Cold Water

That night Bain doesn’t return and Knauss can’t help but be a bit disappointed because the human made it seem like he would, so he distracts himself with a thorough stretching of all his joints and smiling when they pop. It feels incredibly satisfying to swim his laps and then he goes down to adjust his rocks in a new pattern because he feels like the old setup was a bit stale.

After he finishes with his rocks he swims to the top of his tank to look at the decking and a thought strikes him.

Suddenly hesitant, he turns to look at the rest of the empty room. The TV is off and the couch is vacant. He’s completely alone.

Before he loses the will to go through with it, he swims over to the edge of the tank where the deck overhangs slightly. The wood is polished and despite the fact that he’s been here for a long time it still looks fairly new, at least on the top. On the bottom it looks a bit like the salt water has worn it down. He reaches out and touches it.

The wood grain feels different than the saturated driftwood that would fall to the seabed where his pod could make use of it. It feels a lot sturdier. Strong enough to hold a human, he remembers when the stranger stood on it, trying to hoist him out of the tank.

Shuddering, he forces away the memory, refocusing on the platform. It’s not that tall and he reaches up to place both palms flat on the deck and before he lets himself think about it he pushes down.

It’s satisfying to know that he’s still strong enough to pull himself out of the water, he grins at the realization, turning to seat himself on the deck. The wood is slatted so that when he drips water on it, it all drips back into the tank. Convenient. Knauss isn’t bothered with that, though, he’s much more interested in looking around the room from his new vantage point.

With wide, curious eyes he looks around first to the shelves of books behind him, to the plump leather chair where Bain sometimes sits to read, to the stairs down to the first floor and finally the rest of the room. It’s strange to see everything without the distortion of glass, and things are fuzzier, but the air feels so thin on his gills. He has to breathe with his mouth and nose to get enough but once he gets the hang of it it’s not difficult.

The air is also very cold and it zings across his flesh. It’s biting in the way icy water never was, it’s more irregular when the air hits him and it dries his skin very quickly but when he reaches up to touch his dark hair it’s not dry.

How strange. He then goes on to touch the finals on his forearms to find them dry, as well as the ones on his hips, but his hair remains damp. It also seems to clump and stick to his face, which is mostly annoying, but he doesn’t have to worry about scratching his own face with sharp nails when he moves it away.

He laughs with bitter irony, but his spirits are too high to focus on his ruined nails right now. Instead he scoots away from the water and lays flat on his back, looking up at the ceiling.

It’s a flat color, nothing like the dips and grooves of his den, and especially different to the way even still water moves even the slightest, reflecting light down onto the soft sand. Wood is much harder than sand. He would prefer something that didn’t scrape quite so roughly on his back, but he’s mostly just interested in all the textures.

Then the idea hits him. He wonders, briefly, what his own voice sounds like outside of the water.

Pursing his lips, Knauss pushes to sit up again, eyes trained on his tail still dangling in the water. He flexes just to watch it kick up a little current, and then he purposefully kicks up a stronger current.

Who would even hear him? It’s quite late, he’s alone. Knauss swallows, flexing his grip before opening his mouth and -

“Hello,” he smiles, feeling not unlike a young bull again. Like he could get away with anything.

Of course there is immediately a knock on the great door and Knauss jumps so high that when he dives back in his tank he bites his tongue because of the force of it. Outside his tank Bain is shuffling in, entirely unaware of the mer currently hissing in pain, huddled in his den. Knauss snarls, the smell of blood in the water leaves a metallic taste in the back of his throat.

“Hey man, sorry I’m so late, I had some shit I had to do. Figured you’d be swimming and shit so I knocked, you’re welcome. Your water okay?” Bain is saying as he sets up on the table in front of the couch.

Knauss is too busy trying not to make noise out loud that would give away his blunder to respond and eventually Bain scoffs.

“Dude, really? You’re going to be a dick? I knocked and everything,” he snaps, indignant.

“No,” Knauss finally manages, his tongue is throbbing and thick in his throat.

Bain waits for more, but when Knauss doesn’t speak he impatiently prompts, “Well?”

“I am wounded,” Knauss admits haltingly. The change is instant, he hears Bain moving on the couch but he can’t be bothered to look and see what he’s doing. He’s too busy trying to deal with himself.

“Oh shit, are you bleeding? Do I need to like, get someone? I don’t know how to, uh, shit,” Bain stutters, entirely out of his depth.

Knauss swallows another mouthful of blood and debates on even admitting. Only infants wound themselves with their own teeth when they are new and still learning. There’s a beat of silence before.

“I bit my tongue,” he confesses. For a moment there's silence so stifling that he almost peeks out to make sure the human hadn’t actually left to get help before Bain snorts loudly.

“Are you- Are you being serious?” he laughs.

Knauss doesn't reply. Apparently that's answer enough because Bain just laughs louder.

“Holy shit dude, that’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. I didn’t- I guess I just thought mermaids were supposed to be graceful or some shit. Cal should get a refund,” Bain is howling and Knauss just scowls in his den. He thinks he understands what the human is saying, but he’s always kind of wanted to clarify.

“What is Cal?”

“What?” Bain asks, still catching his breath, but Knauss isn’t sure he wants to speak any more than he already has. It’s weird hearing his own voice. It feels like he shouldn’t be using it, not for a human, “Come on man,” Bain continues, pressing, “I don’t know what you mean? What is Cal? Cal is my brother, he’s human, I think. The tall guy? Blonde? Yells a lot?”

Knauss nods mostly to himself. He’s the one they call the boss, though he never understood why, at least he knows they are the same human and there aren’t two.

“Anyway, how’d you bite your tongue?” Bain continues, obviously steering away from the subject of his kin.

“...Surprised,” Knauss says stiltedly, still not sure if he’s enjoying the contact or if he’s just so deprived that he’d stoop so low as to talk to a human. The idea still makes him a little sick to his stomach, but he’s been feeling cagey tonight. Like his scales are too tight on his body. He wants to swim more.

“What, when I knocked? Really? I gave you like, five minutes to hide or whatever,” Bain defends himself. Knauss doesn’t respond because he doesn’t know how to. It’s still difficult to translate sometimes, though he’s gotten a lot better about it. He finds it easier to understand than to reply.

After a long silence when Bain figures that he isn’t planning on responding he hears shuffling from the couch again as he turns back around to the TV.

“Alright, whatever man. Do whatever, I’ve got shit to do. Don’t be loud.” As if he’s ever been loud. Nothing can compare to the shrieking these humans can do, it’s a wonder he can still hear at all. Knauss doesn’t say any of this, he just sticks out his tongue to try and assess the damage until giving up and swimming out to swim a few more laps before it gets too late in the morning.

At least this time he doesn’t feel like he needs to sleep for a week just to stop being exhausted like last time. Improvement comes in small strides.

*

Knauss spends the next week silent. The human is busy with whatever it is that humans do, and he spends most of his evenings swimming laps and, whenever Bain doesn’t show up, exploring the deck of his tank. The dry air is still quite strange, but Bain will leave the TV on for him sometimes and he can hear it better without water and glass in the way.

Other nights he will simply lay out on the sand, staring up at the light filtering down onto the rocks. He lets himself remember his colony on nights like that. His mother, and cousins.

Tonight, he remembers a mermaid from a pod far west, across the sea. Ceta.

She had arrived a long time ago, when all the western colonies had merged for a special tradition with hopes of combining their families together and hopes of marriage. Ceta, with her beautiful yellow tail, had returned to their icy hunting grounds newly mated with his cousin Adak. She had been devastated when he had died to a shark attack just moons later.

Seas away from her family, alone in a new pod, her bright scales grew tarnished and dark. They had feared she would fade, until another, an older mer named Chevak, went to her. Chevak had also been an outsider from the south before she joined their family.

Knauss remembers seeing them in the back of the cave, speaking in hushed tones and smiling quietly. Their tails twisted together as Chevak plaited her hair.

Ceta’s scales stopped appearing in the sand not long after.

Knauss remembers asking his mother about the duo and she had replied with a cryptic young love is the easiest to soothe. He later understood that they had mated, but more importantly, if Ceta was able to return from how far she had faded then that means he can survive this.

Sometimes that's all he can think about when his matte scales don't shine in the dim lights.

*

“I can’t keep calling you fish face,” Bain says when he walks in one evening, his arms full with his little television he’s taken to bringing with him.

Knauss had been chewing on another vertebrae, a bad habit he’d picked up to keep himself busy while he waits for Bain in the evenings.

“Well, I guess I can if you wanna be called that, fuckin’ weirdo. I’d prefer a name,” Bain continues.

Knauss just scoffs quietly and doesn’t bother justifying that with a response. Bain doesn’t try to speak to him again that night.

*

He doesn’t think about their conversation for a few days until he revisits it. The human refers to him as a fish in his own head? The thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth despite the fatty salmon he’s been chewing on since Bain arrived.

“I am not a fish.”

Bain just hums at him instead of really acknowledging what he says. He’s been busy with his personal TV all evening and in one of his ears a white wire is plugged in, “Okay.”

Knauss frowns, lingering by the edge of his tank before swimming to the top and looking down to get a better angle to see what the human is doing. Bain is blissfully oblivious to the mer’s snooping, content with just tapping away at the device. Knauss doesn’t know what to make of that so he swims back down.

“Do not call me a fish,” Knauss clarified, deep voice sounding more firm. He’s been using it a lot more lately. Bain doesn’t really react except to hum again, still fiddling with his device.

“I wouldn’t have to if I knew your name,” he shoots back a moment later.

Knauss swims an unhappy circuit, keeping close to the end of his tank. Names are important. There are so few mermaids left, every name is precious and must be remembered. He doesn’t know if he wants to share it with a human that will undoubtedly butcher the pronunciation.

“No answer for me, fishy?” Bain is grinning, Knauss doesn’t have to look to know because he hears it in his voice.

“You will not say it right.”

That gives the human pause, and he leans back in his seat, “Probably not.” He concedes.

The mermaid is silent until Bain sighs and closes the device in his lap, putting it off to the side and relaxing back into the sofa.

“Alright, you don’t want to be called fish. I get it. But you gotta give me something else to call you. They’ve been calling you Shortie because you’re giant, that any better?” Shortie? Knauss flexes his finals in disgust.

“That is not my name,” Knauss asserts.

“Well we’re just up a creek then, ain’t we? You ain’t telling me your name, but you don’t like what everyone else calls you. Throw me a bone here, man,” Bain complains.

They sit in silence for another long while, until he can see the human fidgeting because humans are impatient and Bain can’t sit still for long unless he’s watching the television.

“You were Speckle,” Knauss says after a beat. Bain snorts because he hadn’t been expecting the admission.

“What!?” He sounds incredulous, but Knauss doesn’t respond. He’s still considering until he finally decides. There is no one else here. There won’t be anyone else here who has taken an express interest in him like this human has, and frankly, he’s tired.

“I am Knauss.”

“Nice?” Bain sounds incredibly confused.

“No. Knauss,” Knauss tries to repeat his name more clearly, but it’s difficult to speak it in English. It sounds wrong, but everything humans say sounds wrong, so why should it matter.

“Nos? Like cars? Makes them go fast, like that movie earlier this week? With Vin Diesel?”

“No.”

“Uh, okay. I wish you knew how to spell it.” Knauss doesn’t know how to spell it with an english alphabet. He’s never needed written language before.

“I do not know how,” he says but Bain is already moving to pick his little portable television from where he put it down on the coffee table. He flips it open and jams his thumb into a button that apparently tells the thing to wake up before he goes about clicking and opening a few different things on the screen.

“I’ll google it. Okay, we got like. Names and shit. There’s some slavic shit and they spell it kinda cool. Oh, but the german way is spelled cooler,” Knauss has no idea what the human is prattling on about. He keeps himself occupied by rolling around in the plush water.

“Okay,” he hums distractedly. Bain must sense his dwindling interest because he scoffs.

“Well, we’re going with german Knauss then. It looks coolest,” Bain says finitely, closing the device again.

“Alright. I am Knauss,” Knauss repeats, if he had been paying more attention he would have noticed Bain’s grin. The human shuffles in his seat like he can’t get comfortable. Like he suddenly has more energy than he knows what to deal with. Knauss can relate.

“At least I can stop calling you fish, now,” Bain sniffs before flipping on the TV, leaving them both to their thoughts.