Chapter Text
Tim remembered the first time he’d seen a mer. He’d been nine and already disillusioned with the idea of a childhood. His parents had been back in town, one of their few annual visits, and they’d been trying to bond. If Tim had been younger, maybe he would have appreciated the opportunity to go to the circus.
As it was it felt more patronizing than anything.
Still, he couldn’t deny that he’d been awestruck by the mers’ performance, their shimmering scales dazzling under the hot show lights. His appreciation had been obvious enough that his parents had paid their way backstage afterwards, where the adult mer were being reunited with a third, tiny one.
The parents had largely ignored the humans to fuss over the guppy, but the small one had stared at Tim with huge, glimmering blue eyes. It had stuck with him, for some reason. The beauty, the passive cruelty of circuses using animals like mer and lions and elephants to entertain the masses.
It hadn’t even occurred to him that they might be intelligent. Not moreso than a dolphin or elephant at least.
The memory had slipped out of his mind as he grew older, as things happened and he, himself changed. An evening spent with his parents had become something fond to reminisce on, once they were gone.
But it hadn’t really been about the mer.