Chapter 3
Nerida
Sand. Glass. A thousand invisible needles are scrubbing the moisture from my gills. The atmosphere here betrays me, a dry, scraping poison that violates my lungs with every desperate, heaving breath.
My world is weightless, a cradle of crushing dark and silence.
But this place is heavy. Gravity acts as a physical enemy, a giant’s hand pinning me to the floorboards, flattening the delicate arch of my spine until the vertebrae grind together.
My scales, stripped of their protective slime, feel tacky and tight.
They begin to itch, a maddening burn that screams of desiccation, of a slow, crumbling death.
I try to keen, to summon the distress call of the pod, but my throat produces only a dry, pathetic click.
The delicate filaments of my gills are sticking together, suffocating me from the inside out.
Gray fog eats the edges of my vision, narrowing the world to a tunnel of pain.
It smells of dust, dead wood, and dying things.
Then, the heat returns.
The land walker looms over me, a tower of flannel and violence. He smells of the storm, but beneath that lies a scent far more potent. Iron. Salt. Blood. My blood smeared on his chest, and his blood welling on his arm where my claws found purchase.
He rumbles words I do not know, the vibrations traveling through the floor and into my cheek.
The sounds are low and guttural, lacking the harmonic resonance of the deep, but they carry a frantic energy.
He sees the panic in my eyes. He sees the way my chest hitches, failing to pull oxygen from this thin, dry atmosphere.
His eyes, the color of shallow reef sand, go wide.
He reaches down.
A growl rips through my chest. I am a hunter of the trench.
I do not submit to the touch of another, certainly not a soft-skinned surface dweller.
I bare my teeth, needle-sharp and ready, but the threat is hollow.
My limbs are lead. I cannot swipe. I am nothing but meat on a slab, waiting for the butcher’s knife.
He ignores the teeth. He slides his arms under me, one beneath the aching curve of my tail, the other bracing my shoulders.
His body is a furnace. He burns against my cold skin, a shock of dry, mammalian heat that makes me flinch, but I have no strength to fight it.
The flannel of his shirt is rough, an abrasive texture against the sensitivity of my flank.
He lifts.
Gravity shifts, sending a spike of white agony through my side where the wood pierced me. A cry tears from my throat, high and whistling, hurting my ears. The room spins, a kaleidoscope of shadows and dust motes.
The male grunts, his jaw tight, sweat beading on his forehead.
He is strong for a soft-skinned thing. Muscles bunch beneath the fabric of his sleeves as he adjusts my weight.
He carries me through the air that feels thick as wool, his heart hammering a frantic, rabbit-rhythm against my ear.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It is the only familiar sound in this alien hell, a drumbeat of biology that mirrors my own fading pulse.
We pass through a doorway, leaving the scent of old wood for something sharper.
We move into a smaller, white, sterile cave.
The walls are hard and shiny, echoing the harsh artificial light like the inside of a polished conch shell.
The smell of chemicals is sharp enough to sting my drying nasal passages, a scent of artificial cleanliness that masks the underlying rot of the surface world.
He lowers me into a hollow, white basin.
It is cold. Hard. Porcelain bites into my skin, unyielding and slick.
It is a vessel shaped for legs, for creatures who bend at the knee, not for the length of a predator.
I am forced to coil, bending my spine, tucking the powerful muscle of my tail underneath me in a cramped, humiliating spiral.
My fins press uncomfortably against the sides. I am a leviathan trapped in a teacup.
Then, the sound.
A roar of pressure.
Water explodes from a metal spout, hitting my shoulder with delicious, freezing force. I gasp, arching my back into the stream, abandoning all dignity. It is fresh water, thin, tasteless, lacking the salt and minerals of home, but it is wet.
It is life.
The basin fills. The water rises around my hips, swirling over my waist, finally claiming my chest. The level creeps higher, a rising tide of salvation.
I slide down and submerge.
Oh.
The relief is a physical blow, a wave that washes away the burning itch.
The water separates my gill filaments, allowing them to flutter and expand.
I inhale. The oxygen content is low, pitiful compared to the deep, but it is there.
I pull it in, greedy and desperate. My lungs stop screaming.
My heart slows its frantic beating, settling into the slow, powerful thrum of a resting hunter.
I stay under for a long time, letting the water soak into my parched scales.
The slime coat begins to regenerate, a microscopic barrier reforming between the harshness of the world and me.
The pain in my side dulls to a manageable, familiar throbbing ache.
Pain is a constant in the trench. I can ignore pain, but not the dryness.
I open my eyes.
The world is blurry through the fresh water, distorted by ripples, but I can see him.
Jack.
He sits on a white lid, elbows on his knees, staring into the water. He is not hunting. He is… guarding? His posture is slumped, and the aggression drains out of him. He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration or exhaustion.
He turns his attention to his arm, where he wraps a white cloth around the forearm and pulls it tight with his teeth. The fabric blooms red.
I did that.
Blood clouds the water. The scent drifts toward me, tasting of iron and copper, and triggers a vicious, twisting ache in my stomach. I am entirely empty. Whatever energy I had left is being devoured by the wound in my side, leaving me with nothing.
I break the surface.
Water cascades off my face, dripping from my lashes. I take a breath of the humid air more easily now that my skin is wet. The bathroom is filled with steam, a micro-climate that mimics the coast’s fog.
Jack stops wrapping his arm. He stares at me, his face unreadable, his energy depleted and frayed like an old net. He looks exhausted. Dark circles bruise the skin beneath his eyes. He looks at me not as a monster, but as a problem he does not know how to solve.
I need to tell him.
I need to make the sound.
Communication with his kind is difficult.
Their language is flat, lacking the bioluminescent signaling and pressure waves of my people.
I force air through my vocal cords, shaping the clumsy sounds of the surface tongue.
It hurts to speak. My voice comes out doubled, the high, human-like pitch layered with the lower, resonant hum of the deep that vibrates in my chest.
“Hunger.”
The word hangs in the small, tiled room, echoing with a harmonic chime that shouldn’t exist in this air. It sounds ancient, demanding.
Jack blinks. He looks at my mouth, then my eyes. He seems surprised that I can speak at all. Slowly, his knees popping, he stands, then nods once, a silent acknowledgment of the predator’s need.
He leaves the room.
I am alone in the white shell.
I listen to his heavy footsteps retreating down the hall. Panic flares, a cold, sharp spike in my gut. If he leaves me here, in this small box of stagnant water, I will die. The oxygen in this basin is finite.
I cannot move.
I am trapped.
I try to shift my tail, but the porcelain is slippery, and the space is too small.
My fluke hits the metal tap with a clang that rings in my ears, and I hiss.
I am vulnerable here. Exposed. If he returns with a weapon, with a spear or a net, I have nowhere to go.
I am a queen of the ocean reduced to a curiosity in a jar.
I examine the wound in my side. The water is clouding slightly with my blood, a teal-black swirl against the white tub. The wood is gone, but the hole remains. It will heal, given time and food.
Mostly food.
The footsteps return.
He appears in the doorway, holding a plate. On it lies the flesh of the reef. Raw, pink, and white filets, glistening in the harsh artificial light. Snapper. I can smell the salt on them. I can smell the fear the fish felt when it died.
The man inches toward the basin's edge. A pale strip of flesh dangles from his trembling fingers. Fear rolls off him in waves—a smart reaction when offering food to something that views his hand as just another meal.
Water explodes as an arm breaks the surface. Claws scrape across the soft, radiating heat of his palm, snatching the prize before he can even blink. He recoils with a sharp gasp at the freezing contact, but the prize is already gone.
The meat slides down the throat in one ragged, unchewed lump. Cold. Sweet. It hits the bottom of a hollow gut like a lead weight, finally dulling the agonizing cramps. Torn muscle and tissue immediately scream for the raw protein, desperate to knit back together.
Bloody water drips from a heavy jaw. Across the room, the man refuses to step any closer. Instead, the next chunk sails through the air.
Jaws snap shut around it mid-flight.
A third piece follows. Then a fourth. The pristine tiles around the basin are quickly painted with splashed water and shredded sinew. There is no grace in survival. Starvation leaves no room for anything but teeth, blood, and the desperate, violent urge to live.
When the plate is empty, I lick the grease from my fingers. The webbing between them is sensitive, picking up the storm’s vibrations and the man’s rapid pulse in front of me.
The man remains rooted to the floor, knuckles white around the empty plate.
Revulsion twists his features at the slaughtered, bloody mess of the feeding, yet his gaze doesn't waver.
Wide, dark pupils track every movement. A frantic pulse beats against the thin skin of his throat—terrified, but completely anchored to the spot.
Across the room, a fresh crimson stain spreads through the white cloth wrapped around his forearm. With the immediate starvation finally dulled, the sharp, copper scent of human blood cuts through the damp air. It hangs there, thick and heavy.
Down in the dark water, a torn vein means something. An unreturned strike changes the hierarchy. He took the claws, let his blood spill, and didn't fight back. That makes him part of the trench now. Claimed.
A dripping hand extends toward him.
His shoulders flinch, muscles locking tight, but his boots stay planted. A single, wet fingertip presses against the soaked bandage. The searing heat of his wound bleeds instantly onto freezing, pale skin.
Above the ruined arm, his gray eyes are wide and locked on the contact. The terror is still there, sharp and bright, but he doesn't pull away. He doesn't strike. He just lets it happen.
“You bleed,” I say, my dual-voice vibrating against the tiles, filling the small space with a resonance that rattles the mirror.
I press my finger into the wound, just hard enough to make him hiss. A fresh well of crimson seeps through the fabric, coating my fingertip.
“My mark.”
I speak the words like a tether snapping taut.
Jack stares at me, forgetting to exhale. To him, this is just an injury, and I am just a beast acknowledging the blood. He has no idea what he has triggered.
I bring my finger to my lips and lick it clean. The taste is startling, heavy, warm, and metallic.
The plate drops from Jack’s grip, shattering on the floor. He doesn't look down. He just watches my lips.
The storm’s static seems to have moved inside, prickling against my wet skin. The dynamic has shifted. I am in his tub, in his home, at his mercy. And yet, he is the one trembling.
“Your… mark,” he whispers. His voice is rough, a rasp of sandpaper compared to the liquid smoothness of mine.
I sink lower into the water, until only my eyes and nose are visible, watching him over the rim of the porcelain. The pain in my side is a distant memory. The fear of the dry air is gone. There is only the water, the blood, and the man.
He steps back, retreating toward the door, but his eyes never leave mine. He looks like a man waking from a dream or perhaps walking into a nightmare he cannot resist.
He turns off the light, plunging the room into gray shadows.
“Sleep,” he commands, though it sounds more like a plea, then he closes the door.
I am alone in the dark, but the darkness is my friend. I curl my tail tighter, resting my head on the cool porcelain rim. I can still taste him on my tongue. The storm rages outside, battering the house, but inside, the water is still.
I close my eyes and listen to the house’s rhythm. I hear his footsteps overhead. I hear the creak of a bedspring. I hear the slow, steady thump of his heart, separated from me by wood and plaster, but loud as a drum in the silence.
He is marked and mine.
Tomorrow, if the dry air does not kill me, I will find out what that means in this strange, heavy world.