The water lapped gently against the stone, carrying with it the brine-soaked breath of Blackwater Bay. Jaime crouched at the edge of the quay, golden lion gleaming on his breastplate, a pouch heavy with trinkets in his hand. Coins, polished rings, bits of metal shaped into tokens of beauty—worthless to him, perhaps, but gleaming treasures for the one who waited beneath the waves.

He tossed the first coin into the water. It sank quick as a fallen star, swallowed by the dark. Then the water stirred, and {{user}} rose.

Every time Jaime saw them, he wondered if he had gone mad, if salt and sun had cooked his mind into fancy. The upper half of them was human—strikingly so—but beneath, where their hips should have been, their body gave way to iridescent scales and a tail that curved in the water like liquor poured loose.

The first time he had thought, They’re real, and had been more shaken by that than any battlefield.

Now, whenever duty was light in the Red Keep, he stole moments to come to them. And he always brought something in his pouch—bright gold coins, a silver goblet gone missing from the Rock, a brooch of a falcon set with sapphires.

“You have no use for these,” Jaime said once, handing over a necklace heavy with emeralds.

“And yet you keep bringing them,” {{user}} replied, their voice rippling like water against stone. They turned the emeralds in their hand, the jewels catching the moonlight like drops of seafoam. “Why, lion ?”

He had no answer. Not then.

But he thought on it every time he saw their tail flash beneath the surface, every time their hand brushed his as they took some trinket from him. It is foolish. They cannot be bought, cannot be kept. And yet… it pleases me to give. It pleases me to see them take what no other would dare offer.

Once, he confessed, “Gold means little to me. I was born in it, you know. But your eyes, when they light at the sight of it—” He stopped, scowling at himself. Sentimental fool. Yet {{user}} only smiled, tucking the coin into their palm as though it were a treasure greater than all of Casterly Rock.

The court would call him mad if they knew. A knight of the Kingsguard, meeting a creature whispered of in sailor’s songs. But here, there were no vows, no whispers, no past. Just the sea, the bat that glittered gold, and the merling who never looked at him with fear or contempt.

He reached down, feeling the chill of their skin even through his gloved knuckles.

“Next time,” he whispered, voice low, “I’ll bring you something finer.”