"Come on Lance, we should turn around now", I could hear Hunk call out behind me as I swam ahead of him.
I slowed down a bit so he could catch up with my speed as we talked, "And go where exactly? We were sent out to look for food and there's nothing nearby" I exclaimed, throwing my arms out wide to prove my point.
He glanced around at the empty waters before looking back to me, "We shouldn't be getting this close to upper land", he tried to nudge me back to the direction we came from but I shrugged him off, "We'll be fine, now come on", with that we were headed off again.
We had been swimming for a while, still unsuccessful in catching anything when my eyes locked on something floating on the surface. I nudged Hunk and pointed up to the object, "Do you see that?" I questioned him.
I could see him squint to try and make out the figure in the distance, "What it is that?", I could feel a spark of my hope return, "Let's go find out!" Before Hunk could stop me I had already swum off towards the thing with impressive speed.
"Lance wait up!" I could hear him call out from behind me. As I got closer to the thing in the water I could start to see the vague shape of a tail.
"Do you see that?" I pointed towards the purple blob of a creature.
A large gasp came from my friend as he too saw what I believed to be a tail, "Is that another mer?"
"Why would a mer be on the surface?"
"There's only one way to find out", with a nod of confirmation we traveled towards the supposed mer with determination. I could now clearly see red surrounding the water around a long tail that was barely moving the owner of it through the water. Concern filled me as I recognized the smell of iron, leading me to believe the red stuff is blood.
I was about to let out a trill to let the stranger know that we were here when Hunk stopped me, "Look!" The owner of the tail lazily turned to make eye contact with us and we both froze in shock at what we saw.
The first thing I saw were his eyes, a startling purple color if I wasn't so distracted by the rest of his appearance I could've stared into them all day. His skin was a nasty red color and I could see blisters forming on multiple parts of the skin. The real thing that got my attention was the gaping wounds on his skin.
My arms were outstretched as I approached, showing him that I didn't have any weapons. Suddenly I felt a yank on my wrist pushing me back, "Hunk what are you doing?!"
"He's a shark!", he proclaimed pointing a finger at the accused person.
I stared at him for a moment before shaking my head, "He's injured!" I shot back at him.
"You shouldn't be here" He tried to growl at us.
"We just want to help you", I continued trying to get close to him again.
"It's not worth it" he spat out, the two legs will see you.
"Two legs?" Due to our panic, we failed to notice the boat that was floating above water a ways away. That made me wonder how long he had been out here by himself. The two legs was most likely just waiting for him to weaken so that he could snatch in and either kill or capture him.
I turned towards Hunk, "We can't just leave him here"
I could see the internal conflict he was facing before he agreed and we both turned back to the shark.
"We need to get you back to our pod", I stated as we both approached him on opposite sides. The only response we got is a weak snap of the teeth as a warning to back off. Unaffected by the shark's attempts to scare us off we continued until we were right up to him.
