You and I, We Mer-Maid for Each Other

≋ chapter one: when you blotted out the horizon

Keith sighed as he stared into the horizon. It used to be something poetic, but these days it was a straight line that didn't change for the most part. There were waves that rippled the ocean, sure, but it wasn't quite tumultuous. An occasional bit of excitement and otherwise exactly the same as it always was. Exactly like his life.

He wasn't unhappy. Just bored, he thought. There was a time when he'd had passion and drive and that time was long past. These days he worked just to do something half of the time and he only interacted with a total of about five people. One of whom was his brother, so some might say it didn't count as a social connection at all. Another of those people was his brother's husband. And yet another was a coworker. Did he have "friends"? He wasn't sure, and he was even less sure if he cared.

Enough introspection— he did have a job to do, and it wasn't so bad. He liked getting to spend so much time by himself. Even if it was on a filthy beach. A beach so filthy, so destroyed by human negligence and overconsumption, that it hardly looked like a beach at all. Keith's job was simple. He worked on that stretch of beach by himself and he carefully collected and organized the trash there. He had a variety of tools to make it easier, and he was careful to wear something like a jumpsuit even if it was hot out. He'd learned the hard way that sweating was better than taking a broken bottle to the kneecap.

Picking up the trash was step one. He tended to collect it in boxes or bags. Then he had to sort through it with his own gloved hands, separating glass from plastic from paper. Anything that could be recycled would be recycled and the rest would be sent to the landfill.

It was a pretty ambitious goal. Keith admired his brother's work a lot, and so he was happy to help out even if his job was less than thrilling. Shiro was a conservationist, a successful marine biologist, who wanted to restore both ocean life and a sense of community to this beach some day. He'd employed a hand-selected team to help him accomplish this, and his little brother had been gifted this one stretch of sand to tidy up as he saw fit. Other people might have seen it as Shiro saddling Keith with some nothing task just to keep him busy, likely because he felt he had to do so for his brother. Keith knew that wasn't the case. He knew that Shiro was putting a lot of faith in him by letting him tackle it alone. He and Shiro understood one another, so it didn't really matter what other people thought of them.

Keith was nearly done for the day. (On a very memorable day that hadn't seemed like it would be memorable when it had started, and so he distinctly remembered it being a sunny Tuesday early in the summer.) Being on his knees for so long was beginning to hurt. He felt a crack in his joints when he stood and thought he was way too young to be feeling that way. Maybe that kind of thing just ran in the family— Shiro often seemed several decades older than he was. Keith looked down at his containers, studying them for a moment and confirming to himself that he'd organized everything right and he hadn't missed a thing.

He was in the process of bending over to pick up a container and put it in his little wagon machine when he heard that voice. It was cheerful and bright, not unlike the sun that was beating down cruelly upon his head. He squinted into the unchanging horizon and found that it was different. Different as in obscured by an unfamiliar silhouette.

"Hello!" The stranger called, waving a frantic arm. The tone and gesture would have made more sense if this man were a friend of Keith's that he hadn't seen since high school, so he briefly sorted through his memories and tried to place him somewhere. Like he could tell from such a distance anyway. As if trying to jog his memory, the stranger jogged closer, still waving. Still excited in a mildly unsettling way. Keith was easily overwhelmed.

"H-Hey," he called back weakly. His voice cracked. It always cracked, but still. His wave was awkward. He'd blame it on his sore muscles if the man asked.