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the-awkward-outlaw · 4 years

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Holà ! Could you write an imagine / headcanon about Arthur meeting a mermaid ( maybe in Guarma ) and falling for her ? And you can choose the ending ( but not too sad please he deserved better )

Ah, I’m so sorry Anon this has taken me so long! My life is weirdly busy right now even though none of the reasons it’s busy are important. This turned out really long and doesn’t neccessarily have a happy ending, but it sort of does at the same time. Anyways, I hope it’s at least semi-satisfactory.

When Arthur found himself stranded on the beach after the boat wrecked, he was horrible disorientated. A mixture of exhaustion, heat stroke, dehydration, and a horrible burning in his lungs didn’t make anything better. The ground was white hot and he could barely see when he opened his eyes. Once they’d adjusted, he realized he was standing on sand with islands of grass and bushes.

Hot. That’s the only sense his mind can process. unbearable heat. The sand burns his feet, the sun burns his face and eyes. The air is thick and soupy. Gulls cry happily as they soar above him. How can any living thing be happy in this place? Hell itself could not be worse.

As he stumbles around the beach, he sees something sparkling on a large rock poking from the waves near the shore. He thinks it must be some water collected in the fissures of the rock, or perhaps some strange birds. He’s heard of sea turtles, maybe it’s coming from them. As he approaches, though, he sees a little better and it’s obvious that none of his previous impressions were correct. He’s looking at what looks like a woman. Or what looks partially like a woman from the waist up anyways. Where her legs should have been was instead a long, shimmering tail, the flukes trailing back and forth slowly. Her head was tipped back as though enjoying the rays of the sun, her long brown hair trailing over her chest and back.

Arthur blinks multiple times. His condition must be making him go insane. She can’t possibly be real. He’s heard legends of course. He heard some drunken sailors at the saloon in Saint Denis discussing their sightings of mermaids, but ten minutes later they were black out drunk. Yet here she was, visible proof that perhaps they weren’t mistaken.

Arthur lifts his hand. “Y-you!” he calls, his voice weak.

The woman looked to him, unafraid. She was very familiar with the land folk, her people called them. She was unimpressed with him. Sure, he was a large specimen, broad shouldered and barrel chested, but most men she’d seen wandering shores or atop their strange, massive floating carved trees were. Luckily for him, she wasn’t feeling particularly hungry. Land folk were regarding by her kind as a delicacy, but she had never grown to like the taste. There was just something about land meat she never craved. She preferred her usual game of fish and the other creatures that dwell in the ocean with her.

She flashed him a smile though. Her pod would definitely appreciate her bringing in an offering of land folk. They were becoming harder to come by as their carved trees became more advanced. Faster and sturdier. A land folk who had been ship wrecked was the perfect target.

“You there!” he yelled again, slightly stronger.

“Arthur!” another land folk approaches him. Taller yet thinner in build with disheveled black hair and mustache. Three more men followed him and she knew it wasn’t safe. Luckily none of them saw her and she slipped quickly back into the water. Her sun bathing would have to continue later.

Over the next few days, she saw the man again and again in the same spot as the first time. It was like he was looking for her. The boulder he’d seen her from happened to be her favorite sun bathing spot as it was easy to access and surrounded by deep water which made hiding easy. She knew the island was heavily populated despite its small size, making her vulnerable.

The man seemed harmless enough, but he was clearly wary of her. She allowed him to spot her a handful of times, both in and out of the water. Despite how little she liked the taste of land folk, she was very good at hunting them. Something the matriarch of her pod was befuddled by.

The third time the man came calling, she slid right to the edge of the water, allowing him to get the closest he’d ever been. She found herself growing curious about him. He wasn’t like other land folk she’d stalked and killed. He wasn’t frightened nor did he try and kiss her like some misguided sailors had. He was simply intrigued and she was too.

Mayani, as was her name, soon learned the land folk’s name was Arthur Morgan. She learned, like all merfolk do, his native tongue along with the languages of other land folks. It was part of learning the hunt. She spoke with Arthur for many hours that first day and he told her many things about where he came from. He described the hot deserts, seas made of grass, mountains taller than the highest waves capped in snow. It was intriguing. In turn, Mayani , or Maya as she preferred, told him the secrets of the ocean. Listening to the haunting songs of whales, hunting giant squid, outrunning sharks, the colorful and vibrant corals and how to tell which kinds were safe to eat and which kinds were not.

Arthur found himself longing to join Maya in her watery kingdom after a week had passed. Dutch was still working with Hercule in order to get off this god-forsaken island, and he felt envious of Maya and the freedom she had to come and go from it as she pleased. She told him that she was breaking her matriarch’s boundaries though. Last year, three of her pod members had been killed on the shores of this island by those who occupied it and the matriarch forbade the rest of the pod from returning. Maya still found the warm, shallow waters worth the risk, plus it offered some of the best foraging corals and hunting grounds. The temptation was too great.

Arthur made her laugh easily. When he asked her if it was true that a mermaid’s kiss could give a sailor the ability to breathe underwater, she found it hysterical. A kiss could not change one’s abilities, she said. Nothing could do that. She learned that his kind were called humans. As they divulged more secrets of their lives to one another, they found that their species were not so different. Merfolk possessed their own cultures, though the females were the leaders and not the men. The females were also the only ones allowed to do hunting. The idea was that since they were the only ones to give life, they should be the only ones to take lives. The males spent their time foraging and helping raise the offspring.

Arthur quickly became interested in the mermaid. She was beautiful, sure, but he found himself more attracted to her spirit than anything else. She was in a very similar position as he was in his own gang, the third highest ranking member of her pod but she enjoyed wandering the ocean on her own, though her loyalty was unwaverable. Arthur wished there was a way they could be together, but he knew that was impossible. She could not survive on land for more than a few hours, her tail and even skin was heavily dependent on the salt water. Without it, she would quickly dehydrate and die. He of course could not exist in the water.

The time finally came when only one thing was left to do before he and the others could return to the mainland. Arthur approached his and Maya’s meeting spot with a somber expression. She was miserable too as someone in her pod had spotted her “fraternizing” (as her matriarch had put it) with a land folk on a forbidden island. This was the last time she’d be able to see him. They told each other how things were standing for themselves. Arthur didn’t want to leave her with nothing, but having no object to give, he kissed Maya gently.

“Thank you,” he said. Maya smiled, but something about the way his lips tasted was off. She knew immediately he was sick. She told him to wait and then dived down and foraged for a rather rare coral that she knew grew around the island. It luckily didn’t take her long before she found the tiny organism and she gave it to him.

“You’re very sick, Arthur,” she explained. “Your kind carry many sicknesses. If we didn’t learn to identify them, we’d get sick too. When we’ve eaten sick humans, we eat this coral and it cures us. You should do the same.”

Arthur did not question. His lungs had been burning more than ever before and he’d developed quite a cough, so he studied the strange, bumpy coral. It was only the size of a quarter but the texture was awful. Squeezing his eyes, he swallowed the coral as quickly as he could, for Maya said cooking it would destroy its healing properties. She smiled at him when he had swallowed it and he kissed her one last time.

“I promise,” he said. “I will never forget you.”

“I wish our paths could cross again,” she said.

The sun was beginning to set and in the distance they heard Dutch calling Arthur’s name. He sighed heavily and brushed her cheek. “Thank you,” he said. He got up and walked away towards the voice. Maya watched him for a moment and then dipped into the water. She tried to imagine how things could have been between them in another world, but her matriarch had told her time and time again that wanting what could never be was the most fruitless venture of all.

#red dead fanfic #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x female #awkward asks #rdr2 fanfic

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