Bride of the Sea God

Prologue

A/N: I own nothing but plot. Enjoy!

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The bride desperately clung onto the sides of the small vessel, constructed to fit one person and nothing else. There was no oar for her to row, no sail for her to catch even the smallest of fleeting wind. Her skin was burnt from being exposed to the sun and wind, even when she unpinned her chiton to pull the cloth over her head for some sort of shade.

Waves tossed the sides of the little boat like a cat playing with its prey, tiring out the fastenings in the wood. The predicted future of the small boat seemed imminent to sink into the depths of the ocean.

She wanted to clasp her hands together in hasty prayer, but if the gods had ever been listening, she would not have been in this predicament in the first place. She was the pharmakos, the unlucky chosen bride to be sacrificed to the gods. Her life had been nothing but misfortune as a slave. And because of her lowly status, she was the one selected as a "gift" in the hopes that their appeasement would bring rain to the drought stricken village.

She knew not whether she would truly be taken in as a bride or would she fall into the depths of hell as a ghost. The old tales passed down from the elders told of sea gods as half-human with fish tails or eight wriggling octopus legs as their bottom halves. With the gods' fickle natures, the sea could be giving or it could be cruel as it was now. Even if she survived the raging sea storm, she could be nothing worth more than chum used to feed the fish.

Suddenly, the vessel collided with something invisible, almost throwing her overboard had not her fingers been gripping onto the canoe. She didn't have much strength left, having been tired out and dizzy from lack of fresh water and food in nearly three days.

She screamed as the canoe whipped about again. A massive whirlpool had formed behind her, about the diameter of ten of her boat lengths. But there was nowhere for the boat to go. She stretched out her hands before her but it was as though there was an invisible wall before her.

Before she could figure out what to do, her vessel was caught in the cesspool of dark swirling mass, pulling her towards the center. The watercraft turned dizzyingly around and around as it spun in circles. Some debris disappeared in the middle of the vortex before vanishing into nothing. Then, she too, disappeared as the boat and its occupant was swallowed.

The whirlpool dissipated as if it had never existed.

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A/N: Very loosely based on the Korean manhwa Bride of the Water God. 

Art by WindbyFire.