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His bright, slitted greenish-yellow eyes stared intently. He had been following this particularly large, lone tuna for a while, after it had become separated from its school when most of them were scooped up by fishing nets. It was on edge---Meison could tell. His long, eel-like tail flitted through the sand, burying itself, and the rest of his greenish, scaled body hid in a cluster of weedy kelp. He could eat that, but he'd been subsiding on kelp and sharp seaweed for days now and had to eat something heavier. His stalking had been careful and deliberate, as he had been taught a long time ago, and somehow still remembered. Unfortunately he remembered all of his past, and it hurt.

He drifted forward, his hair that resembled underwater serpents and leaves swaying in the underwater current that felt like wind above the ocean water. Its eyes were set on the bluish-green nothing that seemed to stretch forever in front of them. The slightest twitch in the wrong direction, the slightest shift or break of the coral, and it was all over. He let out a watery breath, aiming his webbed, claw-tipped hands for the creature's ticking tail. A little more...

The water shifted remarkably, sending them both to a hard right and the fish spinning around, darting out of sight in an instant. Meison yelled, flipping onto a hard rock and spinning around, glaring up at whatever sent them flying, sent his first real meal in ages flying away like a dart. But it wasn't an animal. It looked like one---the belly of a whale. But the water was too shallow for a whale, especially one that simply materialized suddenly. A ship. Its current. Something that laced the water. It fell fast, over him. He went back, flipping over something behind him, but he only succeeded in tangling himself even more. Whatever it was suddenly tightened, yanking him up and away from the bottom of the ocean floor.

Meison's eyes snapped open and he shifted backward, meeting cool, smooth wall. It sent him forward, into a stone that was surrounded by oddly-formed coral. Human-made. Human made, everywhere. What time was it...? He couldn't see the sun. He was inside. In a man-made thing. A fish out of water. Soon this... this prison would open and he would have to see his captors. He wanted to scream, but wouldn't give them the pleasure of hearing that.

This vessel. It moved. He was so close to his home and yet so far. He wanted out! When he was left alone, he banged on the walls, the see-through glass, glaring at everything he possibly could. He glared at the men and women, the ones in white and red clothing, at the machines beeping away. He wasn't stupid, he knew what all this was. He was trapped. They would... poke, prod, dissect him to figure out what he was if they didn't torture him first. Why hadn't he swam away? Like the tuna. Swam away and avoided the net. A dull, stupid fish was more intelligent than him, apparently, and so much more beautiful now. What was he? What did they think he was? Certainly not a merman. No, he might as well have been a monster. Maybe that was what they thought he was.

"Let me out... You dirty, disgusting creatures..." He glared at the closed door, and when it started to open, he flew backward as much as he could. Him. One of the men that had captured him. He looked young. How young? That didn't matter. Meison refused to look at him. He went to the rock and sat on it, smoothing his tail down as if it looked as beautiful as it used to be. No, it wasn't beautiful now. It was bulky and hard to maneuver. But it was his. And as far as Meison was concerned, anything on him was still more than worth protecting and petting. Even his tangled, ugly hair. His sickly green-yellow eyes. His sharp teeth that looked like an eel's teeth. He turned his back on the human.

Hated him. He hated him. Them. All of them! He wanted to see them hurt, but couldn't hurt them. Wanted to scream and yell at them every curse under the sun, everything he could think of in as many languages as he knew. But he wouldn't give them that. That was what they wanted. What this scrawny little thing wanted. He refused to acknowledge the human's presence.

Meison couldn't help but flinch at the way the human cretin beat the small fish against glass. The poor thing... At least he and his kind had the common decency to kill the things quickly rather than harm them first. He refused to acknowledge it when it was in his own tank, allowing it time to gather itself and have a fighting chance. Meison crossed his arms, digging his nails into his hard skin to keep himself from saying anything, though he couldn't ignore what the human said. It burned. It hurt. Ugly? What did it know about ugly? Humans were the ugly ones! Slow, clumsy, lumbering things. He gritted his teeth and slammed forward, pounding his fist on the glass wall.

But then, maybe he was wrong. This one wasn't ugly. It wasn't thick and stumpy in appearance. Rather, he was smoothly elegant. Tall. Meison growled, spinning around and slapping his tail against the wall, going behind the rock and huddling down between coral bits. His hair floated around his head like a small forest of kelp and seaweed. Perhaps it added to the cold, unfeeling manner the tank was laid out. The small, colorful fish found refuge in it, at least.

He pouted and moped, the way he always did. The way he had when he was cursed. Cursed. He didn't look like this. This disgusting skin. He wanted his old life back. Wanted to go back to where he was, how he used to be, back home. Atlantis. His home. Such a beautiful place. Not like what human legends wanted to describe---a place once sunk, a place that didn't exist, a place in ruins and deserted by everything and everyone but random marine life. It was big, and beautiful. It was in a cave that opened up to the sky, so it was saved from human sight.

He wanted to go back. Was it still the same? Years had passed... How many years? He couldn't remember, but he was sure his parents did. Was sure his siblings did. He hadn't been back since becoming this green, slimy, disgusting thing. He growled to himself, to the human that talked to him as if he couldn't understand a word he said. Maybe that was what he thought. Good. Good---he'd keep it that way. He would speak in an obscure, dead language. Atlantean. None of his people had spoken it since they had started watching humans all over the world. Russian, Italian, Egyptian, French, Spanish and Latin, Portuguese, and so on, but most predominant: English. This was the language that human spoke. Meison shook his head, making the little fish dart away and search for a new place to hide. He wanted it, much like he'd wanted the tuna. But it was small. Too small. He'd only want more, and desperation might send him to speak to the humans. So he wouldn't even look at it.

The way they watched him---wrote things down---it unnerved him. Not so much as the odd tilting of the tank. There was something wrong. A storm. The way the boat they were on swayed made the water in his tank do the same, tilt to the left, the right, force him to bob along. He swam in tight circles, wishing there was an exit but knowing there was none. the hot lights above him made it feel as if they were in tropical waters and he couldn't escape that, no matter where he went. He wanted it to be cooler---he was dying! Why couldn't this woman see it? She was writing, writing. Watching. Adjusting her glasses. She tilted her head sometimes and looked at him curiously. What was she thinking? Meison had never thought to learn to read faces.

He stopped spinning, pressing his face against the glass and trying to communicate that way. He refused to speak and that stubborn bone refused to budge. He knitted his nonexistent brow and turned away, feeling the sand. It was warm too, but not as bad as above his head, the top of the water, and if he kept moving he would stir the water until it was down with him. So instead, he dug. His webbed hands dug, scooping sand out until he felt cooler, hard ground. The bottom of the tank. He dug out more sand from around that area and curled inside it, scooping it slowly over him. It was cool, at least. Cool. If he kept warming up, he would eventually die. That had to be a fact... It certainly felt like it.

He couldn't take it. So hungry, but at the same time, so sickened by the unnatural way the world tilted this way and that. Hiding in the sand didn't help that, but it did help the heat, though no one would seem to leave him alone. The woman in the glasses kept tapping to get his attention, though after a time Meison refused to acknowledge her. And from the corner of his eye he watched her write something down, then go to a panel nearby. He huddled down and barely turned his head to watch what she was doing. Pushing buttons. He had no idea what these human contraptions did, but while he watched, the lighting dimmed a little. A red line grew shorter on one of the screens.

He didn't know what it meant, but the water was already noticeably cooler. He didn't thank anybody, however. He wanted out. To go back to his home of the ocean. Meison couldn't go back to Atlantis---he knew that. It wasn't his home anymore. It hadn't been for many years. But he could go back to what he had before he'd been caught. He wanted that now more than ever. Shifting a little, he buried his head to allow only his hair to come out of the sand. If anyone were to look, they might have thought him completely vanished.

Meison watched the newcomer. The one that had been present earlier. He looked damp and windswept though it seemed he tried to hide it. Slowly coming out of his hiding place, he slid through the water carefully, watching them. What were they saying? From the current state he couldn't understand them well, and when the woman left, he was sure he could be left alone now. But the human man didn't leave. Instead he came closer, up the ladder on the dry side of the tank with a handful of kelp. Disgusting. He hated it now, but only because he had been subsiding on it for days. He batted it away and slammed it to the ground with a strong slap of the tail. He wanted out, but wouldn't tell these humans. They wouldn't listen, anyway.

Instead, he swam around the edge of the tank, refusing to look up to the distorted face of the human above him. He wanted out. Away from these people. What were they going to do to him? He growled, feeling overcome by a combined anger and sadness, a sorrow that wanted him to cry, but wouldn't give them the chance to see that. He settled on the stone in the tank, and sung instead, as a whale. Whalesong was often heard in Atlantis, and around in the villages. It was a method to cry without feeling embarrassment, and often one would swim to the aid of the merfolk the song came from. However, no whale would hear. It was too high a tempo for them.

He was so stupid. So stupid. Why hadn't he swam away? Listened to the tuna? He could have found something else---some kind of human food, or something left in an unattended net. If he'd wanted to go closer to shore, of course, but he'd been too stubborn to let go of his tracked He fell silent when his voice broke, threatening to spill into actual, human sobbing. While the water wouldn't let anyone see tears, it would be more than obvious by his body language. He slithered along the bottom of the tank, growling, forcing self-pity and sadness to be replaced by anger, blame.

He didn't care what the human was talking about. Good that he had cried, good that he was sad. Maybe he knew how Meison felt, but then, he was still free to do as he pleased. He could go where he wanted. He wasn't in a cage. He was on a boat, but eventually he could leave. Go home. Something Meison couldn't do.

He glared at the little fish that now populated the tank. At least they had been given a chance to escape, within capacity. He chased them, snapping them up with his sharp, long teeth. He could probably do damage to someone that dared reach into this tank, try to touch him. He made a promise to himself that if that were to happen, they wouldn't leave unharmed.

Meison was starved enough to capture every one of the defenseless creatures despite having nowhere to run nor hide, and approaching him enough to hide in his seaweed-serpent-styled hair was a deathwish in and of itself. But at least they didn't die in vain, as Meison sighed and found himself the focus of the human that had sacrificed more than a dozen small yellow fish to something whose very race he didn't even know. He slid up to the surface and pulled himself up, looking over to the sleeping man. Did they know he could escape? Probably. But they must have figured out that he wouldn't get far at all. They probably had a constant guard much more vigilant than this one that was sleeping, leaning precariously in his metal chair, nearly about to fall as the boat slid left and right. He screamed, and dove back underneath the water, hiding behind the rock lest he implicate himself with the snicker he was trying to hide.

For once he found a reason to laugh, but couldn't let himself be seen doing so. The way the human had flailed to the ground in such confusion nearly made him lose his will, but he gritted his sharp teeth and lifted his head in acknowledgment when the human tapped the glass. He tilted his head, showing his confusion. He had no idea what the human was saying---or so the human had to keep thinking. He drifted forward, instead, slithering over the sand and settling down in a half-coiled, half-sitting position, and raised his hand, flattening it onto the glass. It was webbed heavily, giving him strong speed. He tapped the glass as the human did, his long claw-like nail sharply clicking. He hated that. Hated his hands. Himself. He wanted his old self back. So beautiful it was. So unlike this uncultured, greenish-brown skin he was forced to wear, like a heavy blanket under the hot sun.

Meison narrowed his slitted eyes, and tapped back, his hand flat against the glass tapping out a random tune he had heard one day some time ago. A group that had sung it on the beach when presenting some round foodstuff on fire to someone else. He'd not heard what they were saying---they were horrid singers, but someone had a stringed instrument, and had played out the tune they had been singing to. And why did the human look at him like that? Like he was so amazing? Or was it disgust? Meison cringed, backing away and digging himself back into the sand. He couldn't stand people looking at him in disgust. No one had managed to do that yet---he'd never let them see what he was. But now he was on display. Everyone could see him. And hate him.

Meison twitched his head toward the source of the sound. It reverberated through the tank but the source itself was more than obvious. And that sound. Music, in a way. Not merfolk music, certainly, it was too... grating. But it was familiar. That song. It sounded too happy. Too joyful. He growled, looking at the human and waving his hand as if to dismiss him, and buried himself. He didn't want to hear happy, pretty humans singing about... a happy birthday. Why did they make such a big deal out of turning another year older? They lived so briefly, after all, it was less of a celebration and more of a worry that soon enough they would be dead and gone.

He huffed, settling in his cool sand bed and glaring out, watching the human that was so easily startled. Why did he stare? Didn't he ever see a freak before?

He glared as hard as he could, almost hoping that his hot stare could force both the young man and the newcomer to burst into flame. But it was a false hope---fire was nothing his kind could use. How they spoke of him as if he weren't really there... He ground his teeth and was surprised that the heat from his own anger didn't noticeably raise the temperature in the tank. When they left, it felt as if the world shifted, and he slid out of his sandy bed, swimming in circles near the glassy walls. His tail slapped it quickly with each pass, making loud thumps that filled the room.

He stopped after the fourth pass, glaring around the room. "Bastards... Bastards! Thieves! Kidnappers!" He punched the wall, crying in pain. "Ow... You bastards! I hate you! I hate you all! You too, you mousy little creep! If you dare get near me I'll claw your eyes out! I'll rip your tongue out..." His voice faltered, and he settled on the ground. "Why does every dreadful thing happen to me? Always...? I hate this... I never should have left the city... I have nothing now... Not even my appearance... And I'm in a prison... A human prison!" He grabbed a fistful of sand and threw it, but it was a strange, almost powdery tropical sand, and it did little more than cloud around his head and send him coughing into another area of the tank.