“Naoto.”

A dark, pleasant nothingness gave way to a thick, slow awareness of his surroundings. Being awake was terrible. Naoto curled deeper into his comfortable nest of blankets.

“Naoto!” his dad again huffed.

Finally Naoto cracked open his eyes, blearily taking in what little light passed through his bedding. He let out a miserable noise in acknowledgement that he was at least conscious.

“Naoto, get up.” His dad nudged his tail fins.

Naoto felt him grab the edge of his hammock. The few seconds between being curled up and dumped out onto the floor felt like an era that didn’t last long enough. Naoto lay as a limp, bundled form on the floor, trying his hardest to block out the sudden light as his dad yanked the blankets off of him.

“I’m up,” Naoto moaned. His tail curled up so that his fins covered his eyes.

Ondes sighed. “We need to pack emergency bags, then open the clinic for half-service today.”

Naoto sat up. His senses still dulled by the dreamfish, he swayed back and forth ever-so-slightly on the floor - the motion made more apparent with his hair loose. “Are you…” he squinted as his mind still catching up with the previous day’s events. “Are you feeling okay enough for the clinic?”

“Feeling well enough to dump my son out of bed, aren’t I,” Ondes remarked with some pride. “Wait, are you-” Ondes’s eyes narrowed. Naoto had turned away, but the older mer grabbed his shoulders and spun him back around to face him. Naoto clenched his eyes shut, knowing exactly what his dad was looking at. “Dreamfish again, Naoto? You know how risky those are.”

Naoto shrugged his dad’s hands off his shoulders. “I couldn’t sleep,” he defensively snipped.

“Your pupils are still half the size of dinner plates,” Ondes pointed out. “If you had said something about not being able to sleep, I would have given you a deepkrait tincture. Honestly, someone else would think I’m not training you to be a healer properly.” With a small smirk, he patted his son’s head before gliding out the door. “I’ll make the carragheen cakes. You’re going to eat the carragheen cakes.”

Naoto yawned and then immediately grimaced at the taste of carragheen still on his tongue. He leaned his cheek on his knuckles, his elbow resting on the small reception desk in the clinic’s waiting area. Before him on the desk was a textbook, a metal currency tray, and a small ledger. He’d had to go over the contents of the textbook - Common Medical Applications of the Lantiq Ocean - three times that year. Ondes, however, deigned a fourth reread necessary as punishment for the dreamfish.

“I can’t hear you,” Ondes called from the other room. The soft sound of clinking jars and vials chimed after his words.

With the news of the Lotan lurking around in Seafaesi waters, nereids of all kinds were seeking to stock up on medicines for their own kits in the event disaster struck. The three nereids in the waiting area had paid for extra jars of gorgonian pastes, diluted tinctures, and bandages. A few of the older nereids that had come in questioned why Naoto, a known apprentice healer, was reading the textbook out loud while Ondes was the one preparing supplies; they nodded approvingly when Ondes had mentioned it was a punishment. Naoto was Ondes’s child first and his apprentice second.

Naoto’s shoulders drooped with a heavy, heavy sigh. “Sarpa salpa, commonly known as dreamfish, are a fish from the eastern region of the Lantiq Ocean,” he read, ignoring the embarrassing red overtaking his own facial features. “They are often used in the treatment of anxiety, depression, and insomnia. In order to be viable for medical use, they must be carefully submerged in a brining solution made from purified blue sea swallow extract and kept in a dark, cool place for no less than ninety days. Improperly mixed brining solutions can result in both sea swallow and dreamfish poisoning. Symptoms of dreamfish poisoning include: extreme fatigue and vivid hallucinations of a negative nature.”

Ondes emerged from the back of the clinic and, with a smile, handed the box of supplies he had prepared to a cecaelia woman who took them with a small smile of her own and left.

Naoto looked up at his dad. “I got to the page on dreamfish; backroom brining is dangerous, I get it. Can I stop now?”

Ondes tapped his chin in thought. “I think reading the page on carragheen again sounds about right.”

Naoto groaned and pressed his forehead to the pages of the book.

“Didn’t quite catch that,” Ondes said as he went to make the next order.

“Mastocarpus stellatus, commonly known as carragheen, is a species of red algae found in rocky areas of the northern Lantiq Ocean,” Naoto recited into the pages. “Medicinally it is used for the treatment of colds, outpost flu, and counteracting hallucinogens. It has a wide range of uses outside of medicine...”

Just then, the door to the clinic opened. In came an older mer woman accompanied by her son. She carried a small crate in her arms. She was stout in build, though the bright blue of her curly hair and scales gave away who she was; her son was the same bright, sapphire blue.

“Hey, man,” Lluvan greeted Naoto with a wave. His greeting fell short when Naoto lifted his head and cast a bleary look at him. “Oh. You look like you didn’t sleep well.”

“Lady Tiago, Lluvan,” Naoto greeted Lluvan’s mother, then his friend. He picked up the pen at his desk and smiled. “We’re only open for half-service today. I can take your order and my dad will fill it.”

Lady Tiago’s face scrunched. “I heard your father was not well again,” she said. “Why are you taking the orders, while he has to work back there?”

“That’s because he would find some way to entertain himself back there and he’s being punished,” Ondes said, returning with another filled order. He gave it to a syren couple that had been waiting before turning to the two Tiago’s. “He got into some homebrewed dreamfish. We don’t stock it in our clinic, so I’m not sure where he got it.”

Lluvan’s spine went rigid. He shifted his eyes to meet Naoto’s and mouthed “sorry”. In turn, Naoto mouthed back “run”.

Lady Tiago hummed in parental approval. “At least it was only dreamfish this time, no? Not like what happened with that syren boy, what was his name?”

Naoto’s smile immediately slid off his face at the mention of his ex.

Lluvan frowned. “Mom.”

“What? He was a circe syren. He tried to eat four people!”

“Yes, well, thank you for coming all this way,” Ondes quickly brushed aside the sensitive topic. “I can take that box for you and set about filling what you need.”

“Oh,” Lady Tiago breathed, then held the box out to Ondes. Inside were small bundles wrapped in frond paper. “This is extra food for you two. I know how sick you get, Aequitas. Why don’t you two close up for lunch and I can make sure you boys get fed properly.”

Lluvan leaned over the ornate dagger, dusky fingers hovering over the handle as if he were waiting for Naoto’s permission to actually touch it. “So you dad just gave you this? It looks like it costs some serious cash.”

Naoto sunk down onto his hammock. “He said my birth family left it.”

Noting Naoto’s demeanor, Lluvan tore his attention away from the dagger. “Look, I’m sorry my mom brought up Marsh.” Lluvan scratched at his gills. “She just doesn’t know when to stop sometimes, y’know? I know you really liked him… up to the whole ‘circe who drinks blood’ thing.”

Naoto shivered at memories of late nights spent beached on rocks, listening to the inky-haired syren’s song. Of looking into those ruby red eyes and feeling those soft, silver feathers. His fins shook receptively just remembering Marsh’s deep, smooth voice. There had never been any indication that Marsh was circe; that he fed on sentient peoples like nereids and overlanders.

“C’mon, man, it’s been, like, a whole year,” Lluvan flipped over and then sat directly on top of Naoto, like he were a comfy pillow. “You’ll find someone else - preferably someone who doesn’t try to eat you. But you have to get back out there. All you do right now is work and take care of your dad. You never come out ruin-diving with Keyes and me anymore.”

As soon as Naoto opened his mouth to respond, a great force shoved both of them into the wall next to his hammock. The house around them rocked, the great kelp forest outside trembled, the shaking sloshed them around the room. Things fell from the shelves in Naoto’s closet, the mirror on the wall fell and shattered, scattering shards onto the emergency bag he had only just packed. It came in four waves of force. Then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped.

The quiet after was unlike anything Naoto had ever experienced in his life. Everything was silent even though the ocean still stirred outside, sediment swirled all around. An uprooted kelp floated by Naoto’s bedroom window.

Lluvan tenderly pushed himself up off the floor. He winced as he touched a spot where some scales on his forearm had been scraped off by the edge of the hammock. “What was that?”