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Description

Chapter 1
Sinking Feeling
    TWs: Description of a panic attack, references to drowning.
Notes: This is my first ever fic! Please let me know if it's any good! I'll also provide a link to Ao3 once I upload it there too. Thank you sooo much for reading!

    You slowly awoke to a strange landscape, completely unfamiliar and unlike anything you'd ever seen before. The last thing you remembered... It was all fuzzy. You were aboard a ship when stormy weather blew in and you'd been trying to get below deck when…

    You sat up slowly and gazed around, thinking that something didn't feel right… literally. The air around you felt heavy. The landscape, now that you got a good look at it, formed bizarre shapes in the distance. Your head felt groggy as though you’d just woken up from a long nap, but it didn’t feel as though you might have a concussion. There was no pain to make you think you’d hit your head, everything just felt off, like waking up and realizing you were still drunk from the night before.

    The last thing you remembered was being aboard a ship in the middle of the ocean. Yet as you looked around at the beautiful but foreign hills surrounding you, you realized there was no beach. It wasn’t as if you even washed up on shore, there was no shore. As far as you could see there was no water, no structures, no roads, no sign of humanity or being moved there for any reason. You were just laying on the ground in the middle of nowhere.

    Something small and silvery flew past you, close enough to ruffle your hair, followed by many more just like it. It was too close and moving too quickly to get a good look, but it certainly caught your eye and distracted your attention from the surrounding area.

    I guess the birds here aren’t afraid of people… You thought to yourself as you watched them swoop along in unison. As they got further away you noticed how the light shimmered off of their…

    Hang on, you thought, those birds don’t have wings. You first imagined that either a) in this strange land some kind of flightless birds, like puffins, shot around in the air telepathically, or b)... Actually, those appeared to be fish. As the mystery animals flocked away you squinted at them and saw that they definitely resembled silvery fish, which made about as much sense to you as the bizarre landscape you'd woken up in, puffin theory notwithstanding.

    You looked around for anything that might help explain your strange situation, and began noticing even more oddities. The plant life around you was overly colorful and completely alien to you. Small, bright scarlet branches stuck up from rocks, with huge purple and red fern-like plants growing around them. Tall willowy plants like giant, upright feather boas loomed overhead and swayed and caught the light in shades ranging from emerald to orange.

    The longer you looked, the more certain you were that you could not identify a single plant, and at this point you'd be willing to settle for one that even roughly resembled a tree. Meanwhile as you examined the flora you noticed even more crazy flying fish zooming around the exotic plants, going about their fish business.

    You looked upward, at least hoping to see the nice, familiar blue sky, and your growing feeling of anxiety turned into a terrible black despair as you took in the scene above.

    The sky was all wrong. For one thing, it was moving. The sun was white, and distorted, it seemed to dance above you, mocking you. That wasn't the worst of it though. High above you, like a dark cloud in the sky, you recognized the bottom of a large ship.

    Your ship. The one you were supposed to be on.

    You could see the ship being tossed around on the waves, almost half a mile above you. The sky, or what you’d thought was just the sky, rippled with waves and tossed the ship around like a toy.

    That's right, you thought to yourself, finally remembering, A wave came and I was swept overboard…

    All of this evidence before you, the fish, the ship, and the apparent fact you seemed to be sitting on the ocean floor, seemed to suggest the impossible. You took a deep breath and tried to wrap your head around it all, and suddenly you noticed that that felt weird too.

    You raised your hands to your face and immediately noticed the delicate webbing between your fingers that definitely was not there before. Your nails had become thick and strong, more clawlike actually, and on the back of your hand going up the back of your arm, scales shimmered in the light refracted from above.

    You craned your head around and panic started to seize your chest when you finally noticed that where your legs were supposed to be, was a long flexible tail tipped with a fish fin. Your mind raced, tumbling over different possibilities that are just as unlikely as what you were seeing.

    Is this a dream? Did I swallow too much seawater? Have I died and gone to Davy Jones's Locker?

     You were in the beginning stages of a panic attack when, to make matters worse, you noticed the ship you were supposed to be on began to pull away, and your rational mind spoke up.

    If that ship leaves, then whatever else is happening now, I’ll be stuck in the middle of the ocean with no idea where I am.

    So you decided to swim for it using your newfound fish powers, which proved to be easier said than done. Swimming like a fish apparently didn’t come naturally to you, as you “kicked” off of the ocean floor and did something like a somersault before landing on the ocean floor again. You hadn’t expected the burst of speed one flip of your tail would give you, and likewise wasn’t great at controlling it, but after a few more flops you managed to propel yourself in more or less the direction you needed.

    You were surprised and exhilarated by the sudden burst of speed. The water rushed past you, you could feel it streaming through your hair as you swam. It took very little effort to move this quickly and you soon got a steady rhythm going, with only a few occasional ungraceful moments where you were thrown off balance by moving your tail too much, or forgetting you didn't have two legs.

    You weren't sure how fast the ship was going, you were sure someone had once explained to you the difference in knots or kilometers at some point in your life, but you still thought the average person probably couldn’t swim as fast as a moving ship. Whatever you were now though had no trouble shortening the distance, even if you weren't an expert at using your tail yet.

    You planned to surface and yell for help. You hoped that at least someone might recognize you as at least a human, if not a passenger, and help you. You could sort the rest out later. You weren't sure what you looked like now, but you did know that there wouldn't be an easy way to board the ship on your own, unless you planned to climb up the hull using your new claws. However, without legs you'd have to pull yourself up with your arm strength only, and you weren’t sure how well that would work out.

    That was the plan anyway, but as soon as you neared the surface you noticed the light from above was growing to a blinding intensity. As far as you knew there was still a storm raging up above. The tossing of the waves and current confirmed as much, so it didn’t make sense that it seemed so bright.

    Earlier the reason you didn't realize immediately that you were underwater was that it was bright and clear, like a cloudy day on the surface, and you could see the ocean floor for miles around you as well as you could any landscape. There was a slight bluish tint to everything, but nothing like the deep blue haze you'd seen the ocean as before.

    Suddenly lightning flashed across the sky up above, and you almost screamed as your eyes were seared by the light. Nothing could have prepared you for that sudden shock, you’d thought the surface seemed bright before, but the lightning completely overwhelmed your sense of sight.

    Every attempt you made to reach the surface caused your head to ache and your eyes to burn after every flash of lightning, and after a while you decided to back off and attempt this again after the storm had passed. It would have been difficult to shout over the howling wind anyway, you reasoned. At least following the ship from below wouldn't be too hard with your new swimming ability, you could practically swim circles around it as it was being tossed about on the waves. This might also give the crew time to notice you were missing, which, you hoped, might mean they'd be less suspicious of a voice calling out to them from the water.
—
    You’d been following the stupid ship for hours, you were sure of it. The storm had died down, replaced by accursedly sunny weather, and you had to follow the ship from even deeper to avoid having to squint up at it.

     It wasn’t cold, at least. In fact it felt like you were getting a sunburn, even as far below the surface as you were swimming. You were hungry and exhausted, your new tail ached with new muscles that weren’t used to this kind of abuse. It was difficult to tell what time of day it was judging from below the water, but you felt sure your strength would give out before dusk came.

    A few times you attempted to squeeze your eyes shut and grab onto the ship’s side, at least to give yourself a break from swimming, but aside from a few barnacles you could get a hold on, the algae coating most of the lower ship made the hull slick, and even with your claws you couldn’t find a good place to hang on. Climbing up without any help seemed even more impossible.

    For the most part you’d been swimming along uninterrupted. A pod of dolphins briefly swam over and gave you some side-eye for a minute before gracefully diving away. That was fine, you were much more scared of them than they were of you. You’d seen other large non-dolphin shapes moving around down below, and you were trying very hard not to look too closely.

    To take your mind off of creatures of the deep and your growing fatigue, you took time to recall all of the old merfolk stories you’d ever heard and had time to consider how much of it could be based on truth, and whether any of it could be useful in your current situation. Probably not, was the conclusion you’d reached.

    Every sailor seemed to have a few stories about the time they’d seen a mermaid, or heard a ghostly siren’s song trying to lure them off to their deaths. These stories were as popular at sea as ghost stories were on land. Merfolk were usually depicted as tricksters, in some stories you’d heard they would offer help to sailors to guide them through mysterious fog, only to run their ships into rocks and leave them stranded. At best they were tricksters, at worst they had a taste for human flesh or just liked drowning people for the heck of it.

    None of the stories had any mention of humans turning into merpeople, only one you remembered was about a mermaid turning into a human and marrying a fisherman, and that one ended tragically for the fisherman of course. You couldn’t recall any that ended with the merfolk doing good deeds or being helpful, which made you worry about what the crew’s reaction to you might be.

    In addition to the mer stories, you’d had time to carefully consider what might happen if you did manage to get back on board your ship. In the best case scenario, whatever had happened to you that turned you into a fish-person would undo itself, and you would turn human again. You could continue on your voyage and hopefully leave this all behind you like a bad dream…

    That was a big ‘’If’. Much more likely you would be asked questions you had no answers to, examined, poked and embarrassed, and that was even if you got aboard the ship. What if the sailors saw the thing they were hauling up was not the missing passenger, but a sea creature? Would they throw you back? Maybe even try to hurt you?

    As much as you didn’t want to dwell on the negative, everything scared you right now. So much was unknown, and you were too tired and confused to sort it all out. You continued to follow the ship because you simply had nothing else you could do. You knew the ship was at least a few days away from its destination and there were no islands or stops along the way you could remember. Even if you couldn’t board the ship again, if you could at least figure out where you were somehow…

    With a start, you realized you’d sunk much lower in the water and the ship had gotten much further ahead of you. Your tail felt so tired and sore, each paddle felt like the last one you’d be able to make. Panic started to rise in your chest again as you tried to summon the energy to close the distance with the ship, but even with the additional adrenaline you barely managed to rise a few feet.

    I waited too long… You thought, as you were overwhelmed with despair, I should’ve called for help when I had the chance…

    Your despair was interrupted, however, as you noticed something shining in the distance.

    … A light?

    As you sunk deeper into the ocean from exhaustion, you could see a small greenish-yellow light appear on the horizon.

    That didn’t make any sense to you, and doubly so when you noticed more and more of them appearing like evening stars on the ocean floor. As you drew closer, still following the ship’s wake, what had appeared in the distance to be just some more weirdly shaped rocks revealed small structures that spiraled gracefully upwards like the spiral seashells you’d found on the beach as a child and pretended were tiny unicorn horns.

    Wait, are unicorns real too…? You thought dreamily. Err, no, not now. Focus.

    You tried to shake off the mental fog, for all you knew this could have been a hallucination, some sort of underwater mirage, or just wishful thinking. But as the ship’s path took you closer to the strange lights and shapes they seemed to look more and more like a tiny tribal village with two story huts built to look like upended shells. Some even had windows where the light could be seen from within, and a few had a slow stream of bubbles coming out of a hole in the roof, like a chimney.

    The area all around the village seemed to be cultivated, it looked like the residents had plowed fields into the ocean floor where different kinds of seaweeds and crops were growing. Other structures weren't as recognizable, but nothing looked menacing to you, it just looked like a little underwater hermit crab tribe.

    The shapes that swam around the little village were not crablike at all, you noticed. Even from a distance you could see human-like shapes with long, graceful tails topped with fins. Merfolk?

    You didn’t know if it was good luck that you happened upon the tribe, some kind of divine intervention, or maybe merfolk were more common than you realized. Maybe there were just more mysteries in the world that humans simply weren't aware of. In any case, in a few minutes the ship would have sailed past the underwater settlement, so you had a decision to make. You could try to swim a little lower to scout out the village from a safe distance and see if it looked promising. You weren’t sure if you had turned into a merfolk, or even what merfolk really were, but if they didn’t seem hostile towards you, maybe they could help in some way, at least by giving you directions or a place to rest.

    It just so happened that the decision was made for you while you were distracted. In your exhausted daze you didn’t notice a group coming up behind you, armed with spears, until they were close enough to have stabbed you with those spears.

    Startled, you did an ungraceful about-face in the water that looked more like a somersault as you lost your balance. When you finally righted yourself you noticed a couple of the spear-holders looked like they were trying not to laugh.

    They looked like merfolk to you, more or less. They had small scales covering their tails and the back of their arms and torsos, though you’d always seen merpeople depicted as being totally human on top with fish tails on the bottom. At least their faces looked mostly human, except for a patch of tiny scales below their cheekbones.

    More importantly, you’d always thought merfolk didn’t wear clothes, but this group was all dressed in tribal style outfits and armor, enough to cover their chests and hips, with different pieces on their tails or wrists. They all had chest coverings, in fact, even the ones that looked male, and there wasn't so much as a man-nipple present amongst them.

    You were suddenly aware that you were as naked as the day you were born. You weren’t sure what had happened to your clothes when you were washed overboard, but when you’d woken up on the ocean floor you were nude. You hadn’t thought to look for your clothes, as shocked as you were, but now you suddenly regretted it, realizing how odd you must look.

    You crossed your arms over your chest and tried not to look too embarrassed that you'd shown up underdressed.

    I’ll just explain the situation, you thought. They weren’t attacking you at least, merely treading water around you and exchanging looks between themselves.

    One of the merfolk who appeared to be female swam a little closer, holding her spear tip away from you so as not to scare you, you hoped. She sang some notes at you, though they sounded nothing like words in any language you’d ever heard. Unlike whales songs it was faster and higher pitched, with more notes and nuances. It was lovely, but you hoped it wasn’t the only language they spoke.

    Assuming the female was attempting to make a friendly gesture, you swam a little closer too, and tried saying “hello”.

    The noise you made sounded nothing at all like the word you were trying to say, sort of a muted, muffled version of it. Worse yet, bubbles escaped from your mouth making you look like you’d burped at her. Her song had produced no bubbles, and was elegant by comparison.

    The merfolk around you couldn’t contain what you assumed was laughter anymore, even though the female who addressed you scowled at them. Your face burnt with humiliation and you were pretty sure you were blushing from the top of your ears to the tip of your tail, made extra visible by the lack of covering.

    You tried again, thinking there might be some trick to it, but the only difference was a softer noise and a smaller stream of bubbles. You could feel panic rising in your chest now, as, ironically, your chest felt completely empty of air.

    Can merpeople drown? Your memory didn’t offer any helpful suggestions as you instinctively tried to fill your lungs, coughing and sputtering, but it just didn’t work. You could feel water flow in through your mouth and nose, but it seemed to bypass your lungs and rush out through your new gills instead. You continued trying to speak until the bubbles stopped forming… but so did any other sound you made.

    By this point the surrounding merpeople seemed to sense something was wrong with you, and the laughter stopped, replaced by concern and some wariness. The female had backed off and seemed to be warning the others in her group to do the same.

    Are they afraid of me? I’m not sick, and I’m not crazy! You wanted to tell them, as you realized the situation was getting out of hand. Your heart was hammering away so loudly you could feel it in your ears. Fear, fatigue, frustration, all of those emotions seemed to be melting together and competing against each other to be heard.

    Why can’t I speak? It’s hard enough being dumped in the ocean, I’m tired and I’m starving and I just want some help! Why is this happening?

    Your racing mind suddenly reminded you of something, and you whipped around. The sudden movement, coupled with the panic attack, left you feeling dizzy and your vision began to black out. Before it did, you saw the dark silhouette of the ship pulling away from you and fading away into the distance.

Description

Chapter 1
Sinking Feeling
    TWs: Description of a panic attack, references to drowning.
Notes: This is my first ever fic! Please let me know if it's any good! I'll also provide a link to Ao3 once I upload it there too. Thank you sooo much for reading!

    You slowly awoke to a strange landscape, completely unfamiliar and unlike anything you'd ever seen before. The last thing you remembered... It was all fuzzy. You were aboard a ship when stormy weather blew in and you'd been trying to get below deck when…

    You sat up slowly and gazed around, thinking that something didn't feel right… literally. The air around you felt heavy. The landscape, now that you got a good look at it, formed bizarre shapes in the distance. Your head felt groggy as though you’d just woken up from a long nap, but it didn’t feel as though you might have a concussion. There was no pain to make you think you’d hit your head, everything just felt off, like waking up and realizing you were still drunk from the night before.

    The last thing you remembered was being aboard a ship in the middle of the ocean. Yet as you looked around at the beautiful but foreign hills surrounding you, you realized there was no beach. It wasn’t as if you even washed up on shore, there was no shore. As far as you could see there was no water, no structures, no roads, no sign of humanity or being moved there for any reason. You were just laying on the ground in the middle of nowhere.

    Something small and silvery flew past you, close enough to ruffle your hair, followed by many more just like it. It was too close and moving too quickly to get a good look, but it certainly caught your eye and distracted your attention from the surrounding area.

    I guess the birds here aren’t afraid of people… You thought to yourself as you watched them swoop along in unison. As they got further away you noticed how the light shimmered off of their…

    Hang on, you thought, those birds don’t have wings. You first imagined that either a) in this strange land some kind of flightless birds, like puffins, shot around in the air telepathically, or b)... Actually, those appeared to be fish. As the mystery animals flocked away you squinted at them and saw that they definitely resembled silvery fish, which made about as much sense to you as the bizarre landscape you'd woken up in, puffin theory notwithstanding.

    You looked around for anything that might help explain your strange situation, and began noticing even more oddities. The plant life around you was overly colorful and completely alien to you. Small, bright scarlet branches stuck up from rocks, with huge purple and red fern-like plants growing around them. Tall willowy plants like giant, upright feather boas loomed overhead and swayed and caught the light in shades ranging from emerald to orange.

    The longer you looked, the more certain you were that you could not identify a single plant, and at this point you'd be willing to settle for one that even roughly resembled a tree. Meanwhile as you examined the flora you noticed even more crazy flying fish zooming around the exotic plants, going about their fish business.

    You looked upward, at least hoping to see the nice, familiar blue sky, and your growing feeling of anxiety turned into a terrible black despair as you took in the scene above.

    The sky was all wrong. For one thing, it was moving. The sun was white, and distorted, it seemed to dance above you, mocking you. That wasn't the worst of it though. High above you, like a dark cloud in the sky, you recognized the bottom of a large ship.

    Your ship. The one you were supposed to be on.

    You could see the ship being tossed around on the waves, almost half a mile above you. The sky, or what you’d thought was just the sky, rippled with waves and tossed the ship around like a toy.

    That's right, you thought to yourself, finally remembering, A wave came and I was swept overboard…

    All of this evidence before you, the fish, the ship, and the apparent fact you seemed to be sitting on the ocean floor, seemed to suggest the impossible. You took a deep breath and tried to wrap your head around it all, and suddenly you noticed that that felt weird too.

    You raised your hands to your face and immediately noticed the delicate webbing between your fingers that definitely was not there before. Your nails had become thick and strong, more clawlike actually, and on the back of your hand going up the back of your arm, scales shimmered in the light refracted from above.

    You craned your head around and panic started to seize your chest when you finally noticed that where your legs were supposed to be, was a long flexible tail tipped with a fish fin. Your mind raced, tumbling over different possibilities that are just as unlikely as what you were seeing.

    Is this a dream? Did I swallow too much seawater? Have I died and gone to Davy Jones's Locker?

     You were in the beginning stages of a panic attack when, to make matters worse, you noticed the ship you were supposed to be on began to pull away, and your rational mind spoke up.

    If that ship leaves, then whatever else is happening now, I’ll be stuck in the middle of the ocean with no idea where I am.

    So you decided to swim for it using your newfound fish powers, which proved to be easier said than done. Swimming like a fish apparently didn’t come naturally to you, as you “kicked” off of the ocean floor and did something like a somersault before landing on the ocean floor again. You hadn’t expected the burst of speed one flip of your tail would give you, and likewise wasn’t great at controlling it, but after a few more flops you managed to propel yourself in more or less the direction you needed.

    You were surprised and exhilarated by the sudden burst of speed. The water rushed past you, you could feel it streaming through your hair as you swam. It took very little effort to move this quickly and you soon got a steady rhythm going, with only a few occasional ungraceful moments where you were thrown off balance by moving your tail too much, or forgetting you didn't have two legs.

    You weren't sure how fast the ship was going, you were sure someone had once explained to you the difference in knots or kilometers at some point in your life, but you still thought the average person probably couldn’t swim as fast as a moving ship. Whatever you were now though had no trouble shortening the distance, even if you weren't an expert at using your tail yet.

    You planned to surface and yell for help. You hoped that at least someone might recognize you as at least a human, if not a passenger, and help you. You could sort the rest out later. You weren't sure what you looked like now, but you did know that there wouldn't be an easy way to board the ship on your own, unless you planned to climb up the hull using your new claws. However, without legs you'd have to pull yourself up with your arm strength only, and you weren’t sure how well that would work out.

    That was the plan anyway, but as soon as you neared the surface you noticed the light from above was growing to a blinding intensity. As far as you knew there was still a storm raging up above. The tossing of the waves and current confirmed as much, so it didn’t make sense that it seemed so bright.

    Earlier the reason you didn't realize immediately that you were underwater was that it was bright and clear, like a cloudy day on the surface, and you could see the ocean floor for miles around you as well as you could any landscape. There was a slight bluish tint to everything, but nothing like the deep blue haze you'd seen the ocean as before.

    Suddenly lightning flashed across the sky up above, and you almost screamed as your eyes were seared by the light. Nothing could have prepared you for that sudden shock, you’d thought the surface seemed bright before, but the lightning completely overwhelmed your sense of sight.

    Every attempt you made to reach the surface caused your head to ache and your eyes to burn after every flash of lightning, and after a while you decided to back off and attempt this again after the storm had passed. It would have been difficult to shout over the howling wind anyway, you reasoned. At least following the ship from below wouldn't be too hard with your new swimming ability, you could practically swim circles around it as it was being tossed about on the waves. This might also give the crew time to notice you were missing, which, you hoped, might mean they'd be less suspicious of a voice calling out to them from the water.
—
    You’d been following the stupid ship for hours, you were sure of it. The storm had died down, replaced by accursedly sunny weather, and you had to follow the ship from even deeper to avoid having to squint up at it.

     It wasn’t cold, at least. In fact it felt like you were getting a sunburn, even as far below the surface as you were swimming. You were hungry and exhausted, your new tail ached with new muscles that weren’t used to this kind of abuse. It was difficult to tell what time of day it was judging from below the water, but you felt sure your strength would give out before dusk came.

    A few times you attempted to squeeze your eyes shut and grab onto the ship’s side, at least to give yourself a break from swimming, but aside from a few barnacles you could get a hold on, the algae coating most of the lower ship made the hull slick, and even with your claws you couldn’t find a good place to hang on. Climbing up without any help seemed even more impossible.

    For the most part you’d been swimming along uninterrupted. A pod of dolphins briefly swam over and gave you some side-eye for a minute before gracefully diving away. That was fine, you were much more scared of them than they were of you. You’d seen other large non-dolphin shapes moving around down below, and you were trying very hard not to look too closely.

    To take your mind off of creatures of the deep and your growing fatigue, you took time to recall all of the old merfolk stories you’d ever heard and had time to consider how much of it could be based on truth, and whether any of it could be useful in your current situation. Probably not, was the conclusion you’d reached.

    Every sailor seemed to have a few stories about the time they’d seen a mermaid, or heard a ghostly siren’s song trying to lure them off to their deaths. These stories were as popular at sea as ghost stories were on land. Merfolk were usually depicted as tricksters, in some stories you’d heard they would offer help to sailors to guide them through mysterious fog, only to run their ships into rocks and leave them stranded. At best they were tricksters, at worst they had a taste for human flesh or just liked drowning people for the heck of it.

    None of the stories had any mention of humans turning into merpeople, only one you remembered was about a mermaid turning into a human and marrying a fisherman, and that one ended tragically for the fisherman of course. You couldn’t recall any that ended with the merfolk doing good deeds or being helpful, which made you worry about what the crew’s reaction to you might be.

    In addition to the mer stories, you’d had time to carefully consider what might happen if you did manage to get back on board your ship. In the best case scenario, whatever had happened to you that turned you into a fish-person would undo itself, and you would turn human again. You could continue on your voyage and hopefully leave this all behind you like a bad dream…

    That was a big ‘’If’. Much more likely you would be asked questions you had no answers to, examined, poked and embarrassed, and that was even if you got aboard the ship. What if the sailors saw the thing they were hauling up was not the missing passenger, but a sea creature? Would they throw you back? Maybe even try to hurt you?

    As much as you didn’t want to dwell on the negative, everything scared you right now. So much was unknown, and you were too tired and confused to sort it all out. You continued to follow the ship because you simply had nothing else you could do. You knew the ship was at least a few days away from its destination and there were no islands or stops along the way you could remember. Even if you couldn’t board the ship again, if you could at least figure out where you were somehow…

    With a start, you realized you’d sunk much lower in the water and the ship had gotten much further ahead of you. Your tail felt so tired and sore, each paddle felt like the last one you’d be able to make. Panic started to rise in your chest again as you tried to summon the energy to close the distance with the ship, but even with the additional adrenaline you barely managed to rise a few feet.

    I waited too long… You thought, as you were overwhelmed with despair, I should’ve called for help when I had the chance…

    Your despair was interrupted, however, as you noticed something shining in the distance.

    … A light?

    As you sunk deeper into the ocean from exhaustion, you could see a small greenish-yellow light appear on the horizon.

    That didn’t make any sense to you, and doubly so when you noticed more and more of them appearing like evening stars on the ocean floor. As you drew closer, still following the ship’s wake, what had appeared in the distance to be just some more weirdly shaped rocks revealed small structures that spiraled gracefully upwards like the spiral seashells you’d found on the beach as a child and pretended were tiny unicorn horns.

    Wait, are unicorns real too…? You thought dreamily. Err, no, not now. Focus.

    You tried to shake off the mental fog, for all you knew this could have been a hallucination, some sort of underwater mirage, or just wishful thinking. But as the ship’s path took you closer to the strange lights and shapes they seemed to look more and more like a tiny tribal village with two story huts built to look like upended shells. Some even had windows where the light could be seen from within, and a few had a slow stream of bubbles coming out of a hole in the roof, like a chimney.

    The area all around the village seemed to be cultivated, it looked like the residents had plowed fields into the ocean floor where different kinds of seaweeds and crops were growing. Other structures weren't as recognizable, but nothing looked menacing to you, it just looked like a little underwater hermit crab tribe.

    The shapes that swam around the little village were not crablike at all, you noticed. Even from a distance you could see human-like shapes with long, graceful tails topped with fins. Merfolk?

    You didn’t know if it was good luck that you happened upon the tribe, some kind of divine intervention, or maybe merfolk were more common than you realized. Maybe there were just more mysteries in the world that humans simply weren't aware of. In any case, in a few minutes the ship would have sailed past the underwater settlement, so you had a decision to make. You could try to swim a little lower to scout out the village from a safe distance and see if it looked promising. You weren’t sure if you had turned into a merfolk, or even what merfolk really were, but if they didn’t seem hostile towards you, maybe they could help in some way, at least by giving you directions or a place to rest.

    It just so happened that the decision was made for you while you were distracted. In your exhausted daze you didn’t notice a group coming up behind you, armed with spears, until they were close enough to have stabbed you with those spears.

    Startled, you did an ungraceful about-face in the water that looked more like a somersault as you lost your balance. When you finally righted yourself you noticed a couple of the spear-holders looked like they were trying not to laugh.

    They looked like merfolk to you, more or less. They had small scales covering their tails and the back of their arms and torsos, though you’d always seen merpeople depicted as being totally human on top with fish tails on the bottom. At least their faces looked mostly human, except for a patch of tiny scales below their cheekbones.

    More importantly, you’d always thought merfolk didn’t wear clothes, but this group was all dressed in tribal style outfits and armor, enough to cover their chests and hips, with different pieces on their tails or wrists. They all had chest coverings, in fact, even the ones that looked male, and there wasn't so much as a man-nipple present amongst them.

    You were suddenly aware that you were as naked as the day you were born. You weren’t sure what had happened to your clothes when you were washed overboard, but when you’d woken up on the ocean floor you were nude. You hadn’t thought to look for your clothes, as shocked as you were, but now you suddenly regretted it, realizing how odd you must look.

    You crossed your arms over your chest and tried not to look too embarrassed that you'd shown up underdressed.

    I’ll just explain the situation, you thought. They weren’t attacking you at least, merely treading water around you and exchanging looks between themselves.

    One of the merfolk who appeared to be female swam a little closer, holding her spear tip away from you so as not to scare you, you hoped. She sang some notes at you, though they sounded nothing like words in any language you’d ever heard. Unlike whales songs it was faster and higher pitched, with more notes and nuances. It was lovely, but you hoped it wasn’t the only language they spoke.

    Assuming the female was attempting to make a friendly gesture, you swam a little closer too, and tried saying “hello”.

    The noise you made sounded nothing at all like the word you were trying to say, sort of a muted, muffled version of it. Worse yet, bubbles escaped from your mouth making you look like you’d burped at her. Her song had produced no bubbles, and was elegant by comparison.

    The merfolk around you couldn’t contain what you assumed was laughter anymore, even though the female who addressed you scowled at them. Your face burnt with humiliation and you were pretty sure you were blushing from the top of your ears to the tip of your tail, made extra visible by the lack of covering.

    You tried again, thinking there might be some trick to it, but the only difference was a softer noise and a smaller stream of bubbles. You could feel panic rising in your chest now, as, ironically, your chest felt completely empty of air.

    Can merpeople drown? Your memory didn’t offer any helpful suggestions as you instinctively tried to fill your lungs, coughing and sputtering, but it just didn’t work. You could feel water flow in through your mouth and nose, but it seemed to bypass your lungs and rush out through your new gills instead. You continued trying to speak until the bubbles stopped forming… but so did any other sound you made.

    By this point the surrounding merpeople seemed to sense something was wrong with you, and the laughter stopped, replaced by concern and some wariness. The female had backed off and seemed to be warning the others in her group to do the same.

    Are they afraid of me? I’m not sick, and I’m not crazy! You wanted to tell them, as you realized the situation was getting out of hand. Your heart was hammering away so loudly you could feel it in your ears. Fear, fatigue, frustration, all of those emotions seemed to be melting together and competing against each other to be heard.

    Why can’t I speak? It’s hard enough being dumped in the ocean, I’m tired and I’m starving and I just want some help! Why is this happening?

    Your racing mind suddenly reminded you of something, and you whipped around. The sudden movement, coupled with the panic attack, left you feeling dizzy and your vision began to black out. Before it did, you saw the dark silhouette of the ship pulling away from you and fading away into the distance.