Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim’s summer vacation wasn’t going well.

It was a shame because he had been looking forward to it for months. His parents were actually taking him on a dig with them- just so long as he stayed on his best behavior and touched nothing. And to make it even more of a vacation, they were taking a relaxing transatlantic cruise to England for the first leg of the journey.

Tim loved spending time with his parents. He didn’t even care that this was probably a gift meant to make up for him starting at Brentwood Academy in the fall. Once he was in middle school, he wouldn’t be able to come home on the weekends anymore, only on school breaks. And his summers would probably still involve a few weeks of sleepaway camp while his parents were out of the country. He couldn’t say he was happy about sharing more rooms with kids who snored and ate his snacks without permission and messed up his save files of Zelda. But he knew his parents were busy. And he knew when they felt guilty they sometimes splurged on very expensive apologies.

This trip was meant to be special but right now they were arguing. He wasn’t sure what about.

“This is so like you,” Dad said. “This is such a classic Janet move.”

“Is it? Because this is what you do, Jack. You deflect, you refuse to take criticism.”

“And why do I need to be criticized? All you do is criticize! According to you, everything I do is wrong!”

“Because you never listen! You ignore me! You think you’re so much better than me!”

“I have never said that! You’re the always talking about your master’s degree!”

“You think just because your father gave you the company that you can walk all over me!”

Tim wished he could disappear between the couch cushions. He wished they could all get along.

He was sitting on the blue couch in the living room of their suite while his parents yelled at each other from either side of the glass dining table. Picking at a scab on his knee, he kicked the toes of his canvas boat shoes together. He’d tripped the day before coming up the gangplank and his dad had laughingly pulled him to his feet saying he clearly hadn’t got his sea legs yet.

Tim had been nauseous all night as the ship passed through rough seas and now he was wondering if he would ever get his sea legs. He was starting to wish they’d flown.

Someone opened the door to their cabin. A man stepped into the room. He was wearing a black balaclava and he was holding a gun.

“Alright, folks. Get out. Now.”

There was a moment of silence while they all stared at the gun. It looked real. Maybe the realest thing Tim had ever seen.

“What?” Dad asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Jack-”

The man gestured with the gun. “Out. In the hallway. You’re going up on deck.”

The gun was black too and shiny. It looked solid in his gloved hand. Tim had never seen a pistol like that. Only in movies.

“Tim,” Mom said sharply, fear in her voice that only sent Tim’s terror skyrocketing. He scrambled off the couch and ran to her side, clinging to her waist.

They shuffled into the hallway, the gun still pointed at them. There were more people in masks waiting in the hall. Tim buried his face in his mother’s shirt. She ran a hand down his back.

“Any valuables in there?” The man with the gun asked.

“Just our wallets,” Dad said. He was moving to stand in front of Mom and Tim.

“Uh huh.” The man sounded bored. “Look in the safe,” he said to his friends as they entered the room. Raising the gun, he prodded Dad with a poke in the chest. “You three. Upstairs. Sit with the rest of them.”

The sun blinded Tim as they stepped out onto the top deck, the polished wood and the ocean glistening. The rest of the passengers were huddled on the ground just beyond the wheelhouse, more people in black balaclavas standing over them with drawn pistols.

“Sit down,” one of them grunted. His eyes locked onto Tim and didn’t leave.

Tim kneeled beside his parents, the hot surface searing his bare legs. The captain was laying in a heap beside them, tied in so many ropes he looked like a netted up Christmas tree. He seemed to be unconscious, a nasty red-black bruise on his left temple.

“What’s happening?” Mom asked in a low voice. “Were we boarded? Are they pirates?”

Dad narrowed his eyes. “I think they’re the crew. Some of them anyway.”

The door of the wheelhouse opened under the shoulder of another man dressed in a black crew uniform and mask, the captain’s hat sitting jauntily on his head.

“Passenger manifest,” he said, shaking a loose binder of papers. “Let’s see who’s got the highest net worth.”

“You call my company right now,” Dad said. “They’ll pay any ransom you ask for.”

The man in the captain’s hat had cool gray eyes that showed through the holes in his mask. They flicked over Tim’s parents then landed on Tim. His mouth puckered into a frown.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be an adult’s only cruise?”

Unease shifted through the gunmen, one murmured into another’s ear.

Captain’s Hat turned to yell down the stairs, presumably to the man who had ordered them out of their cabin. “Joey, did you know about this?”

Tim remembered when his parents booked the trip, talking over their plans at their favorite Italian restaurant in Gotham. They didn’t want to deal with any annoying stranger children on their relaxing cruise. They’d just had to pull some strings with the captain to get Tim on board because he wasn’t really the same. He could be such a polite, quiet young man when he put his mind to it.

“He’s not going to be a problem,” Mom said, curling her arm over Tim’s shoulders. “I promise.”

The murmuring rose in volume.

Someone said, “I didn’t sign up to kill a kid.”

“Shut it,” Captain’s Hat snapped but the damage was already done. Everyone had heard.

A shiver went down Tim’s spine. Why did they need to say that? Had they been planning to kill them all along?

The passengers began to shuffle in place, nervousness taking over where they had been numb and compliant before.

“Hey, hey, people,” Captain’s Hat said holding up his hands. “Relax. No one is getting hurt as long as we get our money.”

Tim’s parents met eyes over Tim’s head. Something seemed to pass between them.

Mom drew Tim closer until her breath was directly in his ear.

“Timmy. Run.”

He was frozen for a moment, air caught in his throat. He didn’t want to leave the safety of his mother’s arms. He shook his head. Her eyes hardened, not quite the same anger as when Tim had knocked an ancient vase off a table but scary nonetheless.

“Timothy. Run. That’s an order.”

She shoved him and he was forced onto his wobbly legs. Captain’s Hat started to turn to face him as if he had caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and Tim had no choice but to run. He shoved past one of the guards, sending the man knocking to the deck with a surprised shout.

There was more yelling. The ear splitting sound of a gun going off. A grunt that sounded like his dad.

But Tim couldn’t look back, not when the guard he had knocked over was chasing him, shoes clacking against the surface of the deck. He didn’t know where to run to. The ship wasn’t that big. But there had to be somewhere. Somewhere he could hide.

“Get back here, you little twerp,” the guard growled, his breath almost down Tim’s neck.

He turned a corner, darting for a door he had seen one of the crew members exit the day before. His boat shoes skidded on the smooth surface. He made it to the hatch which was pushed slightly ajar. He was able to squeeze himself in and yank it closed behind him. There was a bang as the gunman ran straight into it.

Tim panted, his breath coming painfully down his dry throat. He twisted a knob, bolting the door. Was he safe?

He was on a small landing on a narrow, ladder like set of stairs that lead down toward the kitchens. And standing at the bottom of the stairs was another man in crew blacks. He wasn’t wearing a mask and seemed to have been helping himself to the food in the fridge.

He looked surprised to see Tim.

“Please,” Tim said because he didn’t know what else to do. “You have to help me.”

The man frowned.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be an adult’s only cruise?”

The little boat was floating high in the water, bouncing back and forth between the buffeting waves. It drifted, no anchor, no motor, no paddles. They were far from shore where humans did not often go.

But the first thought on Red’s mind was, hunters. The two legged creatures that killed and stole, reaping from their boats. He had seen them plenty. He even had the scars.

They were why his father always told them to swim low and hide when they saw a boat. To be too deep to speared or netted, to be seen.

This boat was little and no shadows leaned over its edges. He circled it for a long time before he butted against the bottom and rocked it. It could have been an empty boat, escaped from the larger one. That would be the best option. But he would have found it boring.

Red was hoping it was one of those boats with hunters who were not good at hunting. He did not know what made them that way but they were funny to play with. When he tipped over their boats they flailed and yelled in the water and screamed whenever he swept past their feet and legs below the surface.

His father wouldn’t like it if he knew Red did that. Some hunters could be pretending to be bad at what they did. Or the bad hunters might go back to land and tell the good hunters where to start looking. But he thought he knew how to pick them. And how to make sure they didn’t know a mer had done it.

This boat as he rocked it had a little weight. He pushed it harder from below, almost capsizing it. There was a muffled sound and a hard thud against the inside of the boat. Something was alive in there.

A little thrill of glee went through him. He tipped the boat to the other side. The weight rolled in the other direction, more thudding and shouting as the hunter tried not to fall overboard. Strange fragile creatures going out into the water where they could neither breathe or swim. You didn’t see him crawling around on land.

He banged a fist against the bottom of the boat, producing a loud hollow sound. More human language being shouted. Only one voice. Which explained why it was so light. A shame. It was funnier the more there were of them.

Flicking his tail to propel himself upward, he flipped the little boat, dumping its contents into the water.

The splash was smaller than expected. And the hunter didn’t flail and cling to the surface. It wiggled a little and began to sink.

For a moment, he wondered if it was some other kind of animal. He followed it below the surface.

It looked human. Like a mer but with two legs instead of a tail. Wearing funny clothes. Just smaller. And there was something keeping it from spreading its limbs and swimming for the surface.

It was like it was tangled up in a net. Unable to swim and falling. He followed the twitching bundle down, looking at the white thread that held its legs and arms together behind it. Human material. As deliberate as a net.

Red frowned. The human was awfully small. Like a guppy. Its balled up red face looked like a guppy’s too. Which probably meant it was a guppy.

It noticed him, eyes going wide in fright and screamed, letting loose a stream of bubbles. The sound was garbled in the water, not meant for it.

Red’s frown grew deeper. Why would it do a thing like that? Humans were like birds, they needed to bob on the surface to breathe. But he thought maybe it was too scared and tangled up to be thinking straight.

He remembered the feeling of being caught in a hunter’s net, dragging behind the boat until he could no longer pull water through his gills, dodging a spear tip driven mercilessly at him.

If his father hadn’t come to save him- he would have died.

The guppy struggled but the ropes wouldn’t budge. His eyes were begging now.

Red grabbed the guppy and pulled it to the surface, bursting above the water line into the distorted surface world of sun and sound. The guppy wiggled in his hold, gasping and spitting water as it drew in large mouthfuls of air. Red looked around seeing no other boats for miles, no adults watching the young at all.

The white webbing that pulled the guppy’s limbs backward into an uncomfortable looking contortion was tight and drawing lines of red into its skin. He cut through it with his claw. The guppy made a sound between pain and relief. One foot kicked his tail. The arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, holding on so he couldn’t have put the guppy down if he wanted to.

Breathing harshly, the guppy was prattling on in human language. He couldn’t understand it but he caught the thread of fear in it. He spread his palm across the guppy’s back and rubbed, cooing. He could feel his hammering heart. He wasn’t used to the idea of comforting a human but he thought the guppy probably deserved it.

If hunters came and killed mers, killed guppies even, taking some of the bodies and leaving others to rot on the sea floor, that spoke to a certain amount of cruelty. Cruelty that wasn’t impossible to imagine they did to their own kind. Because binding a guppy and setting him adrift in the sun was cruel and human work.

Red looked into the guppy’s face. He had straight black hair and wide terrified blue eyes to go with a cute little snub nose. He really could have been a mer if not for the lack of scales.

The guppy paused in his rambling to look at him, their eyes meeting. The guppy said something in a plaintive, sad voice. He wasn’t scared of Red. At least not too badly. And Red couldn’t sense any of that evil he’d seen in the eyes of the good hunters. Maybe that was why the humans had hurt him and sent him away.

A dark bruise was forming along the guppy's cheekbone. He cooed, almost touching it with the tip of his clawed finger.

The guppy ducked his head. Muttering some more. But his hands kept a tight grip on Red’s shoulders. His silly human clothes were soaked through and clinging to his skin. Skin that were it was exposed he could see was puckering with bumps and turning blue. The water was too cold for him.

Red swam back toward the capsized boat, making sure to keep the guppy’s head above water. With one arm, he was able to flip the boat upright again. The guppy’s eyes somehow grew wider. He chirped another something at Red. Red gestured at the boat, slapping a palm along the inside. The guppy nodded and tried to drag himself over the lip and into the boat. But his arms seemed to be too weak. He almost fell back in. Red had to push him from behind until he fell awkwardly to the bottom of the boat.

Red sniffed. Humans sure were clumsy things. Not that Red hadn’t been clumsy too when he was a guppy.

The guppy poked his head up over the side of the boat, looking down at Red now with curiosity. His hands gripped the edge with white knuckles so that if the boat flipped again he wouldn’t lose it. Red felt bad for dumping him in the water. He wouldn’t have done it if he’d known it was only a scared guppy. The little thing was trembling, his wet hair dripped into his eyes.

He said something that might have been a question but Red didn’t know how human language worked. He and his family mostly spoke in sounds that carried through the water and mind to mind in images and sensations. Humans seemed to do everything with their mouths- breathing and talking.

Now Red didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t supposed to approach any big boat and any nearby would probably have the hunters who hurt the guppy on board. The same went for the shore. But the guppy was cold and looked like he had been in the sun all day. Probably hungry too.

Well, there was one option. He could take the guppy home. His father would be furious but he had taken Red in and his brother. Maybe he could come to accept a human guppy too. At least for a little while.

Red grabbed a rope that dangled from a loop at the front of the boat and wound it around his wrist. The guppy shuffled to get a look at what he was doing, chirping at him. Red wished he knew how to reassure him that he was going to help. That he wasn’t anything like the hunters who had hurt him. He began to swim, dragging the boat behind him.

Chapter Text

Tim kneeled in the bottom of the wooden boat. It was one of the life rafts from the ship but he’d been tossed in with none of the emergency supplies or even the oars for rowing.

The mark on his cheek still smarted from where they’d struck him, deep bruises forming on his wrists and ankles. His skin had been blistering in the sun but now he was shivering, soaked as he was in cold ocean water.

He remembered lying there, trying to pull himself free of the ropes as the boat drifted further and further from the ship, pulled by the indifferent tides. He didn’t know when he had passed out of sight, unable to sit up. He only knew it must have been hours as his stomach roiled. He didn’t know what had happened to his mom and dad. He didn’t know what was going to happen to him.

Then the boat had rocked as if something had struck it. He remembered documentary footage of sharks circling, nosing at what they thought might be prey. His breath caught in his chest.

When the bump came again, he yelped, trying to sit up and only succeeding in striking his head on the underside of the bench seat. The boat rocked. He knew there was something there, below him in the water.

He wished his mom didn’t tell him to run. He didn’t care what happened on that ship. He wanted to be with her.

Then the boat had flipped over, dumping him into the cold water. He’d barely managed a deep gasp of air before he was under, water entering his ears, his nostrils, his eyes. He struggled but he hadn’t been able to escape the ropes when he could breathe. He wasn’t going to manage it then.

But he wasn’t just going to drown. He was going to be eaten alive. He looked up seeing the shadow move against the sun.

It wasn’t a shark. It was something more frightening. A creature with red scales and the frilled gills of a lionfish, slitted eyes like a cat’s, and clawed hands.

He’d screamed, his breath leaving him in a wave of bubbles. Which meant he took in a gulp of water and proceeded to choke.

A mer. His lungs were screaming, his head pounding. All he could think was- Mer!

Then hands grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him upward so fast his ears popped. His head broke above water, coughing, sputtering. His body working on reflex to suck in air and eject water.

After a moment, when he could finally open his eyes and his vision wasn’t shrunk down to a panic-y tunnel, he noticed the mer sort of inspecting him. It extended a finger tipped with a wickedly sharp claw. He tensed only for it to slice through the ropes holding his legs and arms behind his back.

He yelped as the tension on his stressed muscles was suddenly relieved and blood rushed back to his hands and feet. On instinct, he wrapped his arms around the mer’s shoulders, desperate to hold on to the only thing keeping him afloat.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said in a rush. He coughed, chest aching and felt his limbs throb with restored sensation. “Are you- are you rescuing me? Is that what’s going on?”

The mer cooed and chirred, rubbing his back. Almost as if it was comforting him.

He buried his face in the cool skin of its shoulder as tears sprung to his eyes. “I- I- I was so scared. Thank you. Thank you.”

He was rambling and he knew it. His parents would have been annoyed but they weren’t there. And that was the problem. He didn’t know where his parents were anymore. Were they okay? What had those men in the masks done to them?

“It was so scary,” he told the mer. He was telling the mer everything that had happened but the mer made no reply.

He leaned back to look at the mer, at its strangely human face, like a boy only a few years older than him.

“Can you understand me?”

The mer cooed and reached to touch the bruise on his cheek. Tim ducked his head away. He was afraid the mer would just poke it. And he was a little scared of those claws.

“I guess not,” he mumbled. “That’s just great. You don’t speak English. Heck, you don’t speak any languages I might know.”

He remembered reading an article about mers in one of his favorite science magazines. There was a lot that wasn’t known about them. For years, scientists thought they were a myth until they found mer bones and scales being sold as magical cure-alls. Then a badly decomposed body was found washed up on shore. No one had ever captured a live specimen before. There was an attempt recently which was what the article was about. One of the scientists involved had lost a hand and wound up shipwrecked for three days but couldn’t stop gushing about how clever the mers had been to circumvent their traps.

He figured mers were about as intelligent as great apes with the mischievousness of a crow and the viciousness of a wolverine.

Tim wasn’t so sure because the mer had figured out that he needed to be above water to breathe and that he didn’t like being tied up. They weren’t the most complicated concepts in the world but he didn’t know if a chimp would notice or care to help out.

The mer leaned toward him with big curious eyes. Inspecting him as much as he was inspecting it.

Tim shivered, the cold of the water slowly seeping into his bones.

“Could you help me?” Tim asked. “Could you take me back to my family?”

The mer’s tail bumped against his legs as it pushed back, dragging him smoothly through the water. It glanced over its shoulder, sighting the overturned life boat.

Tim watched as the mer easily flipped it over then looked meaningfully at him and slapped the inside.

His eyes grew wide. The mer was communicating with him.

“You want me to get in?” He asked. That sounded pretty nice instead of just bobbing in the water. The mer didn’t answer but the look was pretty obvious. “Okay.”

He reached out for the edge of the boat and struggled to lift himself. His arms were like noodles, limp and hurting.

The mer shoved him and he fell into the bottom of the boat, upside down like a turtle.

“Ow! Hey!”

He pushed himself up on his hands and knees to look over the edge into the water. He hoped the mer wasn’t going to leave him.

But the mer swam to the front of the boat and gathered up a loose tie that had once held it to the ocean liner. It wrapped the rope around its wrist and tested the connection to the boat.

“You’re going to tow me?”

The mer gave a stroke of its powerful tail pulling Tim’s boat forward. It seemed to look approving before setting off, turning its back on him to swim in earnest.

“Wow,” Tim said to himself. This was way, way more intelligent than the guy in the article had said. He’d heard of dolphins helping people to shore before but he didn’t think they’d get the physics of pulling something. And not with so much determination.

Though maybe Tim should stop guessing at the intelligence of animals since he clearly had no idea what to expect from them.

Sitting back on his haunches, he had a thought. Maybe the mer was bringing him back to the ship. That was- he wanted to go back. He wanted to see his parents. More than that he wished he could go back to that morning when the worst thing he had to worry about was his parents arguing.

But now, if the mer took him right back, he’d wind up at the barrel of a gun. They had tied him up and set him adrift before. If he came back… He swallowed. They would probably kill him.

The smart thing would be to get someone to help. The police? The coast guard? The navy? Somebody with authority. But how was he supposed to communicate that to the mer?

He looked around at the empty ocean, there was miles and miles of it in every direction. He couldn’t see land. He couldn’t see any ships. There was nothing in the boat with him. No cellphone. No radio.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Tim called to the mer but it had slipped its head below the surface of the water to swim faster. The powerful tail flexed back and forth, sinuous and long. They were creating a wake behind them, water sloshing as they cut through the waves.

Tim began to pick at a hang nail on his thumb as he sunk down again.

“Please don’t bring me back. Please don’t bring me back,” he whispered even though that was exactly the place he wanted to be. He wished he hadn’t run.

After what seemed like a while, Tim noticed something appearing on the horizon. Not a ship but an island. He stood, holding out his hands for balance in the moving boat.

The island was not much of anything. A spit of sand, rock, and tangled mangrove trees. Tim shielded his eyes against the sun. Did someone live there? Could they help him?

As they got closer, the mer released the rope and allowed the waves crashing on the beach to push Tim into shore. He wobbled as the bottom of the boat struck sand and he floundered into the shallows so he could try and pull the boat up onto the beach.

After a moment, the mer joined him, pushing from the below the water until he was crawling across the sand beside Tim.

“Thank you,” Tim said. The sun was still bright but the water was cold and his teeth chattered against each other. He tied the rope around the trunk of a coconut tree so it wouldn’t stray if the tide changed. “Does someone live here? Do they have a phone?”

The mer cocked his head to the side and chittered at Tim. He didn’t understand a word he was saying.

Tim sat down as a hopeless thought struck him. Maybe the mer knew people lived on land and just took him to the closest land even if it happened to be a deserted tiny island. No one was ever going to find him.

His lip trembled as he tried to force back the tears he knew were coming. The mer cooed and scooted across the sand toward him. Tim drew his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Mom always says not to panic.”

But he was panicking. This was so, so bad.

The mer butted his head against his arm, letting out a sound like a cat gargling razor blades. It was strangely comforting especially when he raised his head and met the wide blue eyes that peered at him sympathetically.

Tim sniffed, wiping away the tears that were now rolling down his cheeks. “I’m glad you didn’t leave.”

The mer pressed up against him and though his skin was cool from the water there was a core of heat to him that warmed Tim the longer he clung on and the sun shone. At some point, exhausted, Tim closed his eyes.

He woke to a dry throat and a chill in the air. A gentle breeze ruffled through his hair. He was still laying on the beach but the sun had set and now a massive silver moon hung above them.

Tim was sprawled across the mer, sleeping like a baby otter on his chest, the mer’s arms wrapped around him. He licked his chapped lips and tried to swallow. The mer lifted his head, looking at him curiously.

And then he nudged something at Tim’s hand. It was a glass bottle, sand clinging to the sides, the label long rubbed off in the water. Tim felt the weight of it and heard the sound of bubbles popping.

“What’s this?” Tim asked.

The mer cooed and more insistently pressed it to his hand. He took it and sniffed at it but couldn’t smell anything in particular. It definitely had a liquid in it.

“I can’t drink salt water,” he said but took a sip anyway just to see what it was.

The water was a little salty but not like seawater. He tested it carefully on his tongue. It was a little sour, a little sweet, a little bit carbonated and warm for some reason that Tim couldn’t guess at. But it was fresh enough and he drank it quickly, sating his thirst.

“Thank you,” he said, surprised. “Where did you get this from?”

The mer was looking at the lapping waves beyond Tim’s beached boat. Tim followed his gaze and flinched when he noticed a set of eyes staring back at him, reflecting the light of the moon.

He pushed himself back, his heart pounding. “Who’s that? Are they a friend?”

The mer made a clicking sound and the eyes came closer until another mer was pulling himself onto the shore. This one was larger with dark scales that reflected almost blue under the moonlight. Like the mer Tim had already met, he had a mop of black hair and large blue eyes. Frilled gills flexed where Tim would expect ears to be and ran down his neck.

The mer opened his mouth and bared a set of sharp teeth, clawed and webbed fingers digging into the sand as he crawled forward. Tim curled tighter against his mer.

His mer chittered and the new mer paused, closing his mouth and tilting his head to the side.

“You’re not gonna eat me, right?” Tim asked, just to be sure.

His mer gave that comforting churr again and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

The new mer cooed at Tim as if he thought Tim was cute. He didn’t seem too threatening.

“Okay,” Tim said. “I’m Tim. Do you have names?”

His words were lost on them, again. But the larger mer seemed to take Tim’s words as invitation to come closer. He scooted across the sand until he bumped into Tim, sniffing at his hair and clothes.

He plucked the bottle from Tim’s hand and lifted it to his face, almost a question in his chittering. Tim stared at the empty bottle for a moment. The mers watched him as if waiting for an answer.

“Oh! Do I want more? Sure!” He nodded vigorously. When that didn’t seem to make sense to them, he mimed drinking from the bottle again.

The mers spoke to each other in a series of pops and squeaks. Then the larger mer pointed over Tim’s shoulder toward the center of the island, beyond the mangrove trees.

“Something over there?” Tim asked. He got to his feet, feeling less wobbly than before.

His mer- he was going to have to come up with better names for them- prodded him in the back, pushing him toward where the other mer had pointed. Before they both turned and retreated into the water.

Tim was suddenly alone.

He wrapped his arms around himself. “Okay. They want me to go over there. That’s fine. It’s not like they can walk.”

He pushed through the dense growth of trees and over sharp rocks as the ground gently sloped upward. Somewhere he startled a bird as he heard it cawing. And then he heard the sound of water flowing.

It was like one of the sounds his mom put on to help her sleep. A babbling brook. He pushed aside a branch that almost swung back and slapped him in the face.

He found himself at the peak of a rocky outcropping. The island was very small and on this side, instead of sloping down to a sand beach, it cut off sharply into a short cliff face. A waterfall ran down it, splashing onto the rocks carved out by the sea.

He followed the stream of water up to a large steaming pool. The air smelled like the water the mers had given him. He crouched beside the pool and dipped his fingers in. The heat was enough to prickle his skin but not burn it.

Water continuously flowed upward from the bottom, sloshing over the sides and joining the stream that ran to the waterfall.

Tim’s eyes went wide in wonder. He remembered some things from his class on earth science. The rock this island was made of must have been volcanic. The very top of an underwater volcano, one that heated and propelled upward a natural hot water spring.

Which meant the island- here in the middle of the Atlantic ocean- had fresh water. And something to keep him warm.

There was a loud splash behind him. He turned. The two mers were in the pool, grinning at him with their sharp teeth, resting their elbows on the edge like they were relaxing in a hot tub.

“You can swim up here?” He asked. The dark pool didn’t exactly have a bottom though there was a ledge he could probably stand on if he wanted to.

He peered down into it wondering at the idea of a tube that ran all the way through the rock, wide enough for a mer to squeeze through and accessible from the ocean.

His mer splashed the water as if beckoning Tim closer and then produced a fish, speared through on the tip of his claw. Tim’s stomach rumbled at the thought of food even as he looked dubiously at the fish. He had tried and liked sushi before but cut up raw fish and a full fish with head, and scales that was still bleeding onto the arm of his would-be rescuer was an entirely different prospect.

Still, he appreciated the gesture.

The mer insistently held the fish out to him until Tim took it. It was kinda a big fish, hefty in his two hands, and if it had been cooked, it probably would have still been too much for him. Now even though his stomach was rumbling, he didn’t know what to do with it.

He realized he might have to learn how to cook. And to communicate with the mers something more complex than drinking water. At least, the mers seemed to want to help him rather than hurt him.

Maybe he was going to be okay for a little while.

Red’s brother, Blue, liked his guppy. He thought that was a good sign that he would be able to convince their father to let him keep him.

Blue wasn’t sure at first that they could take care of a human guppy. After all, humans needed air and got cold and tired in the water.

Red thought he was completely forgetting that the island that sat above the caves they lived in had ground and fresh water in the form of the spring they sometimes liked to relax in. And that there were plenty of fish around. Red knew humans ate fish. And they liked warm things.

Red’s guppy had certainly looked happy when he dipped his fingers in the pool and realized what it was. Red’s guppy was very smart. And very sweet. He didn’t understand how the hunters could have hurt him. But he didn’t think he himself had deserved to be hurt by them either.

Humans were cruel creatures. Now he just had to show his dad that it didn’t include his guppy.