July 6th: Terror At Makeout Point
July 6th: Terror At Makeout Point
“Something smells…fishy.” Merrick’s nose wrinkled, rather involuntarily Natanael thought, though his eyes remained a soothing storm-cloud blue.
“That is not fish.” Natanael replied, with a wry smile. “You have not spent much time near the ocean, have you?”
“No.” A delicate shudder. “Not since I went to the Old Country to visit my kinsfolk there. I was wretchedly sick the entire way, there and back, and vowed upon my life that I would never get on a boat again, no matter how grandly anyone chose to describe it.”
“Ah. Well.” Natanael lifted his birding glasses and scanned the darkening eastern vista; from their place on a slightly elevated spit of rock and sawgrass, the entire point was visible with the aid of magnification. Windswept dunes blent into the flatter length of the beach, still slightly damp from high tide; well above the tideline, late bathers - most of them young, all of them ignoring the local authorities’ injunction against haunting the seaside so close to full dark - gathered around driftwood fires, the wind carrying the sound of their talk and laughter and, very faintly, the scent of the clams they were steaming for dinner. “My people come from an island nation. The sea is in our blood.”
“If you insist.” Merrick handed him a mug of tea poured from their thermos in exchange for the glasses. “Frankly, I would rather - “
Screams started, and a screech just at the edge of human hearing. Merrick’s eyes flickered green in the gloaming and he shucked off his coat and drew his knives in two economical motions.
Natanael did not, at that point, learn precisely what he would rather.
“Something smells…fishy.” Merrick’s nose wrinkled, rather involuntarily Natanael thought, though his eyes remained a soothing storm-cloud blue.
“That is not fish.” Natanael replied, with a wry smile. “You have not spent much time near the ocean, have you?”
“No.” A delicate shudder. “Not since I went to the Old Country to visit my kinsfolk there. I was wretchedly sick the entire way, there and back, and vowed upon my life that I would never get on a boat again, no matter how grandly anyone chose to describe it.”
“Ah. Well.” Natanael lifted his birding glasses and scanned the darkening eastern vista; from their place on a slightly elevated spit of rock and sawgrass, the entire point was visible with the aid of magnification. Windswept dunes blent into the flatter length of the beach, still slightly damp from high tide; well above the tideline, late bathers - most of them young, all of them ignoring the local authorities’ injunction against haunting the seaside so close to full dark - gathered around driftwood fires, the wind carrying the sound of their talk and laughter and, very faintly, the scent of the clams they were steaming for dinner. “My people come from an island nation. The sea is in our blood.”
“If you insist.” Merrick handed him a mug of tea poured from their thermos in exchange for the glasses. “Frankly, I would rather - “
Screams started, and a screech just at the edge of human hearing. Merrick’s eyes flickered green in the gloaming and he shucked off his coat and drew his knives in two economical motions.
Natanael did not, at that point, learn precisely what he would rather.