Tangaroa
Greentails, sirens, mermaids, merfolk, the creature you think of when you hear these names is a Tangaroa.
May the Gods watch over you
And they consider what you've doneBut now you're hidden way to get your strength
Deep in a cave, your power has regained
And your legacy is spread, to the deepest of the sea
The Tangaroa
Those Whole Dwell in the Surging Waters
The men of the land are painfully unaware of the fact that their world is only a small portion of the whole. In their arrogance they believe that their kingdoms and nations, set upon stone and wood are the pinnacle of the world, history, and of creation. The men of the land have always been and ever will be arrogant. It is in their blood, to live above and at the expense of nature, to turn the earth mother's gifts back against her, the cut greater treasures from her stony flesh. I am frequently asked by the frylings if man has always been thus. If you listen to the oldest legends, whispered from deepest depths they say that this was not always the case.
For in the beginning there was naught but water. As any of the races of the dry land and they all agree, the beginning was water. They the land-walkers will tell one another that the Tangaroa were once men and women as themselves that forsook land to swim in the sea. Their favorite stories call upon young Tangaroa girls to beach themselves in a desperate attempt to return to the land, to find a charming prince and live happily ever after. Teanoi, the Wave Rider, the Shark Father recalls when one of the deities of the sky and air rebelled against his celestial kin and brought a great and terrible gift to the earth. This was no concern of ours, for the sea does as the sea does. There was jagged lightning, and flames that swallowed up everything. Yes, some say that the fallen Celestial One was the Harbinger of Flame, The One prophesied to dry the Oceans to desolate Salt wastes.
But from that time, the creatures of land took up strange ways. Tools and weapons are known to us, spears and tridents shaped from coraland bone, macanas made of whalebone studded with Teanoi's blessed teeth, but not such as the land dwellers. They came many shapes and forms, with proud faces, dour faces, coarse faces, fair faces, all came with metal. Torn from the flesh of mother earth, tortured with flame and beaten, this is the land-walker's prize. They treasure metal above all things. They kill the plants of the land, burn their mass for fuel. The earth is broken to yield it's bones. They covet the metal like the sun and murder each other, mother slaying son, daughter slaying father, brother slaying brother until they yield a sea of blood. They have other metals, some like the moon, some dark and sinister.
Then thay came to the sea. Teanoi and Rorqual paid them little mind, the foolish died in Kun's embrace or in the jaws of Teanoi's many hungry children. Soon they made false land they called boats and ships. These mockeries of land grew larger and more powerful. They cast hooks of metal into the sea to trick Kun's brood into feeding them. But this is the place of Kun's brood, to feed the many. Then they came into the water with spears and harpoons, again taking many of Kun's Brood. But their arrogance was tempered, for the great of Kun's brood were enough to bring death to the Land-Walkers. They sought the children of Rorqual, the whales. They found the gaping hungry jaws of Rorqual's Hunters and many ships were lost and many land-walkers perished.
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? Responses (5)
Update: Incomplete and exiled from in work.
The Tangaroa were going to be a riff on the traditional green tail mermaid, having a barbarian hunter/gatherer culture, the main merfolk that surface dwellers deal with, rather than the benthic mer, or the cecaelia
I would personally throw sth like out as a stub but to each his own. Content-wise, there really isn't much since these are basically just substitutes for mermaids (hence why you say it's incomplete) but the prose of this piece is well-done as has always been with your work. One thing I think this piece would be great for is to serve as a lead-in to a more expanded piece that explores the sea-folk and other sea creatures.
I like the feel of the races beneath the seas. I also like the conversational tone you strike for your narrator. I almost want a setting for the conversation, a reason why I'm able to hear it. It leaves me with a sense of a larger world and the narrator seems to be monologing.
This seems like a text you might find scratched into a seashell, a manifesto of a merperson tribe waging or about to wage war against the surface folk.
A mergirl would find the tale of the Little Mermaid to be a horror story.