Short Stories and Drabbles

Fathoms Apart

Note: I have an original rewrite of this idea in my other short stories fic.

Her father had always warned her about the surface.

She must never go there.

It was dangerous and the land dwellers would mistreat her, lock her in a cage and view her as some kind of spectacle.

Bilba had rolled her eyes and utterly ignored him.

Her father had never even been to the surface, merely heard stories told to him by his parents and others who'd gone.

Like her mother.

Her beautiful, vibrant mother who'd often traveled to the surface and always brought back stories of the places she'd seen and the people she'd met.

The stories had filled Bilba with wonder and amazement.

They'd filled her father with fear.

When her mother had failed to come back one day he'd believed his point proven.

Bilba had believed her mother had simply found a better, and more exciting, life.

Had.

She had believed that.

She didn't anymore.

The water she currently sat in was stagnant and foul but she had no choice but to take it in through the narrow slits on her waist, her body filtering what oxygen it could. The result left her feeling perpetually ill and weak, barely able to muster up an appetite for the table scraps of fish and other seafood her captors tossed her way, when they remembered to feed her at all.

The aquarium they'd locked her in was so small and narrow she couldn't stretch her tail out or even turn around.

So she simply sat, and slowly lost her mind.

Was this what had happened to her mother? Was she even then trapped in a similar situation in some tavern or the private collection of a nobleman, locked away in the dark far from the sun or sea?

If she was Bilba doubted she would recognize her mother any longer.

Soon enough she doubted anyone would recognize her either.

She had no idea exactly how long she'd been there but it had been long enough for her to grow thin and for her tail, once a mix of brilliant blue, emerald green and rich brown, to dull to a flat, muddy color. Her hair, auburn streaked with gold had begun to fall out and she imagined her eyes, which had once matched her tail, were probably as flat and colorless as the eyes she'd once seen in a captive dolphin.

She understood that creature now, in a way she never had before.

Through the glass she could hear the dull, distorted sound of humans talking and laughing, mugs and cups clunking to the tops of tables and the clink of coin exchanging hands. No one had cleaned her aquarium in some time so the glass was clouded and hard to see through but she knew, if she could, there would be little worth viewing.

After she'd been captured and dragged to the mainland she'd been sold to the owner of a tavern so far inland she could no longer feel the pull of the waves no matter how hard she tried. The tavern owner, an odious human who saw her as little more than an exotic fish, had set her up where she currently was and charged extra for the privilege of coming in and seeing her.

At first she'd been surrounded, people on all sides chattering excitedly or knocking on the glass in an effort to get her to do...whatever it was they wanted. She couldn't hear them well enough to know and, even had she the desire, her quarters were far too tight to permit much more than pushing herself up vertically a few feet and sitting down once more.