Growing up sheltered, I never understood why other merpeople lure humans into the sea and drown them. Our voices were blessings, not weapons… what changed?

Curiosity and pity welled up inside me, causing me to defy my kind for the first time: I intervened during a mermaid's lethal song, and brought the drowning man back to shore.

Now, hurt from being transported roughly, I sit in a white box of painful freshwater. Soon, two sets of footsteps approach; the man I saved and… another human.