Never see the sky the same way again Who: Nixie, dream!NPCs Where: Captive place and the world of dreams When: Time doesn’t matter… she’s kinda captive
Did Nixie hate her current life? Yes, more than words in any language could express. Not that it was really allowed to be called a life. No life could be lived when you spent everyday chained to a wall while a sprinkler coated you with water to keep you in your water-form. She hadn't been fully immersed in water for she didn't know how long. Telling time was difficult too. At first she had tried to do it going off of how many times the blonde hunter visited, but that didn't work too well. Sometimes she wasn't sure if she was awake for all of the visits. Other times all she wanted to do was bite down and make the woman bleed. She couldn't decide if she believed her about Charlene and what she'd done to her, but she had decided to act like she believed the worst. That way she had a place to focus every last molecule of her anger, maybe then she wouldn’t have to hear about it ever again.
If someone could be hated to death, then Nixie would have watched that hunter die on the spot. Burst into flames with water right there, impale herself on those hated needles she kept driving into her arms, fall and crack her head open and bleed out on the spot... the mermaid kept herself entertained when she was awake by imagining all of the ways she could die. The best, of course, involved her getting free and showing what happened when they were evenly matched. She hadn't tasted a human in a few weeks and was far overdue. Skinny and little or not Nixie knew that she'd delight in that meal more than she had any other. Especially if it was true... about Charlene.
Awake or asleep or anywhere in-between, that image was one that haunted the blue-eyed mermaid. Charlene stretched out somewhere with her throat slit, bled right out and dead. Her little sister. If anyone from their family deserved a death like that then it was their mother, maybe Kendra or Nixie herself. Most definitely not Charlene. She was the one who always got into human things and showed the interest in them and all they did. Nixie could still remember that day when she'd decided that she was leaving the pod. How she'd held that dead human child in her arms so tenderly. If mermaids cried then she knew that Charlene would have. Nixie hadn't understood then and still didn't fully, but she knew that things like that were why her sister could be so different. That was why she could kiss a non-merfolk and get that light in her eyes when she talked about that penguin-girl disaster that had pulled on Nixie's head.
That seemed like an event that had been a lifetime away. Everything before this meaningless, blood-draining existence was a different lifetime. Back in the sunlight and the fresh air and the flowing water with live fish and seaweed and clams... Nixie's eyes fluttered closed and her head lolled back as consciousness left her yet again just as the sound of a door opening echoed through the room.
The darkness of deep water had never bothered her. Ever since she'd been just a guppy Nixie had loved to see how deep she could go. Her mother got worried sometimes when she was still little, but once she'd reached full length she had stopped. Maybe that was more because she had more of a handful to worry about with Charlene. Nixie felt a slight pang of jealousy when she saw the attention that was reaped on her younger sister when she did the simplest things. But it wasn't as bad now as it had been when they were younger. Ever since that incident with the cave Nixie hadn't been able to hate her. It wasn't her fault that she had the personality that their mother liked more. Nixie didn't need it much anyway, she got to do more this way.
Though she did leave the depths when she heard the distant sound of the crier. Sighing, Nixie dropped what she'd found and turned to swim back. She could always return tomorrow and besides, she was a little tired. It seemed like she was always tired these days with wounds that wouldn't stop bleeding. That was a problem, it attracted the sharks and her mother didn't like that very much. Not that any remarks were made when Nixie swam in and towards the area where her family slept.
Settling in for the night, with Kendra on one side and Charlene on the other, Nixie found herself turning towards Charlene. Unsurprisingly, her sister's eyes were looking back at her. They were much darker than her own. More like her father's, she supposed. "You should be sleeping," Nixie murmured, reaching out to tug at a seashell that was coming loose. Charlene always had put too many decorations into her hair. Nixie frowned a little at that thought. Does, she corrected herself as the shell pressed into her palm. She always does wear too many shells.
"Mmmm, I am sleeping," Charlene replied with a giggle, flicking her fingers at Nixie. "You know that, Nixie. Sleeping forever up above the sea, dried out and useless without a drop of blood left." Those dark eyes were suddenly wounded and red blossomed in the water from a deep cut in her neck. Nixie recoiled in fear, finding that she couldn't go any farther because Charlene was gripping her wrist. "What kind of mermaid isn't allowed to die in the water? Guess you were right when you said that, huh? I'm not a real mermaid after all. Real mermaids don't fall for landwalkers and I did... guess it got me killed."
The shell fell out of Nixie's hand as she stared at Charlene, horrified at how her words sounded when they were tossed at her like this. "No, Charlene, you're not-"
"Dead?" It was impossible that she could speak with that cut, or that she could bleed so much... there was so much blood, clouding the water around them and yet Kendra didn't wake, nor did Nixie's vision of Charlene become obstructed in any way. How was that possible? "Oh Nixie, I'm as dead as you're going to be..." Now she was laughing but it was a strange laugh, one that didn't sound like her at all. "Dead, dead, dead and stranded as far from the water as I am. Can mermaids be ghosts? Because if they can I'll haunt you there too. You can't have a moment's peace. Don't deserve it."
Nixie came awake with a strangled sob. She strained against her bonds again, feeling them chafe at her skin as she pulled and twisted and scream. It had only been a dream but still. The feel of the ocean had been so real and the way Charlene and Kendra looked. The cut on Charlene's neck and all of the blood in the water around them... tides be damned, her sister couldn't be dead! Not her little sister.
Choking again, Nixie glanced down at her arm, seeing a fresh puncture there. At least that explained the lightness in her head and the metal tang in her mouth. The hunter always forced one of those small gray pills down her throat when she stole her blood. Claimed that it was to help her keep her strength up. Though Nixie couldn't help but wonder what strength she meant. She hadn't been able to feel her arms for far too long and her tail? That was as useless as everything else, a piece of muscle she couldn’t even use thanks to both the bindings and the lack of feeling. Even her song was gone from her. Oh she could talk, but she couldn't sing for some reason. Something that hunter had done.
That hunter. It all came back to that hunter these days. She had quickly become the very embodiment of all that Nixie hated about humanity. Nixie knew her sister well enough to also know that she wouldn’t have done something to deserve getting attacked by someone so vicious. Ever since she’d come back to the pod for that brief time after being away with whatever her name was, Charlene’d been different. Mischievous yes, but malicious? No. Not anymore. Maybe not ever, really, Nixie couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t her life after all and they hadn’t had an in-depth conversation about it. Not that it really mattered if the hunter told the truth. If she was really dead.
Nixie wasn’t big on crying, but the salty tears had been coming to her eyes easier and easier since she had been imprisoned. It was easy to cry even for someone like her. Bitterly, she wondered if her tears could be sold too. That hunter would have a monopoly on the market if that was the case. Her blood, her tears… what else could she do? Cut her open and sell all of her insides? At least then she wouldn’t have to hang here day after day, haunted by the nightmares of her sister with a slit throat or of being back in the ocean where she belonged. Where she never should have left.
Right then, Nixie swore to herself that if she ever got out of this then she was going back to the ocean. And tides be damned, she was going to take Charlene with her no matter what her sister thought about it. Knock her right out and drag her the whole way. Once she was back in the cold, salty water she’d come back to her senses and realize that that was where they both really needed to be. No more of this nonsense about falling in love with penguin-girls and liking living in a forsaken river.
Of course that was if she ever got out and that wasn’t looking very good. A few more days like this with her blood drained out were going to leave her a dead and empty shell, of that Nixie was almost certain.