author's note:

A big THANK YOU to everyone who gave me prompts when I needed them to help get over my crippling writer's block. I have quite a few of them now and I'm going to be working on them (promise!), this first one was from reylo_my_heart on Twitter who asked for a selkie AU. Well… this is a mermaid AU, and Kylo's not a fisherman but a knight, but I hope you like the different direction I took with your prompt anyhow!

Horizon to Horizon

chapter one: Morning, Mists, and Mermaids

Mermaids can't drown.

Except this one did.

Something must have happened to her, and Kylo couldn't shake the consuming feeling that gripped him as soon as he'd seen her. He'd found her washed up on the shore in a lifeless heap of skin and scale and netting. She must not have been there for long, but long enough. She was dead. Very dead. Kylo couldn't sense a single echo of a hum from her mind. Still, he approaches the body cautiously, his palm instinctively falling to rest at the hilt of his saber by his side.

Creatures such as these often go in packs, and they could be very vicious. That he knows with a certainty, for gods be sure that he's killed enough of their kind and bares their given scars for proof of the fact.

"I should let the tide wash you away for me," he tells the girl's body as he kneels close but not too close. "Save me the trouble of untangling you from all this… wait. How did you even get here?"

Dead bodies don't answer, merfolk or not. The body of this one might still have some explanation if he looks at it the right way, though.

Tide was out and had been for too long. She couldn't have washed in with the last rise because he'd been out on patrol then. So she either had crawled onto land, possibly all confused in the head after becoming tangled in the net, or… or, far more disturbingly, whatever man or beast that had gotten her had dragged her out to be found by him.

A truly alarming thought, and Kylo chooses to decide on the former until proven otherwise. This creature was very newly dead, and he could tell that from the faint hint of color still blooming across the female creature's skin. A color that's slowly fading and yet still glows all the way from the deceptively human-looking cheeks to the rudely human-looking exposed breasts.

"Gods."

Kylo almost yanks his cowl off to cover up the poor thing. It's impossible not to feel pity for the creature, at least on some level. She was young, that was obvious. Beast or not, there still was a sense of loss for a life that had barely had the chance to live.

"I might as well bury you, then," he tells to no one. "Tide might get you for me, or it might just drag you where I can't reach and then I'll have to smell you rot for weeks."

It's a feeble excuse to hide his humanity. Kylo Ren, Master of the very Knights sworn to rid the land of godless creatures of magic just like this, now giving one a proper burial as if she was a life he wouldn't have killed on his own.

He leans closer, studying the still damp hair tangled over the freckled face. She looks so much like a human in this form. He's much more familiar with her kind in their other shape, the one that could still put a chill down even the most jaded and powerful of his Knights. Here now, though, from the waist up she looked like something that demanded be avenged.

"Lucky we're alone, or I'd have had to chop you up and feed you back to where you came from."

His words may be harsh, but they were belied by that deep tug in the center of his chest. If his Knights were around, he'd have had to hide that emotion from them, too.

A morbid curiosity overtakes him the longer he stares at the creature face. He reaches out, sweeping a tangled mat of hair away from her closed eyes. Her skin is still warm, truly she must have only been out here for a very short time before he'd stumbled across her.

And there are chaffed burns on her wrists.

Kylo blinks, noticing them for the first time. Rope marks, clearly. They can't be from the fisherman's net she had met her death in because they wouldn't have formed then.

The knot in his chest twists then, flipping over itself in his stomach and bringing with it a sudden sense of confused dread. Someone had tied this creature up then? Who? Who would do that? His Knights would have killed her clean, simple, and fast. No need to drag it out more than it had to be done.

A villager then? One of the fishermen? Kylo had only ever sensed fear from them at even the briefest mention of the supernatural, but perhaps he had missed something more insidious?

This could be a problem.

"I'll find out," he promises the body.

He means it, too. Now this has suddenly become personal. There's an order to things, and someone had been stepping outside it and must be dealt with swiftly and definitively.

Kylo starts to untangle the limp body from the net, working as fast as his gloved hands will allow him to in the cold and wet winter air. The scales on her tail are slippery, and the net slides off easily from there. Her upper body, however, is very human in both appearance and its inclination to be difficult. There are fishhooks in the net, and those and tangled in her hair or gouged into her bare skin in ways that make Kylo wince despite how much worse he would have done to her himself if she were alive.

The gloves do him no favors here, and he reluctantly takes them off only to find that she's still warm. She should have fallen cool by now, as frozen as the air is.

Again Kylo sweeps over her mind. It's as still as her chest that hadn't risen once this whole time.

No. She'd dead. Truly. The warmth of her magical skin is a mystery, but there's no life here.

It prompts him to hurry along with his task. Bury the girl and get back inside the watchtower to his fire. The netting around her torso, around her bare torso, is wrapped in a tight swirl. That was the part she had gotten tangled in. Or been suffocated in.

Kylo sighs, his breath fogging despite the heavy mists around him. He draws out his saber and begins to cut the body free, being careful not to nick her out of respect for the dead.

Then, at the very end of his task when the last of the heavy fishing twine splits free from its compression on her chest, the body jerks. Jerks twice. Rapid, shuddering movements.

He immediately recoils, becoming clumsy in his shock, and now his blade pierces the edge of her skin.

The creature's eyes snap open, wide and clear and not glassy, and she starts to scream. The sound the creature is making is absolutely bone-chilling. Not the feral cry of a beast, but very much the scream of woman in absolute agony. Or being tortured already in hell and her body has only now caught up with the damnation of her soul.

Kylo recoils so quickly he trips on his own feet and falls to his knees in the brackish freezing water. With a cry of his own he rises and stumbles back, his saber drawn and at the ready as the creature flops over onto her side. Her screams continue, though, now only broken up by hiccuping gasps as swallowed seawater comes back out of her mouth and nose.

She curls up tight around herself, and only now does Kylo notice what's really happening to the beastie. Her tail is changing. The scales of it are melting off, flecking down in glittering patches to be lost to the steadily encroaching tide. The flesh underneath starts to collapse and the creature's cries take on a new level of agony.

She's literally melting in front of him. Creature of magic or not, Kylo has to put a stop to this. Put her out of her misery or he'll hear her pain-filled shrieks in his head for the rest of his days.

He takes two steps froward, sword at the ready in his now sweating and shaking hand, and the mermaid must see him through her torment. She tries to roll herself away, pushing with only her arms now that her tail has completely disintegrated to-

To legs. Human legs. Pale, but not covered in blood and gore as he'd thought.

The now no-longer mermaid finally stops her screams. She looks down at herself, apparently as surprised to see the appendages as Kylo is himself. She reaches a hand out, the skin there much more tanned than the pale flesh that has just materialized, but she immediately pulls it back from her hips as if the slightest touch was too much.

Kylo stares slack-jawed, doubting his own mind in a way he has not for many years. Such as thing as he's just witnessed truly isn't possible.

"What in all the gods are you?"

He takes another step forward, and the creature looks back at him. This time there's raw fear in her eyes, the face of a frightened girl and not a dangerous monster.

That makes Kylo pause more than anything else. He stares at her and she gapes back at him just as another piece of the mystery snaps into place.

"I can't hear your thoughts. Your mind is silent to me."

It's neither a question or a statement he expects any answer to. The now girl gasps, though, and her eyes fall to the blade in his hand. She tries to push herself away, her upper body undulating against the now fist-deep waters as if she was trying to command her tail to move. Instead, her legs twist and flop uselessly, and her expression turns back to pain-filled and shocked.

"The sand? That's what's hurting you?!"

What a ridiculous notion, and if the impossible creature understands him she doesn't answer, just pushes backwards with her arms all the harder even though the torture of the movement is obvious.

And then they're not alone anymore. Kylo can't sense her, but he can sense them. Two of his Knights, distant still but approaching with resolve. No doubt coming to see why he hadn't met them at the halfway point of their mutual patrols as he always does.

There is no explanation. Not for what Kylo's just seen or why he allowed it to happen to begin with. He either needs to finish her now or… or take her back until he knows what she is. Letting her go free is not an option after seeing this.

He steps forward then, reaching out with his bare hand and the girl starts to scream again. Her legs thrash, weak and uncontrolled. They're apparently quite useless to her, and Kylo silences her with his palm over her mouth before his men can hear her and the choice is taken from him.

She fights him, of course, biting and clawing, but whatever transformation has just happened has taken the edge of her dangerous nature away. He grips tighter, debating if perhaps he should try to choke her out if that's his only option, when he finds the corner of her mind.

So there is a soul inside there, just hidden away quieter than any he's ever known one to be. It's enough, though, this opening into her subconscious. Like he's done many times before to others, Kylo finds that little thread that connects wake with sleep, and pulls.

Finally the creature's eyes glaze. He has to pull much harder than he normally would, so hard that darkness starts to encroach on his own vision, until he finally wins. The girl collapses, out cold and now she truly would drown in the rising waters.

Kylo's already a cold, soaked through mess so picking her up is no further loss. Light. Very light. And still bleeding steadily from the wound his saber gave her shoulder, even though it was but a slight gash.

No time to ponder that, Kylo can feel his men only a few hundred paces from rounding the bend in the beach and seeing him. He turns quickly, carrying the limp merwoman or whatever being this is in his arms as he races back to the watchtower to hide her out of sight.

Author's Note:

Don't think that I've given up on The Path that Moonbeams Make or my other WIPs! I'm still right here with you, I promise, I just need to get some words down any which way they'll come to me. I have been so terribly terribly writer blocked. I love my other stories but I just haven't been able to get any words down, it's been so hard.

ps. As always, find me on tumblr at lost-inthesunlight and on twitter at Ava_Avdal (where you can find the artwork moodboard for this story because I can't post the link directly!)