Lance sped through the water, his powerful blue tail propelling him onward. Then his sixth sense of where things were in the water warned him of an approaching obstacle, and he changed direction, making a wide circle around the obstacle and coming to a halt in front of it.
He surfaced, surveying a bit of wreckage. Nothing more than a bunch of planks. But something was on them. A mermaid? But why didn't he have a tail? Or- really- any mermaid features at all?
Lance realized with a start of horror and thrill that this was a human. He'd been told stories of mermaids who had lost their lives or freedoms to the tailless creatures. But still, he was curious. And the human looked rather floppy and limp. Lance splashed it with water, and it opened its eyes with a strangled yelp.
Keith blinked at his surroundings, and then at the pair of bright, inquisitive blue eyes that were peering at him. And the tail that followed. "I'm hallucinating," he muttered, putting a hand to his forehead, "I've had too much sun, and I'm starving and dying of thirst." But when he looked again, the mermaid was still there.
It poked a finger at him. "Are you alive?"
Great. It was also an auditory and tangible hallucination. "Are you real?" he countered.
The mermaid laughed. "Of course I am! Why wouldn't I be?"
"Because mermaids aren't real."
It gave its hands a bored look. "Good thing I'm a merman, then." It grinned toothily at him, and Keith shuddered as he realized that its teeth were incredibly sharp. "You're a human, right? Never seen one before."
Lance cocked his head at the human. "You're strange looking. Are all humans normally this red?"
"No. I've been sunburned. Are you going to eat me? Or drown me?"
Lance shoved himself backwards in shock. He turned his back and started to swim away.
"No! Wait!" the human sounded panicked now. "Don't leave!"
Lance turned around, plopping his chin on the wood. "I have better things to do than talk to rude humans. Goodbye. Maybe I'll be around again." He flipped his tail, drenching the human. "Or maybe not." He sped off into the water again.
He found the human again, completely on accident, two sunrises later. Then wreckage was miraculously still afloat, but the person on top of it wasn't looking anywhere as good as the raft. Lance splashed it, trying to wake it up again, but it didn't open its eyes.
Lance poked it tentatively with one finger. Was it dead? Why hadn't it collapsed into sea foam? He sighed. Only one real way to find out if it was dead. Lance grabbed one of its fingers and chomped down on it, hard. The human gave a strangled yelp in its sleep, but didn't wake up.
It wasn't dead, then, but it was close to it, based on the birds circling overhead. Wait. Birds? That meant that land was close by, because these were no albatrosses! Humans belonged on land, didn't they? Despite their silly boat attempts to live on the sea. Lance grabbed ahold of the raft and started pushing it towards the source of the circling birds. He saw a busy port, and he let the raft go. That was as far as he was willing to go. He was not getting anywhere close to more humans, ones that had enough strength to kidnap him. The human was on its own, now.
He heard shouts from another boat, and saw the little raft get hauled in by a fishing boat. His human was pulled up, and Lance disappeared under the waves, feeling proud of himself. He'd probably just saved a life.
Xxx
Shiro volunteered to take the shipwreck survivor in. The other fishermen were perfectly happy to let him have the kid, and Shiro left early, taking him home. His house wasn't much, but it was better than a raft, he thought.
The boy was delirious with heatstroke, and Shiro had to soothe sunburns that covered the kid's neck, face, feet and hands, but he slowly nursed the castaway back to health.
"Keith."
Shiro looked up in surprise. It was the first time that his charge had spoken. "What?"
The castaway looked at him with luminous purple eyes. "My name is Keith."
"Oh. I'm Shiro. Mind telling me what happened?"
"Pirates," Keith said hoarsely, "The captain blew the ship to bits and sent the cargo to the bottom of the ocean rather than let them get it. The explosion from the gunpowder took the pirate ship down too"
Shiro busied himself fixing a net. "Oh. Sounds like a brave man."
"Or a stupid one." Keith's fist clenched on his blanket. "Why would he just doom us all like that?! The rest of the crew was killed, as far as I know, and I nearly was! He could've just handed over his cargo!"
A small smile played on Shiro's lips. "Maybe he just refused to ever lose to pirates."
"So he sank two shipfuls of people just for a sense of stubborn pride?!"
Shiro shrugged. "Or maybe he just wanted to be sure that those pirates couldn't prey on anyone else ever again. Maybe he was protecting future ships."
"It's stupid. I spent nearly a week out on the ocean, starving and dying of thirst and heatstroke because of him."
Shiro shook his head. "I get it, if it was the second option. Wanting to keep people safe. I was on a navy ship. Pirate attack. Whole crew- dead or captured. Cargo taken. Ship captured. I'm the only one who got away. If I could blow up that ship, sacrificing myself in the process, to save other ships from them? I would. I would for most pirate ships."
"Oh." Keith was silent for a moment. "Do you have a big pirate problem here?"
Shiro shrugged. "Occasionally one will show up, get drunk, reveal himself and get a rope around his neck for his trouble. And who knows? We might get pirate ships in harbor, but we can't tell, and as long as they behave, pay their fees and not get drunk, how are we going to catch them? But we don't get raids, no." He glanced at Keith, whose face had gone pale. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Is- is being a pirate immediately a hanging?"
Shiro shrugged. "I suppose so. They might get a trial, but I doubt it's fair. The more of them at the gallows the better is the general town feeling."
"Oh. Is- is that your feeling?"
Shiro's steel-grey eyes met Keith's purple ones. "If I found a pirate, I'd turn him in," he said firmly, and Keith nodded. He looked a little... sad, Shiro thought. A little haunted. And a little scared. Shiro smiled at him.
"Let's not talk about it, okay? You know how to mend nets?"
Keith nodded and took one, his hands working deftly. The hole in the net quickly disappeared. Shiro eyed it appreciatively.
"You did this kind of thing?"
Keith shrugged. "I was a swabbie. I did a lot of things." His nose crinkled. "Typically the jobs no one else wanted to do."
Shiro made a face. He knew how that was. "Navy for five years before we were sunk by pirates. It was decent pay. Relatively neat."
Keith chuckled. "Merchant ships... not as much."
There was a knocking on the door, and Shiro opened it to a young girl, in a nice purple and white dress but no shoes. She was holding a dainty pair of high-heeled boots in her hand, as if she'd taken them off to run. "Matt and Dad need your help today," she told him breathlessly, "Dad's back is giving him problems again."
Shiro smiled at her. "Sure, Katie. I'll be right there. How's your job?"
"Oh, well, you know. Bit annoying. Don't see why I have to dress like this in order to help out a lady. Gotta dash anyway, speaking of that job. Gonna be late if I don't get moving."
She ran back across the sand, picking up her skirts and sprinting towards town. Shiro gave Keith a small smile.
"I'll be back. You just stick around the beach. I should be back around sunset-ish."
Keith nodded. Shiro gave him another smile and left. Keith paced the cottage, restless, then went out onto the beach. He wandered along the coastline, looking into the ocean for any sign of- nah. That couldn't have been real. The merman had been a figment of his imagination. Right?
"Hey! You!"
Keith turned around to see a man, waving frantically. "Yes?"
"You know how to get to the nearest town? We're a bit lost."
Keith nodded. "We?"
The man jammed his thumb up towards the cliffs. "My caravan. We're a traveling circus, see. Best collection of oddities."
"But no maps?"
The man let out a short laugh. "It appears not."
"I can get you to town."
"Good lad."
Keith scrambled up the paths that led to the top of the cliffs, the man not far behind him. He brought them to the road, which wasn't far, but was hard to see through the vegetation.
"There."
"Thank you. I'd like to show you something. Come here, come here. Don't be shy. You live by the sea, yes? You'll find this interesting, then."
Keith followed the man, his curiosity outweighing his caution. The man pulled a tarp off of a wagon, and Keith stepped back in shock. It hadn't been a hallucination after all.
Mermaids- or mermen- were real.