I didn’t plan to ask her how her day had ended up with her in the boat in the middle of the storm, but apparently she planned to tell me anyway.

“There’s a herd of centaurs in town,” she started abruptly.  “We don’t always run in herds, but when we do, it’s dangerous.  It’s like a mob mentality.  I mean, we already have a reputation for all having a sadistic streak, which isn’t entirely untrue, but some of us just squelch it, you know?  I don’t want to be like that, so I’m careful.  I try to think really hard before I engage in any sort of fight with anyone and even then I’m really careful that I’m not crossing the line between normal stuff and just, you know, enjoying hurting someone.”  She frowned a bit.  “But a lot of us aren’t like that, especially when we’re in a herd.  It just gets worse.

“I’ve lived here about a year and a half and everything was fine.  Well, not fine exactly – there were two other centaurs in town that I knew of, and they didn’t like me much, but we just don’t cross into each other’s territory and it’s okay, it works out.  But then things changed.  Last week a bunch of their friends showed up.  I don’t know if it’s a permanent move, but I’m worried that it is, because they’re basically running around town in a herd and it’s – it’s gonna be bad if they keep going.  They targeted me first, because I’m a lone centaur, so it’s either join them or die, you know?  I didn’t want to join.  Don’t want to join.  I know all my work to contain my darker side will be immediately thrown away if I do that.  They’ll bring it out and in a herd like that, I probably can’t stop it.  So I don’t want to join, but I don’t want to die, either.”

She pulled her knees up a bit and rested her arms on them.  “I was trying to just avoid them or keep near some of the demons in town.  I’m friends with one of the pandemonium leaders, so that helps.  But they caught me yesterday as I was leaving work.  I guess they didn’t want to kill me outright – maybe too many questions, or maybe someone saw them?  I don’t know, but I woke up in that boat.  I’m pretty sure it’s Jade’s – she’s one of the centaurs who was here before.  They probably planned to claim I stole the boat and died in the storm.  And I would have died in the storm if it wasn’t for you.”  She finally looked over at me, then seemed startled at my expression.

“Are you okay?  You look really freaked out.”

I was really freaked out.  I knew of centaurs, I knew they were one of the more violent land supernaturals, and that meant she was just about the last person I would ever want to be around.  Even despite what she said about trying to hold herself back some, she still clearly had no problems getting into fights at times.  And that terrified me.

Violence scared me.  Sure, to most supernaturals, it was a part of life, but I’d been lucky enough to live in an extremely peaceful merfolk community that had never had any sort of merfolk conflicts, or at least not in more than 200 years.  In recent years, we probably owed that in large part to Jett, because anyone who might want to come in and challenge the Elder for the right of leading the town would also be aware that there was a freaking kraken who lived in town and, well, oceanids didn’t like fighting kraken.  No one did.  So because Jett lived here, we hadn’t had people come to challenge us in a long time, and that was exactly the way I liked it.  Even before he’d showed up, we’d managed to avoid conflict, but now it was even less likely anything would happen because no one wants to bother a kraken.

Which meant that to me, at least, merfolk represented peace and quiet while everyone else…did not.  Sure, I was aware that other merfolk communities weren’t like mine, but even other merfolk communities didn’t seem to have as many fights between themselves as a lot of supernaturals did.  Merfolk usually got along with other merfolk, apart from occasional attempts at power regime changes.  We didn’t usually have fights with our own kind over territory, or fights with other supernaturals because some were “light” and some were “dark” magic and therefore didn’t like each other.  We didn’t even usually have to worry about Hunters finding and killing us because, well, the ocean helped us out a bit.  Hunters couldn’t exactly find us down there.

But this particular supernatural was not only a member of a more violent species, she was in the middle of a fight herself.  And I wanted nothing to do with it.

I tried to even out my breathing as I looked away from her, pulling on my braid nervously as I did.  “My brother can take you to shore.  I’ll get him once the storm lets up some.”

She seemed really confused by my decision to ignore everything she said and started to ask me if I was okay again when we both turned abruptly, noticing someone approach us.

I was extremely surprised to recognize the stranger.  It was the sea otter shifter, and he looked kind of tired as he came up to us.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he told me without preamble, “but it seems you never come to the shore.  I guess I should have thought to look on the outer islands since that’s where I met you the first time.”  He paused, looking over at the other supernatural, his brow furrowing a bit.

“Centaur?”  He asked politely.

“Yep.  You an oceanid, too?”  She nodded in greeting to him.

He sat down at the fire, glancing at her and me like he was trying to figure out what was going on.  “Aquatic shifter,” he clarified.  “What exactly is a centaur doing out here, anyway?”

“I have a centaur herd trying to kill me because I don’t want to join them, they threw me in a boat to make it look more accidental, but miss, uh, I don’t know your name?”  She said in my direction.  “Miss oceanid here saved me and here we are.”

“Huh.”  He looked at me thoughtfully.  “You like to help people?  You were trying to help me when we first me.”

“Yeah, um, sorry about that.”  I shifted my position uncomfortably.  Great, what a lovely reunion.  And why was he looking for me, anyway?  To yell at me some more about why I was stupid enough to mistake him for an actual sea otter?  Wasn’t the first time enough embarrassment over that?

“I’m Charlotte,” the centaur suddenly volunteered.  She was taller than I was, but curvier.  Now that her hair was drying, I could tell it was a reddish color, which went with her fair skin.  I wondered if that meant her centaur form was a chestnut color before remembering that I really, really didn’t want to be involved with her.

“Theodore.  Most people call me Theo,” the shifter shrugged.  He had blonde hair and a slightly tanned complexion, likely from a lot of hours in the sun, while his body had broader shoulders and more muscle than my male form did.

Somehow, looking at both of them, I felt a little plain and inadequate.  Here they were curves and muscle and red hair and blond while I was just…slight built, minimally curvy even in my female form, and medium brown hair.  It sort of felt like the plain cousin up next to the pretty cousins.

“Okay, Teddy,” Charlotte grinned abruptly, bringing my focus back to them.

The shifter frowned in response.  “Theo,” he corrected.

“Teddy,” she seemed to enjoy this argument and looked like she was settling in for the long haul if he kept trying to disagree with her.

He folded his arms across his chest and gave her a firm stare.  “Theo.”

“Sage!”  I startled both of them with my sudden, almost shouted announcement, but it looked like they were just going to argue back and forth about what his nickname was and arguing, well…I didn’t know how violent she might be.  Land supernaturals – especially centaurs – were unpredictable to me.

“Nice to meet you, Sage,” Charlotte gave me what appeared to be a very real smile, but then…she was a centaur.  What if they smiled at people like that before killing them?

“Thanks for saving my life,” she added.  “And for agreeing to get someone to help take me to shore.  Unless you can?”  She looked at Theo with one brow raised.

I knew he couldn’t – he was way too small for that in shifted form – but he looked over at me, puzzled.

“Why can’t you take her?”

I scooted a couple inches further away from them both, wondering if it was okay for me to leave now.  If Theo was here, then Charlotte wasn’t alone, so I could leave and get Silas, right?

“I don’t go inland,” I mumbled in response to the question as I looked away from them both.  “I don’t usually surface if I can help it.”

“So,” he said slowly, his voice softer, kinder now, “when you came to find me – that was kind of a big allowance?  If you don’t normally come up on the surface?”

I really didn’t know why he insisted on bringing that up, in front of someone else, no less – just to make me more embarrassed?  Was he one of those people that liked to bully people by making them embarrassed in front of others?

I shrugged slightly.  “I’d heard there was a possibly injured sea otter, I just wanted to make sure it got help.  Sorry for not realizing you were a shifter.”

“Wait, you didn’t realize he was a shifter?”  Charlotte seemed startled.  “Wouldn’t you be able to tell he was a supernatural, at least?  And shifter would be obvious if he was an animal?”

“I can’t recognize supernaturals that way!”  I tried to hold back the frustrated tears.  It was enough that my face was red with embarrassment again.  “I just can’t.  To me, humans, supernaturals, animals – everyone reads the same.”

“Oh, huh.”  Charlotte sounded puzzled, but I wasn’t looking at either of them anymore.  “Is that why you stay underwater?  Because it’s hard to tell who’s safe or not – who’s supernatural or not?”

I threw her a slightly askance look.  “Someone being a supernatural or not doesn’t make them safe or not.  Anyway,” I was dying to be back in the water where I was safe – this was the longest I’d been out of the water since elementary school.  “Since Theo is here, you’re not alone, so can I go get my brother now to take you back?”

“Hold up!”  Theo sounded alarmed.  “Don’t rush off yet, please – I wanted to apologize for the other day first.  You were trying to help and I sort of…wasn’t great about it.”  He rubbed the back of his neck.  “I’ve been going through a lot lately and came out here for some peace and quiet, and I wasn’t really that great to you when that was interrupted, which wasn’t fair because you were just being nice.  I – my problems aren’t something that should hurt you.”  He looked forlorn now, sad, almost – depressed.  That was it.  That was what I’d felt from him when I first saw him.  Theo was depressed about something.

Depressed was harder for me to help with.  If it was one of my friends, I’d try, but he was a stranger I kept embarrassing myself in front of, and it seemed like he didn’t want people around him anyway, so probably I should just leave him alone.

Charlotte, however, didn’t seem to feel the same way.  “What’s your story?”  She rested her chin on her arms that were still folded across her knees, watching him intently.  “You heard mine, how I’m dealing with these centaurs.  What’s yours?”

Theo looked at her for a moment, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to tell her, but then maybe he just decided he had to tell someone, because he started to explain.  Haltingly, but without actually stopping.

“About six years ago I was part of a large sea otter raft – mostly shifters, though we did have a few actual sea otters that joined us from time to time – and I met this girl.  We dated, we got married – and about a year and a half ago we had a kid.”  He bowed his head and his fingers balled into a fist.  “But he was sick and we spent months in the hospital before – before he died.”  His voice went raw with emotion.  “Everyone told us it was just one of those things and we weren’t to blame and all, but he was my baby.  We’d looked forward to him for so long and then he just – he struggled so hard, and then he was gone and – ”  He stopped, struggling to speak for a long minute of silence.

Eventually, though, he continued.  “We both took it hard, but my wife – she started distancing herself from me after Arlo’s death.  It was like she couldn’t stand to look at me anymore, didn’t want to even be in the same room as me.  I tried to fix it, begged her to go to counseling with me, but she never agreed.  We’ve barely spoken in more than a year and don’t even live together anymore but then she came to me a couple months ago and wanted a divorce so she could marry someone else.  I wasn’t going to force her to stay, even though that wasn’t what I wanted, so it was finalized a month ago and I just – I lost my baby, which was devastating, but somehow I lost my wife, too, and I don’t even know what to do anymore.”

Neither Charlotte nor I knew how to respond to this revelation – it was a lot more than what I’d expected to hear – but I recovered first, my natural inclination to try to make people feel better taking over from my desire to escape.

Somehow I ended up scooting around the fire and resting my head on this almost-stranger’s shoulder as he sat there, miserable.

“I’m sorry,” I told him softly.  “No one should ever see their baby die.”

His shoulders started to shake and I could hear the tears quietly falling while, to my surprise, Charlotte came and sat on the other side of him.  She wasn’t quite as forward as I was, but rested hand on his arm in a comforting gesture.

“If I’d realized your story was all that, I wouldn’t have tried to force you to share,” she said softly, “but thank you for trusting us with your story anyway.  I know we can’t really fix it – no one can do that – but now you have some new friends who can help you start a new life.  I can’t promise I’m always the nicest person, but I’m a good friend, okay?  Or, um, I think I am.  I try to be.  Err, uh, anyway, Sage here is clearly one of those people who can’t help but be nice to people, so you at least have one good friend out of all this.”  She looked across his head at me, a mixture of worry and concern on her face, like she was trying to ask me for help figuring out what to say.

I didn’t really know what to say, either – what do you tell to someone when their child died and their wife left them as a result?  I didn’t think there was really anything I could say to help him and there wasn’t any way I could understand what he’d been through, either.