DPxDC Prompt #18
Inspired by reading this prompt from @nerdpoe and my brain randomly deciding to mash it with this prompt and reblog from @stealingyourbones and @moodycow210. Basic premise is the Nerdpoe prompt with the backstory of the Bones prompt. Do read those for full context of what my brain was trying to do here.
Danny was sent on a mission by Clockwork and missed his window back home, getting stuck in a vast, dark (twilight), oceanic place; with only the company of fish-like beings that can only communicate empathically very basic desires and intents.
After a while of panic and searching for a way back, he ultimately settles in and waits for rescue, occupying his time by playing with and training his powers. He discovers an ability to shapeshift and decides to make his form into something more comfortable and camouflaged for where he is.
The form he settles in to is somewhere between human and fish. Hands and claws and fins and webbing and gills.
It saves his life when Danny loses his hold on his ghost form, discovering that the changes transferred over to his living self.
And Danny waits.
And waits.
And drifts along, avoiding the attention of anything with teeth and intent to eat, while searching for his own meal.
And forgets what he's waiting for.
Danny has been there so long now. His memories of before are nothing but vague, indistinct impressions. Like the shadow of the other creatures that sometimes brush against his own. When the green, swirling thing appears in front of him, he almost swims away from it. But something about it brushes him, like those shadows of before. It calls to him, urges him to approach, to swim through.
On the other side of the green thing is light. So much light. It's so bright. And full of fish. More fish and more light than he can remember ever seeing before. The other fish swim around, swimming with a suffocating shadow of urgency and fear. And the green thing is gone.
Confused and disoriented, he cannot avoid the massive thing, like a strange tangle of kelp vines, sweeping through the water collecting anything that does not avoid it's path. It pulls him and many fish up and up and up. To a place too heavy to swim, where some instinct has him changing the way he breathes from his gills to his mouth and nostrils. He didn't know he could do that. And yet, some part of him is quite certain that he did.
There are strange shapes beyond the strange vines. They bark noises that brush against those shadows of memory, but he does not understand them. He should, he knows he should. He should understand a lot more about this situation than he does. But he doesn't.
"Is that one of them fish people?"
"Looks like it. Seems a young one too."
"Should we toss it back?"
"Why? Pretty little fish, bet we could find a buyer. He oughta fetch a pretty penny. Might even get nough to actually retire."
