Lys and the soldier that he doesn’t bother to remember the name have been swimming for half a hour or so under water and just about to reach the surface of the sea.
The reason he’s staying under water for that long is because he was mesmerized by the view of the scenery he’d never seen in their territory before, and to curb in some anticipation for the bigger prize.
He saw plants, corals and fish alike he never meet inside their territory and it’s created such a wonderful feeling for someone who’s been seeing the same scenery over and over.
Although it was said like that, he has explored the area around his father territory for as far as he can, and as long as he can, when no one realize that he’s been gone for too long. When he get caught by the royal guards after they searched the whole territory, they will dragged him home and he’ll ended up listening to his whole family lectures.
Lys did not like one bit of their repeated lecturing, like ‘It’s too dangerous!’, ‘What If you get hurt?’, ‘Don’t go too far!’, ‘You might get eaten by the giant clam and turned to an ugly pearl!’ and on and on.
And ever since he was little, he never liked to heard others naggings and opinions of what he should and shouldn’t do. He do love his family and knew they only wanted to protect him, but it gets tiring fast when they didn’t believe in his own judgement of what’s best for himself. So he would often take a swim when no one is watching and explore to his heart content. Until he get caught again, period.
So when he finally thought that he sees the scenery under the water enough and swam to the surface with heart beating faster than ever, the feeling he have when he finally come face to face with the water surface and taking his first breath of air without having any water on his lung is something he cannot describe with words.
Mers have two respiratory organs, one is the gills on the side of their neck and body, and the secondary lungs where they can took a breath with the usually useless nose. They still can survive long with only using the secondary lungs, but they still have to get back to the water often if they didn’t want to dried up from water deficiencies and die.
It feels weird when the cold air suddenly replaced the water on his lungs and it did felt a little uncomfortable when he took his first breath, but as he get used to it and were able to control the rhythm of his breathing until he no longer felt the burns, there’s a feeling of comfort he never felt before when he takes a deep breath of the humid air to fill his lungs over and over, and he likes it very much.
And the scenery! The scenery he saw right now is something that he would never be able to imagined before. Not even in his wildest dream he would be able to think up this kind of beauty, and surely his grandmother’s or sisters’s stories he heard before could not describe the aesthetic of the Surface!
His first look on the Surface made him astonished with its magnificent views. A true beauty! It was a breathtaking and exquisite scene he would never forget in his life! Majestic!
A view where the sky is surrounded by thick and heavy clouds as dark as the deep sea without a hint of blue till far to the edge of the horizon. The world looks dark and grayish; blinding when the thread of the angry yellow light striking in between the fast moving clouds that’s hung low enough that made Lys think that he could touch it if he stretch his hand up, followed by a deafening sound of thunder that come after the light that seemed to slit the word in half. The winds blowing hard, and the sea waves was splashing his body and pushing him around continuously. Droplets of water that comes slowly from the sky when he first faces the open air then turned violent, touched the sea and his skin in heavy splash. It is definitely a sensation he never felt before in his life.
He looked around him wide eyed, taking everything for his memory to keep and continued to smile widely and he only have one thought, “Beautiful.”
All promises he made and warnings he received from his family vanished from his mind as he gazed with a bewitched look at the raging storms and the merciless waves.
He felt like he could watch it all year long and would not be bored in any way.
In between his wonder for the storm that happened around him, he doesn’t sees any living creatures in the storm beside the forgotten kingdom soldier behind him that he’d slapped away whenever he tries to pull him under. The soldier kept on giving him some very reasonable words like how dangerous it was to stays up there when there’s a storm in this scale.
The storm were raging more than ever and while Lys still think that it looks absolutely beautiful, it looks deathly to the soldier.
“Your Highness! Please listen to me! We need to go down now! It’s not safe to swim around in a storm! Please, follow me!” the soldier shouted to match the sound of the thunder and rain.
“So this is called the storm?” Lys said excitedly with sparkling eyes. The soldier gave him an incredulous look.
“Uh, yes it is, Your Highness, and its really dangerous! We have to dive now!”
“Why?”
“Er, um, because we might die, Your Highness.” The soldier tried to said the line with a serious face although he still felt that something is wrong with this prince. “The waves might still be fine for us, but if the lightning decided to struck down, we’re roast!”
“But look around you! Don’t you think its beautiful?” ask Lys, the excitement is clear in his voice, totally disregarding the soldier words.
For the first time in his life, the soldier questioning the sanity of the royal prince in front of him.
Letting himself off from the soldier’s grip, he kept on swimming on the surface, letting the violent waves tossing him around and felt the rain on his scales, while the poor soldier were having a hard time following him since he can’t possibly let the prince off of his sight.
The pitiful soldier now begin to regretted his choice of career.
While the soldier was suffering behind him, Lys were having fun playing (?) around the waves and in the midst of that he thought he heard the soldier crying and praying to the Mother Sea silently behind him, but he simply ignored it .
“This is really fun!” said Lys to no one in particular.
The soldier can’t disagree more to that statement.
After another half a hour being tossed around by the waves because the soldier persuasion and plead until his face gone pale wasn’t able to moves him at all to get him back inside the water, Lys finally spotted something big far in the north.
Curious, he swam to that direction, mainly because it is the only thing he saw for a while in the storm. Except for the soldier, of course.
He want to know if it was a creature he didn’t know of or maybe a thing made by the humans called ship. He found a few old ship carcass a few years ago when he was exploring their territory and it was one of his favourite hiding place when he’s being chased by the royal guards. There’s one or two nearer to the town, but it’s been remade as a pub and prince or no prince, he’s not allowed to enter it before the coming of age ceremony.
Noticing the same thing as the prince, the soldier immediately grabbed Lys's arm that he deliberately slapped away—again.
“Your Highness! Please, don’t go there! It’s very dangerous!” He tried to push Lys under again and tried to block him to go north, and Lys finally have enough of it.
“Oh for shark’s tooth. Come on man, stop yelling every time some interesting stuff happens! I just want to know what’s that giant thing was! Stop getting in my way!” he slipped away from the soldier and he may have elbowing him on his side to do so. “Just stay where you are If you’re too afraid. I’ll be back soon.” He takes off after saying that to the dumbfounded soldier that got hit without reason.
The soldier have no other choice but to chase after Lys that has gone under water like what he asked to do, although for a completely different reason than what the soldier have in mind in order to look at what lies on the north while cursing his life choice even more.
After a short while, they finally getting close enough to see that the thing is indeed was a human ship, to the soldier disappointment.
“Wow...” is the only thing that Lys can said, while beside him, the soldier are praying hard to the Mother Sea.
“O the holy almighty Mother Sea; mother of all the living and every creature; our protector and the only true light; I am a humble subject of yours begging you to keep us safe. Please don’t take us this early, I do still want to be alive,” and he added on his mind, “-and please slap some sense to this no-brainer prince. Do I have to serve him for all my life?”
While the soldier are still praying, Lys subconsciously swam closer to the ship and taking in every detail of the ship to his memory.
It was a fairly good medium sized ship with beautiful carving and pattern on the side of the ship body. In the bowsprit, there attached a figurehead of a creature he did not know the name of. The mainsail is sewn with some beautiful pattern and in the middle of it is the creature similar to the figurehead he saw on the bowsprit that probably was the symbol of the kingdom where the owner of ship come from. He couldn’t see well what’s on the ship deck, but what catch his attention is not the beauty of the ship, rather the condition of the ship at the moment.
The ship were moving around unstably when the waves keep on crashing to its body. The sailcloth is torn apart from its place. One of the mast is clearly burned, and begin to break down and its pieces is falling to the deck below it. And although he couldn’t figuring out what happened up there, the humans that he finally able to see for the first time in his life is running around frantically and shouting things that he can’t hear or understand clearly when the rain and the thunder that keep on booming in the sky obscuring his hearing.
Though he didn’t know much, Lys figured that they were trying to make the ship stable in the hopeless situation where yet another mizzen is teared up by a falling mast that most likely got hit by the lightning before.
He’s still able to see their face and emotion from far below, since the merfolks eyes is a lot more better than the humans to looked at the darkness and far away objects as the seas is far more darker than the Surface. The day has yet come to the end, but the surrounding area is indeed as dark as the nighttime.
The rain falls harder and his sight are becoming a little bit hazy, but looking at the scene where the humans faces is mostly filled with agony, fear, and hopelessness for knowing that they might die any moment in the sea if they can’t hold the ship up, he felt some pity for them.
He knew that there’s nothing he can do to help them, and even though he want to do something, the soldier that has reached him is still trying very hard to drag him underwater if not pushing him away from the scene.
Finally feeling bad at the soldier that have been trying to get him away from the sight of the humans (with no apparent result), he decided to continue his journey and leave the place that obviously going to became the ship—and all the humans on board—grave.
At that moment, his eyes caught a sight of a particular human that’s holding and pulling a rope on the deck. That said human did not dresses very differently from the other humans, but there’s something about that one particular human that make him couldn’t look away the moment he laid his eyes on him and that resulted in him shoving away the soldier that feeling betrayed when he thought that Lys finally regain some sanity and willing to go under water but then ended up staying a little bit longer on the water surface.
The human have a medium length auburn hair that stuck to his head like how his clothes sticking on his body because of the rain and sea water that’s got splashed on him. He didn’t appear to have a muscular body like the other humans he has seen on the ship, but he do have a graceful feature and a rather beautiful face than the other rough faced humans.
Human doesn’t looks that different from mers by much over the waist line, except mers have some extra gills, fins, and others fish things, their face do differ a little bit from the humans.
Although he didn’t know the beauty standard on the Land, his grandmother did said that it was fairly close to the mers beauty standard—only slightly lower.
“He’s a little thin,” he thought, “but his face is really beautiful.”
Like the ship, the two of them were swayed around by the waves, and seeing no sign of retreat from the prince, the soldier finally resorted to the begging mode at this point.
But Lys couldn’t takes his eyes away from the human’s beautiful face and the ship seems like its going to sink anytime soon.
He then heard the scream of another human, and it’s more noticeable because of the alarming rate of desperation on this voice and all of them looked to the direction he pointed. There’s no need to hear what he said at this point since on the right side of the ship, a huge waves taller than the remaining mast on the ship is coming toward them, and as beautiful as the human was, Lys know that staying on the surface is not a good idea at all and they all going to die if the waves hit the ship and the two of them swirled into the water vortex together with the ship and its debris.
He dove back in to the water while dragging the soldier that’s still gaping while looking at the waves direction with him as fast as he can, but it’s not before he saw the waves hit the ship and heard the screams that filled with agony of the humans in the ship before its muffled completely by the water.
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