In the world above, today is a festival of love. The villagers offer each other roses and set their wedding dates, they cover everything in pink and red and white. They sing each other love songs and write swooping poetry, or offer proposals with family rings.
But love can mean different things for different people. Today, these villagers celebrate because they know that they are kissing and dancing on a precipice. Here, the tradition is to be passionate because this is a day of mourning.
After all, it could be your turn next.
Somewhere in the village, perhaps, a young couple is sharing a final, bitter kiss. Somewhere, maybe, an older couple holds hands and share good memories, weeping for each other because ritual keeps them from weeping where anyone else can see, and because they are going to lose a child today.
Somewhere in the village, quite certainly, there is a red ribbon.
They found it at the door of a certain house a day before the festival began. The grass outside was damp with water--it always is, no matter how far you build away from the river. It was untied with shaking hands and put away, to be worn during the night's celebrations.
At the edge of this little village, the sea is as quiet and placid as it ever was. The only time it ever rages is when enemies come near the village's shores, and even then, it is only to drive their ships away. Fish float easily to the surface, and trade with neighboring communities thrives.
Life is easy here, in this village. Life is safe. Most of the inhabitants live long, happy lives.
The day is coming to an end and the villagers walk to the riverbank together, holding each other's hands. The laughter and fun of the day is quieter now, subdued by the coming night. Lights glimmer in everyone's hands, lighting their way.
There are no prayers. There are no rituals, no chants. The gods they worship would not stick their heads out of the water long enough to hear. Instead, the villagers set their lights, soft paper vessels in a dozen different shapes, down upon the peaceful waves.
Deep under the water, farther down than any human would think possible from the surface, creatures are waiting. They look up through the dark water with hungry, cutting eyes.
Pictures the mermaids of Disney movies and old paintings, the silky hair, the hooded eyes, the shell-cup bras. Now forget them. Add a few more teeth, add a twisted web of flesh and scales tangled endlessly together. Take away the steady light of sanity in their eyes. Give them jaws that unhinge and ruthless, brutal strength.
They have not been seen above the water for a very long time, but the people remember. They remember waves of red with blood lapping at their feet, remember the way the very river had shrugged its shoulders and sent death spilling down their streets. They remember the cost of oaths broken and demands denied.
So there are no protests as, one by one, the lights are set down little flares of pink and white drift through the dark water, casting their glow down, down, down into the depths. Inhuman eyes flicker upward at the sight, narrowing with interest.
The signal has been cast, and they rise. Muscular bodies rippling up, teeth baring in cracked glass smiles, the school rises up out of the deep for the first time in a long while. They can the swirl of lanterns, looking, looking--
Ah. There it is. A single drop of fiery red amidst all the pastel, bright as blood running down a rosy cheek. It hangs off a familiar mass of wood and barnacles, one that bobs gentle under a weight heavier than a lantern.
At the surface mists rise up, a sign of approval. The boat and its small passenger vanish into the gray. One will be found bobbing against the docks in a day or two, ready to be cleaned and put aside for next year. The other will...not.
Every year, a female member of the village is chosen. Sometimes it's a young girl in the blossoming heat of youth, sometimes it's a buxom older matron. Sometimes she's got a fiancé or a husband, a man who has to turn away from her with fury and heartbreak--he is honored in the village afterwards, but that doesn't bring her back. Sometimes she's the kind of girl that everyone thought was a boy for a while, might have thought so right up until the ribbon reached her door.
If this year's prize weeps, she does it quietly, to everyone's relief. She is obedient; she has never considered the possibility of being anything else. She has seen many other girls pass into the water before this day, and the tradition is ingrained in her blood.
The fog sweeps her away as neatly as a rubbed-out pencil mark, same way she will be erased from the town's memory in the years to come. They have trained themselves to survive by forgetting.
They walk away, still holding each other's hands, whispering in each other's years. Tonight's couples will make love fiercely, desperately, savoring the pump of life in each other's veins. They will tear at each other with nails and teeth, punishing their partners for the community's crime.
And tomorrow they will wake up, and those with need to grieve will wipe their tears away, and life will go on. That is the way of things.
 
Alone in her boat, the sacrifice waits. The lanterns are her only guardians for a while, light spilling over the water like rose petals. But eventually they start to sink under the water or get snatched away by eddies, peeling off until she is truly, utterly alone in the dark. She tells herself not to be afraid and fails miserably.
Something splashes nearby, and she stiffens. "Hello?"
Her answer is a great brutal something roaring up out of the dark, tackling her from the boat with an almighty splash. She doesn't have time to scream as she hits the freezing water, stealing her breath away, eyes rolling with the shock--
And then lips are being pressed against hers. Rough, firm lips from a mouth that is clearly not human in the slightest, but still lips. The teeth are carefully tucked away, but she can still feel the outline pressed against her lips.
A low hum echoes through her bones, and suddenly, that's air being poured down her throat. Hands press against her back, and she gasps into the strange mouth as heat pulses into her veins, chasing the cold away.
She can breathe, she can feel life pulsing through her veins, and she does not understand. Why isn't she dead? Isn't that what she's doing out here, isn't she supposed to--
The mouth against her jerks away, but then another mouth shoves in to replace it, a wet and slimy tongue pushing down her throat. She gags, head jerking back as another mouth presses onto her neck. More mouth on her wrists, her shoulders, ripping her shoes off to drag suck and bite at her tender feet.
And then she realizes the game. She screams, a stream of bubbles rising unheeded, gasping for air that isn't there as she fruitlessly tries to struggle free. Sound waves shudder through the water--laughter. They're laughing. 
Fingers tear at her dress, ripping her clothes away. Her hands are pinned behind her back, legs yanked apart as the water rushes against her bare skin. Everything she sees is writhing, twisted shapes, but she can't make out anything else, can't see their weak spots.
A hand slips between her legs, finding her clit with inhuman accuracy. The hand is finned, but its fingers are still long enough and determined enough to press down oh so delicately. The girl jerks with a muffled wail, her heart fluttering. She's never been touched like this before, never felt anything like it in all her childish fumbling with boys.
The finger presses down with more force and she tries to buck away, but there are hands grinding down on her from every direction, pushing and pulling. Fingers drag along her ass, her breasts, the curve of her thigh, pinching and tugging.
The mermaids keep kissing her, pumping fresh air into her throat. They wrap hungry mouths around her fingers and toes and suck, coaxing a terrifying heat into her stomach. Hands squeeze her nipples, pinching and pulling so hard she thinks she might begin to bleed.
Hands slap her ass in quick, brutal succession, and she squirms in humiliated pain. Then there are wet mouths pressed against her rear as if an apology, one daring tongue slipping between her buttocks to nudge at her ass.
The hand on her cunt disappears, a tender mercy, at least until it's replaced by a vicious little mouth. No one has ever put their cunt on her mouth before; no one has ever plundered her like this, and she--she's so scared, but it's not just fear, and that's the scariest part of all.
It's like they know her, know what makes her shudder and moan. Know what sends her limbs jerking in confusion, rocked by pleasure-pain from fingers lips tongues on every single part of her body.
The first time she comes, she almost doesn't realize it. She thinks that they've found somehow to take her apart, to finally bring this to an end. But death shouldn't feel like this, not so terribly good.
She wails into somebody's mouth and they hum, each and every one, the sound buzzing through her skin. The girl vibrates from the sheer force of it, her bones trembling so hard she thinks they might break.
The space of the hands running over her body picks up, the finger spilling at her with just a touch more strength. The kisses have a hint of teeth, now, but she's too lost in the swirls of pleasure to notice.
Please, she thinks, not knowing what she's asking for. Please. Please. 
And from a place that's both so far away and impossibly close, a voice answers, let it happen. 
She comes again before she can make much sense of that. And again, and again, batting about like a toy between their bodies. She can feel them rubbing their dripping genitals against her flesh, staining her with their want, but none of them seem very focused on their own pleasure, only hers.
And they just keep humming , louder and louder. Keep on fucking her with their mouths and fingers, keep making her come until she's sobbing from how raw and burnt-out she feels.
Her clit feels like it might fucking burst into flames if they keep touching it for much longer. Even when she's not directly coming, she's shaking painfully hard from the aftershocks.
Enough. Enough. Stop, stop, please-- 
Just let it happen. The voice is growing louder, melting into a vast gurgling swirl. She can feel her skin start to tear under the weight of their teeth, their flesh. She can feel her mind start to do the same. You're almost there. 
I've already come, she thinks hysterically, right before she does just that. I've already, I've already-- 
You have more to give. Something rips at her neck, and she should be more frightened at that than she is. All we need is a little bit more.
She shudders again, again, again. She splinters, breaks. Fragments of the past--her parents, her friends, her crushes, the flowers she'd pick and the bread she'd make, all come flowing out like blood from a wound.
Light seeps into the cut.
Do you see, sister? they ask. Do you see? 
She sees. Just as today is a celebration of love in the world above, it is a celebration of love down here, too. She sees bloodstained fins joined, hearts beating in sync. She sees a love loud enough and deep enough to swallow the world.
That's it. Blood stains the water, but it doesn't hurt. She burns alive, but it doesn't hurt. That's it, love. 
She breaks apart, colors flowing in reverse. Pink, red, white. The dark water swallows it all.
Welcome home. 
 
There is a village by a river. In the village, love is celebrated in tune with loss, with what may disappear should the waters be cruel enough to choose you. The chocolate is salty with tears, and perhaps, in its own way, is a strength, a clarity.
In the water, though, love is celebrated in turn with gifts given, with victory, with renewal. Love is only the beginning of something great. Love is a sugar buzz; love is red candy so thick and sweet it chokes all reason. Love is making yourself sick on sweetness and letting all your heavy weight be purged with efficient, nauseating quickness.  
Love is a collection of bodies twined together under the surf, reaching out to run gentle hands over the flanks of their new sister-wife. A mermaid just like them looks back, with eyes that can now see better than they ever did on land.
She reaches out with a smile, ready to serve. To give them her love, the whole endless well of it. The night has only begun for them, for the water down here must boil with a whole community's pleasure before any of them will be ready to sleep.
I love you, she thinks at them. Countless voices reply in the affirmative, the impact of all of them at once hitting her with the force of a tidal wave.
She takes it without flinching and smiles, showing razor-edged teeth.