Palaimon and the Sailor (boyxboy) Short story by L.J Harding

Chapter 2

I could hear my home before I could see it, the bustling mammal noises of the sea creatures and sea people alike entered my ears. The feeling of home lifted my spirits as I watched a shimmer of mermaid's swim off on their daily job of hunting.

I examined the many naturally glowing lights created by my people's magic. Things I had seen my whole life were completely uninteresting to me, but I wondered what a Human's perspective would be like.

Crystals were the source of the light, but they would never produce such power without our people.

I swam at a steady pace into the city I was hatched in. Merfolk swam in glimmers and alone around me, clearly transfixed on their own duties.

Life was great here, like it must be in all other pods. We had responsibilities, well, our shoals did.

My shoal wasn't as big as other shoals, they called it the Rekcart shoal and we were the trackers among our pod. All members of the Rekcart shoal had that need to track and search for things in the sea. It explained my need to hunt for shipwrecks.

I examined my surroundings while swimming to my cave, trying to look at it as a Human in our city for the first time. I imagined what it would be like to watch the Guardian merfolk patrol the outer areas of our city. I examined the strong, large torsos of the mermen with their long sapphire hair and their huge, long tails decorated in proud blue scales, marking them as members of the Naidruag shoal. The Naidruag mermaids were present too, they had no need for large bodies, they were born a lot stronger than the mermen. Their tails' were a darker shade of blue, just like their eye colour and their hair colour, marking their viciousness as something more dominating than the mermen.

I continued swimming until eventually I reached my cave. My cave rested among the Rekcart grotto. There were five grottos for five shoals. Each grotto was the same size but our shoal only took up three caves out of twenty five.

In other shoals, there would be that many merfolk that they would have a few merfolk living in each cave.

I smiled as I saw my sister playing with a dolphin pod swimming nearby. Andrina always loved the sea creatures, especially when the dolphins came. She would swim side by side with the pods until she was at the border of our hunting grounds.

Our parents would always tell her not to go out that far. They would tell her that she's too young to swim outside our city. She would never listen, she doesn't understand the danger.

It has been ninety five full moons since Andrina hatched, and she has kept us on our fin's ever since. Andrina had piercing brown eyes, which brought everyone into her appearance. Her hair was red, and flowed in all directions with the sea, somethings hitting off her pale skin. Her youthful tail was coloured in red scales. All of these qualities were hereditary among the Rekcart shoal.

"Don't stray too far, you know how mad our parents will be", I advised, the ripples of my speech travelling to her ears. She gave me an irritated look as she replied "I'll be fine, I'm a tracker remember".

"You're not a tracker just yet, Andrina, please be careful, don't stray too far", I advised once more, remaining in a patient mood. She only grew more irritated, as a hatchling would. "You want to address this with names, then fine. Palaimon, how about you go into your cave and leave me to my dolphin friends. Our parents can do what they like, who's going to tell them anyway? They're going to be gone for another two moons", ordered the impatient sound ripples of Andrina.

Before I could respond, my sister was off with the dolphin pod. "How did she grow so sassy?" I said to no one in particular. I swam into my cave, looking around at the many corals and shells I had found from my hatchling days myself.

Like Andrina, I too went discovering against my parents bidding. Little did I know, the dangers of straying from the city were a lot worse than I thought they were when I was a hatchling.

The amount of merfolk in our shoal was small for a reason. There were many enemies of the merfolk. Trackers suffered the most because they liked to travel individually rather than in glimmers. My parents, Andrina and I were the only trackers in our pod.

I lay down on my bed of sea weed, wrapping the layers around me as I began to grow sleepy. My body was suspended in the water, only being tied down by the sea weed as my world went black.

I went to sleep.

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