They were born with heterochromia and when their canines grew in, they grew in long and pointed. Yes they were human, it was a genetic anomaly. But hey, they loved how it scared pirates when they smiled fully and showed THOSE teeth!
[While I don't have heterochromia - a condition where the person is born with one eye being one color and the other eye being a completely different color, when I lost my eye-teeth, aka the canines, as a kid, the adult teeth grew in long and pointed. Unfortunately.... :-( My parents dragged me to the dentist and had the dentist grind them down to match the rest of my teeth in length, and to get rid of the points. I wish they'd left my fangs alone.] -- DaniAndShali
When Janka was born, it was under some portents that none of the seers could agree upon. Some hailed her arrival as good luck. Others bad. When her eyes changed from their infant's grey to a mismatched pair of colours, they leaned towards bad. Witch-eyed children were certainly a bad omen.
Nevertheless, there were those who championed her welfare, witch-eyed or not.
Once behind a set of smoked glass[1] circles, nobody would see or care that one of her eyes was green and the other brown. It was when her fangs came in that the rest of her village got upset. Which was why, in that same week, Janka's mother sent her off with her father to learn sailing.
Sailors are a superstitious lot, but many of their superstitions are the opposite of those on land. Cats, for instance, are tremendously good luck on ships. One does not leave a candle to gutter and die on its own. Or, for that matter, leave a flame without a guard of some kind around it. Being able to whistle is always a good thing for a sailor. And it doesn't matter if a sailor is witch-eyed, so long as they can see long distances and know how to spot trouble brewing.
So none of the crew minded at all that the cabin boy was a cabin girl. They adopted her as their own and taught her everything a sailor should know. Including how to gut a man if he tried anything wicked.
Then the pirates tried something.
A small trader boat like this one was good pickings for pirates, and every sailor knew something about how to fight. Janka was enjoying herself so much that she smiled at the brigand who was trying to board.
This sailor was not ready for those teeth. He shied away, screaming about vampires, werewolves, and other beasts of terror.
Janka pressed the advantage, baring her teeth at any pirate who had set foot on her dad's ship, sending them all running back to their vessel. One of them tried to shoot her with their crossbow, but she sliced the arrow out of the air and shouted a curse at them.
"Devil below, take these devils above," she hollered. And everyone who survived what happened next would remember and share the tale.
A gigantic cephalopod, seen only by its tentacles, reached up and dragged the pirates down to the seabed. They would all never forget the looks of terror in those pirate's eyes as they went down in a second or less.
So hail you all, and raise a glass. In honour of my Captain, Janka the Fanged. Caller of the Kraken. May she bless you well. If she curse you, that'll be the last you know.
[1] Before polarised sunglasses, civilisation had "smoked" glass, glass that was coloured a very, very dark grey.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / sababa66]
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