Chapter Text
Kryoz kept his eyes keen, the water around him swimming in a lazy current. His pod’s island stood warm, with white sand and swaying palm trees. The glimmering, clear blue around it seemed colder than usual; maybe it was because of the new arrivals.
“What the fuck are they doing here?” Pezzy asks from beside him, his voice a disbelieving whisper.
“I’m not sure yet,” Kryoz responds, looking to his left and scrunching his brows. His yellow-streaked tail twitches, and he smooths a hand down his hip.
“I don’t like it,” Pezzy shakes his head, backing away from the rock they sat behind to hide themselves, his pink fins shimmering. The ship above them creaked and groaned, the people on it shouting. They were docking on Kryoz’s island, which was never good news. It sent a discomforting shiver down his spine.
“Go tell Puffer and Doo, I’ll keep watch a little longer,” he says, nodding at the shorter.
“Okay,” Pezzy says, voice quiet and eyes speculative. Kryoz stays in his spot, muscles rigid. His yellow-blue tail shimmers gently in the late morning light, the water around him sparkling with life. The boat is concerning. The humans on the boat are more so. The last time a ship came to his island… shit got real. He doesn’t want that again.
What could they possibly need? Are they even here for us? What if they don’t even know we’re here? He thinks to himself, mind whirring as he anxiously chews his nail. Shaking his head, he abandons the gravelly rock and swims closer. Slow and steady, he reaches the underside, careful not be spotted and not scrape himself on the sharp barnacles.
The shouting becomes less indistinct. Well, less indistinct if Kryoz spoke any lick of English, which he doesn’t. But that never deterred him from trying to discern general feelings from tone, which worked well enough with his pod, so it might as well work with these humans. They seemed to sound excited, probably because this is their first stop in a while, and loud; they mostly seemed loud.
Kryoz tuned the chatter out in favor of slowly swimming up the side of the ship, just to barely make it to the surface. He didn’t break the tension of the water; he sat and observed the planks of the boat and glanced over to see the humans hustling about on his sandy beaches, stupidly poking at crabs and shaking coconuts from the trees. He rolled his eyes. They were a bunch of fools, and they probably weren’t even here for the mermaids; they were probably here because they had gotten lost.
Slowly, his anxiety simmered, and it formed into a baffled amusement at the predicament the humans supposedly found themselves in. If they had gotten lost, which seemed highly likely, they were much too far from any form of civilization to survive on the rations they--presumably--had.
In other terms, they were utterly fucked.
Which also meant they weren’t a threat, and Kryoz would only have to deal with them for a little while before they packed up and left.
With his anxiety sufficiently subdued, he swam back to the cool ocean floor, sticking to the sand as he travelled back to his pod’s cave. It was nice and hidden, covered by a field of dancing seaweed and towering kelp. They’d lived there for a while now and had claimed the surrounding area and island as their own. As he entered the cave, darkness surrounded him before his eyes adjusted, and he took in the sight in front of him. Pezzy was saying something to Puffer, their conversation seemingly ending when they both saw Kryoz.
“How did the scouting go?” Puffer asked, his brow set in a speculative line. He doesn’t seem too puffy at the moment, his quills only slightly protruding from his skin.
“Fine. The humans are a bunch of fools, they're not here for us, and they won’t stay long,” Kryoz responds, shaking his head as he moves closer to them.
“Are you sure?” Pezzy questioned, anxiety obviously eating at him
“I’m positive,” Kryoz stated, looking at Pezzy with eyes that said, ‘I have no doubt’. “Where did Doo run off to?” He asked, glancing around the cave for the siren.
“He said he was going for a deep swim a little while ago. I’m sure he’ll be back soon enough,” Puffer responded, heading to the mouth of the cave and peering out, searching with keen eyes.
“Alright, well, I expect you two will inform him of all this shit while I go out hunting for dinner,” Kryoz comments, meeting Puffer at the mouth of the cave before the two nod at each other. He swims off, his sharp tail carrying him effortlessly through the water.
He’s by far the fastest in the pod, lightning quick with amazing reflexes and the most predatory instinct. Kryoz is the main hunter, and he doesn’t mind much. It means he gets to think on his own, in the silence of the open ocean. He swims past the concealing pillars of kelp, making it to a sand field not too far from the island. Crabs and snails swim under him, but he’s here for bigger prey.
Occasionally, a mackerel or a squid will fly by, and he’ll chase it down easily and kill it, shoving it into a pack he keeps on his hip (Pezzy made it for him last dry season, and it’s been a total game changer). He also cracks a couple of crabs and collects some tastier seaweed, for some variety.
When he gets back, Doo’s sleek black fins are spread over their ‘couch’- a pile of seaweed stacked on top of a couple of large rocks. Kryoz greets him kindly and spreads out the food on one of the counters, calling the others to the large dinner. They eat, mostly quietly, as the sun sinks.
Kryoz wonders what the humans are up to right about now. Probably also eating. Or maybe they're starving because they don’t know how to hunt for themselves on this island. Maybe he should check on them to see.
“I’m gonna go check up on the people again,” He informs the group, already heading to the mouth of the cave.
“Okay,” Puffer agrees, his mouth full of crab. “Tell me about it when you get back,” Doo says, and Pezzy nods in accord. Kryoz throws them a thumbs up before slipping out, weaving through kelp and jagged rocks before getting to the docked ship.
Quiet as he can be, he breaks the surface tension of the swaying ocean. It laps gently around him, reflecting the sparkling light of the stars and the glimmering moon. He follows its tide closer to the beaches of his island, assuming it’ll be too hard for the humans to see him (Kryoz knows that humans have significantly less night-capable eyes, and that they wander around like pups in the dark).
He doesn’t get within eight yards of the beach, careful to keep his distance. Even from here, however, he can see the people, stoking a smoking fire with long sticks and roasting various things. They make hushed sounds of conversation, occasionally bursting into loud laughter.
He tries to catalogue their faces, tries to figure out what they look like, but the twisting flames of the fire and the shadows it casts blur their features, and Kryoz sinks back beneath the waves, assuming himself undetected by the newcomers.