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The fish weren't biting.

Perhaps they weren't there? Perhaps they were all gone.

Asheater put another worm on another hook, and set the weight at the end back down into the water. It was overcast, and he could see a mist further out to sea.

He sang a song in the language of the warrior navy, the ones with the smith-gods.

Nothing came.

His own language?

Nothing.

The merchant kingdom to the south's... still nothing.

The only noise was Asheater's voice, and the crackling from the torch at the end of his boat. The day was overcast, and Asheater had thought it might get even darker.

"You're a silly boy," his mother had said, whenever he was scolding him. He could imagine her doing that now, since people had said to him at the market this morning that a storm was on its way. This fishing effort of Asheater's was taking some time, and possibly leaving him in danger. Still. Fish.

The first time she'd called him a silly boy was the first time they'd called him Asheater, for obvious reasons. He remembered both of those, but not his alleged crime. It was decided that he had eaten out of the fireplace, though, and he couldn't really argue.

The waters of the bay were absolutely still. Asheater's compass wasn't even swinging.

Out in the iron-grey sea, a white wall of fog hid the horizon.

This was so uncomfortable.

He needed this meat.

Well. 'Need'. Out in the city, on the mainland, or just further inland on the island, it would be a luxury to have fish at all, probably. However, it was the best part of Asheater's life, catching and eating fish.

At home, in his little cottage, there was nothing to enjoy but food - and, sometimes, the ash from the fire, and the way it washed off. Sometimes, it was the Sun, in Summer. Sometimes - twice, in fact - he'd gone into town and gone home with a warm girl. Neither of them had the interest to keep going with each other after the second time - was it something about Asheater not doing enough?

No, it was 'decisions', he remembered her saying it - he wasn't 'being the man'.

Asheater was a man. He knew that for a fact, and so did she. They'd fucked before, after all. The fisherman didn't go in for sex that had to be solved, like it was a riddle, like who had made the Cairns, and what King or religion the country had this month. No, if Asheater had to do more than please the one he was loving (physically loving, he didn't like her house), he was not interested.

And anyway, sex didn't compare to frying a cod.

Or grilling a rockfish.

Nothing did, really. To compare the two fishes was the only way in the world that Asheater could be offended.

Swimming was good, he thought, for a second. Once you were used to the cold. He'd tried a sauna, once, and then swam, and that was just lovely. He'd done that with the crofter's sons and two of his brothers.

Still wasn't as good as...

Ah, a bite. Motion on the line, nearly pulling it off the boat.

Asheater grinned like a goblin, and he took the line in hand and pulled it up. He struggled with it... he guessed his prize was big enough for a whole day's feed. Once he got the line up, his bare feet tangled in the line at the bottom of his boat, not only was it a piece of metal on a rope, it was inscribed with something.

And of course, Asheater couldn't read, as he was not the Princess, or the King, or any of their servants. He paid the tax he was told to pay and that was it. Slowly, he turned it over in his hands, ignoring the rumbling around him, and the beginning rain.

You must understand that Asheater was not, actually, slow. The young man was cunning, and knowledgeable. He knew what most folk knew, and a bit more. He spoke every language he'd ever need in the waters he fished, and knew the folk who spoke them well enough to get by with them, whether he was being investigated for what he caught, or when there was work. He knew enough about clocks from his time repairing the clocktower in town that he could repair watches, given the tools. However, he was a slave to pleasure, and to emotion: the boy was a glutton, and if there was some food or play he fancied, he'd go and do it, come storms or high water.

For example, the sea-storm (which the village had correctly predicted) was actually approaching rather quickly now, visibly so, and Asheater was turning over a metal block to work out why it had fought with him in starts and stops on the way up. His little boat floated further out, towards the mist, the tempest, and death.

"What are you?" he asked the metal block. It could have broken off of a ship, but there wasn't anything identifiable on it. He could tell, at least, that it wasn't from any kind of folk he knew.

"It's very old," someone said behind him, smoothly and strangely, and Asheater jumped.

Behind him, arching out of the water, was the head of a small-ish sea serpent. This head was about the size of Asheater himself. Its scaly skin was a handsome near-black blue, with a green zig-zag going from its snout down its back. It didn't seem like it had any eyelids - just two big pearl-like eyes, unblinking. In fact, it wasn't at all unlike an adder on land, besides its size and colour (and living in the sea, and talking). Asheater looked at its mouth as it spoke, and out slurped a tongue with many small... spikes? Branches? It was lovely, whatever it was.

The fog was closing in, now, around both of them, and Asheater could hear the storm's approach more clearly.

"You could sell it, I think," said the snake. "Hello."

"Hello," said Asheater, who was polite to everyone, provided they weren't one of his brothers. "I'm Callum. What do you want in return for this? I haven't caught anything to give you."

"Oh, I don't want anything from you," and it had the strangest accent. It sounded almost like his own island's, but with a lot of Norse in there, too. Asheater wondered how it could have picked up an accent living in the sea. "I know this came from an old ship. It's a few centuries old, at least, as it's been that long since I saw ships with those on them. It could be worth something on land. I thought, if you got something valuable, you'd go back to shore, or to the Cove --"

"I'm not a virgin," Asheater interrupted, having become a little frightened.

"We don't eat virgins, and -- and there's no real way of telling, and I've eaten this year," stammered the serpent. Its -- no, his head was now over the end of his boat, held in the air by its own strength. Its tongue slurped again - and lingered for an instant too long at the bottom of the boat, one of those thick 'hairs' pressed on the tangle of rope and Asheater's feet. "Callum, that storm's coming in fast. I like your singing. Please don't stay out here."

"Do you live out here?" Asheater was a little suspicious, still, but the snake was warm. So warm he could feel that heat radiating onto him now. He could feel it in the drip of the water off of his scales, from his even hotter spit. His mouth steamed, slightly. Asheater began to think. "How often do you listen to me singing?"

The snake recoiled a little, bizarrely shy. The boat had stopped rocking, which meant that Asheater's new acquaintance was wrapped around it. And who knew how much more of the serpent there was, under the water?

"Yes," he said. "I've listened to you since you started fishing here. Sometimes I - um. Callum. The storm."

"You never said hello, or anything," Asheater said. He leaned forward, towards the snake, who seemed to be deliberately stopping his tongue from coming out. It seemed to Asheater - who was clever with whatever was right in front of him - that the tongue had to come out, eventually. Those slurps seemed as necessary and inevitable as breathing for this creature. "D'you know what people really call me?"

There was a moment's silence. Well, a moment's distant rumbling.

"Yes," the snake said, finally. "They call you Asheater. They say you ate some ash from a fireplace when you were very little."

Asheater's eyes narrowed.

"I think," Asheater said, not nearly as furtively as he thought he said it, "that you care if I'm a virgin, my friend."

The blue lindworm was scandalised. His enormous jaw dropped, and he took a second to compose himself.

"You needn't get so shocked," Asheater said, forcedly fancy. He lay back and put his legs up on the seat in the middle of the boat, which put his crossed feet just below the snake's jaws. Asheater was hopeful. "It's not like anyone else can hear us. No-one else is fishing right now." He grinned. "What's your name, my friend?"

"Cieran," the serpent replied. After a moment's eye contact, Cieran let his branched tongue slip down, over and between Asheater's calves, and slipped it back up, maybe a little slowly. "I'm normally more... outgoing, Asheater, but I didn't know if you'd like me. You people often try to kill us."

"I do like you," Asheater said, though his concentration was broken by the wonderfully warm feeling of Cieran's tongue slurping down on his legs again. He needed more of it. "I think I could love you. Stay here with me."

"I really think we need to get to the Cove, man --"

"Can I fit in your mouth?" Asheater interrupted, his eyes wide like a curious child.

Cieran paused, for a moment, then said:

"Actually, I could store you in my gullet for about half a day." Asheater's face would have brightened if that was possible, the stupid man. It was just as well Cieran was so guileless, and Asheater so silly: neither of them questioned the other's trust or their worthiness of it. "I've got one big lung, and one small lung. I can keep giving you air while I'm under the surface." He pulled back, and Asheater stumbled after him, the little bit of metal forgot. "But you don't want that."

"Why wouldn't I want that?!" Asheater laughed, and nearly -- very nearly -- poked Cieran's snout with his own while he pursued him off the side of the boat. His little craft, held in the loop of Cieran's body, was tipped up.

"I like you," Cieran said, with an unmanly giggle. He opened his great mouth wide open off the prow, and Asheater paused at the edge of his boat, staring down and feeling the steam come off him. Cieran didn't smell like fish. He smelled - actually, it was a lot like a normal adder. (When Asheater was little, he'd picked one up, and it musked on him.)

The fisherman held onto the side of the boat with his hands and feet, then gingerly slipped his feet down, pressing them onto Cieran's fleshy gums and palate -- and it was heaven. Hot, too. A bath made of muscles. "Oh," said Cieran further, ducking and closing his mouth while Asheater sat spellbound by the feeling, "I'd rather you were naked for this, you know, just -- it doesn't -- feel good, the cloth."

Asheater winked at him.

"No, not for... I mean...," Cieran said, but sighed, exasperated with this boy. Asheater ducked back into the boat, which was politely righted by the sea-dragon to make it easier for him. He shucked off his shirt and his trousers. He wondered how he'd replace them. The boat, too.

Oh, well.

Asheater slipped over the boat's edge and stood in Cieran's mouth again, just as slowly - his steaming breath covered his naked body and highlighted the cold of the rain falling on his skin. The boy shuddered happily. He tried to stand, and his feet slid to the centre of the mouth, toes pointed straight down, slipping into Cieran's throat. There was no need for the serpent to open his mouth wide around, like an adder swallowing a vole - Asheater wasn't even the breadth of his mouth. So, he let the Earth's pull do its job, while Cieran's throat muscles opened and closed, walking him down to his knees in heat and moisture.

He felt Cieran's moan more than he heard it.

Wonderfully, finally, the snake's whole tongue slipped from its hole in the lower jaw of the serpent, and wrapped itself around Asheater's arms - his chest - his head - like he was bound in chains - and pulled taut, squeezing him perfectly tight.

An adder's tongue is long, and has two little forks at the end. Asheater's house seemed to attract a lot of them. The received wisdom on sea serpents - at least, of the sort Cieran seemed to be - was that they ate only virgins, preferably children, and gathered them up with a spiny tongue. Like all the village folk's stories about animals, this was probably not true, as the 'spikes' in this tongue were flexible and rubbery, probably for tasting instead of impaling. This was like that story they told about cats following pregnant women in the hopes of stealing the baby for themselves.

The tongue, this soft tree-root of muscle, was at least as wide around as Asheater's belly was. The hair-like 'spikes' sticking out from it were as broad as his hands, and not unlike a jellyfish's thicker arms, or a sea anemone's. The coil snuggled and tightened around him ever further, like Asheater had once or twice crushed brambles with his own tongue. He wished Cieran could enjoy him that much. He was fairly certain Cieran did enjoy him that much, from the long, pleased groan he now felt through his hips. If his face wasn't covered in colourful scales, the fisherman would have thought the sea-wyrm was blushing.

Sadly, of course, Cieran's tongue uncoiled from him bit by bit as he was accepted into the sea serpent's gullet. This wet slither was its own pleasure.

Asheater felt the heat of the snake's smooth throat from his feet up to his hips, and every motion of every muscle slid over him. A thick slime coated his legs, made them slide over each other, and he sighed out in animal pleasure as he fit his hands into the throat, too tight to allow any movement once he was inside, and let himself be walked further in.

Cieran's tongue was just round his neck, now, and in his hair, stroking him like a lover. He hoped this was them becoming lovers, really. It was flattering to be wanted, and enjoyed. He hummed a little to himself. A little of the foreign tune he'd sung to the fish before. Cieran continued the tune with his own strange hum, and the sound echoed inside Asheater's bones, and drove him out of his senses.

The serpent's throat reached his shoulders, and at this point he craved being swallowed whole... partly because it was so wonderfully hot within the snake, and getting colder without. Cieran's tongue spiralled into his hair, and shoved him into the dark.

Cieran moaned, again, and it filled all of Asheater's mind. Waves of happy pressure went down from his head to his feet as the rings of muscle that wrapped around the snake's throat began to rhythmically push him down.

"That," said Cieran, "was very pleasant, Callum - um, Asheater. Thank you." The snake licked his lips, and the throat above Asheater must have closed up, because the enormous serpent was clearly diving underwater now, meandering from side to side as he swam. The heat and wetness inside the snake's throat covered all of Asheater, and he couldn't really tell if they were going further towards land or out to sea. "I'm going to push your boat back to the cove, but only the line you brought out of the water will be saved. I'll bring the others back if I find them."

Cieran kept talking for a few more moments, gently, softly, and with Asheater right next to his larynx, it was a delightful all-over rumble. In his nineteen or so years of life -- no-one was counting -- Asheater had never felt so much, so quickly. He swore at that moment to renounce drink and every other vice he had, just to make room for more of this. He had to keep in Cieran's good graces to be swallowed like this again...

...but Cieran seemed to admire Asheater for who, and what, he was. Even if that included his indolence. He knew all about Asheater already. The boy, for all that he lived a bit of a secluded life, wasn't what you'd call private. Being observed, not knowing about it, and being admired from afar, none of it bothered him. It might have, if it had happened for less benign reasons than interest, fascination or lust. Or, if he disliked the person peeping. Or if it was one of his brothers.

Asheater forgot about that line of thought, and relaxed himself, and let his body be slipped further down into Cieran.

The snake eventually turned around, flexing Asheater pleasantly, and he felt the two of them swim out to sea... and sink.

The sensation was instantly and almost irresistibly soporific. Asheater yawned, and stretched out his arms and legs, up and down. There wasn't room to do much speaking. He slid even further in.

"Asheater," Cieran said, "Can you feel the storm? I can see it here. The water surface is rolling and white. There are valleys. It moves so slowly from down here."

Asheater could almost feel the storm in some of the currents hitting Cieran, but it was like being in a castle during... well, during a storm. In the perfect, slimy darkness, Asheater closed his eyes.

"I've fallen asleep down here a few times, listening to your song above the surface," Cieran said, more quietly now, a little more to himself. "I like the one about the ... well. I like the inviting one, from the milkmaid to her man. I thought about coming up, but. But, um."

Asheater strained against the gut walls of the serpent, and loved the fact that, this far down, he probably didn't even make an indent in the thing's body. Not a lump. It was odd that there was no fish scent down here either.

"...you'll understand I didn't know, not really, that you'd like me." They had stopped moving, and there was a slight bending in the tunnel Asheater was trapped in. "That you'd... sst. I can feel your breathing... you're excited by this, too, are you? I was just going to fall asleep here... Hs. I have a solution."

So, Cieran began, quietly, to sing.

We can say 'quietly', because with the storm rumbling all around, neither Cieran nor any fish or crabs nearby could hear him. Inside the sea serpent, however, where the storm itself couldn't be heard, his voice was a soft, beautiful, near-muffled echo all over Asheater. He forgot all about his sweat mingling with the slime on the walls around him, used to the heat now. His muscles, which were of the consistency he needed as a fisherman but not quite as actively maintained as those of a harder-working one, had lost all tension, and were reduced now to so much spooling string.

There, at the bottom of the sea, safe from storms, flies, and other people, and surrounded by a lullaby he himself had written as a dirty joke, Asheater fell asleep.

It wasn't the last time he would do so.