When he awoke, he wished he was dead. Death was substantially less painful from what he understood. His eyes snapped open and went immediately to his leg, his face paling when he saw the ruined remnants of his leg. It had been coated in some sort of green paste and wrapped in a thin layer of seaweed, but he saw the damage nonetheless. He had felt the damage very clearly when the shark had been attacking him, but actually seeing it left him with the taste of bile in his mouth. Tendons, ligaments, muscles, they had all been cut to ribbons.
He glanced around the room where he was lying, taking stock of his situation. The room was a startling white color scheme, down to the sheets and he laid on. He heard the sound of voices coming from somewhere in the house, and he began to have an idea of where he was. A pair of crutches stood propped up in the corner, presumably for his use, and he immediately began to shift off the bed. He bit off a cry of pain as his leg sent pain rocketing up his leg. It came as no surprise to him that he could not move the limb even in the slightest. When he had managed to scoot himself to the edge of the bed he placed his good leg, his right leg, onto the ground and applied some pressure to it. His muscles were weak, but they were still usable. He reached for the crutches, leaning heavily on his right leg. His fingers brushed the very edge of the crutch, pushing it ever so slightly just further out of his reach. "You have got to be kidding me." He panted in fury, shifting ever so more precariously off of the bed. The last adjustment was all it took. His right leg could not take his full weight and buckled beneath him when he inexplicably slid off of the bed. He had previously thought that the pain in his leg could not get any worse. He really wished he was right. But he was very wrong. When his left leg hit the floor it sent tendrils of pure agony spiraling up his leg, drawing a cry of pain from his very being.
"Yup." He said through gritted teeth, tears of pain streaming down his eyes. "That hurt. That really hurt."
He had inadvertently pulled the sheets from the bed down with him when he fell and Sevan had the uncomfortable feeling of true helplessness. He disentangled himself quickly, tossing the sheets into the opposite corner of the room in frustration. The only bright side of his fall was that his impact with the floor had somehow caused the crutch to fall down the wall and was now in easy reach. He quickly took hold of the metal and began the slow process of pulling himself to his feet. It was not easy, nor was it quick, and by the end his chest, neck, and face were coated in sweat but he completed his task nonetheless. He stood shakily on his good leg, most of his body weight being supported by the crutch. "Alright," He said, wiping his face off with the hand not wrapped around his crutch. "First things first. Find out where I am, and why I am alive."
His first step with the crutch was difficult, he had never used them before, and it took him a few paces for him to get the relative pattern of his walking. It only took him reaching the outside of his room to immediately recognize where he was. The older mermaid's house. Rita Santos.
The very effort of getting out of the room he had been resting in left him breathing hard with even more sweat dropping from his chin. "Gotta get out of here." He grunted, taking another step forward. He truly hoped that they were not home, he could not begin to hope to outrun them if they prevented him from leaving.
Luck was not on his side as it seemed. He had just made it to the kitchen when Mimi came up, presumably from the grotto, she seemed as shocked as Sevan was furious. "You're up." She said, displaying a real ability for stating the obvious.
"Really?" He asked dryly. "I hadn't noticed."
"You shouldn't be moving around." She said, her gaze darting to his ravaged leg. "Rita put some medicine on it, but moving might reopen the wounds."
"I'll take care of myself." Sevan snapped, momentary guilt for his lack of gratitude washing over him. He groaned inwardly as the guilt assuaged him and he grunted out, "Why did you save me?"
"Because you saved that little land boy." Mimi said, shrugging. "And because Rita made us promise to help you if you needed it."
"Well, thanks." Sevan grumbled awkwardly. Now with all traces of guilt over his ingratitude suppressed, he attempted to draw himself up to his normal stature. It didn't work, his wounded leg throbbing in protest. He settled for a half-hunched, raised-chin, position. "But you don't need to look after me, I can take care of myself."
"With that leg?" Rita asked, appearing from the same direction that Mimi had come from. "I think not. The fact that you can even stand right now, crutch or not, is admirable in itself. The sharks severed your femoral artery, most of your major tendons, and quite a few muscles. Even with constant magical healing it is going to be at least a few months until you are back to your old self."
Sevan found it hard to argue with this. He needed his legs in proper working order for him to be able to work. A marine wildlife scientist with a bum leg was something of a misnomer, considering their job often required them to be on the move. But he still hated being beholden to the mermaids, he already owed them one favor for saving him from the sharks. If he accepted this offer, he was going to have to owe them a second one as well.
Apparently it was not hard for Rita to follow the swirl of thoughts going through Sevan's mind. "I understand that accepting help from us will be… difficult." She said delicately, "But it really is the only choice you have. I promise, the second you are able to move well enough on your own you can leave. I will not try to keep you here any longer than you wish to be."
"Fine… and thank you… again." Sevan said the words grudgingly, slipping from his mouth like sandpaper. He rubbed the shoulder that his crutch was tucked under uncomfortably and shifted the padded metal. "How did you know I was in trouble?"
"A shark told me." Mimi said, stating the answer like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "They can smell blood from a very far away. Ondina and I had been swimming by the reef when we saw it heading towards the beach. We followed it and asked, and that led us to you."
"We were almost too late." Ondina added emerging from the grotto. By her tone of voice Sevan guessed that she was rather disappointed they had managed to get there on time. "You had just hit the sea floor when we swam up. The sharks swam away when they saw us. I thought you were dead."
"In truth, I thought the same when they brought you to the grotto." Rita admitted. "You had lost a substantial amount of blood and you had swallowed a lot of water as well."
"Well. I suppose I can thank magic for the fact I am still breathing?" Sevan asked. It was his way of thanking them indirectly. He loathed thanking the creatures that had stolen so much from him, and this was somewhat of a middle ground.
They stood in an awkward silence after Sevan spoke, no one sure of how to respond to the statement. The silence stretched for a few moments with Mimi glancing between Sevan, Ondina, and Rita. Ondina and Sevan stared each other down and Rita seemed to be struggling with her natural inclination to say something to bridge the gap between the hunter and the mermaid. "My books." Sevan said finally, breaking the silence.
"They are still in the grotto, did you want-?" Rita began, before being abruptly cut off by Sevan.
"Not those." Sevan said with a shake of his head. He paused and amended his statement. "Well, those, but… I have others as well. They are in a storage warehouse by the Marine Park. I had been exchanging them with the ones at my house when I finished reading one."
"You were keeping secrets from us?" Ondina demanded. "After we saved your life?"
"No, I was keeping secrets before you saved my life." Sevan said with a roll of his eyes. "Besides, you have your secrets and I have mine. Like-." Sevan's eyes widened and he suddenly began to pat down his chest for his Moon Rings.
"Looking for these, I presume?" Rita asked, withdrawing the silver chain with the Rings upon them from her pocket. She extended her hand and Sevan quickly took them back, placing the chain safely back upon his neck. "I must say, you were quite fortunate that you had them. They had stored quite a large amount of magic inside them. Without them I am not entirely certain you would still be here."
"I guess they are my good luck charms." He said, patting them fondly.
"How did you get them?" Ondina blurted out, the question having clearly burned her for some time. "What happened to the mermaids that they belonged to?"
"Not sure." Sevan shrugged. He rubbed the chain absentmindedly between his thumb and forefinger as he continued, "Everything I had read about mermaids told me that your magic was linked to an item, something you had on you at all times."
"And that's another thing- how did you know about us?" Ondina demanded. "Humans shouldn't know about us. Even in the old days when land people were on wooden ships they thought we were myths."
Sevan stared at her, patiently waiting for her to finish her tirade before answering. "I didn't know about them." He said, his voice filled with quiet rage. "I didn't know about them until one night when I was twelve I went on a sail with my parents. We were on vacation, in the Caribbean, and it was late at night. My mom… she was fascinated by the way old-time sailors navigated by the stars and had learned how to do it herself. Night was their favorite time to sail. So we went out one night and sailed a few hours away from the docks. It was a clear night, the moon was full. Everything was fine until a weird fog suddenly came out of nowhere. It was thick, I could barely see a foot in front of me. That was when the singing started. It started really far off, but it came closer really fast. It was beautiful, hauntingly so. It made me want to get closer to it. My parents were the same way. They… they went in the water. At the same time. The second I heard them hit the water the song stopped and it was like my head cleared with the fog. But my parents… there was no sign of them. There was no sign of the owner of that voice either. I tried to find them, they had taught me to sail the boat in case something happened to them, but I didn't. Not a trace. I searched for what seemed like weeks, but it was probably only a few days. The owner of the sailboat had called in the boat as not returned and they eventually found me, all by myself out there. The local Coast Guard did their own search for them, but they didn't have any better luck. They were officially declared lost at sea two days after I was found. I told them about the singing and the fog, but they just chalked it up to my mind playing tricks on me. But I knew better."
Sevan's vision had slipped from the present and into the past, and as he related his tale he saw every moment as though it was happening in present time before him. He could see everything in perfect clarity, and that recollection had been what assured him that his mind had not been playing tricks on him. "So… I started looking. With my parents gone I went to live with my uncle, who happened to be working on a commercial fishing boat. Since I was only twelve, and he didn't want me home alone, he took me with him most days. Fishermen are a superstitious bunch. Hang around them long enough and you hear all sorts of legends. Like the legend of the sirens. Half-woman, half-fish beings that lured sailors to their death with their voices."
"But those were just legends…." Rita said slowly, her attention fixed upon Sevan.
"I had experienced that they were not just legends." Sevan shot back. "I knew in my core that a siren was what took my parents. So, I started researching. The days that my uncle didn't take me with him on the boat I went to the library. I dug up every article I could find on them, every journal, everything. But it wasn't enough. I needed more. That opportunity came one day when a researcher tagged along on my uncle's fishing boat to see the local marine ecosystem. I started talking to him and I guess he took a liking to me. He offered to take me along with him and his research team on an expedition to catalogue a rare type of shellfish. My uncle let me go and I suppose that I made a name for myself there. After that it was one research team after the other, all of them keen to have me along all because I had an eye for seeing things that other people tended to miss. It is because of that…. Well. That's really none of your concern, is it?" Sevan abruptly cut himself off and turned away, slowly crutching his way back to the room he had been resting in. He had spoken too much, and subsequently had given away far too much.