Curiosity killed the fish...
Or in other words, a g/t first meeting underwater. Angsty but ends on a lighther note.
~3k words
warning: injury and blood, slight mawplay.
Alta floated near the seafloor and watched how little fish dug holes into the sand. They decorated their home with stones to stop the weak currents from filling their creations with sand again.
There were thirteen of them. Grey but glimmery in the sunlight that reached the bottom.
These fishes were new and intriguing to her as they lived here out in the open, further away from her home coast. With these ones Alta stuck out, her purple and pink tail being the only colorful thing as far as the water let her see.
But it didn’t bother her, being alone was refreshing once in a while. Her peers had just continued with their daily swim races around the stone pillars of their mazelike home. No one wanted to come here with her. It was too bland or too far from the coast. Nobody really goes out this far. Or they just didn’t prefer her company, that could be it too. They always nagged at her how she won too many races, cheated in them although she really didn’t. Heck, Alta didn’t even win them that often, some of them just singled her out when she did. When she had a good swim day.
So now she had decided to sate her curiosity of the outer seas on this particular good swim day. And it sure was relaxing to look at the new fish that circled around each other, perhaps they were sharing some thoughts? One more of them appeared from the holes and joined their little dance. Then they slowed down. Was it a part of their routine? No, Alta felt a weight of unease along her skin too. She whipped her head around to look at her surroundings. A quiet stillness fading to murky blue, but something was off. She caught movement in the corner of her eye and turned to look at the fishes again, but they were gone. Sand floated around the holes.
She too dashed away from the holes with a powerful flick of her tail, and not a moment too late. Her quickened swimming was followed by a trashing rumble of something fast behind her.
Alta sped up, swam as fast as she could, but the thing chasing her stayed right behind. With a quick turn she managed to peek at it.
It was slender, at least four times her size and had a set of needle-like teeth. It swam with a clear goal, shaking and twisting its dark green body vigorously to reach the mermaid in front of it. She had no idea what it was, but she knew she couldn’t get caught.
Twists and turns seemed to confuse it a little, make it fall more behind. And that’s all she could do for the time being. The sea floor was truly empty of any obstacles. Her heart sunk as she realized that this was a matter of endurance.
Her only hope was that it would give up before she does.
She kept swimming, although the growing distance from the coast made her even more uncomfortable. Swimming back home with this thing following her was out of the question, but Alta never intended to go this far. Gradually, she felt her sides begin to burn from exhaustion. Her adrenaline filled escape was recklessly tiring but it’s not like she could do something different.
The creature was still snapping its jaws right behind her. Alta swore she could feel the currents around the creature tickling her tailfin, and it made her heartbeat drum against her ribs at an alarming rate.
She dove right to the seafloor and muddied up the water with sand. It didn’t help, the thing moved right through. She dodged turn after turn, momentarily gaining distance again.
Until her turn was too sharp, too close to the creature, and it managed to scrape her side with its teeth. Alta screeched from the sharp, tearing pain. Spasms of panic crept into her swimstrokes. She was bleeding, and it riled up the creature.
She felt like she should faint, throw up, do anything but swim but she knew she had to keep going, even with the sickening warmth flowing out of her wound into the water.
She would not make it back home like this, she knew that. Her swimming was far more choppy now, ridden with pain and fatigue. She wasn’t even sure where the creature had managed to bite her, it felt like her whole side was on fire. Would she bleed out? No, that’s irrational. She wasn’t lightheaded or anything. Or was she?
But then Alta saw something in the distance, a shadowy rock formation. It was her only chance to lose it.
Alta swam towards the obstacle now frantic as the only things keeping her from slowing down were the sharp snaps of pain when the creature barely caught onto her tail fin and scraped the edge. She needed a place to hide, somewhere between the rocks that formed a blurry silhouette and cast her into a shadow.
Stopping would be a death sentence, but still Alta flinched when she saw two yellow glowing rings. Two eyes, wide enough for her to sink through. They were right in front of her, where there should have been dead-still stone. They were focused on the thing right behind her, that much she could notice before a strong current tugged her forward.
Alta shut her eyes out of instinct, her existence confirmed only by the soft click behind her and the scorching pain in her side. The water around the small mermaid stilled, leaving her disoriented.
Her tail brushed against something soft and warm underneath. It felt weird, so she trashed upwards and opened her eyes only to see pitch black darkness and hit something similar above her. She elbowed herself away from that but had to then accept that there really was no space. No waterflow from anywhere, moderately slimy surfaces that she could not avoid. It was too dark to see anything, but she could hear a periodic rush of water somewhere near. Her eyes widened.
Now it seemed like the other creature wasn’t her problem anymore, but this was a much bigger issue. She had been trapped.
Trapped into the mouth of the yellow-eyed creature.
That thought was confirmed as whatever it was that had pulled her in her began to move fast. The momentum pressed her against the soft back of the cavern. She shivered and scrambled as forward as she could, reality setting in.
How—no why was she alive?
She gasped in the water, unsure if the creature would even understand her.
“Let me out! Please!” she screamed. She reached forward with her hands, slithered against the momentum that pressed her against the back wall of this hostile cavern. Her palms hit smooth teeth emerging from the flesh underneath her, fingers slid upward to the pointed ends, nearly reached through but the creature pulled her backwards.
She let out a wail she had been holding in long enough at this point. This exploration had been going from bad to worse for a while.
“Don’t eat me,” her voice broke into sobs. Then again, why was she even trying, it probably couldn’t understand her let alone hear her.
The movement stopped, and any pressure around her eased.
Alta was thrown out past the teeth and blown against what she regognized to be cupped hands. The mer exhaled. Alta stifled her sobs and turned to look at her captor. His green hair flowed around his head like an overgrown raft of seaweed and cast shadows on his gray skin. His yellow eyes looked unnerving, ones of fish which nourish themself with the flesh of others.
He overall reminded Alta of a shark. A really big one. A beast of the seas which had a presence more akin to an unforgiving deity. She slowly backed away as much as his hands let her.
His voice was oddly calming, it filled the water around her in warm, rumbling tones.
But Alta ignored his words, frozen, staring at his teeth as he spoke. They were sharp, and looked exactly like shark teeth. She had been lucky she hadn’t hit them. The outcome wouldn’t have been pretty.
“Did you listen to me at all?” Alta met his gaze. Her hands twitched and anxiously grabbed at the water. She probably should have listened.
He sighed and slowly lowered his hands from behind her. “Either you didn’t or you just can’t speak at the moment, that’s fine.” He paused, checking for eye contact. “I just want to make this clear, my way of saving you from that pesky thing was probably the worst way to do it, or at least you don’t look to be doing too great right now.” He had an apologetic look on his face. It was more convincing than Alta would have expected.
“But I have no intention to hurt you. You are safe now.”
The mermaid flicked herself further away, unsure if the distance really made any difference.
“You don’t look like I can trust you on that,” she said, wondering if the words she just blurted out were too harsh to be spoken from her position.
He blew air from the gills on his neck, which created a vibrating sound. Was it a laugh?
“Well I’m sorry that I look like a leviathan.” A leviathan? She thought. She had heard so many stories of those creatures of the bigger oceans. Stories of mers bigger than whales, who rule the waters just as mercilessly as sharks do.
She tensed. “You… are a leviathan?” Now that Alta thought about it, the mer in front of her matched the description frighteningly well.
"What else could I be?" Again Alta inched backwards. Where was she even? Was this actually worse than being chased by the previous creature?
“You probably want to go back home. You’ve had a rough day.”
Well… He’s definitely not wrong. He seemed to just look at her as she backed away, unfazed.
“You're from the northern coast of the bay, right?" He tipped his head forward, apparently towards the north.
Alta was a bit further away from him now. The distance gave her some confidence so she asked “Why do you think that?” It wouldn’t be good if he knew about her home, of all the merfolk there.
"It's not the first time I've been at this bay. I just tend to keep my distance from the coast because your kind is awfully scared of me, and I don’t see the need to bother you.”
Alta felt that she really should leave now that she might have somewhat of a chance. But she was curious. He hasn't actually said anything that would hint at her being in danger. "Why do you care about whether we are scared of you or not?"
He tilted his head. "I don't care if your kind is terrified of my kind. I think it's a good thing since there are others of my kind who would eat you for dinner without remorse." Alta’s heart skipped a beat.
"Are –are there… Could they come here? You're not one of them are you?" Her mind felt like it was again on the tipping point of becoming a panicky mess.
He looked to be wondering if the mermaid had listened at all before. "No they won't come here since this is pretty deep in my territory. And no, I already said that I won't harm you."
He glanced somewhere further behind Alta. What had happened to the other creature, she wondered. On a second thought, she didn’t want to know right now.
“To me you look like a smaller, maybe slightly friendlier version of me. Eating you is out of the question, it’d be sickening.”
That would explain why she was still here. Though now she really wanted to go home.The spot where she had been bitten had begun to sting more now that she wasn’t swimming for her life. And her sides burned too. The chase had taken a toll on her.
"Uhm, I should probably get going, but what's your name?" It’s hard to admit but the injuries reminded her that he had saved her, perhaps it would be polite to know who he was.
He smiled at her, cracking up the frightening exterior for a moment. "Levent, what's yours? And don't say your goodbyes just yet. I'll swim some of the way with you so you don't get attacked again."
Levent? That’s a little odd, perhaps it’s a leviathan name? Well, she probably couldn’t avoid his further company even if she wanted to. And maybe it wouldn’t do any harm at this point. "Alta. And, thanks?"
"You're welcome." He floated into a more horizontal position, now eye-level with her. "Lead the way.”
"Okay,” she said mostly to herself. She was a bit nervous to turn her back to him but started to swim towards the pointed direction of North. She didn’t hear anything from behind her so she glanced back and there he was, following her.
Somehow, Alta’s heartbeat calmed down a bit. The only thing left was the pain that flared up on each tailstroke. She slid her hand against her side to feel for the damage and bit her mouth shut as the wound burned from the touch.
Alta looked back at it, seeing some deep red stained on a relatively shallow wound slightly below her hip. Some scales had been ripped, but it would heal. Her gaze traveled further back, and met the yellow eyes of her surprising protector. He kept his distance, keeping his eyes on her from a little less than his arm’s length away. His tail was a distant shadow that slowly slithered behind him.
She turned her attention back to the front of her, wanting to shake off the feeling of being chased, even though the ”chasing” was friendly and much slower now.
“Are you doing alright?” Levent asked.
“What do you mean?” Alta shouted back at him. She was surprisingly out of breath.
“It’s just, you’re swimming a little funny.” His serious tone made her slow down a bit.
Alta was about to turn towards him, but he was quicker to act. As she looked back again a shadow cast over her. He had flicked himself to swim over her, gently twisting around above her. His tail was dark grey, ridges of membrane connecting his fins to guide the water around him ever so precicely. He lowered down and turned to face her straight ahead, his curved body flipping straight behind him to point the way she had been going.
A total U-turn.
Alta halted her movement in order to not crash into his face, and found herself holding her sides to cover her discomfort in front of his eyes. He glided closer, studying her.
Levent’s nose scrunched at the sight. “You’re hurt, but the cuts aren’t bleeding that much.”
“I’ll be fine.” Alta said.
“But you’re tired. It’s a long way, I’ll help you.”
“I can swim,” She insisted nervously.
“Yes, but you’re slow, and you move like you’re constantly trying to avoid pain.”
His right hand floated behind Alta and he bumped her against his palm. At first she tensed up again, but decided to let him hold her as the thin webs between his fingers circled her tail. It made her feel smaller than before in his presence. She hadn’t really thought about it, but she was only half the length of his finger, not to mention that he had long claws. Alta was glad that he seemed to know what he was doing, as those things could have easily poked her.
An odd sense of relief washed over her as Levent turned to swim again, the combination of his fingers and the waterflow holding her in place and letting her rest.
He covered the distance far quicker than she ever could have. Alta was left to watch the seafloor go by as he held her in a gentle cupped hold, arms extended to rest against his sides as he swam forward.
The rush of water that traveled through his hand felt exhilarating, almost like she was the one moving at such speed, although in reality she wasn’t moving much. His fingers and the web between them encapsulated her in a space from which she couldn’t accidentally flow out of with the current. But she was sure that if he were to keep his hand like this, she could push herself out. She wasn’t trapped.
The seafloor came closer, and the water let through more and more light. Eventually, Levent stopped. He brought her back up to his face and let go.
“I won’t come further,” he said. And with a good reason. He couldn’t position himself upright here without surfacing. He wouldn’t even be able to sit here without his head and shoulders over the surface. Because of that, he was left floating horizontally, trying to keep his presence as unnoticeable as possible.
Alta looked to where he had brought her. She could see the all-familiar rock formations in the distance. Just a little while away.
“Thanks, that’s okay. I’ll continue from here.”
He smiled with his teeth hidden. “Do me a favour, and don’t come back out here. You’re too small to do that safely. The thing that chased you isn’t the only one eager to hunt you down.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Alta said with honesty. The gash in her side was a constant reminder of how she screwed up today.
“Good. Swim safely.”
“You too?”
Levent’s gills rumbled quietly, as he backed away. Alta found herself waving a goodbye to him. She suprisingly felt a sliver of gratitude and trust towards him regardless of his scary appearance. Then she swam back home, knowing that he didn’t leave as she did, but watched her back for the time it took for her to swim out of view into the safety of the rocky bay. Alta turned to look back one last time, but he had disappeared into the haziness of the blue water.
///
Thank you for reading! The writing I originally had for this was OLD, and it was a bit of a struggle to rewrite. But it is how these two unlikely friends met for the first time and I’m glad to have it finally finished.
Visual reference of Levent and Alta in this post, if that is of interest.
