The boat sliced through water with ease. Long past was the storm, leaving behind a calm in it's wake which made traveling towards their destination a thing of leisure. That was for the crew of the ship. Those who worked for the scientists and researchers had their hands full. The tasks to be done were never ending, including a hastily placed call to their final destination.

When the office phone rang, he let out a long sigh. He hoped it wasn't any of the pesky investors, demanding something which they simply couldn't deliver. The facility wasn't created to house whales, and certainly not the kind that were near extinction. He'd tried to explain it many a time over.

"Hello?" The tall man bent his bespectacled head down to look at the papers littered across his desk. There were notes in his messy handwriting about the different needs of the creatures he cared for. Each one was special to him. Something his wife complained about constantly. They weren't on the best of terms, those days.

Trent nodded as he heard the details of his latest challenge, grabbing yet another piece of paper and scrawling things down with a hurried hand. "I'll take care of things. You won't be disappointed."

When she finally put her phone down, her head was throbbing. Millie's entire day had consisted of calling to re-order cleaning and tank supplies whose request forms had somehow become lost by an unreliable teenage secretary that had had better things on her mind than work. Several tons of sand for the tanks, cleaning solutions and new lighting covers for those that had become damaged by the large creatures the aquarium had on display. She had called in virtual miles of seaweed and kelp, pounds of coral and specially-farmed stone, and barrels of food for what they already had. Pushing back her reading glasses, Millie pinched the bridge of her nose and winced.

She needed to take care of that air-headed secretary, but didn't feel inclined to do so yet. Maybe not until tomorrow---though who knew what else she'd lose before the next sunrise? She could write up a dismissal and have her husband deliver it to the girl---the man needed to tear himself away from his fish for a little while, after all.

She sighed, returning her glasses to her eyes and pulling a form out of a small pile at the corner of her desk. With one hand threaded through her light brown hair, she began filling it out with light, swooping writing.

Trent righted himself with a smile ,and walked through his doorway and slipped into another without knocking. He faced his wife with trepidation, fingers tapping against his leg in an unconscious nervous gesture. "The research team called. They have a rather interesting specimen coming in. We'll need to prepare one of the large tanks for him, fill it with specimen of coral and rock, and kelp, from the Atlantic ocean. Strange thing ..." He fell into silence, and mussed up his black hair as he thought.

"Seems to be like a merman. It has arms, much like ours, thick skin .. Prefers it's meals to be live fish, like a shark does." Trent grinned, teeth flashing white in the fluorescent light. "Do you think we'll be able to bring in the necessary supplies before they come in?" He hoped they didn't end up disagreeing again. They always seemed to. Their disagreements were even slipping into working hours, something he knew they probably both hated. Work had always been their refuge.

Millie glanced up from her work and grimaced at the thought of a late arrival, but felt her face soften at the prospect of something different. It probably wasn't a merman, as Trent said, but some previously unknown species. What species could represent a human in such a way that they'd peg it a 'merman'? Whatever the case, she nodded slowly---she was tired, too tired to try to pick at anything that might bother her. "Well I just had to reorder most of what we should be getting tomorrow because our forgetful little secretary keeps thinking about her phone instead of work. Here." She offered the dismissal form. "Give this to her. I'll get some Atlantic-farmed oceanic necessities written and called up, but I won't be able to get a rush on those things... they'll arrive separate the usual deliveries but probably by the day after tomorrow..."

She sighed, pulling several green slips from a drawer and pausing before she started writing. "How're your projects doing?" She asked. They were less 'projects', really, but Millie knew of Trent's favorite fish as such. He fawned over them in a way he just didn't seem to do with her. Maybe that was why she just felt annoyed with him half the time.

"Another one gone, then." Shaking his head, he accepted the slip and tucked it away in his pocket after folding it too many times. It certainly wouldn't look professional, but Trent cared less about that then actually getting things done. The only details he liked thinking about concerned the creatures in his charge, and now there was one more to think of. "Thank you for ordering the new things."

He brightened at the mention of his favorites. " Oh, well the sharks are starting to adapt to their new meals. The turtles are interacting well with the new fish I've introduced into their tank. They appear to like the new company, but it's very hard to say what goes through the mind of animals. " Then he calmed, as if a bubble had been burst. Trent looked at all the paper upon his wife's desk, and shook his head.

"You do work too hard, Millie. What are you up to now?"

Millie couldn't help but smile, though it was against her better judgment. Trent seemed so... oblivious to social cues, the way a human was supposed to interact with another human. He might have caught the sad sigh she gave halfway through his happy details. But she shook that away when he snapped out of it, sitting back a little to inspect her desktop the way he did. "I've been restocking this entire place. It seems most of the people here are pretty incompetent and let our new secretary lose most of our approved orders. So I'm reordering those, and now placing orders for Atlantic-grown seaweeds, kelps, and sands and corals for our new arrival."

She sat back a little more, huddling down and taking her glasses off. "You don't really think we have a merman on the way, do you, Trent? I mean..." She chuckled, shaking her head and gathering up her hair. "I can't imagine it. Probably a new species of fish... or something that found its way up from one of the oceans unexplored trenches...? Maybe it's some form of raw evolution undiscovered since the dawn of more advanced life on earth...?" She shook her head, waving a hand as if dismissing herself. "What am I going on about, though? There's a reason I got into management and organization and not marine biology."

"I said like a merman. Millie, dear, I do like science far more then fantasy. I know it may not show sometimes ..." He smiled and settled down beside his wife, swinging his legs back and forth in an absentmindedly childish way. "But it is after all my strong point." He glanced at her. "Just like organization is yours."

He laughed. "I would lose my head, if you weren't there to make sure everything goes smoothly." And the fish would never get fed, he wouldn't for that matter either ... Though things were sorely strained between them. He couldn't understand why. He didn't think he had ever done anything wrong.

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The ship approached its home port by the hour. Julian found himself dreading the thought of land, of setting foot upon it. It was in that city that things had ended, and his ocean journey began. He didn't even have anywhere to stay anymore. No ties to bind him, no lies to harm him. Shaking his head, the young man walked to the railings and stared into the waves. At least there was the water to take his mind away from his worries. It would be so easy to just ... Shaking his head, Julian refused to let his thoughts even wander to such things as he watched the ship slice through water, leaving white foam in its wake.

Millie smiled lightly, rolling her eyes the slightest. Oftentimes she was reminded of why she started to love rent in the first place. She did want to make it work. She wanted her marriage to work like her parents' didn't. Perhaps if she just embraced his love of marine life a little more, she wouldn't feel as if he were ignoring her. Was it jealousy? She never took herself for the jealous type, but perhaps she was, just a bit.

"Well..." She nudged Trent's foot with her own. "Maybe I'll stop working so hard if you do the same."

---

Meison was sure he was suffocating. Dying little by little in his tiny prison. He banged on the glass with his fists and tail alike, screamed nonsense at anyone that came in and refused to go silent until they left. He refused to let them know he could understand them and their rude hand gestures or curses, but if they wanted to keep him from his home, they would have to wear ear plugs to do so.

Whatever language he was speaking, it was somewhat familiar. Some older form of Atlantean, something only scholars could understand, perhaps. But how he said anything from the old language Meison had no idea. Maybe it was just his desire to actually be saying something that bred that concept in his mind. He dug in the sand, using his webbed hands to scoop out great mounds of the stuff. Maybe if he forced himself to eat as much as he could, he would die before they could get their filthy hands on him. But the thought was a painful one. Frightening. If he hadn't managed to kill himself yet, he certainly wouldn't now.

Trent tilted his head to peer at his wife with a grin. "Then we should think about setting up a date. Maybe away from the aquarium, but to where?" He could think of no better place to spend time then in a place full of fish, of sea creatures ... But he knew Millie was often annoyed by his far too great liking of marine life. He wanted to make things work with her, to figure out had derailed their marriage.

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Julian had been delegated to taking care of the screaming sea creature who lay in the bowels of the ship. No one else dared approach him, save the scientists who didn't care. While the green being attacked the glass, Julian climbed up the ladder to drop more fish into the tank.

But something went wrong. The vessel shifted, tilting wildly as it was pushed to and fro by a suddenly violent sea. With a thud and a splash, the human fell into the water. He flailed and gasped. Fear slipped into his eyes as he moved his arms and kicked wildly to no avail. Fronds of vegetation wrapped around his ankles, and no matter how often he bent to try and free himself ... Well honestly, Julian just didn't want to free himself all that much.

A few people seemed utterly hell-bent on making his captured life miserable. Absolutely miserable and desolate. They'd approach, speak to him as if he were an infant, and wander off to their work again. Meison was growing more and more tired of screaming at them until they backed away, his throat painful, as if he swallowed a broken bottle like a fool. He stopped pounding on the tank, sighing and starting a circular motion near the sandy bottom of his prison.

Someone approached, and Meison glared toward them. That human again. The one that played music, that called him ugly. Meison watched from a darker area of the tank and gasped when a sudden shift sent him against the tank wall and introduced him to the human among a shower of small fish. Growling, Meison darted around the human and watched him try to escape, but get tangled in the small garden of seaweed and kelp in the center of the tank. No one was around to help, Meison found when he took inventory of the room outside the water. He approached the human carefully, glaring at him and taking in the way he struggled, then stopped. Did he find that escape was useless? Perhaps. Perhaps he had given up. Meison rolled his eyes, grabbing the seaweed around his ankles and uprooting it from the sand, bringing the human up and to the surface.

Instead of letting him go, Meison held him against the tank, head above water, and placed a hand around his neck. "Ugly." He hissed, glaring hard at the human, and turned him around, pushing him up and out of the water with no concern of how he fell when he was out.

The water cradled him, rocked back and forth a bit in a soothing manner. Then, something was pushing him up, just as Julian's vision began to darken. Cold glass against his skin, and something else around his neck. The young man coughed, struggled to breathe again even though he really didn't feel like it. There was a hissing sound in his ears though, one word ringing through the air. Ugly? Was someone talking about him?

Thump! Julian found himself splayed across the floor. Arms twinging, the young man struggled to sit up and stared at the tank and the evidence that the creature within was far more intelligent then anyone had given him credit for so far. "You ... saved me? " He stared, then screamed. "Why?"

Meison growled, glowering at the man and tasting the filth he brought in when he fell. Making a face, he hit the tank with a closed fist and shook his head. I shouldn't have saved you... He wanted to speak. Scream it. But he was afraid of what speaking would do. He was sure this human would run off to tell everyone else, and he'd be poked and prodded even more. Stared at. Watched. What horrifying tests and trials would they bring out if they knew he could speak? No. No, he couldn't let them know.

He hissed instead, flapping his tail at the glass and turning his back on the man, settling on the sand and crossing his arms in a blatant show of defiance. In his settled state, the hiding fish came out and began mulling about, chasing one another and trying to hide in Meison's hair.

"I know you can talk!" yelled Julian once more. He rushed the aquarium and banged against the glass angrily. "Tell me! Tell me why? It's not like anyone cares about me, least of all you." Self-scorn slipped into his voice. Self deprecating, and in despair, he slid down the glass and pressed his forehead against the transparent solid. He had given up! And now the one who had saved him had turned it's, his, back upon him without any reason for why he had acted in the first place.

Meison gritted his teeth, growling out a breath and spinning to face the human. What was he? Just a human, one of many, one of millions, billions. And here he was, one of the first to discover their finned counterparts existed. But he didn't even know what Meison was. Not even his own kind could tell, anymore. He flitted to the surface, breaching and leaning over the mouth of the tank, letting the water drip down on the man's head.

"I'm not cruel!" He screamed, his voice shrill and unnaturally high, hoarse after over a day of screaming to unnerve anyone that spent more than a few minutes with him. "Why would I let even a clunky human die when I could save him? Even after he catches me, takes me from my home and stuffs me into a tiny place and doesn't even take a moment to understand me? Where I am? What I am? Who I am? Why should you care so much?" Meison panted, feeling that this air was hot on his rough skin. He didn't like it.

He tilted his head back to glare at the merman. "I wanted it to end, I gave up! You had no right to pull me away from that." Julian slid his hands up the glass to support himself. "As for taking you away and all that, I had nothing to do with that. I've just tried to take care of you, or hadn't you noticed that I'm the only one other then the scientists who ever dare set foot down here?"

Julian turned away, wobbling upon unsteady feet and the ever swaying floor. He flopped into his chair, a metal affair, and stared up at Meison in a resigned way. What did it matter in the end? They were going to land soon. Unless he truly wanted to escaped everything, the coming confrontation would be inevitable. He needed to get everything from his apartment still, what had once been theirs.

Meison growled, feeling a dim rage begin to light up in the pit of his stomach. "You had no right to try to kill yourself in my presence. I thought I was selfish but you truly put me to shame." He dove down, grabbing some of the uprooted seaweed and flinging it at the human. "If you like to kill yourself, very well! Strangle yourself on that, but do not pollute my prison, disgusting enough as it is. But know this: Only a true coward would end their life. Have you been displaced? Taken from your home? Have you lost your whole family, are you afraid to go back home for the persecution you will suffer?"

He shook his head, brushing back his rough hair and diving back into the water. The air did well to dry his skin, unlike his original, flawlessly beautiful form. The air was not his friend, not that anything was his friend now.

"Have you lost the one person you thought you could never lose? No worse, been betrayed by them entirely? And the worst of it all is that no one will believe you." Julian glared at the merman. "No one listens to me when I say he stole everything I own. Destroyed my friendships, and took my job."

He snorted. "But what do you care?" Julian bent to pick up the kelp, and draped it around his neck casually. He could indeed end everything. He was on the very verge of deciding to do so. After all, he was delusional enough to think he was talking to a man like fish.

He returned to the surface slowly, draping himself over the edge. "You think you're so unique in your troubles. I lost my friends. I lost my family. I lost my home. In fact, I found out my friends loved me not for my presence or who I was, but for what I looked like. And when I became this monster they were so horrified... I knew I could never go home. What would my family say? My parents? They would never believe I was their son. Approaching town is impossible. My home is anywhere but my home. And have I ended it? No! No! I'm no coward. I don't give up, damn you! Not even when disgusting humans catch me and try to force me into things I don't want to do! Not only, now, have I been shunned from my city but I've been taken from my very home and placed in a strange new place with people watching me constantly! I'm treated like a fool, like a child, and do you care? No. So why should I?"

He dove back down, digging into the sand and burying himself again. He was finished. He didn't want to speak anymore. This human fool would never understand the persecution.

"You turned you back on them, you never gave them a chance. I did, and they turned away from me." Julian tapped the glass lightly, and walked away. He could have stayed down below, with the merman, but he didn't feel like talking anymore. It wasn't like imagining conversations with a mythical being could help him any. In fact it could only make matters worse.

So Julian went back to the drudgery of preparing the ship to land. Flashing port lights, city lights, bright in the night guided the vessel back. Oren helped him pull at ropes and tie things down. They heaved and pulled, muscles straining, until everything was in place. The scientists were just as busy, looking at their specimen and making sure the jarring of the ship as it pulled into port didn't unsettle them too much.

Meison growled. Of course he gave them a chance. The moment they darted away he knew he wasn't worth anything to them. Friends would have given him a chance. And he knew his family only fretted over him so because they wanted to preserve his unique, beautiful appearance. If they saw him now they would surely keel over. Or they would scare him off and never believe this abomination was their son. No, he couldn't give them a chance to reject him too.

When things began to get rough, Meison clenched at the sand and tried to keep himself from getting sick. Things didn't move right, they never did on a ship. They were strange and alien crafts and he never liked the way they moved about, shifted, and were so very fragile. But he thought, perhaps, if the ship were to crash, he could escape. Perhaps he could even show a little kindness and save some of the people on it. But they would surely still want to capture him.