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Tommy wasn't the first person to go missing off the coast. He waited in a shallow air pocket that inhabited the cave that he had found shelter in. The cave was nestled so far beneath the surface of the ocean that his eyes couldn't pick up a single trace of light aside from a handful of tiny patches of bioluminescent moss. To keep his mind busy, he traced imaginary spirals into the black, wet stone with a shaky finger.
His eyes burned, and Tommy couldn't tell if it was from the seawater or…
He had known not to swim past the drop-off. There was a place on the coast where the warm water suddenly became bone-chilling and the ground below your feet became null, like a cloth ripped out from beneath a table set.
You're not meant to swim out past the drop-off.
The adults always warned against it, telling tales of children being dragged into the void by sea monsters and haunted undercurrents that bellowed up from the abyss to snatch any person who decided to venture out just a little too far from the safe, shallow waters of the beach.
But Tommy liked to blur the line between bravery and stupidity sometimes and also he did what he wanted.
This, though. This was not the intended outcome.
Because now he was trapped in a pitch-black cave that could only be hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea. And he was running out of breath.
Every quiet grunt and huff that grated out of his throat echoed throughout the tight cavern, punching at his eardrums with the volume of firing cannons. Each drop of water to crash down from the ceiling was it's own gunshot.
Aside from the bellowing, reverberating sounds and the scent of moss flooding his nostrils, his only other useful sense was touch. The stone beneath him was wet and coarse, his clothes were damp and sunk into his skin, littering every inch of him with goosebumps.
When Tommy had gotten up that morning, he didn’t expect that being frozen, drenched, and basked in darkness was a possibility to consider.
But, he was there, and at that point, there wasn't much else to do but wait, he supposed. Death was likely coming for him soon, but if he held onto hope, maybe, just MAYBE some sort of rescue team could somehow reach him.
Tommy might've prayed for safety. But he'd given up on the gods long ago. What was the point of crying out for help if your screams would fall on ignorant ears anyways? So instead, he sat and drew squiggles on the floor.
Was this some type of divine punishment? Tommy considered. It didn’t matter, regardless. If it was, this was his repentance for his sins or non-belief or whatever. If it wasn’t some sort of twisted, fucked-up punishment from some god that he pissed off, then it probably wouldn’t change the outcome of his predicament anyways.
Tommy must've been there for hours. At some point, he removed his shirt. The wet fabric did nothing but cradle cold water against his skin. The atmosphere in his little air pocket was growing extremely humid anyways, and Tommy thought that the oxygen might as well have turned into water.
It made him drowsy. Tommy leaned his back against the wall, all the fight in him had been lost even before he ended up at the bottom of the sea, and he'd decided then that it might simply be easier to go to sleep. He'd either sleep until rescue arrived or.....
Something else was clawing at him deep in his chest, deeper than his place under the seabed. It was an instinct that clung desperately to life. It stirred something sick in his gut, pleading for him to hang on and to stay awake.
Whatever it was that dropped to its knees and begged Tommy to live, whatever subconscious function was firing in his neurons, was snuffed out like a candle in the ocean.
Tommy scoured the ground for his wet, sandy shirt and rolled it up. He laid down, placing his head on it. It was nice under his neck. It wouldn’t be a comfortable nod-off, but it was rest nonetheless. He didn’t expect to have to deal with sore muscles the next day anyways.
Tommy could've slept with his eyes open, that’s how heavy and still the darkness that engulfed him was. Still, he leaned into the hazy warmth that slowly overcame his body.
And he was out.
…
Tommy burst awake, splashing in the shallow water of the cave he’d dozed off in.
He still could not see, but the ear-splitting echo that turned the sound of sloshing water into a rapture remained, and his foot hit something soft as he dragged himself back onto solid ground in a frenzy.
As Tommy collected his breath, he could see his hands. His first guess was that his eyes simply adjusted to the darkness, but as seconds passed, he noticed that he could see more and more of his hands and his surroundings. Something was illuminating the cave, ever so subtly. Something that wasn't there before. Tommy looked at the pool of water and realised that it appeared to be glowing, so he crawled gingerly back to it and peered hesitantly down. Something- an animal of some sort- floated there, glowing neon blue just a couple of metres down.
It had long, opaque, pale tendrils that seemed to conceal its lower body. Tommy assumed that it was a jellyfish of some sort. A giant, man-sized jellyfish, but a jellyfish nonetheless.
Was this what had dragged him down here in the first place? Was he in something's den? Would he be eaten?!
Tommy’s spine crashed into the stony wall behind him. He was trapped in there with this- whatever this thing was.
The water began to glow brighter, as whatever that thing was rose closer and closer to him until the water was nothing but a swirling pot of neon blue and pale tendrils and it breached the water and-
It was- a human? A man’s face stopped, half-submerged in the water. Pink-ish, long hair swirled around the man as he stared at Tommy.
"Rescue...?" Tommy's hoarse voice echoed.
This was, to say the least, a very odd man. Tommy had never heard of people with pink hair. Memories of tales about sea monsters flashed in Tommy’s mind, but he was never warned of anything humanoid. It was always giant squids and sharks and whales and cursed weather and islands.
Rescue. The man in the water did not respond at all to Tommy's query. In fact, he simply sat there and stared up at Tommy and Tommy simply stared back.
"Are you here to... rescue me..?" Tommy asked again.
The pink-haired man did not respond in any meaningful way. Instead, he abruptly dove back into the water, a splash erupting from the stagnant pool.
"Wait!" Tommy shrieked, crawling frantically and reaching a hand towards the water, "I need-" He was interrupted by a sight he hadn't expected to see. “help…”
Trailing the glowing, pink-haired man, breaching the surface of the water like a whale, was a scaly tail that looked like it might've been made out of fire coral. Tommy scrambled swiftly to the edge of the pool and peered down at the light as it faded into the abyss, and the darkness spilled back into the cave, and he could no longer see again.
Had Tommy just… hallucinated all that? Was he even awake? He sat back on his heels in defeat and pinched himself.
There was a splash, and something clamped tightly onto his wrist, and he was being pulled down violently.
And Tommy held his breath.
The freezing, black waters crashed into him as he was submerged yet again, and Tommy fought every urge to scream and thrash. He was kind of fucked anyways, but he was not going to be the one to cause his own demise by struggling underwater, exhausting all of his energy and air, and drowning in the clutches of whatever this fuckin’ thing was.
So Tommy kept his eyes clenched tightly and his mouth shut as he was dragged deeper..? Upwards? Any of the cardinal directions? He couldn't tell. It was too dark to check, and the salt water would sting his eyes anyways. Fuck that.
But at some point, he began to see light through his eyelids and shouldn't he have run out of breath already?
Tommy cracked open one eye, expecting to feel the burn of the sea and to see nothing but.
But he could see. And it didn't hurt.
At that realisation, Tommy's eyes shot open wide, and he took in a deep breath out of shock. The water entered his lungs and his body didn't fight it. In fact, his lungs didn't seem to move at all.
Panic.
That was the first thing Tommy thought to do.
He thrashed against the hand that pulled him by his wrist through the water, and he tried to shout but nothing, not a single muffled sound, escaped.
And his instincts told him that he was drowning and that he needed to fight free.
The humanoid figure that was with Tommy stopped pulling him. It turned to face him. It put its webbed, clawed hands gently on Tommy's shoulders. Tommy met its eyes which glowed a warm, fire-like red. And that soothed Tommy in some strange way. Like magic.
He was not drowning. Tommy was not drowning.
The man pointed a claw to the side of Tommy's neck, and Tommy ran his fingers over his skin to discover slits that flapped gently in the current.
Gills.
He looked down, and he tried to move his legs. Instead, there was one giant, sunshine-golden tail.
Tommy had become one of those creatures. The same as the one that was with him right now.
Did it.... turn him into a monster?
How--?
Was Tommy a monster?
Tommy's face felt hot.
What was he?
He opened his mouth to sob, but nothing came out.
His salty tears didn’t sting his eyes.
The pink-haired thing grabbed his arms and pulled him close. Tommy was embraced snuggly, oh-so-snuggly. More tightly than any human had ever held him.
He could feel a deep hum resonate through his bones. It was music that lulled him down from his panic.
What was Tommy now if he was no longer human?
Well, he was no longer stuck cold and alone at the bottom of a cave.
He was safe.
And Tommy felt a little bit okay.
Just off the coast somewhere was a cave at the bottom of the sea. Within, a cold, lonely boy slept, his golden head of hair resting atop a damp, crumpled-up shirt. There was nothing to keep his still body company aside from patches of moss that would cling onto him until he was nothing but dust.