The next time Sherlock opened his eyes he was surrounded by water again, flooding him with relief assuming he was home, safe. His eyes stung and his dark curls floating around his head covering his eyes so he batted them away and wanted to cry at the sight he saw. Glass… Glass surrounded him in a box like cage, a tank.
He swam up towards the freezing cold glass that was containing him, the water was burning his skin and with inspection he realized it was not salt water, they was not even a grain of salt to be found no wonder he felt so sickly and dizzy, this was worse than being out in the open air for a long length of time!
Focusing his eyes he looked to the humans that were scurrying around the tank, typing away on strange devices, scribbling with pen to paper, examining what looked like to be scales under a microscope.
The child whimpered and floated away from the glass, flicking his tail he struggled to get up toward the surface, gasping as the warm air hit his face, expecting blue skies all he met with was a ceiling, just as if it was a bigger tank, he was locked in a building, goodness knows how far away from his home… his mother.
He placed his tiny hands on the ledge of the tank and peered over the platform, seeing a large staircase that lead from the ground up to the top of the tank, obviously so the humans can get up and down safely but just incase they was a metal gate at the top of the stairs in case the Mer managed to wiggle himself over to the stairs and fall down.
Something else that caught Sherlock's attention was a rotten smell, familiar but awful, so when his eyes landed on a massive bucket of dead fish he wanted to gag in disgust, praying that the humans did not force him to eat just rotten food. He had never eaten a fish in his life… His mother only really fed him with seaweed and sea plants, sometimes shrimp but never ever fish, it was disgusting.
Sinking down in the water he allowed a tear to fall down his pale cheek, missing his mother and honestly… he was not only scared, he was terrified!
He stayed terrified for the next ten or eleven years, adapting to his new diet and way of life, but every single day in his prison he sang a song that would echo through the warehouse hoping that one day his mother would hear him and come steal him away and take him home.
Life was just swimming around in a circle and adapting and surviving on only a diet of fish and if he was lucky some crappy tiny prawns that were not at all as delicious at the big fat ones he and his mother would find.
Now and again he would be partly lifted out of the water for them to take scaled from his tail, or examine his gills, even pulling strands of hair from his head to test and examine, but most of the time he was just swimming around looking pretty as he grew older and larger in the cramp tank.
Magic started to come to him on his tenth birthday, his soft songs became more of a enchantment on the humans, more than once they had absentmindedly climbed up the large stairs that would lead up to the top of the tank and try to reach into the water, to get closer to the beautiful Mer that they admired and in a way worshiped as though he was some kind of wish granter.
It always ended the same, the human male or female splashing into the water when they lost their balance on the edge of the ledge and the security team would rush up armed and prepared for an attack from the Merman which of case never would come, dragged the human out of the water and would punish the Mer by not feeding him again until the next evening.
Sherlock learnt to stop singing at all, unless he was sure they were no humans around which was every single night, the warehouse lights would be turned off apart from the tank light, signalling that it was night time and all the scientists were at home resting with their friends and families at the poor lonely Mer would swim around alone and amuse himself with his songs.
It was not until his fourteenth birthday that more magic came to him, one dull cold winter night he was floating above the surface water, singing softly up at the warehouse ceiling imagining in his mind's eye that he was gazing up at the moon and stars, oh how he missed watching the stunning reflection and the twinkling and the stories of stars being the Mer's ancestors gazing over them and protecting them from the evil human men.
He was pondering over his thoughts when he felt the water around him begin to move and swish around his tail, gasping he reached into the rapidly heating water that was beginning to boil and bubble and spread out his hand, not really knowing what he was attempting but it worked!
The water began to settle again and a thin sheet of ice began to cover the surface, in alarm he dove down back into the deep waters and stared up as the sheet connected together to form one massive sheet of thick ice, protecting him from the outside world.
It had taken him hours to figure out how to make the ice disappear again after somehow unknowingly making it appear.
Of course this was another little secret he would keep from the humans, amusing himself once the lights were out and he was completely alone he managed to get a somewhat sort of control over his powers and tried to explore what else he could do.
In many ways it helped keep his curiosity alive, stopped him practically dying from boredom in the awful prison cell.
Though life was bearable, he was not being physically harmed all that much, and he was still alive… He still yearned to get home, safe and sound to his mother, just to know that she was safe and that she too knew that he was safe in return.
And maybe his chance to do that was going to happen sooner than he had ever imagined.