Page 14 of Storm and Sea

Panicked eyes locked onto the sharpened rod in Atreus’s hand, so he tossed it to the side with a loud clang.

“Relax. I’m not gonna hurt you,” Atreus said in what he hoped was a calm voice. “Talk normally; we understand each other.”

Despite trying to calm the boy, Atreus’s heart was racing in his chest. Someone was here—a real person. He hadn’t spoken to another person in months. But this wasn’t a human—this was a being of the sea.

Like me.

It dawned on him that, other than his father, Atreus had never spoken to another of his kind.

“Oh. I didn’t know we spoke the same as humans— I mean. Of course, we do.” He let out a nervous chuckle. “Of course, we can understand each other. Why wouldn’t we?”

Atreus rolled his eyes. “Smooth.”

“W-what do you mean? This is, ugh, human language?”

He said it like a question. His lie was so poorly hidden that Atreus wondered if this idiot was that clueless or just a special kind of stupid.

“You’re not human, and you’re not doing a very good job hiding it.” Atreus said, “What are you doing here, sireno?”

“Oh. I’m just y-y-ou know.” The Mer could hardly speak as tremors ran down his body. His teeth chattered as he spoke.

“You have no idea what you’re doing. Go back to the sea where you belong,” Atreus bit out, annoyed at the intrusion. But he couldn’t help adding, “Unless you have a good reason to be here.”

He flinched internally at the shallow sign of weakness. The loneliness inside him escaped for a brief moment and opened the door for this stranger to stay.

It was pathetic.

“I can’t. I-I have to s-s-stay a-away.”

Atreus couldn’t ignore his chattering. “You’re cold.”

“C-cold?”

“Yes. It’s something humans have to deal with.”

“Oh,” the sireno said, goosebumps erupting along his arms and legs.

Atreus moved to his meager store of belongings and threw him a spare set of clothes.

“Put these on. They’ll be big on you, but at least they’re dry. You can sit closer to the fire—but don’t touch it!” he warned.

“Right. I figured that one out,” the stranger said, holding up one red-tipped finger.

When he stood, the seaflax pants nearly fell off him. They weren’t meant to dry outside the water. Atreus averted his gaze, not willing to turn his back to a stranger entirely but allowing him privacy. Cloth rustled as the boy struggled to organize himself in foreign clothing.

Finally, he heard, “I don’t know how to put these on.”

“Legs in the two long holes, ignore the hole in the back.”

“What’s that for?” the Mer asked.

“A tail.”

“But… we don’t have one right now.”

“Well, I never know when I might have to make an emergency dive. Don’t want to tear my stuff,” Atreus huffed, annoyed.

That’s exactly what had happened. He’d dropped a pail of water onto himself, revealing scales instantly. With Leo seconds away from spotting him, Atreus leaped over the ropes and into the sea. His tail manifested with Marvassa and ripped his pants to shreds. After that, he’d painstakingly sewed a convenient human invention called ‘velcro’ to a hole in the back of all his pants. It kept the hole closed while he was in human form and adapted to a tail without ruining it.