Well, here it is, my first Little Mermaid fanfic.
I'm not expecting too much attention for this, so out of my other stories this might not get updated as much.
But, I do hope that you enjoy the first chapter non the less :D
"I still don't see why I have to do this." A young boy with unruly black hair and green eyes sighed. His chin resting heavily on his knee and he idly tightened the knots on the fishing net.
"Well, you're 15 now, and it high time you started making regular practice of the family business." James, a large man with a bushy black beard and blue eyes, his father explained.
"How else are ya gonna provide for a family you might have someday?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe I'll find work that I'll actually enjoy." Morgen started. "I hate fishing, you know I do!"
"I don't like doing it and I don't like eating it!"
"Oh, Morgen, don't start this again." James said in an exasperated tone. "Fishing has been a big part of our family for generations; everything about it is like art to us, from the way tie the net, to how we real in the bounty."
"And if you want to always have a good haul in the end, you have got to start appreciating what's in your blood more than you do right now."
"I mean just look at the way you set down the anchor." He gestured to the large weight that Morgen had carelessly placed upside down after he pulled it up. He was surprised that it hadn't capsized the boat already. "If that's not un-appreciation, I don't know what is."
"Dad, it's a smelly old anchor."
"Oh, stow it and help me drop the net already." James said, giving up on the conversation. Morgen Just gave an irritated sigh, making sure that the ends of the net was secure, he gathered it up in his arms and tossed it overboard.
"'kay, now what?" Morgen asked.
"Now we row, and once we start dragging, we pull it back in." His father explained. "The only hard part to this job is making sure that your net is nice and sturdy, so why don't you keep practicing on the spare until it's time?"
Morgen rolled his eyes, but did as he was told. He was made to tie and patch nets since he was six, he could make a good net in his sleep.
But he hated fishing with a passion.
He father called it art, but the kind of art he was interested in involved a paint brush. It was his dream to capture sea life on a canvass, not capture it in a net.
SPLASH!
Morgen jumped when he felt droplets of sea water dot across his back and he looked behind him. He saw nothing at first, but then the grey body of a dolphin suddenly burst from the water, splashing him with water once again.
"Oh wow, it's a dolphin!" Morgen exclaimed with excitement, getting up on his knees and looking over the boat to get a better look while his net was left forgotten.
He suddenly heard James curse under his breath. "Of all the rotten luck." He stated. "If that things here it'll scare away any passing fish." He turned and started reeling in the net by himself. "Too bad dolphin meat ain't any good, otherwise it'd make for at least ten decent meals by itself."
"She's so beautiful, How could you possibly ever think of eating her?" Morgen asked with distaste as he kept his eyes train on the dolphin as she popped up her head to look at him with curious black eyes.
"It's a fish." James said.
"Actually, she's a mammal, just like we are." Morgen said, sending a glare over his shoulder. "And she has feelings too, just like we do."
He suddenly heard a clicking and he looked back to the dolphin just as she submerged and swam under the boat. Morgen crawled over the other side and peered over the rim of the boat. He could just make out her shape under the blue waters, but noticed that she suddenly stopped mid-swim, looking around as though she could sense something.
And whatever it was, she certainly didn't like it.
Without warning, she flipped around and made a mad dash to the other side of the boat, and Morgen's heart leaped into his throat when he saw that his father hadn't finished pulling up the net.
"Oh wait!" Morgen cried, "you'll swim into the-"
"WHOA!" James cried as he was nearly pulled over board.
His father was a rather large man, he towered over Morgen and his body, especially his arms, was big and toned from years of hauling fish. So when he felt something pulling at his most important piece of equipment for his trade, he stood up, planting his feet in the middle of the boat and starting pulling up the net with so much as getting winded.
But it started to get harder for him the closer the dolphin got the surface.
When he finally did managed to get the dolphin up, she was thrashing around so hard, it felt like he was trying to hold steady a whole pack of large dogs as they tried to pull away from him.
"The blasted thing's gonna snap the whole net apart!" His father strained while he tugged on the net harder, making the poor creature squeal in pain as the ropes tightened around her body.
"Dad, stop, you're hurting her!" Morgen yelled, pulling a knife out of his pocket.
"Don't you dare, boy!" His father warned when he saw the knife in his hand.
"What's worse, patching it up or repairing the entire thing?" Morgen demanded.
Deciding that his son had a point, he said nothing more against it as Morgen got to his knees and leaned over the edge of the boat and quickly started cutting at the ropes of the net, carefully calculating each strand so that it would cause the least amount of damage possible to both the dolphin and the net.
"Hurry, son," his father grunted, as he still tried to hold up the weight. "Don't know how much longer I can hold 'er!"
"I almost got it!" Morgen yelled, his arms and face were soaked with water from the amount of thrashing the frightened sea mammal was doing, it was a just one cord away from freedom. It was wrapped around her tail, so tightly from all the pulling and struggling, he could see that the underside was died red with her blood.
Morgen figured that she would have a scare around her tail for the rest of her life after this, but he'd think about that later. He had to get her out of this net!
"Just one…more…" SNAP!
Once it was cut, the Dolphin gave one last powerful thrash of its strong tail, breaking a chunk out from the side of the boat. Right were Morgen had put the ill placed Anchor.
His father, who had been leaning back at the time, fell over from the unexpected lack of weight, and the boat was rocked.
Morgen had been leaning of the edge, and he cried out when the boat rose up high, and came crashing down and submerge his head and shoulders, making him choke down a mouthful of sea water. He had pressed his knees hard against the side of the boat to keep from going overboard.
The Anchor, however, wasn't as lucky as its heavy bottom tumbled out the hole that was made by the dolphin.
And as Morgen lifted his head out of the water moving his arms through the surface of the water to keep his face up, coughing and trying to take a breath; he never noticed the rapidly descending rope of the heavy weight start to tangle around his right wrist until it was too late.
Morgen didn't have the same strength that his father did, so he had no chance of keeping himself in that boat when the slack finally tightened and pulled him under with a short gasp of surprise.
"Morgen!" James cried as he saw Morgen's legs disappear over the edge of the boat
The elder man instantly hurried over to the rope of the anchor that was still inside the boat. And despite the soreness he felt from holding on to the dolphin, began to reel it in, He frantically waited to feel drag from Morgen's weight, waiting for a sign that he was bringing him back up to the surface. But after a short while, his heart became ice cold with fear when all he brought back up was a severed end of a rope.
"No! Morgen!" James cried, rushing over to the edge of the boat. "MORGEN!"
But he could only watch helplessly as he saw the dark outline of his sons body fall further and further beneath the waves.
I actually have no idea what Dolphin tastes like, and I never will :/
Also, sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting familiar characters, but I assure that they'll be coming soon:D
Let me know what you think.