Part of your world

Look At This Stuff

He'd have to go back soon, he knew that.

Seb wasn't entirely sure how long he had been gone, but it was probably long enough for their father to have noticed. He'd have to go back.

No one would find him here, not for a long time anyway, through all the near misses of his father sending the palace guards after them when he noticed Seb was missing, no one had ever found out about Sebs secret. That was for the best because Seb was fairly confident that if his father were to ever find out about his collection he would almost certainly try to destroy it, Seb couldn't let that happen.

Seb did have a clock in his collection, he knew that that was a machine that humans used to tell the time but either the low pressure or submersion in water had rendered the clock useless, always showing the time 4:45. Seb didn't mind though, there were plenty of things in his collection that had been broken due to being kept in the low pressure underwater cave, Sebs most prized possession was an instrument that they had found in a shipwreck, they were fairly sure it was called a piano.

The piano still worked a little, but it had clearly been made for human use above the surface, when Seb played the instrument the noise came out heavy and muted, and there were pedals at the bottom that Seb couldn't even hope to operate with his fin, you needed feet for that. It didn't stop him trying, they had had to try to figure it out on their own, but Seb was fairly sure he had figured it out, the sheet music he had taken from his fathers royal composer seemed to relate to the piano fairly accurately, and using that Seb had been able to write their own melodies and music. Some days they wished they could share their work with someone, anyone, but his fathers overprotective nature was sure to drown out any pride the man would feel at Sebs new skill.

Seb sighed, glancing towards the top of the cavern to where the sun shone through the water, illuminating the space around the surface, reflecting small rainbows into the water.

One day Seb would see the sun properly. He had seen it before of course, he had snuck up to the surface on plenty of occasions, but he always had to be alert when they went, while they were inclined to ignore his fathers insistence that humans were evil and cruel, he also knew that to humans, mermaids were supposed to be a myth, so even if they were nice people like Seb suspected, it was still probably in Sebs best interests to keep himself hidden.

But one day, one day Seb wanted to lay in the sun properly, not hidden behind a rock with his eyes wide open, ears strained for any noise that might signify someone else approaching. They wanted to lay on the sand with his eyes closed, letting their hair dry out to the light blonde colour it looked when he stayed at the surface for long enough, he wanted to sit on the beach and feel at ease and fall asleep with the heat of the sand on his pale skin. They wanted to feel free.

Seb had never felt free in his actual home. Maybe it was the high pressure at the bottom of the sea or maybe it was the more metaphorical pressure of all the royal duties Seb ended up being saddled with despite being 7th in line with no desire to even be a royal. Maybe it was just their ever present feeling that he just didn't belong where he was, Seb had always felt out of place wherever he was, the palace stifled him and swimming around the kingdom with a royal guard and hundreds of people staring made him more uncomfortable than they could even begin to describe.

There were only two situations Seb could ever recall feeling truly at ease in, the first being where he was now, in his cavern of human artefacts, lying across the top of the piano looking up at the refractions of the sun at the surface above him. The second was when he was singing, at least it had been.

Seb had always been considered the black sheep of the family by both his own family and the people in the kingdom, so when their father found out about Sebs talent for singing, he had wasted no time organising a concert for the people to show off his youngest child and prove that Seb was still an asset to the royal family.