Chapter Text
You don’t dream. It’s something you’ve recently learned about after hearing the others talk about sleeping - which you know you do that - but they mentioned seeing things as they slept. Strange visions, or memories from days gone by.
You...you don’t have this. Never haunted by a nightmare or found joy in a dream, and realistically this doesn’t bother you. You find enough happiness in the world with your friends, why waste time in thought?
Except, except this has to be a dream. You don’t remember ever being in this place. This cold, cold place. There’s gritty stuff under you, and you feel so small. You look up and instead of currents and light, see darkness with speckles of little, light dots.
Breathing feels weird, too. Not as heavy, as deep as normal. You can’t even feel the water...but you see it. It’s right in front of you! You need to go back to it, back to the way things are supposed to be. Back to Error, to Sugar and Blood, to the silent one still in his cave.
You take a step forward. Step. No. Wrong. No no. That’s not supposed to be. These aren’t yours. They aren’t your fins. What are you. Where are you. Where is this. What is this.
W h a t i s h a p p e n i n g . . .
You jolt awake, head smacking into a rock. You can hear it crack, but ignore any pain. Checking over yourself, you’re pleased to see everything is back to how it’s supposed to be. Ahh, beautiful tail and scales!
Swimming out into the new day, you smile seeing the others...and try to forget your new thoughts.
Dreams are silly, anyways. They don’t mean anything.
***
Sugar and Blood keep their distance, but are friendly enough. You weren’t being good company anyways. Silent and waiting rather than loud and energetic. Letting out nervous little clicks, teeth tapping together.
This behavior continues for a small while, before Error seems to have enough. He’s swimming over to where you’ve been twisting and turning in your coils and just...floats onto your tail. Sits right down and crosses his arms.
“Alright, Levi. What-What’s got you all dizzy?” His question helps distract you from actually getting dizzy, but…
“I’m...not sure.” It’s the honest truth, and to stress it you gesture around you. “Things feel...off. Wrong. Feels like scales on end.”
You’ve gotten better at talking, having not done that for...um...you weren’t entirely sure, so going with forever seems safe. That doesn’t matter, though, because you’re learning and learning fast.
But you couldn’t explain this. Explain the sense of wrongness that’s worked its way into your skin, your veins. That was making you listen to even the tiniest of sounds, that makes you feel like there’s something you can’t see staring you in the eyes and you can’t place it but you know it’s there. You know it’s watching, and you don’t want it to be watching. You don’t WANT this feeling.
You feel your tail glowing, heat melting downwards and spines pointing up. You...you don’t know this color, on it. Wait! Wait you do know it, it’s —
“Red…?” The whisper catches your attention, and you turn to look at Blood, who is watching all this go down from a distance away. Sugar is floating behind him, and is radiating nerves.
You can relate.
“Huh. Don’t th-think we’ve seen this color yet…” Error reaches down, brushing lightly at a glowing line.
“FUCK!” He swims away fast, and you see it. Burns. Bright burns against his bones on his hand, and you feel cold again. Cold in your chest, cold in your stomach.
Cold, cold, cold on your face. He’s holding his hand close, poking at it and hissing each time as Sugar swims over to check on him, and Blood isn’t far behind but his eyes never leave you.
Never leaves your red, red, red markings meant to be green.
The cold on your cheeks hurts, and you think you're about to be sick but you can’t look away. You shouldn’t. You did this. You.
You swim away, heading down into the tunnels. Heading away from your...pod...friends…Error yells after you, but you don’t hear him. Not really.
You swim away from the skeletons, and hide away in the dark.
It’s what you know. It’s not unknown.
***
You’ve found somewhere quiet. Somewhere deep and dark, the low lighting makes your markings stand out so much more.
They’re green again. It doesn’t heal you, though. Doesn’t make the sick feeling go away. That twisting agony deep in your belly, curling against your skin and tightening around your lungs.
You keep seeing Error swim away. Swim away from what hurt him, a normal reaction to pain.
Keep swimming away from you. Not normal. You didn’t mean to hurt him, you aren’t even sure how you did it! You’ve never done that before!
There’s a lot of things you’ve never done before, you’re beginning to realize.
You’ve never talked before - but you had to have, otherwise you wouldn’t pick up on it so fast.
You’ve never had a friend before - but it feels familiar, and so so right.
You’ve never had weird, glowing markings before - not ones that used power before, ones that could hurt or heal.
Everything felt WRONG, and it was starting to hurt. Starting to be way too much, and you weren’t even sure on the words to use. You can’t figure out where to start, or how to start.
So you stay in the dark, and let the small currents push and pull water around you. This felt normal at least. You let your eyes slide shut, but you don’t dare to fall asleep.
Something taps your nose. Grumbling, you open your eyes back up. It’s the strange Mer, the only one who’s name you never got. He’s staring at you, and you stare back.
“...you ok?”
“...”
“...that's ok. I saw what happened. You didn’t mean it.”
“...”
“...I’m gonna sit right here. When you’re ready, we can go back together.”
“...My name is Anantashesha.”
“...Mouthful. I’m gonna call you Anna. I’m Geno.”
The silence isn’t bad. It’s good. You’re good, too.
You don’t think you like red anymore, though. Just because.
***
The way back up is easy to find, even though you’d been panicking on the way down. You smell dead sharks, and you’re pretty sure you can smell your friends' worries. You’d apologize once you get the chance. Geno is somewhere in your hair, having chosen to hide there on the way.
Something about not liking attention. You get that, Error seems that way too.
You poke your head out of the tunnel, and are instantly greeted with a...frantic Sugar? Seems he never left the entrance when you went down.
“There you are! Young lady you had us all worried!” His hands are on his hips, and he’s frowning at you, but you think his eyes look wetter than they should be.
“M’ sorry…” You end up whining it out, but he seems to accept your apology and pats your nose.
“It’s alright, we just want to make sure you’re ok. Now, come on, there is a very frantic Error looking for you. Blood is worried too, he’s just…not the best at showing it.”
The three of you swim back, where your pod turns to five. And Sugar is right, everyone had been worried about you. Error didn’t even bother hearing you apologize, just jumped straight into sticking next to you and promising he knew you didn’t mean to hurt him.
…It’s strange, the entire time no one really says anything to Geno.
***
You ask him about that, later, and he actually laughs.
“”It’s what my former pod was good at. Why my eyes are so shitty. We can basically make ourselves invisible, but at the cost of being so shortsighted.” He waves a hand out to you, and you coo over how cool it looks when it vanishes before your eyes, “I overused my magic running from the ones hunting us, so now I’m a bit stuck like this.”
Hmm, that sounded…concerning. “Hunting?”
“Yeah, hunting. Some group of Mers decided we were on their turf and went after us. I’m sure we won’t have to worry about them, though. Doubt anyone would go into your territory and try to start shit…”
It was odd, but you…thought you knew who he was talking about. Just for a bit, though. Might be something to consider later on.
For now, though, you’d enjoy talking with your new friend.
For now, everything was ok again.