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Minho chose for his history to start when he met Felix.
Before that was the open ocean, from one pod to another, till he was turned out and found himself on the edge of a seaside cliff, riven with little caverns lit with jellyfish, hiding young pod families. He would have swam past, accepted their rejection early, knowing the bright tinges on the edge of his fluke would have garnered distrust quickly.
But then he’d seen him– a small little thing with his bright silver baby scales, twisting between the rocks while the bigger mer with darker blue scales laughed and prodded, sneering as they tugged off little scales and let out little rivulets of murky, bloody water in their wake–
Well, Minho wouldn’t have been accepted anyway. So if he left them with a few bloody noses, Felix clinging to his back as he catapulted out through open sea to escape angry blood-songs, no one needed to know.
Felix had barely been able to speak, his little songs garbled in bubbles, like dolphin tunes of emotions and intentions than anything definitive, of thank-you-thank-you-love-you-stay?-me-stay-with-you?-stay-please-no-go-away that made Minho melt in immediate fondness and protectiveness.
Of course, little one, Minho sang back, floating on his back and drawing Felix closer to his chest as they rested, a small speck in a very big ocean.
Whatever Minho had thought would happen after that was curiously forgotten, Felix capturing little jellies in his palms and chirping in delight whenever they’d float out of his hands and into Minho’s face. He would hold Minho’s hand and eagerly bring him to the waves, pointing to the sun, moon, and stars as though they could be chased.
For all they knew, perhaps they could be. Minho would certainly try, for the twinkle just behind Felix’s eyes that coaxed him to.
And it was many seasons of Felix hiding among the herrings while Minho tied together a spear and hunted large fish and sharks, which he deboned and carefully fed to the little mermaid as they drifted and shared among the dolphin school as they chased down the herrings they hid in.
Yum-yum-yummy , Felix clicked, imitating the dolphins as they giggled and chirped around him in agreement, yum-yum-yummy, yum-yum-yummy~!
Minho felt no different than a mother coaxing her calf each time they ventured into a channel, or crossed another stretch of the great deep, further and further, between and around many species of life. Sometime along the way, Minho absently stared at the waves above and the darkness below and the bubbles between, and wondered if Felix’s parents would have brought him like this.
He brushed that thought away as quickly as it had come.
Little one, he would purr quietly and protectively, and Felix would tuck his head under Minho’s chin and rest his ear against Minho’s heart, my little one.
Felix would never be able to know or speak his own history. Minho could speculate, but he decided not to. What more did he need to know, really? Except that Felix was his, and he was Felix’s and they would take care of each other and be just fine.
The seasons turned and changed, and when winter came and Felix’s silver scales itched so hard he writhed in his sleep, they found an ocean cliffside where Minho would toy with halibuts and weevers that would dig themselves in the sand whenever Felix would drive him away to grow into his adult scales in peace.
Minho learned to be protective from afar, albeit slowly, wondering how far he could bury his own head in the sand whenever Felix would keen from pain, voice twisted and mangled as his singing voice melded and molded into something more powerful.
Little one? Minho would call out when the agony of sounds had finished, and he would find Felix floating limply and bonelessly from exhaustion, and protectively pull him under a crest in the cliff to hold onto and sleep– Minho himself would never sleep. There were large sharks and larger whales that would call in warning of their arrival, and he would haul a sleeping Felix to hide elsewhere as a migration or hunt passed. The winter storms would also cut through fiercely, and there was never a moment where the ocean was truly calm.
But winter finished. And when it did, Felix’s tail was a glistening turquoise that glimmered in the light and brought curious turtles from their routes to curiously peck at. Felix was a darling, always giggling sweetly and letting them prod at him to their satisfaction while he ran his hands over their worn, sturdy shells.
She has traveled far, Minho would swim gently alongside him, s he has farther still to go.
Felix made a curious sound at the back of his throat, brushing off algae from between the chips of her shell, the turtle lifting a fin over his head gratefully, before pushing up into the current and continuing down the highway to cooler water.
She must to have her babies, Minho explained as they both watched her fade into the vastness of the ocean, all travel to the sands to lay their eggs.
Why-far-why-there-why-not? Felix’s sounds overlapped and meshed in confusion, fluke grazing the edge of the current to watch it ripple and tease him onward.
Because, little one, turtles travel to the place of their birth to lay their babes, Minho gently pulled him away from the current, to follow the mackerel as they cut through the still and deep waters, It is how they live.
How-us? Felix trilled, How-us?-How-how-us?
Like this, Minho looped his arms under the smaller mer, twisting his darker tail around him and spun, startling the mackerel and flinging them wildly in and out of the sunrays, till it drew out that sweet peal of laughter from deep in Felix that echoed to the soul of the ocean.
That was how they lived. They kept their distance from open ocean pods, and hunted themselves. Minho taught Felix to charge sharks and wrap around their tails as Minho speared them. He taught Felix to find shade under mantas, to learn the rhythm of the ocean with great sunfish. They made peace with the great whales, clinging to their backs as they made their journeys. They found family for a season at a time with the schools of dolphins who trilled the same songs Felix did, and taught them a language playful and sweet, which Felix sang for many seasons after they left their schools. They even bowed to the great whale sharks, as Minho taught Felix each creature that it took with it, the ocean stilling in it’s presence.
And they followed the songs of the ocean, till they found a humpback in her season, traveling to warmer water.
Felix swam to her underbelly, clicking in curiosity as the bottlenoses had whenever they found a fish that swam a little funnily.
Minho hummed and swam up to the great humpback’s eye, placing his hand on her face reverently.
She will have her calf.
Suspicions confirmed, Felix darted around her in gleeful delight, twirling till he too came beside her face. He chittered an excited song, the type of congratulations he’d heard echoed from sperm whales to one another, taught and repeated back from their calves before they took their dives into the deep.
He stilled when she did not respond, a low and sad sound of few true words.
Her eye met Minho’s, and a great hurt, fear wrapped in anticipatory grief, barreled over him.
Felix put both hands on her skin, She-hurt-hurt-where-where-hurt-where-pain-where-why-where-where-why?
Minho floated back, under the current of her fins, up to her dorsal where he surveyed her truly and fully, all the way to the edges of her tail.
The damaged edges of her tail, and her fins, scars all along her back.
Felix darted around and carefully took all her wounds in, flitting up to Minho as they swan above and behind her, with the thrumming of questions, who-who-why-who-why-who-why?
Orca pod, Minho thought, but they will not follow to such warmer water.
Felix pouted, But-she-why-but-why-scared-why-why-scared-why-scared?
Minho knew why. Without any words or songs to explain, he knew. The ocean was a vast and deep place, and to be alone anywhere in the middle of it–
With one flick of his tail, Minho surged back down, to where she had slowed and waited for them, placing one hand on her side, and the other on her fin. She let out an echoing trill, questioning almost, in a way Minho couldn’t quite understand, but Felix understood well enough to swim down to Minho’s side and hold onto her fin tightly.
He responded in a certain whistles of encouragement, Us-now!-you-and-me-and-us-and-we-and-all-go!
Emboldened by this, she turned once to meet Minho’s eyes again, but all Minho offered was his strength and assurance, and with it she sang something joyfully, letting a powerful stroke of her tail carry them out. Her current was powerful, Minho barely able to hold on, much less grab Felix as he nearly flew back from her strength.
She spun and kept them in her current, wild and free, and they traveled the ocean, wide and vast as it was, them under her shadow, and her under their touch. Great power in greater gentleness, they were ushered in from the deep with the chorus of many schools of curious fish and many more chittering of — dolphins and eager turtles. Manta rays flew overhead and harkened her arrival to the warmer, shallower seas, till the islands were within site and the sea shifted from the blue of Minho’s tail to the green in Felix’s.
Then they reached the reef.
Bright and beautiful, the sand and the waves between their grasp.
And the mer who resided there—
—curious, kind, and careful—
Was where they met their home.