The Fine Thread

9

The month has passed, and in that time, the mermen have grown increasingly bored. After the first week of the boys being gone they had gone back past the rocklines again to explore more shipwrecks. While they found more things like rope, silverware, nets and a few super valuable items like a sword, it only entertained them for a few days before they got bored again. Suga was laying on the sandy floor, waiting for something to happen that would pique his interest and cure his boredom.

"Suga?" Hinata asks, swimming over to his friend.

"Yea Hinata?" Suga responds, sitting up.

"I think a ship is coming.." Hinata mumbles, looking off at the small ship, slowly getting bigger. Suga looks over to the ship, getting slightly scared of the slowly increasing size.

"Go grab Asahi, we have to hide." Suga instructs, swimming off to the cave they use as cover. Hinata nods, swimming quickly over to the bigger merman and together, they swim into the hideaway, huddled close and trying to stay as calm, and quiet as possible. The large shadow of the ship floats above, as the 3 mermen held their breath in fear. Suga and Hinata were both trembling, grasping onto Asahi as he held tightly on the dull trident. As the shadow lingered above, the mermen grew increasingly fearful.

"W-why isn't it leaving..." Hinata whimpered softly.

"I don't k-know.." Suga mumbled, gripping onto Hinata's arm. Suga and Hinata grow even more scared, when they see Asahi start to shake. Suddenly, the mermen hear a loud splash, followed by the feight shadow of 3 men. Hinata and Suga yelp, grabbing onto each other as they shake in fear while Asahi blocks the other 2, gripping the trident tightly and trembling himself. As the shadows move closer and closer to them, they notice the ship floating away. Not wanting to be surprised by people trying to hurt them, Asahi stands guard, and Suga gets behind Hinata, whose claws are on full display in the clear waters. As the shadows of the people grow near, Hinata starts letting out a deep, guttural growl that neither Suga or Asahi had heard before.

"Suga? Asahi? Hinata?" A voice called, confusing the mermen, the voices were familiar, and calming. All 3 then realized who it was, and swam out of the cave quickly, going to give Daichi, Noya and Tsukishima big hugs.

"You guys scared us so bad! Why did you do that!" Suga yells, hugging Daichi tightly.

"Are we really that scary?" Tsukishima laughs as Hinata clings to his waist, slowly sinking to the floor.

"When a ship goes above us then we just hear a splash yes!" Hinata exclaims.

"Sorry sorry! We wanted to surprise you guys!" Noya shouts.

"Well don't do that again! It scared us really badly." Asahi scolds.

"Ok ok! We promise, we won't do that again" Daichi says laughing.

"You better!" All 3 mermen yell, laying down onto the sandy floor with the human boys. The human boys laugh as the mermen calm down from their fear, before smiling widely.

"Your back!" Hinata cheers.

"We told you we'd be fine." Tsukishima says, rolling his eyes and patting Hinata's head.

"We were still worried!" Suga exclaims. Daichi laughs, laying back in the soft sand next to Suga, who's started to stare up at the mist.

"Well.. What did you guys do while you were on the boat?" Asahi asks, sitting himself in the sand.

"Oh it was so cool! We traveled around to different islands and went fishing and other stuff!" Noya exclaims.

"We also found an abandoned cave that had some artifacts in it." Daichi chimes in.

"Really? Like what?" Hinata asks, looking over at Noya.

"There was a bunch of coins and also some scrolls in bottles." Tsukishima explains.

"Did you take any?" Asahi asks, thinking that if the treasure was blessed it would bring the boys misfortune.

"No we didn't. Our dads wanted to but we remembered that thing you said about blessed treasures." Noya explains, sitting up and shaking the air bubbles out of his hair.

"Good, since there were scrolls in bottles I assume it was some sort of blessed treasure." Suga explains, rolling over to face Daichi.

"That's what I was thinking! Like the bottles had the protection spells inside of them." Hinata exclaims.

"So they keep the spells inside bottles?" Tsukishima asks.

"Of course, they'd get ruined by the current if they keep the sheets just out." Asahi explains.

"You can have paper underwater?" Daichi asks, always having seen paper dissolve in water.

"Well it's not paper, it's made out of kelp." Suga responds, sitting up.

"Let me go grab my storybook and show you!" Hinata exclaims, springing up from the sand and towards the cave.

"Storybook?" Tsukishima asks, watching the merman swim off quickly.

"That was the only thing Hinata took with him from his old home besides his hairbrush and bag. It's this big book with a lot of stories in it." Suga explains.

"What kind of stories?" Noya asks.

"Aparentally before he came here, Hinata's grandmother fell in love with a human, who told her all the stories in the book." Asahi starts.

"Eventually she wrote them all down and it's like a family heirloom to Hinata." Suga finishes, just as the orange haired merman comes swimming back, a large book in his hands with old leather covers.

"Here it is!" Hinata exclaims. Hinata shows the book to the humans, carefully holding it in his hands, scared he would break the book if he thrashed it around.

"Wow.. That book is huge!" Noya exclaims.

"I know! I've read all of them so many times." Hinata explains, carefully opening up the book to show the table of contents. Inside was so many stories that the humans recognized from their own childhoods, like Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Robin Hood, and Thumblena. They stared in awe as Hinata flipped the first few pages, until finally getting to the first story in the book, Little Red Riding Hood.

"Wow... That brought back so many memories just now." Noya laughs, remembering all the stories his mother would tell him.

"It's a really special book to me, I used to read it to Asahi and Suga before bed but then we ran out of stories!" Hinata laughs.

"I mean, I wouldn't mind if we started reading them again Shoyo, I always loved hearing you read." Asahi says, swimming over to look inside the book he hadn't seen in a while.

"Really!" Hinata asks, almost like there were sparks in his eyes.

"Yea! If you guys would like to join us we can just have a storytime before you all go home!" Suga suggests, wanting any excuse to get the humans to stay longer.

"I think that's a great idea." Daichi says, smiling at the thought of listening to the old stories again.