Cold Water

In history texts it’s said that a mermaid’s song is powerful enough to bend time and space. Old sea journals, of sailors long past, will claim that a single song could warp reality. Even today some try to claim to have seen the magic themselves.

Despite this, the fact remains that a mer’s song is their most powerful tool. It is beautiful and, sometimes, terrible, but none can deny it is unique. Thus humans, who are not born simple and beautiful, but they are born to be dangerous, with greed infecting their veins, seek to harness the songs for themselves.

But humans don’t know that a song is not the same as a mer singing; so the mermaids in the sea sing softly, and the poor souls on land stay quiet, keeping their songs like precious pearls close to their chest. Tucked safely away from those that would try to steal it, even at the cost of their lives.

*

Since Knauss was new he had always been a quiet soul. His mother had tried to coax out his voice with warm songs of her own, her voice lilting and severe in its’ beauty, yet Knauss remained silent. He waited and watched with his wide blue eyes.

He was curious and cautious and when the pod sang, he listened.

He had listened to songs of a curious seal that played in the sea and dozed on the beach, and songs of light and sea, and he felt like he had heard them all by the time he was allowed to wander from his mother’s den into the main chamber of the caves.

There were many beautiful voices in his home, but none like his grandmatron. Her voice was deep like his would become, and he felt safe curled by her side chirping harmony. She sang of songs of other, far away pods that he had never seen, and oceans he would never visit.

His favorite song was the song of a seabird that flew so far that it no longer knew how to return home. The bird, confused and scared, would fly tirelessly until finally it grew tired and needed to rest on the ground. Only then did another see the tired bird, and they flew off together. It never got to return to its family, but it found new home with a new flock of seabirds.

It made him sad that the bird would never return to his matron, but while the sea was not a forgiving Mother, she protected her children in her own way.

His grandmatron always assured him that the seabird was content with his new life.

Sometimes, late in the evening, Knauss lets himself think about the story of that bird when he's laying on the decking. He can't help but feel like the irony was a little heavy handed. Things in life aren't like the television shows Bain watches, they aren't scripted the way the human explained to him, but sometimes he feels like his life is a joke.

*

He once asked Bain if the television relayed the lore of the humans and Bain had laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. Apparently the television was simply an easy way to relay oral history that most humans had access to. It's just bullshit, most of the time it ain't real, Bain had said.

But that begs the question, if the television isn't how humans relay their lore, then how do they do it?

That evening when Bain knocks to come in he’s obviously still on edge. Knauss doesn’t even bother waiting for him to sit before dipping out of his den and Bain jumps so hard Knauss thinks he’s going to drop his laptop.

“Knauss?!” Bain squeaks, shocked. He still pronounces his name kind of wrong but Knauss doesn’t think he minds as much as he thought he would.

“Hm?” Knauss hums acknowledgement, already swimming after a fish.

“So you’re cool with me seeing you now? It just took what, nearly drowning?” Bain quips. Knauss figures that sounds about right. In a sadistic way it probably helps that Bain is having such a difficult time accepting this new change. It’s nice to have someone else panicking for once.

“Yes.” Knauss catches a salmon deftly kills it, only then does he let himself look over to the human still standing near the entryway.

Bain is frowning, looking at the fish in his hands before looking up at him. Knauss takes a bite.

There’s a beat of silence before, “That’s kinda gross.”

“What?” Knauss asks.

“You just kinda like, rip into it? Don’t the scales like, hurt your stomach?” Bain asks, tearing his eyes away and walking over to the couch.

“No,” Knauss says between bites. Bain sets himself up and turns the TV on like he always does. Knauss remembers what he had been thinking about earlier, “How do humans tell their lore?”

“What?” Bain asks, plugging the laptop cord to the wall.

“If the television does not tell human lore, how do they tell it?” Knauss reiterates between bites. That gives Bain pause.

“Maybe like, with textbooks I guess?” Bain shrugs, “Comics are better.”

Knauss cocks his head, “Comics?”

“They’re these books with pictures but they’re usually short and the writers piss you off more often than not,” Bain explains. Knauss doesn’t think he would like that, why would humans explain their history in such a way?

“Show me?” Knauss asks and Bain rolls his head to look back at him, his expression unimpressed.

“Dude, you wouldn’t even understand it,” he whines. Knauss cocks an eyebrow and Bain shifts uncomfortably and turns back around. Obviously looking at him is going to be a thing.

Knauss decides not to push it, Bain will get over himself eventually and right now he doesn’t care enough to be bothered. He goes back to swimming laps and at one point in the night he hauls himself to sit on the deck. The more he sits up top the more he likes it, it’s gotten to the point that he goes above water nearly every evening Bain visits.

Which isn’t as regular as he would like, but this past week he’s visited every night so Knauss isn’t as terribly hungry as he could have been.

“So,” Bain begins, his voice unsure, “Do mermaids have lore?”

“Of course,” Knauss scoffs. What kind of question is that?

“Hey, we don’t call it that, it’s just like, fuckin’ history. What kinda lore do mermaids got?” Bain defends himself. Knauss doesn’t really know if he wants to respond to that. Hearing him sing is almost too much, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to start telling humans the stories of his kind.

Instead he asks, “Do humans always procreate when they are children?”

“What the fuck?” Bain sputters.

“On the television,” Knauss says instead of explaining. Bain jerks his attention up to look at the TV like he didn’t notice the channel, Knauss can see his ears getting red from this distance.

“Jesus dude, no. It’s fucking reality tv, you’re supposed to make fun off the assholes that live like that and make yourself feel better, I just use it for background noise. 16 and Pregnant isn’t what people are like,” he tries to defend himself, obviously uncomfortable about the subject though Knauss doesn’t understand why.

“So Savannah is not real?” Knauss asks, confused.

“No dude, I mean, she’s just some kid that got knocked up and they put it on tv for people to laugh at,” Bain explains. Knauss stares blankly before he eventually shrugs.

“Okay.” It will just be another human quirk to add to the list of things that he will never understand. The list is, admittedly, very long.

*

By the end of the first week since Bain fell into his tank Knauss is relieved to find that the human had finally moved on from nervous to curious. More than not Knauss will catch him looking his way and he’s a lot more okay with it than he thought he’d be. Apparently he’s got too much to stress about to be that worried about one measly human curled up in the overstuffed chair by the bookshelves.

On nights like this, though, Knauss usually keeps himself busy with the television anyway. The program on tonight is something about human women and their particularly fickle nature when choosing what white dress to purchase.

All he’s really been able to gather is that humans are an overemotional species that has a tendency to cry a lot and the cloth they choose to put on their bodies is very important.

It’s all gibberish to him, but he can’t help but notice that most of the humans in this pod unit are all wearing the same wire contraptions on their faces that he has stuffed away in the back of his den. He’d seen them before, but they never really get addressed by the humans on screen so he still doesn’t know the English for them.

“What is that?” Knauss asks, turning his slow gaze over to Bain who pretends like he hadn’t been staring from behind his laptop.

“What’s what?”

“That,” Knauss points towards the TV, Bain frowns down at it.

“Say yes to the dress?”

“Not the program, what the humans wear,” Knauss tries to clarify but when it earns him a blank look he sighs and slips back into the tank where he can go get his own wire contraption.

When he resurfaces with the square, black frames Bain blinks at him in surprise, closing his laptop and leaning forward while Knauss hauls himself onto the deck.

“What is this?” Knauss asks.

“Are those the glasses from that guy? Yeesh, that’s morbid. You’re supposed to wear them,” Bain mimes putting them on his face. Knauss mimics, “Yeah, like that. They help nerds see shit, but I ain’t a nerd so I don’t need them.” Knauss stopped paying attention the moment he put the glasses on. Instead he stares back, eyes wide in shock.

Slowly, he looks down to his hands, then back up to Bain’s face, then out to the rest of the room.

“Uh, you okay man?” Bain is saying, but Knauss isn’t listening. Everything in the room is so… sharp. He can see the words scribbled on the spines of the books on the shelves, and the freckles dusted across the bridge of Bain’s nose, and the woman currently gesturing furiously on the TV screen with a sudden clarity.

It’s like the world had finally slid into focus, the fuzzy edge that blurred things before has been peeled away to new, crisp edges. He can see every detail in the background of the show, the pair of shoes sitting on a chair off to the side, with such clarity that he has to look away from the screen.

When he turns back he sees that Bain has put down his laptop, halfway out of his seat.

“Dude, what’s going on? You okay?” The human sounds nervous.

Knauss meets his eyes, expression intense, “Yes.”

“You gotta give me more than that. What the hell is going on?”

“You are very...” Knauss cocks his head, not sure how to explain it, “Pointy.”

Bain frowns, “What?”

“Your lines are sharp,” Knauss tries again but Bain just keeps frowning so he gives up in favor of scooting back on the deck to grab the nearest book, the paper goes damp under his fingers but he’s more interested in looking at the gibberish.

He opens to a random page, raising the glasses on his forehead to look at it up close before dropping them back down, testing the difference with and without the glass. It’s very different. Things that were close before, he could see okay, but outside of his tank things tended to get blurry fast. With the glasses, however, it was like seeing an entirely new world.

“Knauss,” Bain snaps, jolting the mer back to the present.

“Yes?” Knauss hums.

“You’re getting that wet,” Bain says, walking closer and Knauss hands over the book hesitantly, only just noticing how wet the pages were actually getting. He’s still dripping on the deck. This is the closest Bain’s gotten to him outside of handing him food. Knauss stares while Bain pretends to check over the spine for more damage.

“What are glasses?” Knauss asks, eying the stitching on Bain’s trousers. He had previously thought glasses were just wire and glass, but now he sees why humans wear them.

“They’re just glass and shit, it’s just how it’s shaped,” Bain points and Knauss takes the pair off to look at them. Sure enough the glass was thick and curved, “Something about the way they bend light helps you see stuff. Does that actually make a difference for you?”

Knauss nods distractedly, turning the glasses over in his hands to get a better look at them.

“Yes,” he agrees, earning a scoff.

“Seriously? Man you got shit eyesight, those are for like, mega-nerds that stare at screens all day,” Bain says. Knauss shrugs. For a moment he considers his words and if he should even bother, before deciding that ultimately it didn’t matter.

“The hunting grounds were very dark. We did not need to see much,” Knauss admits.

“Wha- really? Where are you from?” Knauss hesitates long enough for Bain to shift his weight.

“I do not know,” Knauss replies because he doesn’t know how to explain it to a human, not that he ever would. Instead he puts the glasses back on his nose and looks back out at the room. Bain apparently isn’t finished with their conversation yet because he hovers, indecisive.

“What was it like?” Bain asks, Knauss frowns.

“Cold,” he replies vaguely. Bain quirks his head, staring at him for a moment before offering a half-shrug, turning to put away the book and go back to his seat where he opens his laptop. Conversation, over.