Voryn || MERS OF THE DEEP

Sunlight cuts through the water in gold bands. The reef mer pod goes about its business below — juveniles chasing each other through the sea fans, a bonded pair drifting along the edge, a cleaning station with a short line. None of them have ever paid you any attention.

Two figures hover at the far shelf where the coral drops off into open blue. They don't join the pod. They don't approach the buoys. They just watch. The pale one above the black coral is impossible to miss — white hair drifting, scales throwing back fractured light. The darker one is tucked into a shadowed crevice below, nearly invisible except for the faint orange glow along his scales.

You zoom your datapad in on the pale mer to get a better look at his scale pattern. That's when he turns his head. Not toward the reef. Toward you.

The dark mer in the crevice has stopped picking at the coral. He's watching you too now. Two points of attention in the blue, both unblinking, while the rest of the reef carries on like nothing has changed.