Seafood Adventures

Connections, new and old

They had been travelling for so long. Too long. They were tired.

They were running out of time.

They needed to find a safe place as soon as possible, but the ocean ground beneath them had been empty. Of food. Of hiding spots. Of anything.

Nightmare sighed. They all were tired and hungry. But he was the most concerned about Cross and Lust. The both of them needed to preserve every speck of energy they could.

They kept close to Horror, in the middle of their patchwork pod, despite Cross usually being one of the protectors. Now he had to leave the protecting to the others. And it frustrated him.

At least no one was hurt.

Nightmare sighed again and turned his gaze ahead again.

In the distance the water appeared a nuance darker, like the slightest shadow.

His brother Dream came up at his right side, where Nightmare was blind since a run-in with a bad-tempered Moray Eel during his Puphood, and squinted his eyes at the shadows ahead. "Brother, do you think we'll find a place to rest there?"

"Right now we don't even know what that is," Nightmare grumbled tiredly.

Dream looked back at the others, thinking.

"I volunteer to swim ahead and scout things out, Brother. I can take a look and see if it's worth going there."

Nightmare looked at his brother, then at the shadowy formation ahead, back at his brother. "Be careful," he finally relented. "We've never been here. We don't know what dangers might lurk around."

Dream beamed at him. "Promise," he chirped. "I come back as fast as i can."

With that the was gone, one of the fastest swimmers of their pod, alongside Cross and Error.

Nightmare sighed again and turned to the others. "Come. Let's follow him for now. If he finds something we won't waste time."

The others nodded and they all followed the direction Dream took off.

They had been swimming for a while and Nightmare began to think Dream might have either gotten carried away, what happened often, or found something and took his time investigating.

He didn't want to think of the third option. Namely that something had happened to him. But he was too fast, his tail too powerful to ever get caught by any predator.

Then he caught sight of a golden glimmer in the distance.

Dream. Thank the currents.

When they met with him Nightmare instantly noticed the scratch wounds. Those looked like they were left by horribly sharp claws. But otherwise Dream seemed fine. Excited even.

"I think i found something!" he exclaimed.

"More like something found you," Nightmare grumbled while he fussed over his brother.

"Yeah, well. It's not perfect, but it should be safe enough."

"What did you find, sunshine? And why are you hurt?" Error asked.

Dream huffed. "It's not that bad. Okay listen. Up ahead the ground rises up and changes into a rock formation. While i swam along a cliffside i got attacked by a sand tiger mer. A pretty big one. And, if i'm honest, pretty ugly. He only got me because i didn't expect him and got surprised. Before he could do any real damage, though, another mer appeared and helped me. He actually managed to fight the shark mer off.

I asked him about any safe places around and he told me that there are deep crevices on the topside and plenty of food around, not much big game but a lot of smaller fish, sea urchins, shellfish, sea weed and so on. He said the only danger around besides some fishermen were the shiver of the shark mer that attacked me. And some normal sharks."