"Anuk!" Dea clasped his hand, careful not to disturb the IV catheter. "How are you feeling?"

He watched the point where their hands met as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "Suddenly...I'm much better."

She hastened to swipe at her eyes and muttered, "You brine pool jerk."

"Are you...smiling at me?" he whispered.

"I'm just happy I could..." Her trembling lips stretched wider. "I have so much to tell you."

"I got that feeling the moment you woke up and started talking."

"What!"

Anuk's hand shifted under hers, and his thumb drew circles on her skin. "Isn't it good that I heard that?"

Dea said nothing, part of her marveling at the calming effect the simple gesture had on her.

"I wish I could ease the weight on your shoulders." A frown eclipsed his face to match the semidarkness around them. "And I hate to see you put yourself in danger. Not just you—Nadie, Muda and the others. I can't even be there."

"Anuk..."

"At least," he said, keen eyes fixed on her, "the others have way better fighting skills and military training."

She blinked at him. "Thank you for that vote of confidence in my battle prowess. My shooting isn't bad at all."

"You're obviously a quick learner." He let out a quiet chuckle. "And you might have good aim. But..."

"I'm not a tank?"

He raised his eyebrows. "A gamer mermaid..."

"I play the occasional FPS," she said, trying to sound less indignant. "I have a VR headset at home, and I used to go to the arcade at the mall."

"Ah." He appeared to mull it over. "Well, I do have something that would help keep you safe."

"What do you mean?"

"Let's just say I upgraded a Cypod with another prototype I was experimenting with. It's a hidden card I didn't reveal to your city-state—it's a bit too complicated and costly to mass produce in a short time anyways."

"Oh..." Her eyes widened. "Where is it?"

"Kelp will be here with it soon."

The gravity of the situation pressed on her again, and Dea shook her head, pale pink waves jiggling with the motion. "Anuk, I just don't understand how your brain works. You're going through this, but you're busy worrying about me. I—I thought you'd..."

"I'd what?"

"Why do you do all this?" She regarded him. "What you do down in the deep with the Callian exiles and the nomad community—well, everything you do."

"I'm just bored."

He maintained a straight face. Her lips twitched, though exasperation made her want to bonk him on the head. Are you trying to lighten up the mood or is this your way of distracting yourself from...

"Is that why you took that bullet for me?" she asked quietly. "Someone who forced you to make weapons?"

He watched her, brow furrowing again. Dea hung her head, and her stare fixated on their joined hands. The sound of waves swelled to fill the quiet. She suddenly wished she could disappear beneath them, dissolve into foam and cease to exist.

"Behind the pain and anger, I could still see the mermaid I first saw in the high seas." He closed his eyes as if to relive the moment. "I can't imagine what you've been through, but I can relate to the anger and despair when you come face to face with what's happening to the oceans. I've been there. I still do—I just channel it into my work."

The words twanged her heartstrings. "You knew I was the heir apparent when I came down to meet you. Muda and Kelp told me."

"Yeah, I did." The smile reappeared on his lips. "And I couldn't exactly say no when the princess of Calliathron wanted to take my Cypod out for a ride."

A faint laugh escaped her. "So tell me your story. Tell me how you met merpeople. I never listened to you. I'm listening now."

"Hm, we have to go back fifteen years. Maybe you should make yourself comfortable."

As if on cue, her stiff back demanded her attention.

Dea moved to the chair, pushed it closer and flopped her arm on the bed. His long fingers scurried over the bedding and closed over her hand. She pretended not to notice, even though warmth suffused her face and a smile strained against her lips. She was glad for the twilight gloom that permeated this little corner of the sick bay.

"So? I'm all ears," she said, her voice soft.

"I lived with my dad in a beachside house not far from the city center." A faraway look descended on his face. "He worked at the faculty of mechanical engineering at SCIT—the Seren City Institute of Technology. Dad had a lifelong fascination of the ocean, and he instilled that into me from a young age. He used to say that it's space right here on Earth and that more funding should go into exploring it.

"Dad had his own submersible with custom-built robotic parts, and he ventured out on exploration trips. He recorded the calls of whales and drew inspiration from the physiology of marine life, which is unlike anything we have on land. You could say he was in touch with the pulse of the ocean. To him, the ocean was a system made up of many parts and their close interactions. If you upset just one of those parts, then the delicate balance is broken and the whole system starts to malfunction..."

He drew in a slow breath. Dea waited for him to continue. This peek of his life was nothing short of enthralling, but the last thing she wanted to do was push him to reminisce a past he might not want to dwell on.

"I grew up tinkering in his garage and learning from him," Anuk went on in a quiet voice. "He used to chuckle at how eager I was to follow in his footsteps. One day—I was eight then—I sneaked into this section of his study that was off limits. I stumbled on a journal that documented a Homo marinus. I also listened to tapes I found. That was when I first heard Mermish. I pieced together that he was actually researching merpeople—what I knew to be nothing more than myth. Needless to say, I was beyond excited. I confronted Dad about it.

"He finally confided in me. Many years ago, before I was even born, he had come across a nomad colony. It was just a brief sighting, but ever since, he had strived to locate them and detect mer-communication. After my mom passed away in a car accident, he devoted his life to his work while bringing me up as a single parent. He kept his work a secret, because us humans don't have a track record for being responsible when it comes to something as big as this—especially under the Goonewardanes.

"Dad surmised that a technological mer-civilization would modulate sound waves for communication. After extensive searching, he had found the location of Calliathron. For years, he'd been decoding your sonic signals. He had hours of merman TV transmissions, and he'd assembled an extensive database of Mermish words and meanings. I can't even imagine how challenging it must've been, because our ears don't have your audible frequency range or some of your vocal sounds. That's why I mispronounce many words.

"So all of that knowledge was passed on to me. It was crazy learning about this whole other world that no one else knew about—and to watch your TV. Your city...and life under the sea just mesmerized me."

Dea realized her mouth was slightly ajar. Yet again, she was struck by how much they had in common. If I only knew back then...that while I was binging movies with CGI humans, there was a human boy out here watching our TV—just as fascinated about us as we were about them.

"My dad battled cancer for many years and succumbed to it when I was fourteen." Anuk's voice went flat, and a flash of emotion flitted across his face. "I lived with relatives after that. Dad had arranged for me to attend Ternion Boys' College—his alma mater. It's a prestigious school in North Salmalwatte. That's where I met Dilip Goonewardane."

"Oh..." She recalled the photos she saw in Dilip's study.

"It was a rough time for me," Anuk went on. "I did pretty okay in school, so I'd skipped a grade—which meant I was the youngest in my class. I pored over my dad's work and continued learning Mermish—because I knew that any meaningful contact with merpeople would require language.

"Goonewardane and I got into a fight on my very first week at Ternion. He hated my guts. I think he hated me because I worked hard, which gained the teachers' favor. And later, I was in the running for head prefect—a position Goonewardane managed to secure for himself. He didn't care whom he threw under the bus as long as he got what he wanted.

"Another front we fought on was the Green Club. He had big ambitions, and he knew that showing initiative in this area would look good on his resume. After all, he wanted to project himself as a youth-centric leader. As for me—I was more...emotional and angry back then. I wanted people to take drastic action—demand change from leaders and also change their ways. Let's just say that was less popular. Behavioral change isn't met well—even more so if it feels like a sacrifice.

"In a nutshell, I was the gloom-and-doom radical, while Dilip was the smiling beacon who made people feel good about themselves. He was big on beach cleanups—organized one or two and took tons of photos to fill the yearbook."

Dea clenched her jaw. She couldn't believe how naïve she was to believe what she did about Dilip, though there was no way she could have seen the monster lurking behind his gentlemanly persona.

She looked at the warm hand that held hers. "I'm sorry you had to go through what you did."

He closed his eyes with a sigh. "This was also the time I met Endera, whose values and goals aligned with mine. Nadie took me in as a volunteer. I was shocked to learn of the extent of government corruption under the Goonewardane administration. All that time, I simply thought it was just apathy...Anyways, Nadie and the others made me feel at home. For the first time, I had hope, and they knocked some pragmatism into my brain."

"Yeah," Dea said. "Nadie told me a bit about that."

"Oh? You talked about me?" Anuk whispered, straightening up—and winced.

She wanted to bonk him again. "Careful!"

His eyes flitted to the bandaged stump, and he immediately looked away. He appeared inexpressive—except for the bobble of his larynx.

Dea's heart ached.

"When I got into SCIT," Anuk said, as if nothing happened, "I built on my dad's work. I developed a prototype to clean up ocean plastic and licensed the patent. The plastic it collects is rendered to pellets and then used to make a wide range of products, including apparel. Later, it also became useful in industry down in the deep.

"During this time, I listened in on your underwater communications. I had a pretty good idea that things were far from ideal under the waves. During a semester break, I was out in my dad's sub. I ventured upon a few nomads. I fired out a Mermish greeting, which got their attention. It was beyond exciting—my first contact with merpeople. That's when I first met Gog."

"Oh." Dea wondered what Gog felt about him, and if that had a bearing in her hostility towards her.

"The merpeople were mind-blown," Anuk said with a chuckle. "My Mermish wasn't that good, but we were able to converse. I got to know that their movement was severely restricted and they were getting limited aid from mer-cities in the region. The Callian exiles were also living with them. Your city-states are crowded, so they didn't want to take in so many refugees. The nomads had taken shelter in the deep, but their future was uncertain."

"So you helped them," Dea said, eyes widening.

He nodded. "Robotics is all the rage in your cities, so it was a promising source of livelihood for the nomads. The mining station could still source raw materials. I saw the potential, though your systems were alien to me. I had to work with several skilled merpeople to get things going."

She could only stare at him. Her eyes traced the contours of his face in the low lighting, and she wondered how she ever thought that Dilip was a work of the finest terrestrial art. It was as if she was seeing Anuk for the first time.

"I couldn't reveal myself to the mer-cities," Anuk continued. "Calliathron's not the only city-state wary of humans—if they knew, they'd take me in for questioning. When the merpeople conducted their trade, they only alluded to my existence. I guess I became an enigmatic figure—crafting forbidden land gear and granting strange powers of telekinesis. I came to be referred to as the Sea Witch."

Dea's mouth fell open. "Oh..."

"Getting to learn about your people and the amazing wonders of the deep were some unique perks." A smile played on his lips as he gazed into space. "The Cypod was a pet project of mine. It's something Muda, Kelp and the other Callian exiles had tried to make. Everyone was enthusiastic about it—because they all shared my vision of a future when we could all live on this planet in harmony."

Her eyes closed as she tried to contain the emotion that bloomed within. It was incredible that she was making this connection with someone she thought was too different. He had legs, and he came from a place that she now dreaded—yet, her soul resonated with his.

His thumb caressed her hand again. She blinked at him, drawn to his eyes. They were as dark and fathomless as the abyssal realm. Her heart skipped a beat.

"Dea, now that all this is happening, there's something I want you to know," he said in a low rumble while a frown shadowed his face. "Even if the Goonewardanes were not in power, and a forward-thinking government was to take their place, Serendiva will not change overnight. Because this is what us humans are used to.

"This is how Serendiva's economy, traditions and everything we know are built. We humans resist change and are slow to adapt to innovation. Fossil fuels would continue to burn. Those trawlers would still operate. Plastic will still get dumped. Emissions would take a while to go down. Your people and this whole planet are suffering because of us. Yeah, we need to stop this war right now—we can't afford to think of failure. Once we do that, I'm confident you'd do what's best for Calliathron. When that day comes, there are two things I need to ask of you—even if it's a lot to ask."

"And what's that?" Dea whispered.

"On behalf of my species, I'm begging you to forgive us and to grant us another chance."

Animal: Goliath Grouper

https://youtu.be/y0eCyugm6f0