#but it’s fiiiiiiiiiiiine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vivitheanimaxen · 5 months

Text

It had been almost a full moon cycle, and there was no sign of Tango anywhere.

Etho wouldn't say it out loud, but he was starting to get really worried. He knew better than anyone just how dangerous ocean currents could get in a storm, and how unpredictable they could end up being. Etho himself had been thrown into a crevasse he'd never seen before, which was great luck.

It meant that there wasn't a chance of him getting beached again. Etho made a habit of knowing which direction the shore was at all times, because land meant humans, and humans meant nothing good.

It hadn't taken long for Etho to get back to the valley where Doc's pod was set up, and beyond some minor scrapes and bruising, he'd gotten out of the whole incident pretty well off. Bdubs showed up a few days after him, cut up and missing a few scales, but not much worse for wear either.

And then a quarter-moon went by without Tango showing up. There wer no signs of him, period. Because of their connections through Doc and a few of the other big pods in the area, it was hard for a mer as distinctive looking as Tango to drop completely out of the ocean.

The only way for that to happen was if he'd been hurt bad enough to where he couldn't swim, or he'd been trapped somewhere he couldn't get out of.

That, or he'd been beached.

After a half-moon, Etho suspected that Tango was dead. Or worse.

Hopefully he was dead.

The hivemind had been able to track the storm that had caught Etho's pod off guard.

As it turns out, a large stationary pod in a very distinct location was a very good rendezvous point. The hivemind eventually got their hands on every rumor and scrap of news that made it's way through this part of the ocean.

The storm had swept inland, through a section of sea that was little more than sandbank after sandbank before it ran straight into the shore. It was seeming more and more like Tango had been beached.

Bdubs was insisting that they go looking for him.

Etho couldn't help but be hesitant about what they might find.

In the end, Etho gave in to Bdubs' desires, and they gathered what they needed to go searching. Etho made sure to pack a wide variety of medicines, things to fight an infection, even materials to splint a broken bone. He didn't know how badly Tango might've been hurt-- but it wasn't any question that he was.

And with a series of directions from the hivemind, they were off.

It was a tense quarter-moon for Etho, that was for sure. He hated being this close to land. Etho insisted on giving the human settlements right on the water a wide berth, so it took even longer for them to make any ground.

Etho didn't know what to expect or if they would find any signs of Tango at all.

Bdubs seemed convinced that they would find something.

Etho couldn't decide if finding Tango's scales on that jetty was a good thing or a bad thing.

They'd sheltered in a cove for the day, wanting to get out from under the pounding waves. Bdubs had found a sheltered spot where the waves wouldn't push them right up onto the sand. It was a place that formed a little eddy, where the debris was built up. There was a lot of seaweed and driftwood and human trash caught there.

It had been a flash of sun off some of that human trash that made Etho look closer.

It wasn't human trash at all-- and there were broken scales caught up in the mess. That was mer gear-- pouches and belts made from woven kelp and grasses, even some tools made from shell and flint. After looking closer, Etho's heart dropped out of his chest.

This was Tango's gear, those were Tango's scales, and someone-- or something-- had cut them off. Etho had never heard Bdubs as quiet as he was while they were picking through the mess, and he would probably never hear Bdubs that quiet again.

But the thing that really signed Tango's death sentence was the shredded sections of fishing net tangled in with his gear. And with how clean those cuts were?

Etho dropped what he was holding like it had burnt him. He turned away, squeezing his eyes shut against the dawning horror.

Humans had gotten to Tango. A fate worse than death.

"Etho?" Bdubs drifted closer, "Etho, are you-- are you okay?"

Etho couldn't respond, focused as he was on the water pumping over his gills and the flexing of his spines. The last thing he needed was to stick Bdubs right now. The hivemind had helped him to mix an antidote of sorts for his venom, after he'd accidentally gotten Tango once, but it still wasn't fun to experience.

And this close to a human road? Where they could be spotted if they weren't careful? It would be a death sentence for both of them.

"Hey. Hey-- Etho look at me--" Bdubs took Etho's face carefully in his hands, tipping his face up so their gazes met, "Whatever happened to Tango, we'll find him, alright?"

Etho hugged himself tighter, pressing his spines flat, "The humans got him, Bdubs. That's-- the cuts in his gear? In the netting? It's too clean to be anything but humans. Or another mer, but mer wouldn't cut off another mer's gear and discard it like trash."

"We'll still find him, Etho. Right? We've got to."

Etho puffed out a mouthful of bubbles, trying not to show the despair coating his every thought, "Sure, Bdubs."

"We can comb this place for any clues, I'm sure the humans would have left something." Bdubs gently laced his fingers into Etho's, pulling him away from the rocks, "Let's find a spot to sleep, it's almost noon and we've been up all night. We can come back after dark, all the humans will be asleep and we'll be able to search everything in peace."

Etho nodded, letting Bdubs lead him away. There was nothing they could do. Not right now, when the threat of being seen by humans was so great.

So, they found a sheltered place to hide, and Bdubs left Etho there while he went on a quick hunt. They'd brought food with them, rations that would last for days yet, but they needed to save that for when they found Tango. And right now, Etho was in no state of mind to be hunting.

Bdubs returned maybe an hour later, bringing with him a couple fish and a bundle of edible seaweed, pulled straight from the silt.

Etho ate what he could stomach-- which wasn't much-- and then curled up with Bdubs to hopefully get some rest.

They went back to the beach in the evening.

The tide was low, leaving numerous tidepools along the edges of the jetty where they'd found Tango's gear. Etho and Bdubs combed the beach like a pair of basking sharks, looking for any more signs that Tango had been there. They only came up with more meaningless debris and a few more of Tango's scales.

It was a testament to how distracted Etho was, that the humans had managed to get so close without him noticing. They were practically right in top of him, out on the rocks of the jetty.

"Shhh-- Skizz, you gotta turn off the light or you're gonna scare it away--"

"Ugh, fine. But it's you're own fault if you trip and fall into the water and drown."

Ironically, it'd been the sound of their voices that had alerted Etho to the human's presence, not the dim light they were using to navigate. He immediately took advantage of the light clicking off to dart into the shadows of the rock, whistling a desperate warning to Bdubs.

Also ironically, Bdubs didn't take the warning as a sign to hide. In fact, he popped his head above the water to get a better look.

Etho made a split-second decision, tackling Bdubs back down into the shadows where they could both stay safe and hidden, but it was too late. They'd surely been seen. Both of them.

"Why did you do that? Those might be the humans that took Tango!" Bdubs protested, squirming against Etho's grip.

"That's exactly why, Bdubs." Etho hissed, his eyes peeled for any sort of movement from the humans, "They might try to take us too--"

"Alright, fine. But we should still see if they have anything of Tango's."

"We are not attacking a group of humans. There's only two of us."

"There's only two of them too! We could take them. Especially if I can get them into the water."

"They aren't going to be lured in like fish, Bdubs, and there might be more of them." Etho frowned, letting go of his pod-mate, "But I might be able to get them into the water. But you've gotta stay right here. And stay hidden. Got that?"

Bdubs nodded. Etho could tell he wanted to ask more questions, but as long as he would stay put, Etho would answer all of them. Later.

Etho carefully poked his head above the water to listen, trying to gather more information on what was going on.

"I wasn't seeing things, right? There's two merpeople down there."

"Yeah, I saw them too. They know we're here though. I didn't see where they went. Can you?"

"No dude, they've completely disappeared!"

Good. They were hidden well enough.

"I've got a recording of tango on my phone from before he started talking. Maybe we can get them to come up?"

"That might work. Just be careful."

Etho had been preparing to call back to the humans in their own language, hoping to mimic the sound of one in trouble to get them close enough to pull into the sea with them, when he heard it.

That was Tango's voice. Calling out for him and Bdubs.

Etho choked on air, unable to help his own answering cry before he bit down on his hand to stop himself. No. It was a trick. Etho knew what a recording was. He'd seen them before, heard them before.

The voice was slurred and in pain, and flat in a way that only recordings could be, but it was unmistakably Tango.

The humans were trying to catch him and Bdubs too. That was the only reason they'd do this.

And the worst part was, it might actually work.

Their reaction to his call was immediate, the scuffling of human feet on rock coming closer to them. Etho couldn't focus, not with Tango's voice in his ears. He couldn't bring himself to duck away, to avoid being seen.

Bdubs popped up beside him a moment later, his fellow mer scanning the rocks for any sign of their missing podmate, "Etho-- What? Do they have Tango with them? I can hear him--"

Etho shook his head, fangs still buried in his hand to prevent himself from calling Tango's name, paralyzed as the pair of humans slid down the rocks down to where the tidal pools were, mere feet away from him and Bdubs.

Etho couldn't do anything but watch as he brought a fate worse than death down on the head of his last remaining podmate.

#ethoslab #bdubs #impulsesv #skizzleman #angst #minor self harm #panic attack #aka Etho has a trauma response #viviwrites #emberfish au #dont mind me #yall get a treat #it was time for a different perspective methinks #and I enjoy writing for Etho #we're totally not procrastinating my original story that i should be writing #its fiiiiiiiiiiiine #hermitfic

29 notes · View notes