TaeYeon knows what the black sail means. It's the type of ship that searches for others to rob and plunder. Pirates, as humans call them. Not only do they leave wreckage in their wake, spoiling the clean water, but they are also notorious for catching her kind. No merperson knows what comes of the captive; only whispers of private collections and exotic food that grants immortality are heard—neither particularly encouraging to confront these pirates. There is no love lost between them.

The captain of TaeYeon's choosing seems young and short for a man, with dark windswept hair and darker eyes. But he is loud. Not in the croaking voice of unwashed sailors, mouth riddled with scurvy and drunk on cheap rum. He likes to sing. Every night the pirates gather on deck to drink, as they are wont to do, and the captain never fails to belt out a song. She admits that he is good. Coming from a merperson whose songs are weapons, it is high praise.

He is perfect for her, so she sings for him.

-

TaeYeon hauls off her burden onto the rocky shore of a tiny land with a huff. Her scales and thicker-than-human skin protect her, but the same can't be said for her prey. There will be some scrapes on him, but at least he is alive. She is hitting his chest with her fist to dislodge the water from his lungs when a certain fact establishes itself.

"You're a woman..."

Without the vest and water sticking to the beige silk shirt on the pirate's body, TaeYeon eyes the bound chest with pity. Poor human women. She so rarely encounters them this far from human settlements because the men believe that they bring bad luck during sails. When she does meet them, they are freshly thrown overboard and sink too quickly due to the many layers of their dress.

"No wonder my song didn't work on you."

Earlier, when she sang, the pirates were frantic to get off their ship, but not their captain. Her pride took a dent then. She thought he was deaf, or worse, that he had known and stuffed his ears with beeswax. Luckily, it was only because the captain is female.

The captain coughed even after she rolled to her side. Water sputters out from her pale lips. She fights to sit up. It is of no concern for TaeYeon, who continues to watch her captive struggle with disinterest. The woman heaves a couple of times as she hunches over, spitting out the last water from her lungs. Her eyes widen when she sees TaeYeon.

"You!" She coughs some more, red-faced and with tears in the corners of her eyes. "I saw you. Aren't you supposed to be a goddess? A good omen?"

TaeYeon stares down at the pirate with a haughty look on her face. "Yet your kind still hunt us down to be sold," she growls, baring her sharp teeth for a moment, and takes satisfaction from the pirate cowering back in fear. "We bring storms, not warn about them."

The pirate, who finally has her wits about her, smiles with uncertainty. "Thank you for saving my life," she says, wiping spit and saltwater from with the back of her hand.

"I didn't."

The woman squares her shoulders then, not so subtly glancing around like a cornered animal. The island is too small for anything more than a few coconut trees. The only predator nearby is the mermaid. The pirate reaches for the cutlass that's no longer strapped to her hip. TaeYeon grins, enjoying the growing look of alarm on the pirate's face. It's nice to be taken seriously instead of only being seen for her body. This is why she prefers the fairer .

"I won't kill you," she informs. The pirate at least earns that much honesty. "I only want your voice."

"Excuse me?"

TaeYeon's fins flick in annoyance. What kind of pirate says excuse me? "I'll take you back to a nearby port after."

She never plans to kill anyone anyway—only leaving the pirate to waste away—but it was when it was him instead of her. Perhaps she ought to keep her longer; she could've used a guide on human land. Even though she is mute, a pirate captain has more knowledge of humans than she does. Yes, that's the most sensible course of action.

"What's your name, woman?"

The pirate bristles. "It's Captain Hwang." Her hands twitch, itching for anything sharp to poke the rude mermaid with.

"You don't have a ship anymore," TaeYeon points out. She waits.

"It's Stephan."

TaeYeon a brow. That's a man's name.

Eventually, the shipless, stranded, definitely-not-male pirate captain relents. "It's Tiffany."

"I'm TaeYeon."

-

"Why did you hide yourself?"

Tiffany yelps, crossing her arms over herself as her face turns red like an angler fish or Humboldt squid. Neither is particularly friendly, and neither is Tiffany.

"Don't you have any manners?"

Dressed only in her underclothing, Tiffany creeps to her shirt, only partially dry from being laid under the sun, but she puts it on all the same. The hem brushes down the middle of her thighs. TaeYeon hasn't stopped looking at her bare legs with intrigue and longing.

"It's rude to stare!"

"If I have those things—" TaeYeon points with her webbed fingers, her eyes never leaving Tiffany. "Those round things above the back of your legs—I won't hide them."

If it's possible, Tiffany gets redder.

TaeYeon, always curious of humans and their foreign ways of living, continues, "Are they soft? They look soft. Can I touch them?"

"No!" Tiffany huffs and pulls on her still damp breeches with a wince. She's not about to let her body continue to be objectified by a mermaid. "And to answer your first question, it's easier being a man than a woman."

"Why?"

"Don't you have the same issue down there?" Tiffany sweeps a hand over the vast sea, but TaeYeon remains unfazed. "Men have more privileges; women are properties."

That is awful. TaeYeon had never considered that before. Merpeople have the ability to change to ensure the survival of their kind, so there is no prejudice between the es. She was a merman for a few decades before, and still, the opposite relentlessly tried to mate her—that is her issue.

Tiffany's tirade goes on. "I was my father's, then my brother's. He wanted me to be married so I could be someone else's responsibility," she spat. "Why did you want to steal my voice? You have your own."

Instead of answering, TaeYeon propels backward into deeper water. "It's none of your business." She dives back under the sea, but not without hearing Tiffany's yell of it's my voice! She has to rethink her decisions, far away from a loudmouthed woman.

-

The next time TaeYeon breaks the surface, it's to flip over a fish that lands right on Tiffany's face. The pirate sputters and yells expletives. TaeYeon lingers to watch her try to hold on to the slippery fish, to no avail, and can't stop herself from giggling. Tiffany has given up on the fish, letting it flop around by her feet as she glares at the mermaid.

"Eat!" TaeYeon orders, ignoring whatever protest Tiffany has, and leaves.

No, TaeYeon doesn't care about her. She only needs her alive until the Sea Witch can travel above. She can't have her captive dead now, can she?

-

"Voice in exchange for human legs."

TaeYeon confirms, thanking Neptune that it isn't brain that the Sea Witch requires, because this pirate is clearly lacking in that department. It's been days since she took her hostage. Tiffany has developed a tan, and the coconuts are running out.

"And this witch didn't specify whose voice, so you took a creative approach?"

TaeYeon wonders how Tiffany managed to hide her real identity for so long when the way she speaks betrays her upbringing so easily. But then again, it's possible that she only hid her gender and not her noble birth. An educated pirate, such an oddity.

"That's wicked," Tiffany says, and TaeYeon abandons the urge to roll her eyes. "You'd make a good pirate."

It feels like a compliment. For a moment, TaeYeon entertains the thought of her cheeks warming up like warm-blooded humans do. Only she isn't so sure anymore that she wants it to be reality.

-

"So—ouch, dammit!"

Tiffany winces when another sharp bone from the fish pricks her fingers. She can't, for the life of her, eat something that still has its eyes intact—it feels like she is being judged, and she had enough of that to last another life. Once TaeYeon found out about her weakness, she began bringing her bigger fish from deeper seas, big enough that she couldn't simply crush the head off with a rock, and she stayed to watch her eat with erse glee.

"I hate you, you know?"

Tiffany mumbles a curse around the finger in . The bone was sharp enough to draw blood this time. It's perfect. She snaps it off and sets it aside, away from TaeYeon's reach but not from her sight. She wants her to know that she can stab her with the very torture she brought straight to her lap, and the thought brings her joy.

"Don't you feel bad for feeding me your friend?" She asks.

She assumes so because TaeYeon shares the same physiology as the fish on the bottom half of her body. She definitely does not think about the upper human half. TaeYeon shrugs, painfully reminding Tiffany of her bare chest, and she has to look away. Damn mermaid. Don't they have dead clam shells to cover their s?

"We eat them too."

It brings a frown to Tiffany's face. Apes are one of the closest relatives to humans, and she can't imagine eating them. God, she hopes people on land are not eating them.

TaeYeon reclines on a rock without a care in the world. "You were saying?"

If the situation had been any different, Tiffany would have called her out for her feigned disinterest. She'd ditch her company, for sure. As she is, if she has to endure the company of an insufferable merwoman who wants to sell her voice for a pair of legs, she would make sure she suffer in return.

"What I was gonna say..." Tiffany trails off, biting her lip to stop her grin, when TaeYeon leans forward despite her nonchalance. "Ah, I forgot about it!" She smiles brightly.

TaeYeon glares. "I hate you too, you know?"

-

Another day closer to the full moon, when the Sea Witch agreed to meet TaeYeon on her little island. Tiffany doesn't know this, of course, but her anxiety is mounting. She has several sharp fish bones to defend herself and has gathered planks of wood that drifted to the island. Once she finishes fashioning some ropes from the coconut's coir fibers, she's getting the hell out of the island. In the meantime, she only has her good sense to persuade TaeYeon.

"What I meant to say is, if you want something so badly, sometimes you have to make sacrifices." Tiffany runs a hand over her hair, cut short above her shoulders, then taps on her chest—the things she had given up to keep her real identity. "Of your own," she reminds her.

TaeYeon has had a thoughtful look for a long time. Tiffany hopes her words make it through the merwoman's thick skull and touch her conscience. After all, she is smart enough to find a loophole in the witch's deal.

After what feels like a lifetime, TaeYeon nods. Tiffany's heart is beating a bruising rhythm against her ribcage. This is it; this is the moment that decides her foreseeable future as mute or dead. Surely she isn't going to give up without a fight.

"If I give back your cutlass," TaeYeon begins. A smirk slowly curling up her lips, the tips of sharp teeth peeking. "Can you kill a Sea Witch?"

Tiffany never even meet a Sea Witch before, but she takes pride in her adaptability and quick learning. Between killing some magical being with tentacles or letting said magical being take her voice so another magical being can become human, her answer is quite obvious. But she knows TaeYeon pretty well by now.

Sighing, she asks, "After you tricked her to give you new legs, I assume?"

"Yes."

"I'll try." It only makes her situation slightly better. Either she fights a Sea Witch or she fights the waves on a raft—both might very well kill her, but so does being trapped on a tiny island. "How would I know you won't doublecross me?"

TaeYeon shrugs. Damn her and her clam-less chest. "I want to be a pirate too."

"You can't!"

"Why not?" TaeYeon turns up her nose. With such an attitude, she won't make it as a pirate for even a day. "You are. And I'm not about to become anyone's property."

"You don't know the intricacy of humankind," Tiffany says, exasperated. "The things people do—the cruelty we all have to do to survive..."

Again, TaeYeon takes it in stride. "So teach me. I'll lure a ship. You can be a captain again and have an all-women crew this time. No need to hide yourself."

That is the farthest from any possibility Tiffany ever thought of how their tentative acquaintance ends. But then again, she never dreamed in her wildest dreams that one day she'd be held hostage by a mermaid who wants to sell her voice in exchange for legs. At least this does make sense. She doesn't know why TaeYeon wants to be human, but once she does, she'll need to learn to be one, and that includes keeping herself alive. This is possibly the best outcome for both of them.

"Fine." Tiffany smiles, and for the first time, it reaches her eyes. This doesn't have to be only TaeYeon's fresh start. She deserves one too. "Get us an intact ship, get your legs, and I'll kill the witch. Then you can be my first mate."

TaeYeon cheers, throwing both arms up before she flips back and vanishes under the water. Tiffany really can't wait to teach her to dress herself.