Black Pearls - Plancti

Shella awoke to a sickening crunching noise and heavy rain rattling the windows of her cabin. "What tha hell?" Shella muttered to herself and she looked out the window. Fierce drops of rain slammed themselves against the glass panes, and Shella could hear the howling of the wind outside shake the panes of glass.

"What tha hell?!" Shella exclaimed, and threw the bed covers off herself. No time for clothes, the weather, for once, was interesting. She pattered to the door, large flipper-like feet flapping, her dark brown body exposed except for the tight pants she wore. Shella was something like a mermaid, in being that she had fish-like traits. However, those traits were kept to her webbed hands, fin-like ears, feet, and gills along her neck and ribs. She more looked like a tall curvaceous woman with a flat belly, dark bronze skin, and seaweed-like green hair.

Shella wrenched the door open, and howling winds slammed into her, nearly knocking her over and tearing the door off its hinges. Shella struggled to close the door and locked it, just as a precaution. This was weird.

Shella, for the last hundred or so years of her seemingly-immortal life, had been trapped in a bizarre alternate world that didn't have many features with a real life, such as pregnancy, illness, death, or bad weather. Strictly speaking, that bad weather part wasn't true, it's just that the weather had never changed. Shella had seen places that had bad weather, but her place, the Ocean, was always in good weather.

Shella tied back her hair with a bandanna and threw on a torn shirt that, with its one remaining button, functioned more like a bra for her. Normally, she'd also tie a tattered pirate flag around her waist, but the loose cloth would be caught in this hellish wind. Shella needed to see what was going on out there.

Going back to the door, Shella firmly grasped it, opened it just enough to let her squeeze past, and closed it before the wind decided to mount another attack on the door. The fierce wind bit into her skin, and the raindrops slammed against her. Shella looked up to see dark, angry clouds swirl with the wrath of gods. "What tha hell is goin' on?" she said to herself. The words were stolen on the wind.

Thunder cracked, and lightning flashed. In the brief light, Shella could see massive rocky trees of spikes rammed into one side of the ship. She peered upward, hands shielding her eyes. Shella couldn't see much, but she was pretty sure the sails were torn apart.

Shella pushed against the wind, trying to make her way to the spikes and assess the damage, when the wind snapped and twisted around. Shella was flung like a ragdoll across the deck and over the railing, splashing down into the cold water below.

It took a moment for Shella to realize what had happened. One moment, she was breathing air, the next, her gills had opened, and she was breathing water. Solid green eyes blinked as they grew accustomed to the darkness of the water around Shella. Not even a few feet from where she floated in the water, a gigantic spike of rock shot up.

Underwater was much less turbulent than above. Everything was eerily still and silent. Nothing moved under here, and that always unnerved Shella. There was a dark shape above her, touching a set of spikes. Shella's feet kicked off, sending her towards the shape like a rocket.

It was the Sea Lilith, Shella's ship, more affectionately known as Lily, and she was not looking good. Somehow, the storm had blown Lily onto the stone spikes, and now a few of them had ripped holes in the hull. The cavernous wounds made by the spikes were blacker than midnight. Shella wasn't sure if they had hit something vital.

Shella swam up the the surface and poked her head above the water. There was another crack of lightning, and Shella swore she saw something flying amongst the clouds. Something hit the water close to Shella. It was a rope ladder back up the ship. Shella could see a dark figure on the deck.

She clambered back up, and saw Lily hunched against the storm, a hand covering her stomach. Lily was the personification of the Sea Lilith, and she looked, for the most part, like a drowned young woman, with purple-tinted white skin, pale hair, and wooden ribs embedded in her skin beneath her breasts. She was wearing a torn dress that either clung to her or fluttered more than the sails of the ship and a set of knee-high boots. "You okay?" Shella yelled over the storm.

Lily weakly removed the hand covering her stomach. Even in the dark, Shella could see that a chunk was missing from her belly. "Come on, let's get back inside," Shella said.

They leaned on each other for support, Lily because of her wound, Shella to grab on to something more attuned to the deck than she was. The doors to Shella's cabin almost burst open, and after they had entered, Shella struggled to close them.

Lily was sitting on the edge of Shella's bed, holding her wound and grimacing. "Hey," Shella called out, "It'll be all right. The storm'll die down, and we can patch you up."

Lily tapped her ear with her free hand and then pointed to her lips as she mouthed something. "Huh?" Shella had no clue what Lily was motioning about. Shella had never heard Lily talk, ever. Best guess was that she was mute.

Lily repeated the same motion, but at the end, she pointed outside. Ear, mouth, storm... Well, ear probably meant hearing, Shella thought, and the mouth probably meant voice. "Did you hear someone speaking out in the storm?" Shella asked.

Lily tilted her head up, placed her hand to her throat, and repeated the mouthing motions. It was more like a choir singing action, Shella decided. "Singing, then. Well, I didn't hear anything," Shella said.

"C'mon, let's see the wound," Shella said, kneeling down next to Lily. Lily flinched, but lifted her hand off her stomach. There was a huge gash on the side of Lily's stomach, like the one on the ship proper. The wound's surface was a splintery mess of greyed wood, as if a hunk had been torn out. On a human, or any living being, the wound would be certainly fatal. Shella grimaced at the wound. There wasn't anything she could do for it; she just didn't know how.

"If there's someone behind this, I'll drag them aboard. Will you be all right?" Shella asked. Lily nodded.

"Is anything vital damaged?" Shella asked. Lily shook her head. That was good. There was a room filled with pearls, and that must not be touched. Shella didn't care who it was, but if someone else other than her or Lily was in it without her knowledge, there'd be hell to pay.

It was hours before the storm died down. Shrieking wind rattled the panes, sometimes for up to an hour. It was driving Shella mad. With Lily pinned and outside too chaotic to do anything about it, she and Lily were trapped.

When the storm finally did die down, it almost stopped abruptly. The entire sequence from storm clouds to a clear sky took under a minute. It was early morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise into the sky.

Shella creeped out, cautiously, and looked around. The grey, worn deck of Lily was absolutely soaked, but it didn't seem damaged. Shella looked up and cursed. The masts were a mess. If she or Lily knew there was going to be a storm, she'd have the sails furled. As it was now, the masts were twisted, one was snapped, and the sails were in great long shredded strips, tangled up in ropes that had snapped and flung themselves around.

As Shella watched, a mast creaked and twisted itself back into shape. Ropes automatically untangled themselves before dropping down lifelessly. Shella peered towards the crow's nest. There was something there, something like an arm or a wing draped over the side.

Shella knocked on the railing to get Lily's attention. "There's something on the crow's nest. Can ye get me up there?" she asked. Almost immediately, rope twisted around and reknotted itself to form a net-like ladder leading from the ground to the crow's nest.

Shella clambered up the net and looked into the crow's nest once she had reached the top. Inside, a naked wing-armed woman with pale skin was sprawled inside; a harpy. She was sleeping, though it didn't appear happily; her eyelids were puffy and red, like she'd been crying a lot. That's no place to sleep, Shella thought to herself, and shook the shoulder of the harpy. She didn't respond to the shaking.

Shella shook the harpy harder, but she still didn't respond. Shella sighed in exasperation and scooped up the harpy. She weighed practically nothing! It was like Shella was hauling a box of pillows! Shella carefully backed down from the ladder, making sure not to fall off, and then carried the harpy into her cabin. A quick glance behind her and Shella saw the torn sails stitching themselves back up.

Shella put the harpy on her bed; Lily wasn't in the cabin anymore. She probably was refocusing herself on fixing what had been done to her.

The harpy laid sprawled across the bed, her wings just flopped about. Now that the harpy wasn't curled up, Shella could have a better look at her. The harpy had long, smooth-edged white wings with black-tipped feathers and a fan-like tail of identical feathers. Her legs were jointed like a birds, though they only sprouted fine feathers half-way up her thighs. Her feet were like a fishing-hawk's, with curved talons on the end of strong grasping claws. Her hands were also scaled and clawed, but she only had three fingers and the fingers looked stiff.

What was more impressive to Shella was the harpy's size. She was small! Not as in young, the harpy appeared to be in her early twenties, like Lily looked to be. The harpy looked to be physically small. Even though the large wings took up a lot of room, her body probably would have made her a head and a half shorter than Shella, and that wasn't taking into account the havoc her legs played with her height.

Still, the harpy had definite feminine features to her. Her breasts were full and smooth, even with her small body, and had pert, rosy nipples. Her smooth, heart-shaped face was exquisitely formed, and her hair was smooth, fluffy feathers? Shella checked the thatch above the harpy's groin. It looked like this harpy had fine feathers wherever there would be hair, excluding the, well, the arms were feathered even slightly past the shoulders, so Shella guessed that applied to the armpit hair as well.

The harpy mumbled in her sleep and rolled over, and Shella jumped back. No, the harpy still looked to be sleeping, though she was covering herself up with a wing. Shella breathed a sigh of relief. It'd be awkward if she was caught ogling someone she just brought in, even though she was pretty sure that the harpy never wore clothes.

Shella took a brief look outside. All the damage that had been done to the masts during the storm was completely gone now. Lily had done a fantastic job repairing herself.

The wall next to the door rippled like water, and Lily strode out of the wood. Her dress wasn't torn as much now, it was just torn down the back and twice for her legs. Lily was one to change more than Shella did. It used to be that she wore a piecemeal set of clothes and had a wooden mast growing out of her back. Now, wooden knobs shaped like the bones of the spinal column pushed out of her back. Shella thought it was creepier, but she wouldn't stop Lily if Lily wanted to change herself.

"Hey, is your belly better?" Shella asked.

Lily shook her head and moved part of the dress to reveal the missing portion. She pointed out at the spines. "We're gonna get you off those rocks eventually. Just waiting for our guest here to wake up," Shella said.

Lily took one look at the harpy, frowned angrily, and walked back into the wall. "Wha? What?" Shella sputtered. "You've seen naked women before, you've seen me naked! You've seen everyone who was on here naked! What's so different about her? She's not wearing anything less than half the merfolk that have come aboard!"

Shella's words fell on deaf walls. She still had yet to learn all the tells to exactly what Lily was thinking. It didn't help that Lily only appeared when she wanted to appear. If she could see Lily as much as Lily could see her, then maybe they'd be on equal ground, but Shella always felt left behind by her ship whenever something important was going on.

The hours passed. On one side of Shella's spacious cabin, there was a massive wardrobe with an even more massive selection of clothes spilling out of it on to the floor. Shella was inspecting a emerald dress with a huge gash in it when the harpy groaned, twisted on the bed, and sat up.

"Mmmm, where is this? The nest is so soft..." murmured the harpy sleepily as Shella walked over to her. The harpy's voice was high and smooth, if weary-sounding.

"Hey," Shella said.

The harpy looked at her through bleary yellow eyes. "You are new. Who are you?" the harpy asked.

"I am Shella, captain of the Sea Lilith, of which you happen to be on," Shella said.

"I'm Plancti. I'm a siren. You're fishy," the harpy, well, that was incorrect now, so siren said. Shella hadn't met as many sirens as she had met harpies, but all the sirens she had seen were female, and barely gave her a passing glance.

"Yes, yes, I am," Shella said with a low chuckle. The chuckle was fake. This Plancti was proving to be more than a tad obvious.

"Have you seen my love?" Plancti asked, as if she expected Shella to know the answer. This almost came out of nowhere, but Shella wouldn't find it odd if Plancti's love was one of her previous passengers.

"What do they look like?" Shella asked.

"He's tall and strong and mighty and has a big penis!" Plancti enthusiastically said, flopping over on her back and trembling her skyward-pointing talons.

That wasn't helpful in the least bit. If Shella was judging Plancti's size right, then anyone bigger than her would fit the bill. The only real identifier was that he was male, and Shella had boxes full of memories from all the men she had. "Anything else about him?" Shella asked softly, making sure her growing irritation wasn't getting in the way.

Plancti looked at Shella between her legs and paused. Her head tilted back in thought. "He's got the most wonderful curly hair. And he had a fake bronze chest and a bronze helm and a shield and a sword and a thick spear! And he said that I was the best and his favourite!" Plancti said dreamily.

A classical warrior, then. Shella had had a few of those, but they were a lot like the other warrior-types she had; They don't really care about their partners. Just to be on the safe side, Shella said, "No, I don't think I've seen your love. What's his name?"

"Jason!" Plancti exclaimed, before twisting around to be on her stomach and looking at Shella. "I really want him back!"

"Hey, I'll see what I can do, but we can't move. Lily got tossed on some rocks yesterday during that freak storm, and we're stuck here for now," Shella said.

"Is Lily the Sea Lilith?" Plancti inquired.

"Yeah, she is," Shella said.

Plancti tilted her head, then asked "Is there anything I can do?"

"Can you push a big ol' boat like this around?" Shella returned.

"I don't know," Plancti said. She struggled to her talons and hopped on the floor, kicking off a bedsheet that had snagged itself on her talons. Plancti stretched out her wingspan and shook herself. Her wingspan was even more impressive when she stretched. Short as she was (Shella's guess was right, she was only slightly more than two heads shorter than Shella was), her wingspan easily eclipsed Shella's full arm span by a good distance. With a flurry of wings, Plancti jumped up into the air and landed on the top of Shella's wardrobe. "What can we do while we wait to get Lily off the rocks?" Plancti asked.

Something occurred to Shella. "Hey, where d'ya think we are?" she asked.

Plancti shrugged and said, "Sicily, maybe the islands around it. I fly around them." Placti paused, looked around the cabin, then at the bed, then at the mess of clothes below her. "I'm not in Siciliy anymore, am I?"

"I don't think you are," Shella said slowly. "Come on down, it'll make things easier to explain."

Shella had to explain the entire Pleasure World to Plancti. She was attentive, listening to the part of no age, illness, pregnancy, or death, but she burst into tears upon the mentioning of No Escape. "I want my Jason!" Plancti babbled out between tears.

Shella found herself with her arms around Plancti. "There, there, it'll be all right. What were you doing before the storm? He may have gotten sucked in with you."

Plancti's tears slowed down enough for her to explain. "We had just done it again, and he was next to me. I could stare into his eyes for hours... He said he was going to find something for us to eat, and I let him go! It was hours before I realized he hadn't returned! I flew off to look for him, and now I'm here!" Her waterfall-like tears resumed.

"Don't worry, he may have been sucked in here by the storm." At this point, Shella was just trying to get Plancti to quiet down. She had never seen someone sucked into the Pleasure World through a violent storm before, but she still wasn't going to rule out something new happening just to fuck with her. And Shella definitely knew she hadn't met this Jason guy. If he was here, he'd drift along and probably get dragged ashore by mermaids. It wasn't likely that Plancti would ever meet Jason again.

"Hey, you must be tired. I got a bath down below that feels wonderful," Shella said in an attempt to distract Plancti.

Plancti sniffled, wiped the tears from her eyes with a wing, and said, "I'll take it. My arms are sore. My throat is sore. My legs are sore. I'm sore."

On the opposite side of the room was a large coral display, a test bed for anything Shella could come up with toy-wise. She waved to it, and the tremendous crack that it made as it parted and split made Plancti jump into the air. Shella chuckled and said, "Don't worry, there's nothing that's gonna hurt you. I just got the bath down here."

Shella led Plancti, whose talons clicked against the wood, to the coral display. A set of stairs had been revealed, and Shella walked down it. Plancti elected to dive, twisting acutely through the passage into the bathing room before settling on the floor with a flurry of wings.

The bathing room was one of Shella's favourite rooms. The large window that extended down from the cabin above faced out back, dipping below the waterline and letting Shella see the light dance in the water. Before it, plate-like stones overlapped each other to form a pile around a wide central pit filled with water. Glowing blue coral, a favourite trick of Shella's, was under the water there, and lit it up at all times. Coral and sessile sea-life colonized the room liberally. They crawled up the walls, forming shelves, and stuck out to form hooks to hang clothes, growing in red, greens, purples, and blues. Shella had recently gotten a whole slew of towels, and they hung from an antler-like rack of coral.

Plancti hopped over the rocks and looked into the water. Her eyes swept along the room, drinking it in and dawdling for a second on a set of ornate double-doors opposite the window. She dipped a wing into the bath, swirling it about. Then she splashed the water with it. Then both wings dipped in and splashed the water.

"Can you swim?" Shella asked as she unbuttoned her shirt. Her breasts, large, smooth, globular, bounced free, her dark teats displayed comfortably. Shella hung the shirt on an antler near the pool.

"No," Plancti grumbled. She looked up at Shella's chest, then down to her own. Shella definitely outclassed the diminutive woman there.

"Are you at least waterproof? I don't want to accidentally give you a bad time," Shella continued as she pulled down her pants. Flawless dark hips and round buttocks were revealed, her hairless slit exposed to the air.