Chapter Text
“WHERE IS HE?” the mighty voice of the King could be heard throughout his palace halls. “Where the devil is that Healer?”
Of all the dumb, stubborn things to do, the young healer, of whom the royal family had found much pride in, (somewhat) had skipped his own appearance in the Plaza. The prodigy student was supposed to be giving a speech to the citizens of Atlantis about the new research and medicine in hospital that its healers were developing, how it was supposed to advance the medical technology of blah, blah, blah…
Now, Poseidon could understand how young Solace had lost his interest in the formality, it really was, after all, a boring way of keeping in touch with the subjects, but it was politics. It was important that the Healers, a most powerful group of mermen and mermaids, kept up their good relationship with the public.
However, this Will boy, Poseidon’s own grandson, (although not of the royal family due to some…complications with a previous lover) was doing a terrific job of making that one of the most arduous tasks in the ocean.
“S-Sir, the guards have looked everywhere,” Poseidon’s advisor informed him, “young Master Solace isn’t anywhere to be found!”
Poseidon pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes downcast to avoid the awkward stares of his citizens. He ran his fingers through his black-grey-peppered hair, and flicked his green fish tail. He appeared quite annoyed, on the surface, but really, he too was itching to get this public stunt over with.
“Just keep searching,” he told the advisor, “He can’t be too far off…”
However, Will Solace was, indeed, very far off, off in the farthest reaches of the shining sea city.
It was only smart that Will skipped his speech this morning. He would have said something wrong, slipped up somehow, and have had the Elder Healers pestering him about it for the next week or so. He felt bad, for letting them down, but they were trying to turn him into the absolute perfect golden child. He would be the pretty face they sent out to do their weekly public stunts, forever on, and for the rest of his life.
Pfft.
Like he was ever going to let that happen. NO.
Will was a natural Healer, but he didn’t take that whole publicity crap. Hey, if the Healers were as talented as everyone thought they were, they wouldn’t have to give speeches to assure the public that everything was good and perfect, like the entire kingdom thought it was.
Good whales, Will thought, I’m drowning in obliviousness. He, unlike 99-percent of the Kingdom of the Sea, knew that their world was not perfect, that Poseidon was only keeping up the act as his ancestors had done by keeping their world hidden for millennium upon millennium, but Will wanted, more than anything, to go beyond the wavy boundaries, into the world of them.
Being a Healer was a perfect job, but nothing else got Will’s attention more than even the slightest mention of the two-finned – er, legged - beings that lurked above their watery world. He obsessed over every other-worldly artifact that he discovered on the ocean floor, and, let me tell you, there were a lot. And Will kept them all.
He swam swiftly, flicking his silvery-blue tail with grace and purpose, navigating over a barren sea floor. Over his shoulder, he bore a seaweed-woven bag. Within it, his daily finds, his precious cargo, were concealed. He knew his race disapproved of the human things, and he didn’t fight it, openly at least, so he quenched his thirst for knowledge about above the seas in different ways.
He arrived at a strange place, a rocky ocean floor, where a good friend of him lived. This friend kneweverything about the human world, and he always could identify Will’s finds. It made Will so happy whenever a name could be given to his contraband items.
“Cecil!” he called out to a cave in the rocks, sticking his head into the crevice, and coming nose-to-nose with a russet-haired merman with a tail that was even brighter red. The brown-eyed merman blinked, annoyed with his blonde friend.
“What do you want, Healer?” he said, suppressing a smile. He swam past the healer, making a show of his bright tail, and seated himself on the rocks above his home. “Don’t you know it’s rude to come shouting into my cave? At this hour?”
“The sun’s at highest-point, Cecil,” Will rolled his blue eyes, “If you weren’t such a hermit, you’d be up with the rest of your species as well.”
“Speak for yourself,” the merman tossed his head, his bright hair catching in the current, “You’re not all perfection and prodigy, and I am referring to that there bag you got there.” He grinned and pointed to Will’s bag.
“Always gotta be the snarky one, don’t you, Cecil?” Will said and slipped the bag off of his shoulder.
“Well, bring it here!” Cecil yipped impatiently, he was as curious about Will’s finds as Will himself was, it wasn’t hard to tell.
Will swam up and joined his friend on the rocks. He excitedly pulled his first artifact from his bag and brandished it fancily to his friend, who greedily snatched it from him and looked it over with awe. It was a tarnished silver object, long, slender. It was round and considerably larger on one end, and that end was precariously concave. When looking at it, Will’s reflection was upside-down on the dipped side, but not on the other. In a strange way the object was pretty.
Cecil flipped the object over again and again, running his fingers along every curve, and looking back and forth between the silver and his contorted reflection. He giggled, “It’s a…a…” he began. His eyes squinted as he fought for the object’s name in his head.
“A what?” Will pried impatiently.
“If I remember correctly, it’s…a…it’s a spurn!” (a spoon, for you land-dwellers) he said triumphantly. “It’s like a trork, those things they comb their hair with, you know, those things you brought last week, only gentler!” (fork)
Will gaped in awe, “That’s so cool!” he exclaimed. Cecil knew everything. “Oooh!” he squealed and dug into his bag again. He pulled out another slender object, but this one was a very thin rod, with a slightly narrowed tip at one end that produced a smooth point when the other end was pushed in (a pen) that Cecil identified as a rune-rod, a tool that didn’t work under water, but the humans used to write, instead of carving everything into stone like they did down here. The practice of Will providing his informative friend with land-artifacts went on for the next hour or so, and Cecil telling his stories of the stories of these artifacts. There were new ones, like the spurn and the rune-rod, and others (A lightbulb, a shovel, a tie, and a pair of glasses) that Cecil described as sun-pieces, earth-claw, woven jewelry, and eye crystals. Others, like (Coins and a hat) gold sand dollars and cranium coats, they already had in their possession, so not much time was spent fussing over them. As the second hour drew to a close, and the sun had gotten lower, Will sighed, content with his finds, for now.
“What do you say we put those pieces of awesome into the grotto?” Cecil offered when Will’s bag was empty.
“Heck yeah!” Will said and he followed his red-tailed friend into his cave.
Now, if Will found his little artifacts cool, Cecil’s cave/home/hideout/grotto made it hard for him to breathe. Even though he had helped find most of the things in there, and even though he’d spent more time here than studying, it never ceased to make him as giddy as a love-struck, young dolphin. There were thousands, and thousands of artifacts down here, found randomly on the sea floor, in the darkest sea caves, or in the forbidden sunken sea chariots the humans rode above the waves. They had countless little fascinating artifacts, supposedly mundane to the humans, such as the spurn and the eye crystals, all organized according to Cecil and Will’s OCD. There were bigger objects, like the metal stones used to keep the ships from floating away, figurines depicting strange creatures no merman or mermaid had ever laid eyes on, and even sunken boats themselves. The entire grotto was filled to the brim with illegal pieces and forbidden objects. It made Will feel so jittery whenever he thought about what would happen if the citizens ever found out, but these treasures, they were so beautiful, so enthralling, so addicting. How could he ever give them up?
Among all of the things, the thing-a-ma-jigs, the what-cha-ma-call-its, the everything contraband and fun and under the sea, there was one piece, one magnificent finding, that captivated Will above all others.
It lay at the center of the grotto, in a background of alien things. Cecil had found it, when they were but mere merlings, it was already here, in the cave, it was a part of the stone after years of being underwater.
As they reached the deepest parts of the grotto, after carefully placing today’s finds in their proper places, Will swam up to it, circling it in the gentle current. It was a statue, made of white stone, like the palace walls, but it was hardly related to that place. Two white stone eyes gazed blankly at Will, unseeing, but still a sight to behold. The stone man was cloaked in some weird skin-covering, almost entirely, but his wavy stone hair, Will often wondered what color it could really be, flew wild, rough, and free. Will referred to the noble statue as ‘his prince’, it seemed to glow in the dark grotto, where but little light reached.
“Still fancying over that thing, aren’t you?” Cecil muttered to his friend.
Will sighed. He let himself sink down into the rock and sand at the stone feet, unsettling a cloud of dust.
“Always, and you know it,” he said and curled up beneath the stone. Cecil giggled and settled next to him, laying back and crossing his arms under his head. Will gazed silently up at the face of his prince, and longingly at the rest of the thousands of artifacts.
“Cecil?” he said softly.
“I know, friend,” Cecil said with a gentle undertone.
“I wish I never had to go back to Atlantis.”
Cecil turned to his friend, searching, hopelessly, for some anchor in those free-spirited blue eyes, an anchor that prevented the free-spirit from drifting like a piece of driftwood, aimlessly, endlessly. Alas, there was none.
Will seemed to notice his friend's concern. He smiled, lightly, but he was lost nearly entirely in his daydream of feet on dry land.
"There's something wrong you you..." Cecil said, finally, shaking his head.
Will shrugged, "Maybe you're right," he said, "Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I can't see..." He rose from the sea floor and circled the prince, "I just can't see...how a world so terrible can make such..." He touched the stone face of the handsome man, lost in his thoughts, "such beautiful things..."