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ronijpeg · 2 years

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Shi’yayc

Pairing: Din Djarin/The Mandalorian x GN!Foundling!Reader

Summary: Reader’s life gets turned upside down

Word Count: 2.6K

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Death, underwater, panic attack

(Translations for Mando’a will be found at the end of the story)

A/N: This is my first fic ever and English is my third language so please point out any mistakes and give me tips on how to write better, I would really appreciate that! Reader is completely gender neutral and I will only be writing in that format in the future.

The sound of explosions and the smell of gunpowder are hard ones to forget. Them coupled with the sight of burning buildings, terrain and bodies is a certified mix for some form of PTSD.

You were only a child, twelve years old, when the Imperium took hold of your home planet, Ariik. Fighter droids had dropped from imperial cruisers and wreaked havoc on the unsuspecting fishing villages on the outskirts of Ariik. You had been swimming in one of the largest lakes in your town when you heard the cruisers, followed by explosions and blood curdling screams. Your parents were on the beach, yelling for you to swim back to shore. You kicked your small feet and paddled your small arms as fast as you could to get out of the water, but before your feet could touch the bottom of the lake, a droid had emerged from the village behind your parents. You tried to scream for them to run, but the droid was faster, shooting them on sight.

You froze in terror and shock, sinking under the water before your instincts kicked in and you made a full turn and dove for a small distance before emerging from the water. A blaster shot breezed past you a small distance away and you filled your lungs with air before diving into the water once again, opening your eyes in the clear water to look for a place to go. There were large rocks some distance away that you could hide behind. Your lungs were burning and you lifted your head from the water once again to catch your breath. You whipped your head around, gasping for air when you saw the droid aiming for you once again. It fired its blaster and two shots hit the water next to you before the third shot grazed the side of your head.

You inhaled sharply at the pain and sank under the water. Your lungs were still screaming and the water was burning the wound on your face. You turned around under the water once again and swam as fast as you could to the rock. You were on the verge of blacking out when you made it around it and held on to its side as you pulled yourself up from the water. You gasped and coughed, clutching the rock hard. You were safe from the droid.

You don’t know how long you floated in the water after that. You let go of the rock with your other hand to assess the throbbing wound on the side of your head. You hissed when you touched the edge of it. It went from your cheek all the way to your ear, where you were missing a piece of your earlobe. Your fingers had started to prune and you had begun shivering from being in the water for so long.

You had started almost dozing off next to the rock from exhaustion when you heard the sound of the Imperial cruisers retreating. You watched them fly into space, leaving the planet silent. You had never heard silence so loud. The gentle splashing of water around you felt almost violent.

You dove into the water to wake yourself up some, before inching your way around the rock to see if it was safe to swim back to shore. Once you made it around, all you could see was fires burning in the distance and two bodies laying in the sand. Your lip quivered as you started stiffly swimming back. You fought to keep your head afloat as exhaustion was trying to pull you under.

You were shivering horrendously when you got to the shore, hugging yourself to keep warm as you slowly walked to the two bodies. Tears fell as you kneeled next to your parents’ bodies, sand clinging onto your wet skin. A sob left you as you pressed your head on your mother’s still chest. You stayed like that until you were dry and shivering violently from the cold. It was starting to get dark outside, the only light coming from the two big moons in the sky and the fires still raging in the village. You crawled to the pile of clothes you had left behind when you went for the swim and slowly and stiffly put them on, not caring about the sand getting in between your skin and the fabric. After you were dressed, you dragged the towel and yourself back to your parents and laid against your father’s chest, raising his heavy and stiff arm around yourself, before draping the towel over yourself to act as a blanket.

You don’t know how long you laid there, shivering and silently crying, but you had fallen asleep. You woke up to a light shining on your face. You yelped and scrambled to get on your feet, terrified it was the droids that had shot your parents. Before you could get up and run away, a hand grabbed your small arm, preventing you from escaping. You looked at the gloved hand around your arm. A warm, gloved hand. Your brain made the connection that the hand didn’t belong to a droid and you looked back up as the light was turned off. In the moonlight, you could see a helmet staring back at you.

“You’re safe now. I’m not going to hurt you.”

That’s how you ended up becoming the Mandalorian’s foundling. He had pulled you up from the ground and lifted you into his arms before flying over the destroyed village and burned forest back to the Razor Crest. He had wrapped you in a space blanket and sat you on top of a crate before disappearing into the fresher and coming out with a medkit and a damp washcloth.

“This is going to hurt but I need to treat your wound,” he had said before gently wiping the wound clean of the blood and sand with the washcloth. You had whimpered, but stayed still as he slowly got the wound clean. After that he had applied some sort of salva that eased the throbbing, before covering the wound with large bandages. He had pulled a bed out of the cot in the wall and carried you there. He had laid you down and draped another blanket over you and told you to rest. You had complied and closed your eyes.

The first two weeks you were silent. The Mandalorian had tried to get you to tell you your name but you had just remained silent.

“You have to talk at some point Shi’yayc,” he had said and laid it to rest. You had no idea what shi’yayc meant. He had called you that once when he had unwrapped you from the blankets and ushered you into the fresher with one of his old tunics to change into. The word had stuck and that’s what he addressed you as.

You had climbed into the cot one night after loitering around the cockpit in silence as Mando put in the coordinates for his next bounty. He had seen you doze off on the uncomfortable co-pilot’s seat and told you to go to sleep.

You laid down in the cot and stared at the ceiling. You were exhausted but for some reason, this night your brain was on overdrive. It was like it had lagged for two weeks, not being able to comprehend that your parents were truly dead. Silent tears slipped from the corners of your eyes and you felt your airways close little by little and your heart rate was rising. You sat up in the cot, grabbing the neck of the tunic and pulling on it to get more air into your lungs even though the loose fabric didn’t even touch your neck. You started shaking and scooted to the end of the mattress, throwing your legs over the edge and sitting there hunched over. Your breath quickened and you started to feel lightheaded.

“Man- mando,” you whispered, your voice hoarse from two weeks of silence. Your heart was racing and hands were shaking uncontrollably. You let out a sob and tried again.

“Mando!” you cried out, hiccupping and closing your eyes. You couldn’t hear anything over the blood rushing in your ears. You ground your teeth together and opened your eyes just to see Mando descending the ladder and jumping down the last two steps to take large steps over to you. He kneeled in front of you and put his hands on your knees.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong Shi’yayc?” he asked with worry in his tone. You clawed at the neck of the tunic and tried to force words out.

“Ca- can’t- can’t bre- breathe,” you spluttered. Mando’s hands gripped your knees a bit tighter and he nodded his helmet. You dropped your hands from the neck of the tunic, down to his hands and tried to get his gloves off with your shaky hands. He looked down and got the hint, removing his gloves and taking your hands in his own. The skin-to-skin contact gave you a tiny bit of comfort.

“Okay Shi’yayc, when I squeeze your hands like this,” he squeezed your hands tightly, “you take a deep breath in, I’m going to do that too. And when I stop squeezing,” he slowly opened his fingers, “I want you to breathe out slowly, okay?” he asked you and you nodded your head. He started slowly squeezing and you heard him inhale. You shakily did the same, your breath stuttering. Then he held the pressure for a while, making you hold your breath before he slowly released his fingers and breathed out, you following his example. He did this for a while, your breathing evening out eventually, the only sound in the Razor Crest being yours and his slow breathing.

After your breath had evened out, silent tears still rolled down your cheeks. You closed your eyes and sighed, lowering your chin to your chest. Mando was still holding your hands but let go of one of them and raised his hand to your cheek, guiding you to look at him once again. His hand was warm on your cheek and his thumb wiped the falling tears away. You leaned into the touch.

“Feeling any better?” he asked, still drawing circles on your cheek with his thumb. You nodded and looked down on your hands, feeling embarrassed now that the attack had subsided. You straightened your posture and took your hand out of his in favor of picking at your fingers. He returned his hands on your knees and you heard him sigh under the helmet.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said quietly. Your eyes found the visor of his helmet and you saw him already looking at you. He drew a circle with his thumb on your knee.

“I want to make you an official part of my clan, but only if you want to,” he said and looked down on his hands on your knees. Your brows furrowed in confusion.

“Wha- what does th- that me-mean?” you asked. You voice still shaky from not using it. His helmet snapped upwards to look at you again. He tilted it, as if he was trying to figure you out.

“It would mean that you would officially be my foundling. I would teach you the ways of the Mand’alore and protect you from any harm,” he explained. You tilted your head in turn and bit the inside of your cheek in thought. You had nothing. Your village had been destroyed, your parents had been killed. All you had was this strange man who had been nothing but kind to you ever since he found you curled up next to your father’s body.

“Okay. Wh- what do I ha- have to do?” you questioned. Mando squeezed your knees and got up from the floor. He held out a hand for you to take and you took it. He gently pulled you up from the mattress until you were standing in front of him on the floor. He let go of your hand.

“Kneel,” he instructed and lowered himself to a kneeling position on the floor as well. You slowly kneeled on the cold floor, your bare knees aching from the texture. You mirrored him and put your hands on your thighs, palms down and looked up at his helmet.

“Close your eyes and repeat after me,” he told you. You closed your eyes tightly and exhaled shakily.

“Ba'jur, beskar'gam-”

“Ba'jur, beskar'gam-” you repeated, your words sounding a bit off since it was a language you didn’t know.

“Ara'nov, aliit-”

“Mando'a bal Mand'alor-”

“An vencuyan mhi.”

“An vencuyan mhi,” you finished. You still held your eyes closed, waiting for more instructions. You heard a click and a hiss and then a thump as something was set on the floor.

“You can open your eyes,” Mando said quietly. His voice sounded different, more soft and human. You slowly opened your eyes, blinking to make the blurriness go away. When your eyes focused again, you didn’t see a helmet staring back at you, but brown eyes. Your mouth opened ever-so-slightly as you took in the face behind the helmet. He had brown hair and a stubble on his chin. His eyes were locked on yours and you slowly lifted one of your hands and brought it to his cheek, making sure this was real and not a dream. He wearily watched your hand, but allowed it to touch his face. He inhaled at the contact and brought his hand to wrap around your wrist.

“You’re now a part of my clan, which means you are allowed to see my face and know my name,” he said. You took your hand away and positioned yourself to a cross legged sitting position, the metal floor hurting your knees. Mando did the same, but he sat with his legs straight in front of him and leaning to a wall.

“What’s your name?” you asked curiously.

“Din Djarin,” he answered. You smiled at him.

“Din. I’ve never heard that before,” you told him. His lip curled upwards ever so slightly. You could see that he didn’t smile often.

“You never told me yours Shi’yayc,” he reminded you. You told him and he nodded.

“What language is that word? And what does it mean? The shi- shi’y…” you struggled to say the word.

“Shi’yayc?” he filled in. You nodded.

“It’s Mando’a and it means yellow,” he explained. You nodded slowly and looked down at your hands in thought. You furrowed your brows.

“Why do you call me that?” you asked and looked at him. His eyebrows twitched, as if he was sad.

“When I found you on Ariik, you were wearing a yellow tunic. I didn’t know your name and you didn’t talk to me so I started calling you Shi’yayc.” He watched you closely for your reaction to him mentioning your home planet. Your lips curled downwards ever so slightly at the mention of Ariik and the sequence of events that led to you and him sitting on the floor of the Razor Crest. You drew in a deep breath and looked back up at him.

“I like it. The name. Can you teach me more Mando’a now that I’m a part of your clan?” you asked. Din smiled at that and nodded his head.

“Yes, gar kelir hibirar te ara”

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Mando’a translations:

Shi’yayc - Yellow

Ba'jur, beskar'gam, Ara'nov, aliit, Mando'a bal Mand'alor— An vencuyan mhi.

Education and armor, Self-defense, our tribe, Our language, our leader— All help us survive.

Gar kelir hibirar te ara - you will learn the way

#din djarin #the mandalorian #mando #pedro pascal #din djarin x reader #din djarin x foundling!reader #foundling!reader #gender neutral reader #gn!reader #din djarin x gn!reader #din djarin platonic #mandalorian #mandalorian x reader #mandalorian x gn!reader #din djarin x gn!foundling!reader #i don't know how tags work #razor crest

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the-huldras-back · 3 months

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On the Boardwalk, On the Shore

Had this on a reblog on another blog that got censored almost immediately, so I decided to start a whole new blog for my writing about it! Anyways I was really gripped by the idea of mermaids transforming like salmon do in the wild.

Aluya’hicetya, A mermaid in her youth, was a darling girl in that time of her life when her kind felt the draw to rebel, swimming up to the surface to breathe the fresh, warm sea air. The old ones in her pod said it was good in moderation to keep parasites out of the skin, and the older ones said that they shouldn’t stray far from the deep waters, or entertain themselves with humans. “It’s not like the old days,” They’d say. “You can’t just sink a ship in a terrible rage like you used to.” But what none of them were willing to discuss, even in the safety and comfort of their warm undersea vents, were the consequences of letting lonely girls wander too close to the shore.

It was nothing so pedestrian as a simple kidnapping, one of those old stories of selkies captured by longshoremen or boys catching a fish bound to grant you a wish. The danger never came from the shore, but inside of the young who sat under dazzling human lights, listening to snippets of conversation on the wind. Some argued that the sea air could turn young merfolk strange, making them unrecognizable to their pods.

Of course, Merfolk were dangerous to humans too. In the old days, plenty of sea creatures made easy meals out of the stupid and the unlucky, and there was no taboo against eating them, but most avoided it unless they were desperate. Search parties churning up their water and threatening their limbs with boat propellers were bad for the community, so in these days, only the witches made a habit of disappearing juicy morsels from the shore.

Aluya, though initially thinking about whether the stray boogie-boarder might make a good snack despite the warnings, was instead haunted by the sound wafting out over the chatter of folks on the boardwalk, resting in near invisibility on the rocks in the dark and listening to these strange beings with their strange chatter. Human tongues came easily to Merfolk, the pink muscles in their mouths just as capable of English as the haunting sounds in the deep. So one night after many years of listening and watching, there came a sound that made her heart ache, and she crept dangerously close to listen.

Aluya was no stranger to the machines humans used to play what they called music, the sick, crunchy, compressed garbage that offended the ears and drowned out the voice, but this was different. She started to recognize it from her perch on the rocks, hidden by the blindingly yellow lights up on the pier. It always went the same way: “Can you play Sweet Child of Mine?” “Do you know ‘House of the Rising Sun’? The Dolly Parton one!” “Hey girl, you know any Nirvana?”

Then the music would kick up. Slow at first, then with more confidence, a small rechargeable amp carrying the sound over the waves. Human technology was as impressive as old, deep magics to her, the way small sounds became large in their hands. It was startling at first, Aluya foolishly trying to match the keening with her own throat, forgetting she was being sneaky and that her song couldn’t respond to the call without water for her to speak into. Her kind didn’t have throats made to communicate above the waves. It made her red with embarrassment, but then she sat and listened for hours on the rocks, haunted by the clear tones of quality steel cords and even better chords.

It took weeks of watching and listening on the rocks before she found who it belonged to, a young woman who walked the long way through the dark once the boardwalk closed, late into the night. Rough-looking and ragged, the scraggly musician was all bones, slinking like a stray cat through the night back to a small cottage by the sea. The ancient detritus of lures and netting in the bay outside the house told Aluya everything she needed to know. A pang in her chest, like the long prelude to a heart attack.A fisherman’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter, whiling away her hours on the earth by the sea, playing songs for money. It made her heart ache in a way that she didn’t expect.

It wasn’t about rebelling anymore, she didn’t think. The night air wasn’t so great for its own sake. Instead, she would leave her pod in the afternoons when the sun on the waves made her impossible to see before posting up on a rock, sitting to listen, then escorting her home, all without any real plan or ability to reason out why she was doing it.

Her family and friends were quick to question her of course, but Aluya simply claimed the warm night air helped with an itch in her deep blue scales, and that she was rebelling, Mom. That seemed to satisfy her initially worried parents, and she felt so clever, sneaking off to listen and learn. Before long, Aluya knew every tune this strange girl knew, memorized them and their particular keenings like she would the voice of a friendly acquaintance. She followed along as well, with the snippets of people listening on the boardwalk or the girl’s own lilting tones when she deigned to do more than play the instrument. In this way, she learned her favorites, like Dokken, Whitesnake, and Genesis, and the ache in her chest grew with each passing evening.

Her dreams, though, weren’t of the usual mermaid things like salty fish and slippery eels and whatever else a mermaid might dream of. They were strange and dark, her inner eye drawn towards a cold, dark void in the shadows cast by instinct and the whispering of old, low voices. They grew harder to ignore, night after night, and as she listened, she learned things.

On waking, Aluya would find that she had spent her night's sleep swimming, or carving things into the walls of her grotto, or floating in the deepest, coldest part of her room, hot and irritable from bad sleep. All of this she could put up with, but the ache in her chest, like there was something she was missing out on, made her so jealous she could bite down on her tongue, that was the part that galled. It was miserable but became so much worse when she started to notice changes.

Small crevices she had swum through since she was a guppy suddenly got tight, and she had to wriggle to get through. Some of her blue scales had started to flake off, and only in the yellow lights of the distant boardwalk could she see that new ones were growing in, a deep and vibrant pink that worried her. Her teeth! How could she forget. Mermaids had jaws of teeth made to fillet fish bones and suck down meat without choking, but what she’d worried were cracks or damage were instead obviously the smallest of serrations, appearing across her mouth in growing numbers each time she woke.

Looking into her reflection in old glass and the family’s scavenged standing mirror, she was different. Pink all over where it mattered, when all the family’s scales were a deep blue, colors that would hide her within moments of swimming away, muscle and growth all over, so she towered and loomed in her own home, and a more powerful jaw, her muscles developing quickly to let her crush bone rather than work the meat off of it. She looked completely feral.

And magic! Mermaids didn’t do magic, she’d always been taught, only witches in the cold deep did, to warm themselves and bring storms down on disrespectful ships. She’d never heard of what made someone a witch, but now she understood as she carved on the walls of her grotto awake, using heavy metal fishhooks from the shore to scrape esoterica she barely understood and felt compelled to perform. With each dream, the old voices taught her a new trick or cantrip, and her family grew more worried, clearly on the edge of bringing up her changes but unable to bring themselves to do so until Aluya was towering over them, having grown at least a foot in a few short months, deep pink scales growing in where she used to have her mother’s blue.

It wouldn’t be too much longer before they withdrew from her, giving only distant but polite answers to her questions about dinner and the weather topside, watching with disapproving eyes when she slinked out into the wider ocean to visit her musician and rest atop the sharp black rocks.

Aluya knew the feeling she was experiencing, after feeling it tear at her guts for months now, all through the spring and into the hot, hot summer. Laying on rocks still warm from the sun, Aluya was absolutely certain that she was lovesick, and that it was causing the strange changes. She was becoming a witch, one of the feared merfolk whose strange ways and instinctive knowledge of the magic of their leviathan ancestors made them outcast from good and decent oceanic society. She’d grown too preoccupied to care though, finding freedom in her newfound size and strength. When it wasn’t worrying Ayula, she found it exhilarating that she seemed to be stronger and faster than before, able to kill and eat much larger, richer prey for her supper, even the mighty tuna unable to evade her in her new, monstrous state. She’d eat this rich food and feel it turn in her stomach, unable to fill the hole in her with food, and something even stranger happened to her as she listened to all those old rock songs on the pier.

Opening her mouth, Ayula found she could speak! Some new adaptation with the change meant that as those chords wafted out into the air, she could catch them and sing along in time, even if only to herself, her deep, husky voice stirring from deep in her aching chest, crooning out her Void-laced tune across the night air, giggling to herself when her bewitched notes stunned animals on the shore or drunken beachgoers. Before long, she was testing herself, seeing how long she could leave someone spellbound on the shore, siren song keeping them in a stupor. She knew she was pushing it when that music kicked up on the boardwalk and she just couldn’t help herself, following along with her beloved’s clever fingers.

“Yesterday, and days before. Sun is cold, and rain is hard. I know…” Her voice left an entire group spellbound, all of them still like deer in headlights around the fire they’d built up next to the water, a dozen humans all trapped in her spell till she let them go. It felt powerful and right, like she could sing them all into the sea for her next meal. But there was only one girl she wanted, and her song couldn’t beat out the cry of a steel guitar.

That was when she began to feel the most miraculous transformation coming along, the whispers growing urgent in her dreams as she rested now in a shipwreck, the old metal hull of a tugboat caked in occult symbols, fetishes made by instinct making her sleep more lucid, easier to remember the words of the tutors in her blood. That was when she learned the greatest, most taboo of mer magic.

Ayula waited though, afraid and frightened for the first time since her transformation began, until she couldn’t stand it for another night longer, putting on the things she’d need. Human clothes and human things, pilfered from the water. She dragged them ashore, and as she left the safety of the sea foam, getting covered in scratchy sand, her tail started to disappear, melting like it had never been there, and then she was just a tall, wet teenager, quickly changing under the pier. Dressed in shorts and a shirt that barely fit her powerful frame, Ayula recognized in the mirror of a nearby jeep that she could pass for human, just so long as she didn’t make a habit of showing off her recessed gills or big, razor-sharp smile. She tied her long hair back, shuddering at the sensation of being dry for the first time in her life, and then headed up the stairs next to the boardwalk, ready to use her newfound voice to make her feelings known, one request at a time.

Peering down at her beloved, Ayula reached into her pocket and took out a mason jar of quarters she’d found and dried on the rocks for weeks now, counting out five dollars' worth of change, before dumping the sum into the guitar case in front of the blonde woman, stunned and shy now despite her monstrous size and ability by her beloved’s lovely, fair features, and asked in a halting voice, “C-could you, um, well… Do you know any Dokken?” She knew that was one of the girl’s favorites, and her smile made all of Ayula’s transformations worth it.

#mermaid #creative writing #writeblr #monster #monster girl #i don't know how tags work

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