Page 13 of Storm and Sea

He took in his surroundings, squinting in the dim light. The home was in a clear state of abandonment. No chance of running into humans here. The longer he stood, the drier Nyel’s body became. A tingling sensation rippled across his skin—sharp, needling, like the prickling rush of blood when a limb falls asleep. He shivered as Marvassa took hold, his scales sinking into his skin and disappearing while fuzzy hair sprouted along his head. His tail retracted, shrinking smaller and smaller until it was gone.

Nyel steadied himself with one arm against the wall. His body was so heavy that even the simple task of keeping his head up was taxing. How did humans do this? How did they walk around without toppling over? Nyel needed his freakin’ tail. Shifting his weight from side to side, he tested his balance and how it felt on his hips. Hunched over, Nyel cautiously took a step forward with his right leg.

Then his left.

Repeat.

Now, he was getting the hang of it. Maybe walking wasn’t so ba⁠—

Razor-sharp pain tore through his leg. He cried out as he fell, a fiery ache flaring in the soft tissue of his foot, as if he’d stepped on a sea urchin. Red spattered across the floor.

Blood.

His blood.

The scent exploded in his nose like he’d been splashed with it.

Nyel whimpered, bringing his foot closer to examine the wound. A clear piece of glass stuck from the soft flesh.

“Stupid humans. Stupid humans and their stupid pink skin and stupid soft feet,” he grumbled through clenched teeth, pulling out the shard with shaking fingers. It hurt, and the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding even once the glass was out.

He ripped off the now dry seaflax vest, which wasn’t doing him any good anyway, and tore off a strip before wrapping his wound.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he mumbled, standing again, now with a limp. “As if walking wasn’t already hard enough.”

Nyel ran a hand through his (was it hair?) and watched much more carefully where he stepped. He made it to another door, this one leading to an impossibly tall staircase that went up and up and up.

This had to be the tower. He could probably see for miles from the top and find a comfortable corner to rest.

With no glass, preferably.

Driven by his exhaustion, the ache in his foot, and a pinch of curiosity, Nyel climbed. He’d had enough excitement for one day.

There wasn’t time to douse the fire. No time to hide the evidence of his space being lived in. Atreus only had a second to grab the sharpened metal pipe and dive behind the curtain partition, heart in his throat.

How had he been so careless? He cursed himself; it was this damned weather. The rain always made him melancholic, and he let his head drift to another world.

The steps grew louder, with a slightly irregular gait as if the person climbing was hobbled on one side. He held his breath and watched through a slit in the curtain. When the door opened, it creaked loudly, the rusted hinges protesting. Lit by the flickering firelight came a hand—an arm, a face.

The young man was pale, almost alarmingly so. His dark brown hair lay in messy waves that curled around his ears. He appeared close to Atreus’s age, though with a slighter build. His frame was lean, lacking noticeable muscle definition. This person didn’t spend a lot of time doing physical labor.

Atreus knew all this with only a glance, reading the stranger like a book. The intruder stepped fully into the firelight, his bare chest exposed and his lower body covered in dried seaflax pants. He stooped as he walked, as if still grappling with his center of gravity, and Atreus knew instantly that this stranger was Mer.

Mer— and likely out of the water for the first time.

What are you doing on a human island, you dummy?

Atreus lowered the makeshift spear but kept it in his hands, just in case.

He watched the stranger for another minute, noticing the Mer’s amazed expression as he took in every foreign object. His eyes were wide with awe, seemingly oblivious that a fresh fire meant somebody had recently inhabited this space. Atreus caught the glimmer of gold in those brown eyes. They shone like bits of mica embedded in the rocks along the island.

He couldn’t look away.

When the stranger reached a cautionless hand to the metal bowl and yelped as it burned him, Atreus decided it was time to step out before he did any real damage—mostly to himself.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t touch that,” Atreus said as he revealed himself.

The stranger yelped again, losing his footing and landing hard on his rear, the seaflax pants crunching as he fell. “I— please… I don’t…. I’m not going….”