Tao never recovered from his fall from humanity.

In fact, he often wondered why he had been saved at all; surely death had been better than his watery fate?

He was different from all the rest. He was the only one who still wore the baggy shirt he sank in. He was the only one who kept the ropes he was supposed to die in. He was the only one who remembers.

The others of his new kind were all the same as him once. They didn’t forget their former selves in an instant. Many grieved the loss of their old lives. But now, Tao wonders if he’s the only human left amongst them.

Even when he saw new faces, therefore recently saved from their tragic doom, they were bare and accepted their newly acquired limb quite freely. So why couldn’t he?

He was still attached to his old life. It was as if only his body had fallen; his spirit was elsewhere. When his ship had mutinied and he was bound and hauled like the stones he was tied to from the side of the hull, jeers ringing in his ears as water filled his lungs, it was like a nightmare he never woke up from. He felt as if he should still be there, with good hands and a duty to his Queen- why would they betray him for piracy? And even pirates dropped off the unwilling on the nearest island to fend for themselves. At least, that’s what he’d heard. And surely, that fate was better than this.

He didn’t think he’d ever get used to gills. His brain insisted he had two legs, not one long, spindly tail. He often forgot the fin which protruded from the small of his back down his tail. He felt immodest that the only piece of clothing he had left was the shirt on his back, the last preservation of his humanity and dignity as a human. He didn’t just miss his family and friends, he missed everything about being a dweller of the surface. Drinking, for one. Wearing shoes. The beautiful trinkets humans could create. Being able to tell the exact time. Breathing.

The others put it down to Tao’s misfortunate ending; the trauma of surviving his own murder. Having everything taken away from him by others rather than something out of control, like say, a storm, a raid, scurvey, one of the many risks of seafaring; the others sympathised with his pining. They all knew how it haunted him.

“No, what are you doing? Get your filthy hands off me!”

“Shut it, princey!”

A beating and a long, long scream.

The captain lay curled into himself on the blood-stained floorboards, taking stuttering breaths through the coppery fluid in his mouth. Tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes, leaving trails down the dirt and blood mixed on his cheeks.

“You’ll pay for this,” He spat out along with a glob of rich crimson, no real conviction behind the spite in his voice, wild eyes raving for anywhere to look but the sullied boots of his own crew. All he earned was a swiftly broken nose, momentum causing sweat beads to flick from his saturated hair.

A burning pain dug between his shoulderblades, whiting his vision, throttling him. Again, and thrice. He wondered if they would ever finish with his rag left of a body. He could feel nothing but the fresh wounds as his hands were lifted above his head, roughly tied with freying rope. He was lifted by his binds from the ground like a doll and dragged around the ship, his crew hollering at him and mocking his broken form. Even while he was still breathing air he was accused of no longer being a man. He wondered if he had enough sweat and blood left to leave a trail. He was starting to feel dizzy.

They hung him from a hook on the ceiling in the captain’s quarters. The new captain of their band of crookery sat at his chair with their feet up on his desk, fingers linked behind crimson curls. He didn’t have the energy to be outraged, nor the tears left to cry.

Only the person who saved Tao moments from the end of the tunnel knew what he looked like sinking through the salty depths. That mer pitied him the most. That mer caught the stone weight in his strong tail, pulled the man’s motionless head around and tipped his chin to plant a kiss on his torn lips. The transformation into his new, strong body snapped the ropes which left little skin on his wrists. Tao had to be carried back to the other mers, leaving a tunnel of blood to disperse into the ocean waves, for his battered and exhausted upper body believed itself finished and on his way to the underworld. In a way, Tao thought, he most certainly was.

“N-no, not that- you’ve done enough…”

He felt a quick sting where the necklace his mother gave him was yanked from round his neck. The sting lingered in his heart. They had looted his body. The newly-christened pirates were impressed he was still alive enough to speak and ignored him rather than taking another swipe. He barely looked human anymore, not that they cared. They considered it taking him down a notch, being the pretty boy that he was, with skill and status. This was his punishment. And now, he was to be disposed of.

He was in no position to struggle, but they bound him anyway, to make sure the weight they secured at his ankles didn’t come undone. They unceremoniously pushed him over the ship’s fence, like broken barrels or food too spoiled to keep. It took three men to ditch his dead weight and the anchor. He rolled over the wooden barrier and hit the sides of the ship on the way down. He wondered if there was a less dignified way to die.

As a mer, Tao rarely sleeps anymore. When he sleeps, no matter how exhausted his body, he dreams of his world above the surface. It’s warded him away from getting anywhere near enough rest, but the good memories fill him with sadness and longing, and the bad make his sleep fitful with turmulent nightmares.

And it was at times like this that he took solace in his own company, the last remainder of humanity locked in the depths of his mind, somewhere he liked to recede when the going got tough and all the rest were sleeping soundly around him.

It was the early hours of the morning, and while most of the ocean rarely abided by the laws of the land, mers were bound in the grips of their human cycle and locked in deep slumber. All except Tao, that is, and he was used to it. Tonight, he was in the corner of the deep sea cave he shared with two other mers, playing with the knots on his fingers.

Sometimes he wondered whether other mers had felt the same way as he and found another way to pass on to the underworld, where he believed they belonged. While they had an extraordinary life span, they, like all on earth, were bound in the cycle, and Tao’s irking youth made him ponder taking matters into his own hands. He was mortal but his numbered days were his eternity. He wondered why the Gods enjoyed torturing him so, why he had to go through any of it at all. He wondered if justice always balanced the unbalanced in their imperfect world, like his mother believed, because here, he had none.

Tao loved her with all his heart. They parted with a warm embrace, choked I love yous, as he once again went on his seafaring. He missed her dearly, and he felt so angry that in the deep blue, he could never even cry. He wondered if she had faith he was still out there somewhere, not dumped into the fathomless waves, assumed dead or fallen to piracy on that forsaken ship. He prayed she held belief and knew he would never succumb to the scum of the seas.

Tao’s chest trembled as it struggled with the turbulent emotions bottled inside. Like the motions of the ocean, Tao swayed under unshakeable, bitter indignation. In the blind rage of storms, entire fleets are destroyed; Tao’s ships were being folded and crushed under waves of misery, one by one agonising turn of the weather, and Tao was none the wiser.

He was losing pieces of himself, despite desperately clinging to anything he had left of his human ways. Not only was lack of sleep disorienting him, the very things which made him himself were shut away in his perpetual state of lament. He was a shadow of himself. Not that any of the others could possibly know it; they only knew Tao as he was, not as he was before. To them, this was Tao- and in that sense, when the true pieces of him were destroyed, they were well and truly lost.

Tao had no way to vent. It made his heart race and eyes rave. Sometimes he picked at his fingers until they bled.

The other mers usually kept their distance from Tao. Perhaps they thought that’s what he needed, what he wanted, or perhaps they thought he was just seeking pity by then; but at the end of the day, even if Tao didn’t realise it himself, he was all alone, and nothing was more painful than that. He may not have known it, but it was that sense of loneliness that was really eating him away on the inside.

His heart only held on for one reason. The mer who saved him, saves him again and again every day. In his arms, Tao’s erratic heart is soothed and consoled, if only enough to calm Tao on the outside. Tao knew his pain was physically manifesting no matter how much he tried to reclude and hide it from the others.

Tao wasn’t sure when Lay had arrived, when Lay had wrapped up the silently sobbing body of his in comforting hold, but he felt exhaustion take hold as well after he’d relaxed into the cup of Lay’s midnight blue tail and grasp of soft hands around his shaking shoulders. They didn’t much talk about it, but Tao owed much of his daily sanity to Lay for nights like this where Lay would sleep with Tao in his hold, patiently waiting for Tao too to relax and drift off in the shelter Lay offered when he offered his embrace. Without him, Tao stewed and stewed, and likelihood was, he’d have thrown away the precious gift Lay had given him that fateful day- his second chance.

-----

Rumour had been swirling round the ocean bed that a new galleon had gone down in the bad weather. Seeing as the huge ship had been ripped to pieces, it was overly optimistic to think anyone survived. Perhaps some of the crew managed to get a rowing boat into the water and hold on to it until the storm subsided, but Tao as usual doubted it. There were a few new faces around, but Tao didn’t emerge from the dark sanctuary of his cave to see.

He didn’t stay in the open cave with the others anymore. He felt like he was disturbing them, especially since his habits had become largely nocturnal and rocked by insomnia. Now, he found comfort in a small, confining, dark hole in the rock, one he could retract into like the crab he had now come to be closely associated with. While many would find the enclosed area confining and from the outside, mers knew he was there, other beings could sense him shifting, the occasional plume of sand dusting out around the edges where his tail swept across the ground. If one were close enough to the entrance, perhaps the gleam of his eyes staring back would be the only light inside.

Today, the infamous hermit finally emerged, skin paled from lack of sun and hair in jagged sections where he’d slashed it himself with no way of seeing. It’d been a long time since he’d turned, and his wounds were healing well. What with the stabs, the burns, the broken bones, once all had scarred he looked rather formidable. The scars were bright despite so much time passing, some still not quite woven tight, hot and tender to the touch. His wrists were roughened with pale, shining imprints of his binds. Serving as a constant reminder of his murder, they were part of why he kept his shirt for so long, despite the waterlogged fabric taking a turn for the worse, seams starting to pick apart. At least part of the slashed canvas was concealed.

Lay wasn’t around. While Tao didn’t breath conventionally anymore, it was still calming to stretch his chest with deep breaths like he always used to. Now wasn’t the time for his reliance on the man to send him straight back whence he came. Squinting in the dull light he wasn’t accustomed to, Tao pressed on, curiosity burning brighter than any other flame in his heart. He needed to see if there were any remains of the gallion joining them at the pits of the seas.

He was by no means in good bodily condition. Leaving his hideout was not only emotionally but physically straining. However, if there was anything motivating left in his life, it was getting a glimpse of the other side, even if that meant sifting through someone else’s broken dreams.

And without Lay, it almost felt impossible. Snaking his way across the ocean floor like some kind of serpent in the sand, his journey was slow and strained on his heart in innumerable ways. It didn’t take long at all for his resolve to gain the weight of lead, dragging behind and slowing him down. He wondered if he should bother doing anything at all; he never usually did, anyway, and his body had adjusted to it wholeheartedly.

Tao’s head collided with something. The clang called him back to reality, sand rising around him as his disorientated body swished up a storm. Righting himself, he took the object up from it’s wedge in the floor and inspected it curiously. He wondered if those above had invented something new while he’d been stuck in the depths.

He was at the site of the galleon, alright. While there was a lot missing and the hull was barely recognisable, Tao felt his entire body tingle as he took in the fond sight of a majestic ship. His throat was on fire as he took in the awesome magnitude of the fantastic creation. It was a much more intricately detailed and magnificent galleon than the usual. It was so fresh and new, despite taking a beating which ultimately landed it on the ocean floor.

He felt energy flood into his body, his curiosity once again the defining strength which drove him on. Above all else, it was not that he wanted, but that he needed to see what was inside that ship.

He chose to swim in from the top and go down through the trapdoor on the poopdeck. Feeling the closest he had done for a while to being human again, from this perspective it was almost as if he were flying, and for once, he relished of the feel of the stream through his hair as if it were wind, and stretched his tail as if it were his wings. He flexed right out to the very tips of his fins, those parts of him which had almost gone dead from never being felt.

Going down into the hull was more difficult than he anticipated. He nearly ripped both his arms out of their sockets trying to get the trapdoor to unlodge. Swimming through deserted corridors with little illumination meant that he often nearly slammed into fallen beams and displaced furniture. Oil lamps hung useless on the walls. Buckets and brooms lay about aimlessly. Rooms were turned upside-down, kitchens dangerous even to pass through with all the knives everywhere, hardly a normal thing left peacefully in their final place of rest.

It wasn’t right. No shanties, no bustle of hard work. No clanking of metal or tapping of wood. No orders from the captain and no cries from the bird’s nest above. No whoosh of the waves gone by or caw of the gulls near land. But Tao revelled in it.

In his brain, where there was darkness, there was light. He saw everything alive, people bustling by, singing crude tales to pass the time. He saw the captain stride down the main corridors and up to the deck, face stern in their responsibility. He saw everything he had seen before, all his memories and dreams, in the form of ghosts passing him by. And he was happy. The happiest and most content he had ever been to be completely delusional.

Someone grabbed onto his arm. When his head whipped around, he gasped, face lighting up. “Chen?” He exclaimed in delight. His old second hand was smiling at him and beckoning him along. He gladly followed as the man firmly gripped his elbow, dragging him somewhere as willing as he’d ever been.

He dearly missed Chen. They’d been friends since the early days- Tao could barely swab a deck without feeling lost when he first managed to obtain a job as a hand on deck. They were both so young, and found solidarity in the fact their first meeting was clumsily headbutting each other while trying to clean; they were as inexperienced as each other, and it linked them.

Tao had a real friend in the frizzy-haired redhead, with two left feet and a cheeky smile that was impossible to rebuke. Chen had oodles of energy and a fire in his heart that was enough for two- he could always cheer Tao up when things were getting hard at sea, when the captain shouted at him, when their hammocks threw them on the floor during witching hour storms.

They learned about the operations of the ship as a pair, and advanced in duties and ranks together; and as a team, they were exceptional. And with Chen’s full support, Tao gathered courage and put forward his all into becoming one of the youngest captains to go seafaring. He succeeded. He took Chen with him, but somehow now the boys were men, things changed. They no longer slept in hammocks next to each other and couldn’t burn the midnight oil telling stories. They both had responsibilities and accounted for those other than themselves.

But as they navigated around in his reminiscence, Tao became suspicious. He began to move further forward in his memories, and a feeling of dread overwhelmed him.

“Chen, no! Chen, why? Chen! Chen!”

Chen didn’t let go. As Tao’s memories flashed forward, he sensed a change in his friend that he had always despaired. Chen had stopped communicating with him on the same level they always had, and he knew something was up. But then, after a simple stop on land, he changed what felt like overnight, and by the middle of the next voyage Tao had been strung up to an inch of his life, ready for the sharks in his final moments.

No matter how Tao struggled, to the last of his strength, Chen wasn’t letting go. He thrashed and screamed, screaming his name, but he never let go. He sobbed and cried, asking him why, but he never answered. And in the end, they left the ship, Chen was Lay and Tao was out for the count.

-----

While Tao was not one to smile, he wasn’t exactly encapsulated in his depression like he used to be. Lay’s healing touch taught him many silent lessons. He owed a lot to the man. He didn’t know much about Lay, as most of their exchanges needed no words; however, he knew Lay was a good person, with a grace and patience which reflected in the soft curves of his face, the button of his nose and the cheerful dimples of his tender smile. The joy in his eyes were what inspired the moon to crescent. Lay was Tao’s safe haven, and it was with him Tao finally gathered the courage to approach the ocean surface.

The currents were powerful, so they held hands so that they wouldn’t lose each other. Tao wondered how in such a cold place he could find such warmth in the joining of palms. Their fingers linked. Tao thought maybe, Lay could give him enough strength to pass on the gift he had been given.

After all, the currents were strong because storms at sea raged on ahead...