The Depths of Love

Chapter 4 Meeting and Braids

"You're not alone."

The moment Branch heard the voice, his sobs cut short in an instant.  He gasped in fear as he barely glanced over his shoulder and instinctively sought safety in the water, he attempted to swim away when he realised a horrible truth.  As he made to jump into the open sea the owner of the voice cried out in alarm.

"Stop!  The tides out!"

Branch briefly glanced all around him and then back out to where the sea had been.  The voice was right. 

"No, no, no, no no!"  He panicked, swimming tight circles about the stone that was now in the centre of a large rock pool.  His scales scraped against the rocks and water splashed around and out of the pool.  How could have been so inutterably stupid?!

Any thought of wanting the land dwellers to put him out of his misery suddenly fled from his mind.  He wanted to live but now he was trapped and at the mercy of whomever had found him.  The waters were literally roiling about him as he continued to circle the pool in an almost blind panic.  He'd fight if he had too...

"Stop! Stop!  You'll hurt yourself!"

Branch ignored the voice, barely hearing it as his panicked mind refused to think rationally.  Another mad circuit around the pool and the inevitable happened.  He caught his arm on the stones.  The sudden shock made him surface, clutching the wound with a webbed hand.

"Son of a sea serpent!"   He cursed with a snarl of pain upon his face.

"Are you alright?!"  The voice called out to him.

Branch froze.  He'd inadvertently revealed himself to the land dweller.  He glanced to the side with his eyes and saw an obviously feminine creature with pink skin, dark pink hair and covered in a green and blue what?  Something was covering the rest of her but he was unsure as to what.

There was a look of concern on her face.

"Are you hurt?"

For some unfathomable reason Branch suddenly felt incredibly embarrassed.  What had he been doing?!  He'd been behaving like a mindless prey animal that had been trapped in a corner.  He ducked under and let himself sink to the bottom.  He leant against the rock and sighed wondering what in the waves he was supposed to do when he heard a soft dunking sound in the water behind him.

Branch cast his sights over his shoulder and frowned curiously.  A pair of pink appendages were now submerged in the water.  He regarded them in fascination for a moment when a set of pink fingers trailed after them and managed to slip over his translucent green tail fins.  His immediate instinct was that of a cornered predator, he instantly whipped his tail away and growled.

The fingers immediately left the water.

Great.  The tide was out.  He was trapped in a rock pool like a crab and he'd been seen by a land dweller who couldn't keep their hands to themselves!

"Sorry!"  Branch heard the pink creature call.   "I just wanted to know if you're okay."

Branch curled himself back around the stone and peered back, looking through the distorted mirror of the salty waters surface.  Why would a land dweller want to know that?  What he'd learnt from the other mertrolls were that they were dangerous and either killed or captured things that they didn't understand.

The pink fingers dipped back into the waters.  Branch watched as they twirled in graceful circles in some kind of odd dance.  They were very pretty fingers .  Attached to a very soft and cute pink hand.  He frowned for a second.  Wait a moment.  There was something very familiar about that pink appendage.