“ Storm’s coming, lucky”, the sea captain said, looking through his spyglass into the horizon. Jisoo, his bound sacrifice to appease the storm gods, cast her gaze in the same direction, the grey clouds mocking her. A waterspout in formation, her death in more than one sense, loomed in the horizon.

Jisoo had been bought at the port many years ago, as a young child. a seafaring tradition said that the storm gods were only calmed down if a woman was sacrificed, their warrior against the goddess of the sea, lest the storm gods take the entire crew for a battalion.

Therefore, a market was settled in every port, selling undesirable women: the orphans, the unwanted, the children who were traded for enough coin to buy a drink at the closest bar. She couldn’t remember which one she’d been.

The crew saw her as both pet and pest . On the best days, the captain fed her scraps of his food. On the worst days, she slept shivering in the open air, standing watch atop the ship’s mast. It was alright. She wasn’t mistreated, at least: the gods took offense to an abused sacrifice, destroyed ships who offered bruised and battered girls to the waters.

Still, it didn’t mean her treatment had been pleasant. She had gone to bed hungry more times than she could count, her face gaunt with hunger, been told more times than ever, when her hands were full of blisters from cleaning the ship top to bottom, that her only respite would be when she was dead.

The crew had always come close to sacrificing her, but the captain summarily ignored it, saying the storm would pass soon, that the gods didn’t need her now. After the first two years, they called her their lucky trinket, took Jisoo to bars so she could guess on what they should bet.

It worked. Lucky , they called her, carrying her around by the shackles on her thin wrists, parading her around the towns and ports they stopped in. Jisoo clung to her name: she didn’t have much, but her name was hers. She would never be their lucky charm.

“Seems like your luck ran out, huh?” The captain said. Jisoo bit her lip. the captain looked at her like one looked at an wounded creature beyond saving. “I t’s too bad. This time the gods haven’t chosen to save you.”

Jisoo nodded, quiet. the captain shouted to one of the crew members, and Jisoo was whisked away to practice the rites, a flurry of activity above deck as she went down.

They taught every girl that was sold the rites to the storm gods. It wasn’t much: one only had a few minutes at most to get ready, after all.

She was sent to the small closet she was given when she was sick, grabbed the face paints (pearl powder, red ochre, powdered blue, all that had been given to her when she’d been sold, carefully maintained so it wouldn’t go bad) and set to work, fingers sculpting the thin, colorful lines in her face that marked Jisoo as a sacrifice to the gods. White for the lightning god, blue for the rain god, red for the thunder god.

She combed her fingers through her grimy hair, trying to give it any semblance of it looking good. Jisoo chuckled dryly, though; she supposed that, when the enemy finally met her, her hair would be waterlogged and it wouldn’t matter, after all.

When she emerged, wearing the cleanest linen she had and with her face painted, the crew gave her a wide berth, like suddenly she wasn’t the pet anymore, but a holy priestess, going to do her duty.

The captain petted her hair, and then, with a gentle hand, guided her to the plank. He undid the clasps of the shackles she wore, and they fell, noisily, into the deck; she was unbound by human matters, now, pure, ready to become a soldier for the gods they all worshipped.

The wind picked up strength, whipping her hair madly, and Jisoo looked to the storm clouds, rolling in closer with alarming speed. the waterspout would soon destroy them if she did not jump. the world went white, for a moment, as the lightning god made itself known, rain hitting her face like thorns.

The crew muttered noisily. Prayers, perhaps. She wanted to think it was prayers.

“It was a pleasure to have you around, lucky.”

Say my name, Jisoo wanted to yell over the sound of the thunder that roared in her ears, but she doubted the captain knew what it was.

Jumping into the cold, murky waters, Jisoo braced herself for the shock, hoping it would break her neck cleanly, like she’d been told it would: the mercy of the gods , the seller had told her, is a quick ascension .

An euphemism for death if I ever saw one, muttered an older woman, a widow. Jisoo still remembered her: she was wearing mourning clothes, contrasting starkly against the children wearing rags.

The storm gods offered her no such thing, rejecting her as an offering.

Jisoo spluttered in the water, ice filling her lungs as the salt stung her open eyes. She could feel the ship by her side, massive, moving water around her and tangling Jisoo into herself. was this how every sacrifice ended, drowned, stinging?

The taste of salt and the face paints sat heavy on her tongue, and Jisoo didn’t know where was up and where was down, flailing, trying to go towards the open air. Jisoo closed her eyes, trying to get the salt out of it, but it seemed useless: the darkness of her eyelids was the same darkness of the ocean.

Hands, webbed, grabbed her wrists. They palmed over her skin, going through her arms, pausing at her shoulders before moving on. the hands soon found her face, touching in an almost unsure manner until they found her lips, where they slipped something through it - a ball of seaweed? - and forced Jisoo’s jaw closed.

She flailed once more, but the hands kept her in place. When she swallowed, she felt the water in her lungs dissolve, and opened her eyes.

Jisoo found a series of things, in the few seconds that came after.

One: she could breathe now, through gills that had opened in her neck and torso.

Two: the salt did not sting her eyes anymore.

Three: the water wasn’t brackish anymore, her vision perfect.

Four: there was a sea witch in front of her.

A sea witch was a siren, a woman whose love was scorned, a woman whose life was claimed by the goddess of the sea, able to walk in land - even though their legs were cursed existences, painful to the even gentlest breeze’s touch, but not to water.

Jisoo knew of them, saw the women on the ports with their green-tinted scaly skin reading fortunes, doing little tricks of magic, selling potions and trading in mischief.

They never allowed her contact with them; the goddess of the sea tainted the sacrifices of the storm gods, made them into sea witches with the touch of their webbed hands. Natural enemies , it was said: the storms of the sea was their battlegrounds, the sacrifices of both sides their soldiers.

This sea witch, like all of them, was beautiful: the scales of her skin shone in the low light, her face framed by blonde strands of hair, while the rest of it was a mass as dark as the ocean itself, moving in the water like it had a life of its own.

“Poor thing.” She cooed, smiling. was full of dangerous looking fangs. “Rejected by the storm gods. Does your heart hold any malice, dearest?”

It did. of course it did - Jisoo’s life had always been on edge, waiting for a terrible enough storm, being hailed from one port to another, making bets for men whose reactions could be impossible to guess had she made them lose.

Pet or pest. Lucky .

The sea witch knew nothing of this, of course. She put her hands on Jisoo’s waist, warmer than the icy water, but not by much.

“Tell me your heart’s desire, dear, and this witch will make it true.”

“Let me end them. And call me Jisoo.”

The sea witch’s black eyes shone with surprise, but she nodded, kissing Jisoo’s forehead. Her pointed teeth scraped her skin gently, and Jisoo felt power surge through her veins, fire-green and burning, her biology changing to better adapt to the new powers that crackled deep inside of her.

“Then call me Jennie.” The sea witch said, letting go of Jisoo, who shot up, the water bending itself to Jisoo’s will. She could sense it, the power of the sea at her fingertips, the weight of the ocean on her.

It felt like coming home.

The ship she had belonged to was still on course, tiny, unrepentant, in the distance. The power in her veins mumbled, trembling as she rose her arms. The ocean reacted to her, forming a wave that grew bigger and bigger, until it swallowed it whole, leaving nothing behind.

In the distance, she saw the bobbing of heads appearing, flickering tails. More sea witches, come to the battle?

“There’s a feast, Jisoo.” Jennie’s voice muttered, hands on her shoulders. Her nails were long, like claws. Jennie’s breath felt warm against Jisoo’s frigid skin. “All those men who belittled you are now prey, ready for the picking. Won’t you come with me?”

Jisoo nodded, turning. the sea witch, Jennie, was beautiful in a dangerous way.

“Okay.” She told her, and Jennie smiled. Jisoo kissed Jennie for a moment, which flustered the other, before she set to swimming to the remnants of the ships, the water slowly turning from its murky color to a bright, vivid red as she approached. Frenzied sharks, the lot of them, and Jisoo was one amongst many.

Jennie soon passed by her, eyes shining, and Jisoo grinned at her. Being a sea witch might be fun.

Her luck certainly had not run out. Maybe she had been their lucky trinket, after all.