Fish-Women Who: Alejandro and Melia When: Before dawn Where: Redleaf Lake
Melia was thrilled - two humans to eat and that only on her first day! Though she knew she had to be careful, because too many missing humans and the human authorities would perhaps start to look, and this town already seemed interesting, so she didn't want to leave. Which meant she'd have to curtail her human-hunting in the vicinity, at least for a little while. She didn't really mind the swim to farther hunting grounds - variety was good for her, and it wasn't really all that long a trip. She enjoyed the exercise.
Speaking of exercise, she was busy exploring the dimensions of her new temporary home. The lake was large and deep, which suited her needs, with rich beds of kelp along the bottom, interesting rock formations to explore, and plenty of fish to sustain herself. She'd just breakfasted on the arm of the woman she'd killed and stowed the rest, along with the body of the man she'd acquired yesterday, securely on the bottom of the lake. She looked up (and up) at the dark barrier that separated her from air, just taking on a hint of silver as the dawn grew closer. In a fit of whimsy, she took off with powerful strokes of her tail, rocketing up towards the surface until she broke it, head, shoulders, tail, and more. Arching gracefully at the height of her leap, she fell headfirst back down and dove back into the water with only the tiniest of splashes.
Alejandro was less thrilled, but at least today his flight thus far hadn't been interrupted by anything or anyone that might have made it more stressful and less relaxing. Because he definitely wanted some relaxing, at this point. Weekend was getting closer, and his thoughts were already turning to where he planned to fly to Friday night, who he planned to kill there, and he was fighting between the lingering guilt that the thought excited him, self-loathing that he was even considering indulging in it, and anticipation.
A flight, at least for the moment, was clearing his head. He shot over town, past the highway, and over the lake, twisting and looping around and high speeds that whipped his hair back, leaving it a tangled mess that he'd get frustrated with later but ignored for now, and occasionally taking a glance at the ground. Or, in this case, the water.
... that was a fucking big fish, that just dove under.
Melia was laughing to herself as she plunged underwater, curling gracefully out of her dive until she was flat on her back, facing up at the water again. She saw something swoop overhead and frowned, surfacing to catch a better glimpse before ducking down a little lower, making sure she didn't stick out of the water too far. That... seemed like an unusually large bird. Ducking underwater, once again on her back, she took off, pacing the thing from a few feet beneath the surface. In fact... it was a little oddly shaped for a bird. Curiosity roused, Melia continued to follow.
That was a huge fish. If it was even a fish. These days, you never really knew. Straightening out, focusing below him in curiosity of his own rather than planning himself another complicated flight path up above, Alejandro dipped down, caught wind in his wings, and slowed down enough to glide about ten feet above the water of the lake. Where did it go? He could see... something down there, a vague, large shape under the water, but he couldn't make it out very well. After all, it was dark, in the twilight before the dawn, and there was water between them. It did, however, seem to be matching him, or he was somehow matching it; he wasn't sure which.
Melia cursed the watery barrier that kept her from getting a truly clear look at what was flying above. It was either a very large, strangely-shaped bird, or it was a man with wings. And since men didn't have wings (or at least, none of the ones she'd met did), that left strange bird. Melia arched suddenly and swam deeper in a blinding flash of speed, reaching sufficient depth in an instant. She turned and glanced up to spot the bird-thing for a split second before she was racing for the surface again, erupting from the lake in a repeat of her earlier jump. The difference was that this time, she'd aimed for the large bird, clawed hands outstretched in an attempt to grab it before she fell.
It was a lucky thing Alejandro was quick in the air. Hell, if he'd been grounded, or god forbid in the water, he'd probably be in trouble, but on the wing he was agile and supernaturally fast. He hovered stupidly, squinting down into the depths of the lake as the fish-thing dove further down, disappearing from sight. If he'd given up on it coming back, or had doecided he didn't really care, he'd probably be fish-meat, but he was still hovering, a pretty target, when it surged back towards the surface. He got one glimpse of clawed hands breaking through the waves, and that was all he needed to realize he'd better move. "Holy shit!" he exclaimed, and with a blur of powerful downbeats, he'd leapt up another fifteen feet into the air, and hopefully out of reach.
Melia turned her fall into another dive, though she quickly surfaced to regard the flying thing. Her hands had brushed a bit of what felt like cloth before it had flown out of reach, and she's rather distinctly heard it cursing. Which meant it obviously wasn't a bird, after all. Curiosity roused to new levels, she let her head break the surface as she stared up at the thing. From here... goodness. That was a man, wasn't it? A man with wings. How interesting.
Those claws had been sharp! Sharp enough to shear off a patch of his jeans! And had he been hallucinating, or had that been a woman with a fish tail? "What the fuck--" There was a face looking up at him from the water, all right, and he stared back down at it, torn between surprise, wonder, and anger. "What the fuck!" he repeated, this time directed at her, as he hovered out of her reach. Or what he hoped was out of her reach. "Was that you?"
The patch of torn jean floated on the surface of the lake, ignored by Melia as it was unimportant. The flying man-thing above her was far more interesting, anyway. The man bit solidified a little more when he spoke to her, and she shrugged in answer, unconcerned. "I thought you were a bird," she answered simply. She didn't apologize; no reason to, in her mind.
"Yeah, well, I thought you were a fish!" Alejandro shot back, dropping a few feet so he wasn't shouting too loudly just to hold a conversation. He doubted she could make a leap like that again, unless she dove first. Right? Right. "That doesn't mean I was gonna attack you! You usually go around randomly trying to kill things?" Of all the hypocritical things to say. Though at least he stuck to people, not people he thought were birds.
"A fish," Melia scoffed, irritated. "Are bird-men like you always so excitable?" she asked. "I wasn't trying to kill you." Yet. "I was trying to catch you. I wanted to see what you were. You can come closer, you know. I'm not going to hurt you." As long as he proved to be a curiosity, at least. She made no guarantees for the future.
"I didn't know you weren't gonna hurt me," Alejandro snorted, but he did loft a few more feet downwards, bobbing up and down a little in the air in time with his wing-beats. "I saw a giant fish who happened to have claws launching out of the water at me. To me? That kinda screams 'danger'. So what... are you? Exactly?" He was still trying to put the fish tail together with the woman's head and clawed hands. Were mermaids real?
"Fish don't have arms," Melia said disdainfully, holding hers out rather gracefully as if to make a point. "Or humanoid torsos." She held back a snort, but just barely. Honestly, who didn't know of the merfolk? Of a certainty, they'd been only legend before that idiot pod had decided to make their presence known with the rest of the creatures who'd stepped into the light, but Melia had been ashore enough to know that mermaids permeated human culture. Moron humans strapped on fake tails and pretended to be her kind, for the love of little fishes. "What do you think I am? And what are you?" She hadn't heard of bird-men before, though that didn't mean they didn't exist. Obviously.
"Yeah, well, when you were launching yourself at me, I was kinda not as concerned with the arms and torso bit," Alejandro replied snidely. "But now that I can kinda see you, I'm going to guess mermaid. Even though I didn't know they existed outside Disney movies or somewhat bloody fairy tales." Because yeah, he knew both. He left it at that for the moment, letting her reply to what he thought she was before he came up with anything about what he was. She obviously didn't know the vampire houses, and she apparently didn't know about angels, either, or she would've guessed that. He didn't know which to go with as an explanation: the truth, or the much prettier lie.
"We sent a representative when the rest of the creatures showed themselves." Melia sniffed, plainly showing her opinion about that. "It isn't my fault you don't pay attention. Why do bird-men continue to hide?" As she spoke, she started humming softly, wrapping her voice around him to encourage honesty. She couldn't say what prompted her to do so, just that he was doing a lot of talking about her and not a lot about him. Which she couldn't say she blamed him, but she was curious. "What are you called? Your species."
Why she was humming, he had no idea, but it made him frown. It didn't affect him as she expected, though, and he finally went with the prettier lie after a moment of eying her warily while he considered. "We hide so we don't get swamped with people wanting our help," he said shortly, because he knew, at least, that angels had supposedly disappeared, and no one knew why. "I'm an angel."
He'd answered her questions, but he didn't have the sort of glazed look to his eyes that humans so often got when she worked her compulsion on them. Perhaps his kind just reacted differently. She wondered if it had had any effect at all. "An angel," she echoed, doubt coloring her tone. "Where is your sword of flames, then?" There were two kinds of angels, in her experience (books, mostly, human books she'd seen during her expeditions on land) - the human-looking ones with flaming swords and vengeful expressions, and the tiny, chubby ones who looked like children. Melia thought she might like to taste one of those, if she could ever find one.
Alejandro snorted, expression disdainful. "Don't believe everything you hear. We don't have flaming swords." He kind of doubted that they would, for real, anyway. That was just kind of ridiculous, he thought. Flaming swords. Yeah, right. "Humans make up shit all the time, I'm sure you know that by now."
"Then prove it," Melia challenged. "Do something... angelic." What that would be, she didn't know. "Aren't angels supposed to be holy?" Human religion - another topic she didn't understand. Putting one's faith in an intangible supposed deity, the requirement to take the whole fantastical story on faith without proof. Stupid.
"What, having wings isn't good enough for you?" Alejandro demanded archly. "You need more proof?" He rolled his eyes. "Come on. You're worse than humans with their made-up stories." What could he do? He could blast her mind with a mental command, he supposed, or take off in flight so fast he was hard to see.
"How do I know wings make you an angel instead of a bird-man?" Melia asked, quite logically if you asked her. "They don't usually look so pale, either." She shrugged. "Whatever." She'd learned that word the other day, it was fantastic. So expressive. "Why are you flying out here?"
"Because there's no such thing as bird-men?" Alejandro suggested. But since she had so helpfully asked another question, he focused on that rather than arguing. "I'm flying out here because I like to fly," he answered with a shrug that made him bob a bit more than usual on that wingbeat, and he took a quick turn and wheel about to regain some lost height and settle himself on a new air current. "And if I fly too close to home, you know, people I know see me and it gets shitty."
"How do you know?" Melia countered. "You didn't know about mermaids, either." She reclined slightly, perfectly at home in the water (as she should be), and watched him make his adjustments in the air. "Why do you care if people see you? Don't people you know also know you're an angel? And if they don't, why don't you want them to know? How do they not notice the wings?" That would be like her friends coming to visit her in the lake and completely missing her tail.
"I can make the wings disappear when I'm not using them," Alejandro answered, giving her a funny look. "I mean, how many people do you see walkin' around with wings? Not too fucking many. As in, none. We lie low, that's safer. But I like to fly, so I fly sometimes." Every night. "Besides, I don't really know anybody. Not well enough to share this with." As if he'd trust anyone to know he was undead and vicious. Yeah, right.
"How many people do I see walking around at all?" Melia countered, raising an eyebrow at him. He didn't know she could take legs and walk as a human, and it was fun to needle him a little bit. "You know me," she pointed out. "And you shared it with me. Why would your friends care? Are angels hunted for some special reason?" She wondered what angels tasted like. Most probably they were delicious, like plump little babies were.
"Shared with you on accident, bella," Alejandro told her with a smirk. "You caught me, after all. And you don't seem the type to pester me for magic or blessings or whatever, want me to fix anything for you." He hoped. She did seem pretty blunt and self-sufficient, confident. Even if she was argumentative and annoying, at least he could respect the confidence. "So while demons might hunt us, sure, mostly it's safer to lay low unless you wanna be asked to do everything." He was totally shitting her, because he had no idea what an angel's life would be like. If they even fucking existed.
"Nothing's wrong with me," Melia said, shrugging. "There's nothing for you to fix." Her head tilted to the side, an expression of almost childlike curiosity. "What is 'bella'?" she asked, skipping over demons. She'd heard of them, and they didn't sound so tough to her. It would be interesting to find one, she wanted to know which of them would win in a fight. An unfair fight, of course, because since when did Melia ever fight fair?
Yeah, he'd gauged her right. Kind of. The kind to handle her own shit, at least. He liked that kind of woman-- though he definitely wasn't thinking of fish women with claws and tails and faintly blue skin as "that kind of woman". Not at this point, anyway. Besides, he still had to call Jovie, and figure out how the fuck to get around the "cold as death" issue. He caught another breeze and circled again; hovering was goddamn tiring, sometimes. "Bella," he repeated, clearly. "It means 'beautiful' in Spanish." Even if he wasn't thinking about fish-women as "that kind of woman", he didn't mind giving her a little flattery.
Right on cue, Melia preened. It was a common compliment, because she was beautiful, but it was nice to hear it from the bird-man all the same. "You can come in the water," she invited, interpreting his occasional circling as fidgeting. "I won't hurt you. Nothing in the lake will." There wasn't anything else in the lake that could hurt him save the water itself, were he to drown, but even that was impossible when one swam on a mermaid's assurances. Though there was also no guarantee how long said assurances would last, but she left that unspoken, of course.
"Maybe another time," Alejandro said with a bit of a grin. "Waterlogged feathers are shitty to deal with, and putting these puppies away takes a while." Putting them away wet would take even longer, and be uncomfortable, besides.
Not to mention he realized that he'd caught her blue-tinged skin only because dawn was rapidly approaching. He glanced in the direction of the sun, saw pink and gold creeping across the horizon, and made a face. "'Sides, I gotta get home soon. Uh, work, and shit. Are you here often at night?" Because hey, he wouldn't mind swimming with a mermaid sometime, if she promised him she would keep her claws to herself.
"Usually," Melia said, wondering at the face. Perhaps bird-men didn't like sunlight? "I live here. For now." Until she got bored and moved on to wider waters - but between dead humans she didn't have to kill herself and bird-men and who knew what else lurked in this human town, she had a feeling she'd be staying a while. "You can come back and visit me another time. We'll swim then."
He flashed her a grin, fangs and all, but it was very brief. "We'll do that," he agreed, then started angling his wingbeats higher to gain altitude, so he could find a better updraft and veer away. Fish-women. Mermaids. What a strange morning.