If You Love Something
He supposed being stranded on an uninhabited island could have been worse, but after a few days since washing up on the pebbly shore, he had found that the island wasn't as empty and devoid of intellectual life as he thought – they lived in the ocean.
At first he couldn't believe his eyes. Mermaids of all things? Straight from the story books? Here? Of course he had heard the tales and the sailor stories, but to actually see something so mythological and absolutely impossible… Arthur had been sure that he was hallucinating.
For days he had watched them from the shade of the forest's edge, confused, awed, starving, and very alone. For days the mermaids called out to him, signing illustrious songs and plucking sweet notes from harps donned in seaweed. "Come and join us, young one. Come and listen to our song," they would cry to him as they ran bristled shells through their drying hair, their tailfins slapping at the surf and spraying droplets of water about.
After three days of watching and waiting, double checking and wondering if perhaps he was slowly going crazy, his fingers stained purple from desperate foraging in the bushes, Arthur fancied himself enchanted by the mystical creatures singing on the beach. On the fourth day he gathered up his courage, and when the mermaids called out to him, he obeyed.
They were ecstatic at Arthur's arrival, jumping and splashing about the shallows in glee. Arthur was more surprised that they hadn't been some realistic mirage created by his weary mind. Their hands were moist and webbed, the edges of their palms glistening with color that was unique to each mermaid. They fed him fish and muscles pulled from darkened shells, singing hymned songs as they washed and groomed him in a nearby freshwater pond – how he had never noticed it before, Arthur didn't know, but he certainly was grateful by its existence.
Arthur drank and ate cheerfully as he was neatly tended to. It had been a week since he had washed up on these deserted shores, and he had been positive that he would die on them, starving and dehydrated, as well.
As the group of mermaids worked, they never spoke directly to him, simply singing in watery voices and occasionally shooing off a younger maiden to fetch something. Arthur's hair was combed, the dirt, sweat, and salt washed from his skin. Kelp and blossoming aquatic flowers from the shallows of the ocean were draped and woven about his chest and legs. Arthur watched them; their hands, so seemingly clumsy with webbing, were swift and precise in their movements, their lips were shaped like curved bows around thin sets of sharpened teeth. The skin on their tails shimmered with water while their human-esque skin seemed to keep a constant dampness about it. They were, in all, eerie creatures with gemlike eyes and rounded breasts, absent of nipples and covered loosely with kelp and stringed pieces of shells. Eerie and not human, but frighteningly beautiful.
When they finished, Arthur glanced at his new apparel. Across his chest was a matted necklace of kelp, bright flowers woven into weaving designs; his legs were wrapped neatly in the green, leafy plant as well, fanning palm leaves and lilies tied to his feet in mock of the mermaid's elaborate tailfins. They carried him down the small, winding stream that emptied into the salty ocean before setting him gently in the surf and pressing pieces of colored shells into the wet sand around him. In confusion, Arthur could only watch, sated and awed, until all at once the mermaids flung themselves into the ocean and out of sight.
Arthur wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. For a few moments he waited to see if they would return, giggling and singing and going about their day as they had in the past. But when they didn't, he wondered if maybe he had dreamed up the entire occurrence out of delusion and a lack of clean water; but then he found his legs were still bound and his thirst was quenched – there had to have been an explanation. It was so strange, and so odd. Why would they simply leave him like that?
He struggled against the seaweed bindings, intent on returning to his makeshift camp in the forest, but then he heard a splash nearby. Arthur looked to the ocean to see if maybe one of the mermaids had come back to explain. He was half shocked to see a merman with wet blond hair and a crown of vibrant coral about his forehead, and half relieved that he wasn't as crazy as the thought he was after all.
The merman pulled himself along the surf, his dolphin-esque tail thudding in the sand as he went, his movements even still graceful until he was before Arthur, broad chested with streamline musculature – Arthur felt inadequate in comparison. He didn't know how to respond (what does a person say to a creature that is said to not exist at all?). Slowly he mustered his courage and said, "Hello…?"
Almost immediately the merman's hands were on him, touching his face and shoulders, long fingers rubbing against his nipples, moving around to his back and groping anything he could touch. Arthur sputtered in outrage, fighting against the merman's hold, but each time the merman asserted himself more and more forcefully until Arthur could do nothing but submit with loud curses and cries.
"I am Alfred," the merman said when Arthur had finally quieted.
The merman stared at Arthur expectantly, his eyes such an entrancing shade of blue that Arthur found he could not look away as he whispered, "Alfred…"
Alfred smiled, showing his pointed teeth. Arthur would have been unnerved if the smile hadn't seemed so sincere, if he hadn't felt so strangely numb. The merman gathered Arthur into his arms and said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of you from now on. You're mine… So you will have the best."
And it was at that moment Arthur realized he had become an exotic pet of a merman.