#i absolutely love the atmosphere
Reed900 Shenanigans: lighthouse-keeper!Gavin and deep sea-mermaid!Nines
The seas had been rough for a couple of days, high winds and waves crashing against the steep cliffs leading into a vast nothing. It’s to the point where Gavin feels uncomfortable stepping outside. He’d sent the second keeper to catch some sleep, if he could with the wailing winds, and opted to tend to the beacon himself.
Despite the groaning of the building, every harsh beat of water trying to bring the structure down around them, Gavin felt safe in the knowledge that it had withstood decades of similar conditions without bending.
The next morning, the weather has calmed significantly and Gavin doesn’t bother to wake his co-worker before stepping outside to assess any potential damages. Railings have been bent out of shape on the path down from the cliff. It’ll need fixing in the near future though thankfully the crane they use to lift cargo is still hail and whole. Further down he can spot a container of rope and other necessary equipment to have been smashed to bits, debris left wedged in crevices of rock as he gazes down.
“Shit,” Gavin curses. The newbie he’d been stationed with and told to train must have secured it wrong and Gavin moves further down on the path to check for further damages.
He’s caught unaware by the sudden change in the wind’s direction and what it means for the previously calm sea.
It’s with mounting horror he realises that even running he can’t escape the fast approaching wave.
The coldness knocks the breath from his lungs and he tastes salt on his tongue before he forces himself to preserve what little air he still has in his lungs. Pure dumb luck is what keeps him from whacking into any of the dangerous spikes of jagged rock but even so the strength to fight currents and freezing temperatures saps from him rapidly, like grains of sand falling to the bottom of an hourglass.
He blacks out‒
‒and wakes up an undetermined amount of time later with the island he calls a second home a great distance away, its sweeping light taunting him, and its relative safety forever out of reach.
Gavin wipes the saltwater from his eyes, blinking up at the star-speckled sky. He stares uncomprehending at two gigantic moons settled above him and it takes a few seconds to realise they’re eyes.
The thing holding him blinks.
He faints, again, and wakes at the steps of the lighthouse. Gavin sits there in his soaked clothes, the rain beating down on him once more, left wondering over the strange hallucination that had come to him and if any of it had happened at all.
