for @displacerghost
Megamind/Roxanne, T rating.
vintage mermaid AU.
Roxanne is a small town librarian who dreams of being a reporter. When she comes into the possession of something that appears to be directions to the hidden treasure of Great Lakes pirate Dan Seavey, she entertains wild hopes of finding enough money to fund her own newspaper. What she actually finds is a blue merperson. And trouble. A lot of trouble.
“I’m—I’m not sure what to do next,” the chimera said.
(Syx, Roxanne reminded herself, he was called Syx and she needed to stop thinking of him as ‘the chimera’; that was almost as rude as ‘it’.)
“What do you mean?” Roxanne asked.
“With your hand,” Syx said. He swallowed, his eyes flicking down to their hands—pressed, still, palm-to-palm. His eyes flicked up to hers. “I mean, do I—I’m supposed to—shake it? But I’m not really sure how…”
“Oh,” Roxanne said, the word trembling on the edge of a laugh, “it’s—here, give me your right hand instead. Yes—and then you take my hand like—this.”
The handclasp was a little awkward at first; the webbing between his thumb and forefinger meant they couldn’t hold hands quite as tightly as normal. After a moment, though, she managed a close approximation.
“And we shake like this,” Roxanne said demonstrating. “You can hold my hand a little tighter than that,” she added, “otherwise your hand just feels like a limp fish.” She wasn’t quite quick enough to stop herself from finishing the sentence, and winced. “Ah—sorry.”
Syx’s lips twitched, and then he laughed.
“Oh,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to seem like a—ah—a limp fish. Is this better?”
He shook her hand again, more firmly this time.
“Yes,” Roxanne said, with a relieved laugh of her own. “Yes, that’s better.”
“I am a very lively fish,” Syx said with an air of satisfaction, and looked up at her through his lashes, his eyes dancing with amusement and a smile hovering around the edges of his mouth.
Between the green sheen of his eyes and the expression, Roxanne found herself thinking not of a fish, but of a cat.
“What are you really?” Roxanne blurted out.
The big green eyes blinked.
“Because of course you’re not really a fish,” she said, unable to stop herself, “I mean, you’re breathing out of water, so you can’t be a fish. And—it—the list said ‘chimera’. But that’s really kind of just a—I mean, that just means some—one,” Roxanne managed to catch herself just before she said ‘thing’, “someone—that looks like they’re made up of more than one type of…creature. But you’re—”
Again she hesitated—the word ‘mermaid’ suggested itself, but they’d only just established that he was probably male, so that didn’t really—
“You’re a—a siren?” she said instead.
Syx seemed to draw back from her slightly, his neck frill curving in just a bit, his second eyelids flicking over his eyes, his gaze going a little distant.
“…siren,” he said, “I suppose that’s—fairly accurate. As far as these things go.”
Roxanne frowned. That had been rather frustratingly vague. He’d been vague when she asked him to name himself, too, and vague when she asked his gender. Did he have some sort of rooted objection to giving definite information?
His fingers twitched in her grip, and Roxanne realized, with a jolt, that she was still holding his hand. She let go of it quickly.
“Would you like to see the rest of my auto-mata?” Syx asked, changing the subject with graceless abruptness.
Roxanne blinked, caught off guard.
Ordinarily, she would have assumed it was merely an attempt to distract her from her original question, but he looked so eager that Roxanne was not entirely certain.
“I would, yes,” Roxanne said.
His whole face lit up, and he clapped his webbed hands happily.
“Ah! Here!”
Roxanne gave an involuntary flinching jump when Syx began to move up the rug that led from the edge of the pool to the little ‘room’—moving with that uncanny snakelike slither.
He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her, still smiling brightly.
“Over here! Follow!”
And he turned away and moved again towards the room.
Roxanne swallowed down the silly feeling of disquiet at his snakelike way of moving, got to her feet, and followed.
“Sit, sit!” Syx said, hands fluttering as he gestured at one of the low divans.
Roxanne sat, watching as Syx carefully replaced the metal orb on a shelf, then picked up another mechanical toy.
“Look!” he said, turning to her and handing the thing to her.
Roxanne looked. It seemed to be something a bit like a clock, but with no face—instead of a face, there just a metal hoop mounted on a metal stand about the size of a candlestick. At the top of the hoop was a flat brass disc the side of her palm and in the shape of a sun. At the bottom of the hoop was a silver disc shaped like a full moon. Another, smaller disc, painted blue, appeared to be designed to move slowly by clockwork around the hoop.
“It keeps the time,” Syx said. “The blue circle takes twenty-four hours exactly to move from the sun, around to the moon, and then up to the sun again—then it chimes to let me know. And here—” He took the sun clock from her and handed her something else.
They spent almost a quarter of an hour like that, Roxanne thought, Syx showing her mechanism after mechanism, each one more remarkable than the last.
“And this,” Syx said, as he put the last of the mechanisms into her hands, “this is my other favorite.”
Roxanne took it carefully from him, and held it in her lap. Syx moved to the other divan as Roxanne looked down at the toy.
It was kind of miniature sea scene of a lighthouse in a storm—a narrow rectangular base, about as wide as a shadow box display. A little handle protruded from the side of the base; Roxanne wound it up, then let the handle go.
The scene began to move.
Blue-painted metal waves rose and fell fluidly, tossing a small metal rowboat up and down. The lighthouse window lit up and began to glow, and the dark storm clouds above the lighthouse began to pulse gently with lights, as if with rumbling lightning.
And, most startling of all, lights began to flash down the thin, clear wires—were they made of glass?—the thin clear wires that slashed diagonally down from the storm clouds to the waves.
Rain, Roxanne realized, catching her breath. It was rain.
She watched the scene until the clockwork wound down and the mechanism went still. Then she looked up at Syx.
“It’s wonderful,” she breathed.
He was lying on the other divan, his tail draped gracefully as he leaned his upper body on a large pillow, looking like something out of an illustrated book of fairytales.
Of all the amazing things in this room, he was the loveliest and most fascinating.
“They’re all wonderful,” she said, and he smiled at her in a soft, gratified way. “Thank you for showing them to me.”
“I am very glad that you came here, Miss Ritchi,” he said.
There was something very charming about his careful politeness, Roxanne thought. It might have seemed stiff if he hadn’t been so absolutely in earnest. As it was, it rather reminded her of music—piano keys, pressed very precisely.
“So am I,” Roxanne said. “And I really don’t want to leave so soon. I’m afraid I have to, though.”
Syx blinked at her, looking faintly surprised.
“Leave?”
“Yes,” Roxanne said with real regret, “I have to get home; it’s going to be dark. I’d like to come back soon, though, if you’ll have me?”
Syx blinked at her again, a long, slow blink—inner eyelids, then the outer ones.
“Oh,” he said, “oh, but of course I can’t let you leave, Miss Ritchi.”
…to be continued.
setepenre-set 