Chapter Text
Things have gotten worse under the waters.
Merfolk, mercurial, foolish, always thinking you can swim somewhere else if the tides change, hadn't spent enough attention on their governments. Thus, when Tigress Blue and her thugs had taken over...well, you hadn't been ready. No one had. Fleeing from the city had and hadn't helped.
It had in that retreating to small communities meant you weren't always under the watchful eye of the tiger sharks.
It hadn't because when one of the massive mermen descended on a group of merfolk, there were seldom enough around to fight them off.
Which is how you had ended up utterly alone.
For months now, the little sea shelf, dazzling with rainbows of coral and patches of carefully tended seaweed had been silent of mermaid song. The cave systems where your brethren had once made homes no longer held the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The otters that your kind had tended for generations chirped for playmates and met no answers. The beds of clam, abalone, muscles, the hunting fields of young tuna, all left alone.
You should move on. Half a hundred mermen dead and as many maids, madames and children stolen away by the tiger shark thugs, you should have moved on. Found somewhere else. Sometimes, you even tell yourself you'll do it; dart away in the dead of night and keep going until you find somewhere else...you won't. You won't make it across the barren flats outside your sea shelf to the next bit of cover by morning, and while you keep telling yourself that the tiger thugs must've moved on, you don't believe it. And sometimes you tell yourself that your natural camouflage, dark blue with speckled silver, would protect you, as it did when you were able to hide while everyone else was fighting, but you don't believe that either.
Still, you need to eat, so, when the last rays of daylight leave your waters chilled, you take your net and swim to the abalone flats. You're a little sick of shellfish by now, but you can't hunt tuna on your own and anything bigger would take more hunters.
Or, a bigger hunter.
*
Stunner Blue, younger brother to Tigress Blue, noticed an interesting little community a few months ago. It was good sport, hunting out the merfolk who lived there. The children could be put to use, raised under the authority of the Blues. The maids and dames have many uses. The men? Well, Tigress doesn't want a man who couldn't put up a fight, so if they won't survive a few rounds with her followers, she has no use for them aside from scavenger scrap. Still, Stunner had thought the sea shelf well set up, and he liked how close the tuna fields were. He can see setting up a base there. Maybe he'll get a few of the stolen children trained up as servants and run hunting training for new recruits. He just has to see if the place is as ideal as he remembers.
It's certainly convenient to travel to, as he manages to kill a young tuna, not big enough to show off, but more than enough for a few days of solo exploration, on the way. If he'd brought any guys along, obviously he'd have gone for the biggest one in the fields, gotta hold his own or Tigress'd be disappointed, but no point wasting the flesh right now.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a glimmer. Maybe a glass shard, nothing worth attention, except he sees the small flash again. He looks.
A small shadow. Maybe a manta, or an eel, gliding over the abalone beds. He should ignore it and just move on to the sea shelf, but...some instinct tells him he doesn't want to do that. Tigress would berate him if she found out he'd ignored an instinct, no matter how tired he was, so Stunner pauses, gazing downward.
A shark, maybe? Not a shark merfolk, but an actual shark? No, that's wrong, too. It takes Stunner a long minute to figure out what's wrong; the speckles aren't there to mimic the ocean floor, but the night sky. A pattern that either belongs in the deepest depths of the ocean, or...
Or to a mer.
He feels his lips pull back in a grin. Sport.
*
You could curse yourself a thousand times.
That was definitely a tiger shark merman swimming overhead. For now, you're hiding in the folds of the abalone beds, but you have to get back to the caves. In daylight, your coloring will stop being an advantage and turn to trouble. For now, you gather your hair tight to your head, doing everything you can to control what can be seen.
It's too late now. Even if he hasn't noticed you, you can't make a run across the flats tonight. Your best bet is to hide until tomorrow and then dash across as fast as you can. Hopefully, you'll find a volcanic fold or something and be able to hide there.
To do any of that, you'll need to eat. The four carefully selected abalone you've collected into your net won't be enough. Actually, more than that, if you're really going to swim for it, you don't know when you'll be able to hunt again.
To prepare, you start prying shellfish out of the beds with your knife. Half, you pry open right here, swallowing down as much meat as you can. The rest collect into your net.
*
Circling slowly above, Stunner can smell the panic. He can also catch the sweet scent of abalone flesh. He's been on the hunt for other merfolk enough to guess what you'll do; stuff yourself with as much as you can swallow then dash. He can't quite tell how big you are, but he occasionally catches a glimpse of huge, frightened night eyes and big fanning fins. He thinks he can make out a belt, but it's not decorated with pearls or shell like his, but with the dark bits of stone. It's just an interruption in the hypnotic silvery speckling among your dark scales. A nocturnal. Maybe even some deep sea ancestry in you. If that's the case, you'll avoid fleeing in the daylight not just because of predation, but because you'll burn easily.
He really wants to see you up close.
But he wouldn't be an apex predator if he weren't fully capable of patience.
Stunner circles the abalone beds carefully. Making the rounds twice, he smiles. You won't be able to find adequate cover from the sunlight anywhere there. Your best option is to retreat back to the sea shelf cave system.
Once he's sure there's no other good cover for you, Stunner goes to inspect the caves. They tell him more about you, or maybe about the community that once lived here.
In one room, he finds nuts. Some, he thinks can be found on the land nearby, cured walnuts and acorns. Others, specifically, the coconut, had to have come from much farther south. You band must've traded with land dwellers, forest nymphs, centaurs, fauns, maybe even humans. Other rooms told a similar story; one room containing neatly folded nets, strands nearly as invisible as spider silk, another showed knife sharpeners. Stunner doesn't think for a moment it all points to things you've done, but he certainly sees a vision of the life your community led.
There's no twinge of guilt, exactly. Well...maybe Stunner regrets that this community didn't just swear allegiance to Tigress. Trade relations with drylanders might've been nice. He certainly doesn't mind having been part of what destroyed life here.
The problem he's facing now is that you know these caves better than he does, and there's plenty of nooks and crannies you can get into that he can't.
At least...that's what he thinks.