Ocean Blue

Chapter 1

Lance sped through the water, his powerful blue tail propelling him onward. Then his sixth sense of where things were in the water warned him of an approaching obstacle, and he changed direction, making a wide circle around the obstacle and coming to a halt in front of it.

He surfaced, surveying a bit of wreckage. Nothing more than a bunch of planks. But something was on them. A mermaid? But why didn't he have a tail? Or- really- any mermaid features at all?

Lance realized with a start of horror and thrill that this was a human. He'd been told stories of mermaids who had lost their lives or freedoms to the tailless creatures. But still, he was curious. And the human looked rather floppy and limp. Lance splashed it with water, and it opened its eyes with a strangled yelp.

Keith blinked at his surroundings, and then at the pair of bright, inquisitive blue eyes that were peering at him. And the tail that followed. "I'm hallucinating," he muttered, putting a hand to his forehead, "I've had too much sun, and I'm starving and dying of thirst." But when he looked again, the mermaid was still there.

It poked a finger at him. "Are you alive?"

Great. It was also an auditory and tangible hallucination. "Are you real?" he countered.

The mermaid laughed. "Of course I am! Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because mermaids aren't real."

It gave its hands a bored look. "Good thing I'm a merman, then." It grinned toothily at him, and Keith shuddered as he realized that its teeth were incredibly sharp. "You're a human, right? Never seen one before."

Lance cocked his head at the human. "You're strange looking. Are all humans normally this red?"

"No. I've been sunburned. Are you going to eat me? Or drown me?"

Lance shoved himself backwards in shock. He turned his back and started to swim away.

"No! Wait!" the human sounded panicked now. "Don't leave!"

Lance turned around, plopping his chin on the wood. "I have better things to do than talk to rude humans. Goodbye. Maybe I'll be around again." He flipped his tail, drenching the human. "Or maybe not." He sped off into the water again.

He found the human again, completely on accident, two sunrises later. Then wreckage was miraculously still afloat, but the person on top of it wasn't looking anywhere as good as the raft. Lance splashed it, trying to wake it up again, but it didn't open its eyes.

Lance poked it tentatively with one finger. Was it dead? Why hadn't it collapsed into sea foam? He sighed. Only one real way to find out if it was dead. Lance grabbed one of its fingers and chomped down on it, hard. The human gave a strangled yelp in its sleep, but didn't wake up.

It wasn't dead, then, but it was close to it, based on the birds circling overhead. Wait. Birds? That meant that land was close by, because these were no albatrosses! Humans belonged on land, didn't they? Despite their silly boat attempts to live on the sea. Lance grabbed ahold of the raft and started pushing it towards the source of the circling birds. He saw a busy port, and he let the raft go. That was as far as he was willing to go. He was not getting anywhere close to more humans, ones that had enough strength to kidnap him. The human was on its own, now.

He heard shouts from another boat, and saw the little raft get hauled in by a fishing boat. His human was pulled up, and Lance disappeared under the waves, feeling proud of himself. He'd probably just saved a life.

Xxx

Shiro volunteered to take the shipwreck survivor in. The other fishermen were perfectly happy to let him have the kid, and Shiro left early, taking him home. His house wasn't much, but it was better than a raft, he thought.