Mermaids in Massachusetts

The Hunger

They swam. They swam and they swam and they swam. Austin and Tanner shared a few conversations here and there, but mostly, it was quiet. After a while, nothing but open ocean went by their vision. Nights passed, and the little Teach crawled under any rock or particularly large piece of driftwood they could find. More than one night passed where none of this was found, and they had to take their chances in the open sand.

"Tanner, this seems awfully far. I mean, we know who did it- it was Blake who took him. Seth said he lived near us- they must be somewhere near," Austin said. This happened to be one of those nights where they weren't lucky enough to find shelter. The three of them were sprawled out in the sand. Austin had burrowed himself under it, almost like a blanket. The night was dark and cold. He missed home.

"I know. It does seem as if we have gone very far, but Ian knows what he is doing. Or, his subconscious does, rather. We'll be there soon."

Soon seemed to come a lot later than Austin expected.

They were growing hungry. The plants- the kelp, the seaweed, the sea grapes- were few and far between. Austin was the first to complain. They were somewhere in between a reef and the bolder they'd stayed under the previous night. Austin's stomach growled. "There has to be more food out here," he said, scanning his eyes along the open landscape.

"Austin, if there was, we would have spotted it by now," Tanner grumbled, and the group kept walking.

It was a little over a month of barely any food when Austin began to see his rib cage. The pains in his stomach were growing longer and longer, and his attention span was beginning to drift. "You know what I could really use right now? A piece of pizza," Austin said, sitting down abruptly.

"What? Austin, we need to keep going," Tanner said, pressing a hand to Austin's shoulder.

"Pizza with pineapple and ham. Hawaiian pizza," Austin continued. His stomach hurt.

"Ausy, please. We need to keep going. Find Mason, remember? Knights? Hunger just might be our dragon. We need to beat it. Come on," Tanner said, kneeling down to Austin's eye level. Austin barely heard a word.

"Ian, come here," Tanner said, and Ian knelt down next to Tanner. "Are you seeing what I am seeing?"

"The symptoms are all present," Ian said. "Dilated pupils, slight amount of deliriousness." Austin could feel Ian's gaze burning into his skin. "Odds are he is starving."

"That is it. We are starting hunting," Tanner said, standing up with a jolt.

"We do not have any energy, we will most likely die trying," Ian said.

"Then so be it. We will most likely die if we keep eating plants, too. I know it is survival of the fittest down here, but we need to try. Besides, if anyone can do it, it is you, Ian. You are the best hunter I know," Tanner said. Ian paused for a minute. Austin assumed that he was processing Tanner's words, taking time to realize what he'd just said.

"No pressure," Ian joked, smiling.

"No pressure," Tanner said back.

The only problem with hunting was the schedule. Tanner and Ian were day hunters, Cancers, scanning the top of the sea unseen  to look for estranged sailors and Teachless mermen. Austin, a Scorpio, was a night hunter, and spent his hunts (or, rather, tried to spend his hunts) searching for other mermen to take out in the dark cover of nighttime. There was no way they could cover ground while hunting like this.

"We could take shifts, go for a day and rest for another," Tanner said. Austin nodded, taking another bite of the sea grapes they had collected. Ian and Tanner had made Austin their main priority, food wise. Both of them had gone through periods of time being Teachless, and they understood how bad it felt to go hungry for the first time. That's what they told Austin, anyway.

"I mean, we could, or we could just go at night. It's not like I can even hunt, anyways," Austin said. He didn't even care that he was talking with his mouth was full- it tasted that good.

"Austin, you will get the hang of it, especially when you get practice. You never know, you could have one really good night and come back with two," Tanner said.

"I... Yeah, okay. No point arguing how invalid and immoral that is, I guess," Austin said, sliding his eyes shut.

"Austin, you are literally starving. Stop arguing for one minute and just try to survive, okay? Our culture is a little different than yours, I get it. But I do not get all up on you for why you ignore etiquette or how strange contractions are," Tanner said. Austin sent him a look that clearly meant 'that's a lie,' and a blush crept onto Tanner's cheeks.  "Okay, so maybe I bugged you a little about contractions. No big deal."

"A little. Ha," Austin said sarcastically.

"Okay, maybe a lot. Shut up, that isn't the point," Tanner said, and his face flushed even further.

"You literally just used a contraction there," Austin said, a smile breaking out onto his face.

"No I didn't! I- oh my god, shut up," Tanner said.

It was moments like these that reminded Austin why he even began to like the mermen in the first place. For a place so chaotic, no one was nearly as cruel, hateful, or mean to spite others like humans sometimes were. People here did what they had to- nothing more, nothing less.

Austin was the first to hunt. Both Ian and Tanner were hidden away under a rock nearby, and he himself was standing alone, a literal sea of darkness clouding his vision. Echolocation, he thought, remembering what Russell had said all that time ago . I've got this.

With that, he screamed. The noise bounced off the walls, throwing itself back into his form. His eyebrows were knitted together in concentration. All he could make out from the sound was that there was something about twenty feet ahead of him, presumably a wall. He tried again, but to no avail. Austin sighed. Fuck this, he thought, his fists clenching. I don't want to shout at walls and eat people, I want to eat, like, KFC or whatever. He shouted across the sea again, and nothing seemed different. "Yeah, I have no idea how to even begin doing this," he muttered to himself. "Not in the slightest."

It was a long night. Needless to say, he didn't exactly manage to hunt anything. (Or, rather, anyone.)

Then there was the fact that it was strange, for Austin, to try to sleep during the day. It was even stranger to know that his only two friends were somewhere above him, trying to kill people for them to eat. He rolled over in his makeshift bed of sand and driftwood, his mind numb from the hunting of last night. Or, technically, the lack thereof. His lackadaisical efforts mixed with the constant nagging of how immoral the whole thing was nearly guaranteed that he was going to suck. Add that to him not knowing what he's doing at all, and Austin is fully aware that he's screwed.

Austin shut his eyes as the sounds of the ocean around him lulled him to sleep.