A merman's tear (dreamnotfound)

Chapter Fifteen

George wasn't sure what kids were like. He'd never really had enough experiences with them to know. There had been no babies when his family died. There had been merfolk younger than him, that was true, but not by enough to actually be considered children. 

From what he could tell when he'd swum past baby dolphins in the past, was that they were excitable. Small, loud, and excitable. George was fine with noise, he'd been quite loud around those he felt comfortable with when he was young, but the level of noise that little dolphins made was incredibly annoying. He'd always steered clear from them.

Human children were probably the same. That was one thing that seemed to be a common factor among all species. Children were small, sometimes cute, and generally made lots of noise.

Teenagers? Now, he was more familiar with them. He was 24, so if he thought about it, in the grand scheme of things, it really hadn't been that long since he'd been a teenager himself.

Out of his pod of 14 merfolk, there was only one other around his age. Karl. He'd been a few years younger than him, but their age was close enough that they bonded. He'd never really bonded with his pod like he had with Karl, other than his mother of course. He wasn't related to the other though, pods were funny like that. They'd meet other pods as time went on and then meet those they loved and break off into new pods, it was something that was common. His mother and him had joined his pod when he was 4, though he was never told what happened to his father. Things didn't always work out, he guessed. Karl and him were basically attached to the hip. They did everything together. But then Karl died. Along with the rest of his pod, in an attack. Because of humans. George had been the only survivor. In the mix of blood and screams, he'd hit his head, and woken up on the seafloor, directly below where the attack had occurred.

No one was there. Blood had wafted through the water. Sharks had been attracted to it, so George couldn't stay long. It was traumatising. Especially for a 15-year-old.

George felt jealous when Dream talked about the crew. He tried not to. He really really did try. But it was hard not to be. Dream had mentioned his bad family experience before he'd met the crew, but he had it good now. He had his family, even if they were a found one.

But anyway. Back to his thoughts on teens. He was thinking about them because one specific teenager had decided to pop in for a visit.

He'd only just begun warming up to Sapnap, so he really wasn't expecting to see anyone else quite yet.

He was sitting, alone, for the first time in a while, because there was some meeting downstairs that the two men were attending. 

The door burst open, smacking on the wall, and a little gremlin teenager had made his presence very much known.

He had extremely blonde fluffy hair, a bandaid over his nose, and the general 'pirate' sort of look going for him. He wore a lot of red. He grinned, as George jumped in surprise, clutching his chest.

"Ayeee big man!" the boy exclaimed, coming in to sit by George who pressed up as far against the glass as he could away from the blonde.

"I'm Tommy! You're that merman bitch aren't you?" George blinked at him in surprise. George felt wary around him, but something about the teenager's presence was nice. He just seemed innocent. Not tainted like adults were. He looked happy.

George peered at him in curiosity. Tommy stuck out his hand towards George, who glanced down at it in confusion.

Tommy let out a bark-like laugh, and said: "You shake it."

George looked up at Tommy, back down to his hand, before relaxing his back slightly and raising his hand.

He mimicked what Tommy was doing, but the blonde shook his head with a smile. "Other hand, big man."