seems far more realistic.

That poses the question though. "So... I hate to ask, but the uh... the..."

"Smell? Pheramones." She admitted knowingly. "It doesn't do much for the humans of the tribe, but for the merfolk it's intoxicating." That was a far better answer than his original assumption.

"So you're not just flirting with me because I appeal to some kink? You're just in heat."

"Don't call it that! I'm not some animal!" But you are, the Dullahan thought. "But ... yea."

The Dullahan paused, giving his train of thought time to process all of this. Perhaps it was this altered mindset that had Zalenka so willing to help in the first place. Motherly instinct would drive her to nurturing state. At least he could only assume. Once he was healthy enough, the main drive of procreation kicked in, inspiring the whole... perverted twist. "And you thought of me as a potential candidate?"

The sea-witch covered her eyes with her hands. "I don't know! Maybe? I don't know!" The poor woman was confused...

"Well," the Dullahan tried to ease her mind. "I'm not quite looking for a relationship right now... I'm honesty--"

"Shh."

"I was just--"

"SHH!"

In a flurry of motion, Zalenka was up and grabbing the head roughly by the hair. Not that he minded, but being swiftly carried to the door to the bedroom and tossed onto the bed from afar was a bit more bothersome. The sea-witch left the head to roll to one side before vanishing into the main room. That was when he heard the faint knocking of someone at the front door. Oh, she had a guest! That made more sense. At least she had the foresight to hide the potentially unsettling head before answering.

"Good morrow, Zalenka! I smell you are in good health!"

"Desronan..." The sea-witch answered with a voice even the Dullahan recoiled from. It was a bitter sound, filled with venom. "I'm not interested."

"Ahh, but let me explain... My father would be MORE than happy to make it worth your while. A clutch for, say, all the fine clothing your closet could fit?"

"I said NO. Great baluga, why do YOU have to be the only one interested! I'd rather fuck a severed head than be just another in your stupid harem!"

It took literally all of Dullahan's willpower and more to not laugh at those words. She was apparently not wrong. Nor did she lie... This was a man in genitalia alone. Buying women, harem, wealth of a parent as a bribe? Pfft. The conversation had already turned his stomach.

"Common, darling! I still need a wife for the last day of the week!" Disgusting. "Tell you what... I'll even let you pick what day you want! Just stop resisting."

"Hey! You alright in there, honey?" Why? WHY did he have to do that? By all the spirits of the oak, WHY? His father was a murder machine, but even HE had taught him how to treat a woman. Like a knight in shining-night-forged armor, he had called out.

Suddenly, the voices in the other room had grown deathly quiet. There came the sound of a footstep, then another - lighter step as Zalenka undoubtedly barred the entrance of this Desronan. "I'm fine, darling! Just telling that aweful man where he can shove it!" She called back. Still no response from the true pervert in the room. The sea-witch then spoke in a lower voice, though she was still plainly audible to the Dullahan.

"Now listen, if you don't want my boyfriend to deal with you... scram. He's an outsider, and you know how they can be." Dullahan had no idea what that threat implied, but it seemed to have some effect on the other mer.

The man cleared his throat. "Yes, well... Far be it from me to bring the ire of a visitor to the village." The man was stopped in his tracks just by the suggestion of an outsider. Dullahan had to wonder what exactly an outsider entailed. "Of course someone like you would offer your clutch to the likes of an outsider." The words were as hushed as they were venomous. "I trust to see our guest at the midnight banquet?"

"Oh for sure!" Of course, she agreed. "Right honey?" She called out to the savior in the back room. "Banquet tonight, remember?"

"Wouldn't miss it!" And why did he respond? What in the world was he thinking?

"I. Can't. Wait." And with the faux anticipation laced with an unworded threat, the Dullahan could hear near stomping as the mer left.

Only a moment after did Zalenka reappear in the doorway. Of course, Dullahan was facing the wrong way to appropriately address her. Not that it mattered. The woman was quick to spill her guts to the back of his head. "Look, I'll help you summon a body and we'll find a way to attach your head to it... I just NEED you to show up and pretend to be my boyfriend! I can't let THAT be my only option, and being on the arm of an outsider might get him off my fins!"

"Sure."

"I know you aren't -- sure?"

"Sure." The head would have nodded, had he the facilities to do so. "I'll be your date. You literally saved my life, the least I can do is be your boyfriend."

"Pretend boyfriend..."

"By the end of the night, I don't even think you will know the difference." A wicked smirk pealed its way across the pale Dullahan's lips. "And I want to have a little talk with your would-be suitor. Face to face."

Though his voice dripped with malice, the sea-witch could not help but smile in agreement. "I'll introduce you."
 
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