Chapter Text
“You’re it!”
Despite Phoenix’s little legs carrying him as fast as they could, his classmate had still managed to catch up and tap him on his shoulder. He quickly skidded to a halt, actually more like stumbled forward as he tried to stop, and spun around.
“Not for long, I won’t!” he declared and steeled his expression into one of pure determination. And off he went, sprinting forward towards his next nearest classmate and also his best friend, Larry Butz. Larry squeaked and hurriedly took off, running until he came up to the metal railings that were meant to keep people from falling off the ferry and then took a sharp left, heading towards the other side of the boat.
Their poor teacher, however, was not having nearly as much fun.
“Please, children, get back to your seats. It is not safe!” Taking care of a whole class elementary school kids on a field trip was no easy task, especially if said kids were darting all over the place, on a ferry no less. “Oh, goodness! Please be careful!” And did she mention she could not swim? Because she could not swim. And most of the children also could not swim. If any of her charges fell into the water… Oh dear. She did not want to think about it.
Still, Phoenix ignored his teacher’s warnings and went after Larry. But, on that sharp turn, his foot landed on a wet patch and, since his body was to pivot about that foot to make the turn, his entire weight brought him down as he slipped and skidded forward. His tiny frame allowed him to slip under the railings and sent him off the edge into the choppy waters below.
The poor boy screamed as he fell, and quickly regretted that for he hit the water and immediately took in a mouthful of seawater. He panicked and he flailed, gasping for air and desperately trying to keep himself afloat. Though the frantic splashing kept his head barely above the water, it sent water up his nose and down his throat, the salty water stinging his insides and making him choke.
With his scrawny arms and legs, coupled with the seawater he choked on and swallowed, the poor boy did not last long. He barely registered the cries from the ferry that continued to get further and further away as his limbs finally gave way and he began to sink.
___
It was nearing the end of the day. The sun was setting. The surface would soon be dark enough for him to explore it.
The young merman slowly swam upwards, his pupils narrowing as he ascended into the better lit upper levels of the ocean. Where he came from, it was dark all the time. The sun’s rays did not do much at such depths.
Just a few years ago, his father had told him to stay away from the surface while he went up alone. He had said that it was dangerous, especially for one as small as himself. Then, one day, he never came back. The young merman had only been 9 when that had happened.
The first few days had been terrifying. He had waited and he waited, and his father had never returned. After the third day, he had been too hungry to wait anymore and went out of their cave against his father’s rules to get himself some food. The dark waters had been terrifying without his father’s lights to guide him, his own red bioluminescence flashing in uncertainty and fear. Thankfully, he had managed to catch something and had quickly wolfed it down. It took him two weeks to finally realise that his father was never ever coming back.
His kind was scarce. He had never seen anyone like him other than his father. So he had been alone since that day, desperately trying to keep himself fed and learning how to survive on his own. He had been slow with his short tail and his claws had been soft due to his young age, making it difficult to catch anything. Even his teeth had been nowhere near as sharp as they should have been, making it difficult to eat certain types of fish he had painstakingly caught. If the scales had been too hard, he would have had to scratch the scales off before he could have eaten it.
How many years had it been since then? Four? Five? He was not sure. But the hard years had taught him well. ‘Trust no one’ was the first lesson. The first time he had seen another being like himself was when he had decided to explore the area around his territory a little more. He had been young and naive and had let the location of his territory slip. Then his food sources had begun to dwindle. He had begun to starve. Somehow, he had still managed to make it out alive, although just barely. It took him far too long, but he eventually figured out where his food had been going. It was the other merperson. The bastard had decided that he was no threat and helped himself to the wildlife in his territory.
The second lesson was that there was no such thing as honour or dignity, only survival. It did not matter if he had to cheat or steal or apply sabotage in order to keep himself fed. The other merperson had paid dearly for what they had done.
He had grown a lot in the last few years, but was not yet at his full size. He relied more on speed and finesse to keep himself safe, rather than simply mass and brute force. He eventually decided he was strong enough to explore the surface and did just that, hoping to find the cause of his father’s disappearance, or at least a reason for his father to keep going there.
The first time he had tried, he had swum upwards until it had gotten far too bright and he had to either swim blind or turn back. He tried a few more times and soon realised that the upper levels of the sea varied in light levels a lot more than they did back home. So, when the day had been at its darkest, he had left his home and swam upwards, and found that it had indeed been dark enough for him to reach the surface.
This time, he had left when it had been getting darker. He realised a while ago that he could still see fairly well even when the sun had not completely set. It had taken him a while, but he was soon almost at the surface and it was comfortably dim. He swam around for a few minutes, simply exploring the area and examining everything he could find. Then he heard an awfully loud noise and quickly covered his ears, his spines pressing down against his back as he cringed. This was one problem he had with the surface. Everything was too loud.
The loud noise had been accompanied by something speeding overhead, followed by something a lot smaller falling into the water. He watched as it struggled, splashing and flailing, before it slowly got weaker and weaker and finally began to sink.
A free meal.
He quickly swam over to the sinking form, grabbing it before any other creature could claim his meal for its own and his lights flashed in delight. But then his spines soon fell when he realised that this creature looked a lot like him and was quite a lot smaller.
It was but a child.
Having lost his father, he understood the pain of losing someone. He still felt that very same pain, although slightly dulled over the years, every day. He simply could not bring himself to inflict it on another family.
Although he knew he would hate himself for being so weak and pathetic later, he decided to bring the child back up above the surface. He swam in the direction in which that obscenely loud object had travelled just a minute before, and soon found that it had stopped not far from where the child had fallen. He quickly surfaced and looked up to see only one other child on that side of the noisy structure, shaking and rubbing its tearing eyes as it wailed. From the voices he could hear, all the other scaleless beings must have been elsewhere or on the other side of the structure.
Cautiously, he swam up to the edge of the structure and lifted the child to place it on the floor beside the other one. The crying child obviously saw this and quickly rubbed the tears out of its eyes to get a better look at the other he had just saved. It beamed and was suddenly shouting and pulling the unconscious child into an embrace, more tears pouring from its eyes as it cried tears of joy. Then it looked over at him and its eyes went wide and it jaw went slack.
However, before the child could do or say anything else, he was gone, having quickly dove back under the water and swimming back towards his home. As he headed back to his cave, the image of the child remained etched in his mind. The child’s strange spiked hair and that tiny stature that reminded him so much of himself from years past. Would his father have saved the child? Would his father have been proud? Was it worth it? Had he learnt nothing about survival in the last few years? He flared his spines in frustration.
___
The first thing Phoenix remembered was him choking and coughing water out of his mouth and nose.
The next thing was the stinging pain in his nose, windpipe, and chest from all the seawater.
He vaguely noticed that there were people around him, looking down at him, all saying something, but what they were saying he could not hear. He tried to sit up and his vision swam, so he quickly laid down again.
A hand was placed on his arm and another on his cheek. Someone was asking him something. He was a man in a uniform that looked vaguely familiar. Maybe he worked on the boat? Oh, right, he was on a boat. The question was asked again and, this time, he heard some of if. The man had asked if he was alright. He managed a small nod.
He did not remember what happened next. Maybe he was carried, maybe they let him rest. But he did remember something.
Red lights.
Rows of red lights, like Christmas lights, as his lungs had burned and his vision had slowly faded. What had that been?
___
Phoenix slowly blinked his eyes open and looked around. Where was he? Everything was a blur. He blinked a few more times and things started to get a little clearer. He saw a few fuzzy figures around him. Mama? Papa? His parents were there and so was Larry. He then slowly turned his head to look around him and realised he did not recognise this place at all. The walls were painted to be colourful and cheery and he was on a bed with a few beeping machines next to him. Was this a hospital? They kind of looked like that on the television.
His mother was the first to notice he was awake and pulled him into an embrace, asking if he felt alright. He only managed a quiet “Yeah…” for his throat still felt sore from all the seawater and was dry from disuse. His father smiled and placed a large, warm hand on his shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze.
Larry, however, was hopping up and down, apparently overjoyed that Phoenix was finally awake again. But what was truly surprising was the fact that the firsts words to leave his mouth had not been ‘I’m glad you are awake!’ or ‘How are you feeling?’. No. Larry had grabbed his arm, shook him, and said with all seriousness, “I saw him! The fish man!”
“The… fish man?” Phoenix asked, knitting his crooked brows together in confusion.
“Yeah! The fish man!” Larry exclaimed in response. Then his expression fell. “You… You don’t remember…?”
The spiky-haired boy shook his head.
“The fish man!!!” Larry then shouted and flailed his arms wildly. “How could you not remember?! He had silver hair and a funny fringe like this,” Larry paused to position his hands in front of his forehead with palms facing out but his fingers pointing downwards, “and a dark tail with these cool red lights down his sides-”
“Wait, red lights?” Phoenix quickly cut him off. The red lights. He remembered the red lights.
Larry looked rather offended and replied, “Yeah, that’s what I said. I saw him with my own eyes after he put you on the boat and went back into the water.”
Put him on the boat? Went back into the water? Fish man? Red lights?
Then it finally clicked and his already large eyes went wide. A merman. A merman with silver hair and red lights had saved him.
Then it was Phoenix’s turn to grab Larry’s hands and scream, “I remember, I remember! The fish man, he saved me!”
And Larry beamed and nodded vigorously.
“Tell me more! What was he like?”
Although Larry had not seen much, he told Phoenix everything he knew about the mysterious merman. He told him that he had looked really scary with his narrowed eyes and vicious glare, but was obviously a pretty cool guy if he had saved Phoenix. He told him about the cool frilly-spine-dorsal fin thing that went down the merman’s back that he had seen when the merman dove back into the water. He told him about the merman’s sharp nails and the fact that they looked super scary, and yet, there was not a single scratch on Phoenix’s body.
Phoenix was fascinated and listened with wide, sparkling eyes. His parents were less thrilled, but let the boys explore their little fantasy for the time being.
___
Phoenix was discharged from the hospital a day later after their monitoring had shown no complications from his near-drowning experience. His parents had let him rest at home for another day. Then he was back in school.
In class, all his classmates crowded around him and Larry, listening to their stories about Phoenix’s drowning and the merman. Everyone loved the idea of a merman hero figure. Soon, the entirety of the third grade had heard of the story.
Phoenix began doodling the merman, or what he thought the merman looked like, all over the place. On his worksheets, on his books, on his table, on his hands. Maybe he was a little obsessed.
The teachers at his school had ignored this new ‘merman fad’ initially, but soon could not. The craze, as they now called it, had gotten out of hand. They had problems conducting lessons because their students were all busy talking about the ridiculous encounter.
But the one who had been most concerned was Phoenix’s teacher herself. She had noticed his fixation on this imaginary creature from the first day he had stepped back into class. At first she had let it slide, wanting to let her students exercise their creativity once in a while. Letting them fantasize about mythical creatures should have been a good workout for their little developing brains.
But the obsession did not fade. What she assumed to be Phoenix’s coping mechanism for such a traumatic event was not going away. She tried to speak to the boy herself, to tell him that the merman and merpeople did not exist, that his mind was coming up with reasons to justify his miraculous survival, but he refused to listen. In fact, Phoenix had not just not listened, but had screamed and thrown a tantrum. He had run off and reportedly cried for the next hour or so according to his friends.
She then approached Larry, whom she knew was Phoenix’s best friend. She tried to convince him to tell Phoenix that merpeople did not exist, but he, instead, adamantly insisted that they did exist and that he had been the one to see it with his very own eyes when it had rescued Phoenix.
The teacher then had no choice but to contact Phoenix’s parents. She called them and they also confirmed that the boy had an obsession with his imaginary merman. They discussed the issue for a while, before Phoenix’s parents agreed to speak to the boy about it.
The next day, Phoenix went to school looking sadder than when Larry had accidentally stepped on his Super Special Homemade Sandwich From Heaven That Had Been Made By Mum With Love ©. When asked about it, all he said was that he was not allowed to talk about the merman anymore. His teacher had felt guilty about it too, but she knew that it was for his own good.
From that day onwards, Phoenix almost never mentioned the merman again. However, his doodles never stopped, although he did stop drawing all over his worksheets and books.
___
Phoenix rested his bicycle beside the same tree he always did and ambled towards the pier. He took his shoes and socks off, sat down at the edge of the platform, and let his feet soak in the warm ocean waters with a sigh. He loved coming here.
A few years had passed since the incident and he was now in high school. His parents had given him a bicycle on his birthday a few years back and he had used it well. He had soon found that there was a pier that he could cycle to from home and was overjoyed. He frequented that pier a lot. All the men who went there to fish and the families that went there on outings could recognise him by now.
Phoenix took in a deep breath, breathing in the smell of the sea, and let his eyes fall closed before he exhaled. Despite having almost drowned before, the sea always seemed to calm him. He often went there to do his homework or sometimes just to relax.
He shrugged his backpack off his shoulders and rummaged through it to produce his pencil case and a large sketchbook. He flipped through the pages, most of which were filled with drawings of this pier or that same merman that had saved him from years gone by, until he reached an empty one. He then waited until the perfect moment, when the sun had just begun to set and the sky melded into a kaleidoscope of reds, pinks, purples, yellows, oranges, and, yet, still a hint of blue, before he started to draw.
He had set himself an impossible challenge that day. He had decided that he was going to capture the colourful sunset with nothing but charcoal, in nothing but black and white, and somehow, still showcase its beauty.
He liked to think that nothing was impossible. Others had called him naive, but he liked to believe that he was merely extremely optimistic. He liked to think that the impossible was always achievable at some point. Like maybe he would be able to capture the beauty of this sunset in only black and white. Maybe he could be world famous for something one day. Maybe he would see that merman again.
Phoenix paused for a moment and smiled at the thought of seeing that merman again. It would be nice to finally meet his saviour.
It took him a while to finish his sketch. He was not entirely satisfied with it, but he could always try again tomorrow. He then lay down on his back, his hands beneath his head and his feet still in the water, and sighed.
How he wished he could swim. Then he could actually get into the water. He could go diving and see some actual fish. He could have a chance at seeing the merman again…
Despite his love of the sea, the water still terrified him, provided he was in it. He had tried, multiple times, to learn to swim. And every single time, he would steel himself for the impending fear, he would tell himself that he was not afraid and that there was no reason to be afraid anyway. The water was too shallow for him to drown and there was a lifeguard and a swimming instructor anyway. There was absolutely no way he could drown. Then he would sit down by the pool, his calves and feet in the water, and slowly lower himself into the pool. But, the moment his torso touched the water, he would scream and leap out of the pool, and then run back to the changing room with tears streaming down his cheeks.
Phoenix let another sigh past his lips and let his eyes fall closed. He would be heading for college soon and he still could not swim.
He laid there for a few more minutes before deciding he should head home. He quickly got up, washed his feet at the nearby toilet, dried his feet, and put his shoes back on before cycling home.
___
Phoenix had been accepted into Ivy University a year ago. He was doing an art course and he loved it. He had breezed through most of the modules so far and he was having more fun than he had ever had in his life. Sure he had to pull a few all-nighters to finish his projects. Of course he also had some issues remembering facts like ‘Leonardo da Vinci was born on the 15th of April in the year 1452’. Or was it 53? Gah, he could never remember. But he still loved his major.
Best of all was the campus-wide admiration of his art. His merpeople specifically. He had apparently spent so much of his time drawing merpeople that he had become an expert at it. People just loved his paintings and sketches. Still, he knew better than to let anyone know that he still believed they were real. He might have been a clumsy, bumbling idiot, but he was not that stupid.
Then, one day, he had opened the door of his dorm to get the newspaper that was placed there every morning, picked it up, and screamed. Yes, he screamed . At the top of his lungs. Really loudly.
By the time his roommate and the other occupants on the same floor had looked out of their rooms, Phoenix had been long gone. He had run all the way to the lifts, mashed the ‘down’ button with his index finger, decided it was taking too long, and sprinted down the stairs by the time anyone had managed to look out their doors.
He was on the ground floor in a minute and darted to where his bicycle was parked, quickly unchained it, and cycled like his life depended on it.
He did not care that he had lessons that day. He did not care that he had a graded essay due that day. He needed to leave. Now.
As he cycled out of the university and out onto the streets, he could only think of one thing. That one headline on the front page that repeated itself over and over and over again in his head.
Local Aquarium Announces New Merman Exhibit! Opens TODAY!