Swimming was… hard for a wounded fish. At least, that’s what you assumed, staring at the bleeding merman that washed up on the shore at your feet.

You loved beach walks at night. They calmed you, your weary head clearing as you sank your feet in the sand, your shoes in your left hand. You got off work late, had nobody to come home to, your day was the same daily. It only served to bother you. Your body was tired, and your heart was growing exhausted.

“Gods, could I just have one interesting thing happen?” You’d plead, gazing up at the sky with a sigh as you stood in the dark. The stars were barely there, your dry eyes longing to close and bask in the cold. “Just one. Just… something.”

See, when you asked for an interesting story to be told to you, you hadn’t thought someone would read one. You were only asking the air as if it could answer you, despite knowing it couldn’t.

Until it did.

It answered.

Your eyes open abruptly as you hear the sound of splashing, vaguely spotting something flailing in the vast distance. You drop the shoes in your hand, your feet thinning faster than your mind. You surged forward, thinking you laid your eyes on a drowning man, until you saw it. That tail, glittering in the vague reflected light of the moon, iridescent and… unreal. Fantasy. A merman.

Blood, gold and silky, poured from a heap of torn scales on his tail. He flopped helplessly, no better than a caught fish. Wrangling against a net, he fought with vigor as he tried to release himself. You let out a sigh as he stops his writhing for a brief moment, heaving as he regained his stamina against the harsh oxygen of the air.

-“Human.” He called, his gaze of lavender directing itself toward you, rocking himself back and forth to flip himself onto his stomach, the action only serving to tangle himself further. “Free me. I beg of you.”