In the Heart of the Sea

"A squid! A squid in the trenches! The Lightless Reaches of all places in the seven bleeding seas! Are you mad, Tom? I would ask what in the abyss you were thinking if it weren't so obvious you weren't!"

It had been two days since their little escapade to the bottom of the Murklight Trench and he had yet to hear the end of it from his furious familiar. He was feeling considerably better now than he had been when he'd woken up-Harry had really done a good job of fixing him up-but any good mood he might have had was considerably dampened by the sea crate's continued admonishment. The Siren sighed heavily and settled deeper into his hoard of treasure.

"Murklight Trench! And to take the Mer-brat with you! You almost died! And if he'd been hurt...! You're not beyond either reproach or defeat, even in the open waters let alone the Lightless Reaches!"

"Yes, Nagini, for the millionth time I get it!"

"Do you really, Tom? Do you? Because I don't believe it!"

"And what," he drawled, lightly tracing one of the circular bruises imprinted on the exposed skin of his upper arm, "would I have to do to make you 'think I do'?"

"Are you really about to tell me that you'll never do that again? That you'll never do anything similar again? That you, at the very least, won't put your weaker and more vulnerable mate into a situation where he could be eaten by something over a hundred times his size!"

"I wouldn't be so quick to call him 'vulnerable', my dear. Where it's true that, as a Mer, he's physically weaker than I am that doesn't mean he's castrated by fear."

"Castrated? He's a Breeder! They don't even have those parts in the first place!"

The Siren ignored her outburst and, while viewing his slightly warped reflection in the bottom of a golden bowl, continued "he was the one who did battle with the damned cephalopod in the first place. Sure, I pushed him out of the way of it initially otherwise I would have been the one fighting it but I'd have died if he hadn't." The bowl fell back into the pile of treasure with a soft click. "That's the second time he's saved me."

Catching sight of the soft expression on the Siren's face, Nagini hissed. "I still don't like him. He has to earn my forgiveness for nearly causing you to die! And he'd better be prepared to have pups because I'm not about to let him get away with not doing his job now!"

Tom couldn't help but chuckle at his familiar's obvious anger. "You'll get along with him swimmingly, Nagini. Harry's way ahead of you. Has names picked out and everything. Wants lots of pups; we'll probably accumulate an entire pod's worth of children between us within...five years? Would that make you happy?"

The sea crate hissed again but didn't answer, grumbling to herself and going to curl up in the small patch of kelp growing against one of the walls of the cave. The Siren adjusted his own position with a snort, propping his head up on a swell of clouded jewels and watching his long tail twitch and curl lazily.

A couple of his black scales had been split and scratched and a number more had been knocked out of his tail entirely. Healing cuts adorned his left side and his dorsal fin-courting colors still visible but slowly beginning to fade-now had a few new rips in it but other than that everything seemed fine.

He coiled the tip towards himself, the broad sweeping fin at the end rippling slightly in the gentle current, and frowned. He wished that his little Mer was there, as the Siren had quickly discovered that there was nothing quite so comforting as holding tails.

Oceanus help him, he was going soft.

The ocean current outside his lair shifted and all thoughts of his mate and how much he missed him was chased away by the realization of precisely what that meant. There was an intruder in his waters. Not just in his waters, but in his lair itself. His gills flared, already slitted pupils narrowing even further until they nearly vanished into a sea of scarlet as a deep warning growl rumbled in his chest.