She was not supposed to be here. Riley knew that she would be in so much trouble if she were to be caught here. It was much further from her pod’s settling grounds than she was allowed to go and also incredibly dangerous. But Riley’s curiosity was getting the better of her. The water had a sweet quality to it that was strange, and a little thin, but it was not hurting her. It merely made breathing slightly strange.

Riley had never been in brackish water before. The reduced salt content as the fresh and sea waters mingled felt strange on her scales, and she found she sunk easier without paying express attention to her buoyancy. The water was incredibly shallow without much colour, and her fins stirred up the mucky sand. Here, the waterbed was littered with sticks and rocks and sunken leaves that made the dark, dense sand a silty mess.

It should have been unpleasant, but it was so different from any environment Riley had ever seen and she could not help but be fascinated by it. She flicked her fins and darted underneath a long dock that stretched out into the water. The wooden legs were green with algae and slick when Riley brushed against one of them. Her nose scrunched and she recoiled before slowly breaking the skin of the water.

Above her, the wooden slats stretched above her head, striping sunlight across her face and the surface of the darker water. It was warm and there were lots of pleasant sounds, from birds singing and wind rustling the leaves of the trees. Riley had only seen trees up close a few times in her life, and these were very different from the banana and coconut trees that grew on islands they sometimes passed by or lingered at. They had long, twisting branches and multiple little leaves that would occasionally fall and flutter to the ground. She had seen them from a distance over the last two turns but had snuck off for a closer look.

Not all of the sounds were pleasant, and as Riley peered up from around the dock, she could see a flock of squawkers flapping their white and gray wings furiously and screeching at one another as they fought over some strange-looking piece of old food in a wrapper of sorts. Riley’s nose crinkled again. Those birds were loud and rather gross. She could not understand the desire to fight over some leftover human trash when there were plenty of small fish swimming lazily around her.

The fight was broken up by a sharp sound that caused the birds to fly off. Riley jerked her attention further up the shore, through the trees, to where a human vehicle had just pulled up. Two of the doors had been noisily shut and Riley assumed that was what had spooked the birds. She had not seen many human vehicles before – not the land ones anyway – and despite how it smelled, she could not help leaning closer to peer at it.

Like all young Mer, she had been taught the dangers of getting too close to the shore or interacting with the people of the land and while she had no true desire to engage with them, she could not help feeling inquisitive about them. They had such a strange way of living with all their noisy machines and strange foods and habits. She had been learning their language – all the members of her pod did just in case of an incident – and while it was strange on her tongue, with far lower, less musical vocalizations than most of the ocean languages, it had been an interesting challenge.

A door on the side of the vehicle slid open and a human girl who looked about Riley’s age stepped out. She had straight, sun-streaked brown hair and heavily tanned skin. There was a strange tangle of wires hanging from her ears into a black box in her hands as she wandered from the vehicle.

There were two adult humans with her, a man with dark, earthy skin and even darker, shaggy hair, and a woman with fiery red curls and vivid green eyes. The woman had opened the back of the vehicle and she and the man were pulling various things from the inside. She looked up as the young girl began walking away from the vehicle and closer to the dock Riley was lurking beneath. “Katie!” she called.

The girl did not respond and continued walking, so the woman called her name a little louder. ‘Katie’ froze and turned to look at the woman while pulling one of the wires out of her ear. “Sorry,” she called back. “I couldn’t hear you.”

The woman laughed and shook her head. “Clearly. Turn that down so you can next time, okay? Lewis and I are going to get the campsite set up. Don’t wander too far.”

Katie nodded. “I won’t. I just want to dip my feet in the water. Do you need any help?”

“No, you’re alright, hon. We’ve got it. Why don’t you unplug that? It would be nice to have some music while we set up; the radio in the car has nothing but static this far out.”

Katie responded by tugging the wire out of the box she was holding. Once she did, the box began to sing. Human music was foreign – Riley had never heard it before – but she was instantly transfixed. There was a human voice singing in English, but behind the voice were several other sounds and tunes that made Riley’s head swim. Her mother had been training her singing voice for cycles, often until her throat hurt, but despite how unfun her mother made it, she did love the sound music made, and this was beyond anything one voice could do alone. She leaned a little closer to the shore until her belly was beached on the silt, still hidden in the shadow of the dock.

The music got louder as Katie got closer, her steps thumping overhead as she crossed the dock and sat with her legs dangling and her bare toes trailing through the water.

Riley chewed her lip. This was dangerous. The girl was too close and there was not enough proper cover. The gaps in the dock’s beams were wide enough that if the girl looked down, she would be able to see Riley’s tail. She knew she should leave, carefully and quietly to not be seen, but she found herself humming as quietly as she could in time with the tune the box was playing.

Katie had set it down beside her, but she was looking the other way. Riley chewed her lip. She knew it was wrong to steal, but she wanted a closer look at this box that sang with multiple voices and sounds she had never heard before. She liked it. She could always return it later.

Riley leaned out from beneath the dock to peer once more up the short, but the adult humans – whom she assumed were Katie’s parents – were out of sight. Taking a deep breath, Riley reached up and hauled her torso up onto the dock as silently as she could manage. It felt strange having her tail dangling in the air as she reached for the song box.

She had just laid her hand on it when Katie reached for it too and wound up grabbing Riley’s hand instead. They both squealed with surprise and Riley froze as Katie’s brown-green gaze twisted to fixate on her. It took Riley a moment to process what had happened, but once she did, she yanked her hand out of Katie’s and reared back. The motion caused her to lose her balance and she slipped off the dock with a splash and a dulled thump as she landed in the surf. The water barely covered parts of her tail and was shallow enough here that she would have to drag herself to swim away.

Riley’s heart was hammering in her chest as Katie peered over the side of the dock with wide eyes and parted lips. Riley tensed when the human girl mouthed the word ‘mermaid’, and showed she showed her fangs to the girl.

“Katie? Are you alright?”

They both flinched at the call. “I’m fine!” Katie called back without breaking eye contact. Then she lowered her voice almost to a whisper and her tone became softer. “It’s okay, I don’t want to hurt you…And I won’t tell anyone either.”

Riley’s heart was racing in her chest, pounding against her ribs as if caught in a trap. It was not that she was afraid of the young human. She knew she could win in a fight, and that no one would believe the girl if she tried to claim she had seen Riley. Humans did not believe the Mer existed. But being seen like this was still bad, and it was made worse by the fact that Riley did not have an easy escape route. She had beached herself in her distraction and could easily be grabbed while trying to haul herself into deeper waters. “P-pr-promise?” she stammered. She was not sure what made her speak to the other girl, but some part of her was desperate to ensure it. If she was believed or decided to get into a tussle with Riley, the other girl could pose a risk to her pod, and Riley had no desire to endanger them and also shuddered at how her mother would react.

Though Katie’s brows raised as Riley spoke, the girl smiled and nodded. “I promise,” she agreed. Riley felt a little tension slip from her shoulders. “My name’s Katie, what’s yours?”

Riley shook herself and rolled over to conceal her middle once more, then glanced back up at Katie. “Riley,” she responded.

“That’s pretty. I’m sorry that I scared you; I didn’t mean to.”

Riley scoffed and puffed out her chest. Her fins stirred the silt as she pulled herself a little deeper until her scales were submerged. “You did n-not,” Riley countered.

“Well, that’s good. You scared me though, what were you doing?”

Riley glanced down at the water and flicked her fins. She felt a surge of guilt over what had happened. Katie was rather friendly and Riley had known that taking something that did not belong to her was wrong, but it felt even worse now that she had been caught in the act. “I am sorry,” she apologized as she deflated.

“You were trying to take this?” she realized as she held up the song box.

Riley blushed and wrung her fingers, but she nodded reluctantly. “I would have given it back,” she defended softly. “I just wanted to see it. It sounds nice.”

Katie’s smile had widened when Riley glanced back up. She reached down to offer the sound box out. “Well here,” she offered. “You can look at it if you want; just don’t dunk it underwater, okay? That would wreck it.”

Riley nodded and shook her hands free of the worst of the clinging water droplets, and then carefully accepted the box. It was not heavy, though its song had changed, and Riley hummed in appreciation. She closed her eyes and listened for a few moments before her hum rose to match the underlying tune of the song.

“This is my favourite band,” Katie stated.

Riley did not know what a band was, but she had a more pressing question. “How?” she pressed as she waved the box in the air.

Katie shrugged. “I don’t really know how it works,” she admitted. “My mom loaded the music on for me, and there are buttons to turn it on and change the songs.”

“Oh,” Riley replied. “What are the sounds?”

“You mean the people singing?” Katie queried.

Riley shook her head. “No. The other sounds,” she elaborated. “The noises with the singers.”

“Oh! You mean the instruments. They’re musical devices that people play to produce extra sound for a song. I have to learn to play one next year at school.”

“Humans travel in schools?” Riley asked. She could not imagine a herd of humans running in the travel patterns that a school of fish did.

Katie began to laugh and shook her head. “No. A school is a building where we go to learn stuff.”

Riley nodded. Each answer brought new questions to her tongue and she wanted just sit and listen to the box while asking more and more of those questions, but she knew she could not. If she did not hurry back soon, her pod would begin to notice she was not just playing on the reef with the other young Mer. She reluctantly handed the box back. “I have to go,” she admitted.

Just as she was about to dive beneath the water, Katie stretched out a hand and called out to her. “Wait! Will you come back later, maybe?” she asked. “Tonight, when you won’t have to worry about being seen? I-I want to talk to you some more.”

Riley chewed her lip. Sneaking away at night was risky, but she had to admit that her adventure had been nice. She had gotten to introduce herself as Riley to someone who would not question it. Most in her pod continued to call her Raelyana because it was her mother’s wish. Even her friends did it if Iliene was within earshot. But Katie had just accepted it flatly, and Riley knew her curiosities would always nag her if she did not ask more.

“Okay,” she agreed hesitantly. “I will try.”

Katie smiled and Riley smiled back.