@watergraved continued from x
He was badly injured when the humans had found him washed up on the shore – tangled in a net with a gaping wound on his tail that was caused by a fisherman’s harpoon.
Surely luck was on his side to have been found and treated, but the merman was having doubts on having such luck since the said human’s had decided to keep him within this…Aquarium, instead. While Iri was certainly grateful for the aid he had received, he wished they could have just released him back into the ocean. He didn’t really like this enclosed space they put him in.
Currently, he was just sulking on a rock while hugging his long striped tail to his chest, though he was careful not to undo the stitchings of his wound of course. It was still very tender and it hurt to swim too long. But the human’s did seem to be very good at healing, even if their way of doing it was kind of scary… He did hope he didn’t have to go back to them anytime soon though.
Glancing to the side, where the ( as the human’s called it ) ‘observation window’ was, he saw a figure staring at him. He took note of the colours they were wearing, noticing they were the same as the other ‘workers’ here. Iri wondered if they were another one of his caretakers…
Working in the aquarium hadn’t been her first choice, but she had to pay for college somehow. It wasn’t a bad job, per se, but she’d never really been terribly interested in fish, and since she was one of the few employees who wasn’t the least bit squeamish, she got all the gross assignments. All in all, it was a pretty lame job -
Until now.
Vivi sped down the hall, shoes clacking loudly against the tile floor. Whether it was because of her interest in the supernatural or just because she could handle weirdness, she’d been assigned as one of the caretakers of a real live merman! Suddenly feeding the sharks was all worth it.
She gazed at him with wide eyes, entranced. Even with the ugly wound on his tail, he was gorgeous. Part of her felt bad that he was being kept in a tank like this ( it was like keeping a human in a cage, wasn’t it? ) but another part argued that it was for his own good until his tail healed. Besides, none of the other staff had managed to get him to talk, so it wasn’t like they could discuss better alternatives.
She jumped slightly when he made eye contact and broke her from her reverie. Hopefully he hadn’t noticed her staring for too long. That would just be a great way to introduce herself, wouldn’t it?
She smiled at him and raised an arm in an awkward wave, “Hi there! I’m Vivi. I’ll be lookin’ out for ya for a little while, okay?”