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sightseertrespasser · 8 days ago

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Too Deep, Too Shallow Part 3

Body Pillow meet Weighted Blanket.

Apocalyptic Ponyo was created by @keferon!

CW Near drowning experience.

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“I AM SO FUCKING SORRY.”

Screaming was not helping. Why was screaming not helping? Instincts demanded volume in response to stressful situations and instincts should see a fucking life coach.

“I THOUGHT-“ Blurr hovered, Orange convulsed and puked up more seawater. Clawing in chocking, staggered breaths. Blurr shook with adrenaline and the lack of immediate outlet.

“I SWEAR ON MY LIFE I FORGOT YOU CAN’T BREATH WATER.”

Blurr went to school. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew humans were air breathers. He passed health class too. He learned, in theory, the correct steps to helping a drowning mammalian mer.

Step 1. Ensure the victim is in a safe location.

The straps burned and cut into his shoulders. Blurr had to swim in an almost Jackknifed position to compensate for the drag at his back. His only focus on not ending up in prison.

Blurr’s heart hurt. His head pounded. The drag at his back vanished and Blurr nearly careened into a wall.

How? Why?

Behind him, loosed from the bag straps Orange drifted, limp and sinking.

Forcing water through his gills fast enough for stray grit to cut, Blurr gripped Orange and dragged him to the surface.

Step 2. Call for help.

Bitch call who??

He didn’t have his Fone. Even if he did, Blurr was miles away from anyone he’d think would be able to come help.

Fuck his reputation. Fuck his freedom. If either of those Orca knew how to perform CPR on a human Blurr was about to turn around and find them.

Step 3. Oh Thank Fuck.

Once his head was above water, Orange half threw up, half gasped and took in air on his own. In tiny, painful sounding sips.

Blurr dragged the human inside a flooded nest. Pulling them halfway up a set of stairs.

Thanking whatever gods or other fuckery at play he didn’t have to do actual CPR. Because all rational thought evaporated on contact and Blurr had been three seconds away from trying to flip the human upside down and physically shaking the water out of him.

Step 4. Apologize profusely.

“I- I am so, so fucking sorry. I will buy you literally whatever you want forever .” The mer continued to hover over the human.

“I just- I didn’t want to get arrested!” Blurr grimaced, speaking through grit teeth. “And I forgot. About the lung situation.”.

He awkwardly pat Orange on the back.

The human was coughing violently and had turned completely bright red in the face. Every now and then at the end of a fit, he’d lock up completely, unable to compel his lungs to function, before brute forcing a sucking gulp of air in to fuel another round of coughing. Blurr cringed.

He didn’t know if the patting was helping, but it made him feel slightly less useless.

If they got through this, Blurr was going to spoil the fuck out of this human. “What do you like? These floral camouflage pelt things? You keep breathing and I’ll get you like fifty.”

Where do they even get these things? Blurr assumed it was like a hermit crab situation. Big humans leave their pelts around for smaller humans to grow into. Do snails make them? Is there some kind of giant soft shelled land snail that makes these colorful pelts?

Blurr resolved to watch more nature documentaries in the future.

The future.

Fuck me.

As the peak of terror induced adrenaline began to pass, tremors started up his arms and across his back. Blurr breathlessly laughed, post survival high kicking in.

“Ha ha hiiii am so fucked.” If he closed his eyes, Blurr could pretend the human was laughing along. And not just coughing up his mistake.

Resting his temple on the stair step, Blurr realized he couldn’t open his eyes. The high dropped off. The only moments he could accomplish were the involuntary twitches of over extended muscle tissue.

Blurr could hear water swishing and felt it lapping at his shoulders. Like a stalking predator, the ocean had crawled a foot higher in the short time they’d been laying there.

His eyelids felt gritty trying to pull them back. He managed it on the second attempt and focused his fuzzy vision on his human.

“Orng.” He was breathing semi normally again. Occasionally catching another coughing fit but otherwise pulling in complete lungful’s of air.

“Orange.” The human slowly responded to his name, turning his head to face the mer. He did a little hand flap.

“Yeah, hi.” Blurr returned the gesture, though lifting his hand felt like it was made from pure lead. “You gotta get up. You gotta get up higher. I’m- I’m tapped out.”

Orange made a noise that sounded like “Blooh.”

Blurr slid his arms under himself, fighting gravity to look at the other properly. “Orange, I’m done. I can’t. The tides coming back and I can’t carry you anymore.”

Orange sat up, brow furrowed. The human looked from the clicking mer to the sloshing water behind them.

The mer sagged in relief when the human finally stood and turned to face the stairs.

And immediately “Hurkked” when Orange grabbed the bag and started dragging him along.

The mer verbally protested being treated like an overstuffed suitcase, but physically? Yeah this may as well be happening. At least he could make a decent argument that it was the humans idea if the orcas caught them now.

Their ascent was painfully slow, frequently interrupted by trembling breaks and reedy breathers. By the end, Orange could only pull them up a couple steps at a time before needing to sit.

Blurr zoned out, trying to ignore the bruises forming across his shoulders and where his tail was being garroted by the bag.

He distracted himself how he usually did, with chit chat. “You didn’t have to bring me you know. I appreciate it. The whole dragging me around like a drug bag thing. I have no idea why you’re keeping me safe but hey, actions speak louder than words.”

Previously, whenever Blurr spoke to Orange, he’d get some nonsense burbling in response. The human was uncharacteristically silent.

Blurr side eyed the “technically a predator” human. “You’re uh, not carrying me off to eat me right?”

Orange had stopped on another landing, digging through one of the side pockets and chugging a pod? A comb? A weird clear bottle looking thing of water.

Orange, still catching his breath, took notice of Blurr’s waiting silence. He raised a hand, “Hih Blooh.”

Blurr snorted. “Oh yeah. Apex predator right here. Gonna save me for a late lunch. Maybe eat my heart for dessert.”

Eventually, Orange managed to pull them onto a floor that was mostly untouched by water damage. The spongy texture of the floor squelched wherever weight was applied, manifesting shallow puddles in their wake. Blurr was getting uncomfortably acquainted with the textures involved.

For the first time, he was pulled into an actual human nest chamber. Blurr looked up and blinked rapidly, mouth slightly agape and brow furrowed.

“Okay. Why does this look like an apartment and more importantly, why does it look nicer than mine?!”

All the proportions were completely wack and every appliance was far too square, but that was sure as shit a kitchen they just passed. It was all just alien enough that Blurr couldn’t tell for certain What exactly was supposed to be What. However, Blurr knew what luxury looked like and this place reeked of it.

Polished stone countertops, glittering wall ornaments and some of the most uncomfortable looking furniture he’s ever seen in his life. The place even had an open floor plan, turning the space into one continuous room. Most striking of all was the far wall completely composed of glass, overlooking the flooded apocalypse.

Blurr could honestly picture this whole thing as some kind of modern art piece in a gallery. A Commentary on Mer Civilizations Corruption of Nature’s Purity. A Nest Made Hollow by Pompous McFuckface.

Orange didn’t seem bothered by the sound of Blurr’s brain breaking and dropped the mer on the carpet, bee-lining for a weirdly rectangular bed.

“Um, excuse me? Concierge I appear to be on the floor.” Blurr rolled onto his elbows. He watched Orange flop face first onto the bed, starfish style. He showed no signs of moving.

“Yeah I’m not sleeping on the floor.” Blurr felt like gravity had increased a hundred fold, but screw that. His arms shook with exhaustion as he peeled out of the wretched traveling cocoon. The only thing fueling his last vestiges of strength was the promise of sleeping in an almost actual bed.

“Scooch.” Blurr grunted.

“Hmg.” Orange also grunted.

He dug his claws into the soft lining, heaving himself on top of the covers. Not stopping until he was fully in the center, instantly deflating upon success.

Eyes shut, and the passage of time dropped out from under him like a trick floor.

——————

Blurr startled awake. His arm hurt. Actually, everything hurt. But at the moment his right arm hurt like the joint had locked into position and was cutting off blood flow.

Something warm and heavy was weighing down the right side of his body. Breathing softly against his pinned shoulder.

Blurr clicked dully, squinting in the daylight. Orange was halfway on top of him, completely out cold. Blurr wedged his numb and tingling arm to under the space of the humans neck, restoring blood flow to the appendage.

Blearily looking around, the sun had moved a couple feet across the sky. It was maybe just before noonish?

Blurr threw his free arm over his eyes.

He’d only managed to sleep a couple hours and still felt so tired he wanted to cry. Blurr wasn’t an insomniac per say, but getting his brain to slow down once it started running was a Sisyphean task. If he was home, Blurr could doom scroll for a couple hours until he physically couldn’t stay awake any longer. Or put on a random movie to the same effect.

Blurr resigned himself to being bored, miserable and too tired to sleep. Waves crashed somewhere below in a rhythmic pattern. Absentmindedly, he started tracing the seams of Orange’s outer pelt. The texture was both bumpy and straight, faintly warm from.. fr…

One eyelid half fluttered open, the other remained at rest. Blurr closed his dry mouth, tasting his own breath. The last 24 hours dripped back into his consciousness and the mer groaned.

Orange had rolled around in their sleep again and was laying fully perpendicularly across his chest. If the weight didn’t feel like it was pressing his soul back into his body, Blurr might have considered removing the human. As it stood, the mer was content to let the moment of safety linger.

Since he was awake again, ish, he could at least take the time to compose some kind of public response for when he finally returned to civilization.

Hello everyone! You all like those heartstring pulling stories where celebrities save a poor helpless animal from certain doom? Well have I got a tale for you!

Blurr crossed his arms over his new 2 in 1 heated and weighted blanket. He fiddled with the reddish fur at the back of the humans head. The texture was totally unlike a seal or sea lions fur, a little stiff and crinkly from dried on seawater.

We’ve got tender moments of trust, heart pumping action, wilderness survival and even a close call with the authorities!

He lightly kneaded the fur, the hairs softening as he worked clumped patches through his fingers. Orange flattened out like melting snow.

A good conditioner could take care of that. Maybe some specialty shampoo.

Blurr closed his eyes.

And it ends in heartbreak.

“I can’t keep you.” He mumbled.

“I forgot you couldn’t breath underwater for fucks sake. Even if it wasn’t insanely illegal, I wouldn’t be able to actually take care of you.” Blurr kept his voice down, though he was starting to be pretty sure Orange could sleep through choir practice for a pod of whales.

He looked up humans once after he first started visiting the shore. The information was sparse to put it mildly. Plenty of pages on what to expect if you cut open a dead one, but almost nothing about their natural behavior. Tons of urban legends and a not so surprising number of fanfics, which he now had the first hand experience to definitively say were 90% carp crap.

Humans don’t even purr. They hum when they’re happy.

He found lots of government warnings about how dangerous they were in numbers. But any actual scientific papers were all about hunting habits. Shit, Blurr even read one doctors firsthand account of how he was attacked and barely survived getting four freaking limbs ripped off.

None of it lined up with what Blurr had seen for himself.

Blurr smoothed out the last of Oranges fur.

“What are you?” He whistled quietly. Staring at the bizarro recreation of a pent house around them, Blurr felt something uncomfortable and niggling at the back of his mind. The cold squirming worm of a paradigm shift that wanted to burrow in and raise every fin on his body.

He suppressed a shudder and pushed the worm away. Letting the undertow of sleep wash the thought away.

Maybe if I sleep for long enough, I’ll wake up and everything will actually be normal.

He slipped under, drifting away once more.

Orange rolled directly on top of Blurr’s head.

Through a combination of muffled shrieking and panicked slapping, the human jolted awake and nearly kicked them both off the bed.

Which bobbed.

Free of the human straight jacket, Blurr sat upright and finally got a good look around.

High tide had arrived. Their bed drifted slowly through the foot or so of water that filled the apartment. By the look of the sun, another couple hours had passed while he’d been conked out.

Blurr scratched at the scales around his gills, feeling like a piece of jerky, and quickly slipped into the water, relishing in the cool relief it brought to his body. Stretching his arms and back, listening to a few joints pop in release.

Feeling much more alive now, he playfully flicked a little water at the human still on the bed. Orange pulled up a blanket to shield himself and dipped a hand in to send a spray back to Blurr.

“You dare challenge me? And here I was thinking you were clever sweetheart!” Blurr grinned devilishly, coiling his body tight and fanning out his tail.

The smile dropped off Oranges face.

The water war ended then and there as Blurr swam victory laps around the apartment. Orange preemptively soaked for the day ahead. Finding where the bag had gone, Blurr fetched it so they could both get some.. breakfast? Lunch?

Eh, whatever.

“I have no idea what this stuff is but it’s amazing. Seriously, if I didn’t think it’d end up triggering horrible ecological exploitation I’d try to sell this to everyone.” Blurr dug into the salty cube of protein, having figured out how to open the human storage combs from watching Orange.

He licked the remaining fat from his fingers, decorum be damned. “Right, if we’re going to get back to civilization, this window of time is going to be our best chance.”

Blurr’s face wrinkled at the horrible bag. “I could maaaybe make a mad dash for the exit in one go. But with all the freaky stuff swimming around, I think having an emergency vertical escape route is a little too useful.”

The mer looked out over the flooded city. Most of the taller buildings stuck out well above of the water line. Various debris littered the surface, further cluttering the way. He could pretty much tell which way the ocean was, though it wasn’t a clean shot and would take a fair bit of weaving to get through.

“I mean, assuming you’ll let me carry you again. You’ve got a pretty nice set up here and I think we’re more than even now. I’mkeepingthemeatblocksthough.” He started arranging the bag to pull it back on.

Blurr hissed as the edges of the straps dug into the tender bruising grooves across his shoulders. Orange, who’d be eating and babbling along to Blurr’s monologue paused and scooted closer.

The human inspected the straps, slipping his fingers underneath and running the edge along his thumb. Orange made a couple nonsense noises before hopping off the bed to splash further into the apartment, disappearing around the corner.

The only thing that stopped Blurr from taking that as his queue to leave was a burning curiosity to know what the human was doing back there.

The sound of doors opening and closing, a few bumps and thuds of object’s falling over and a triumphant human noise kept Blurr on the edge of his seat.

Orange returned carrying some squares of cloth and a cylinder of glossy gray material, wearing the latter like a wrist ornament.

Curiously, Blurr watched as Orange wrapped the cloth around the straps, padding them out, and securing it in place with strips of sticky leather pulled off the wrist cylinder.

The mers face was carefully blank. “Orange.. How smart are you?”

The human chittered to himself happily, making small adjustments to the improvised padding.

“Okay you’re freaking me out a little. That wasn’t normal. What you just did isn’t normal.” Blurr consciously kept his fins from flaring, not wanting to cause the human to panic again after the incident with the cops. The human continued to be oblivious.

“Orange,” Blurr placed his hands on the human, causing them to stop talking and look him directly in the eyes. Blurr slowly and deliberately enunciated each click. “Can you understand me?”

The humans eyes were blank and devoid of comprehension. Orange was quickly turning red and Blurr could feel him wanting to pull away.

“Just- Give me one sign I’m not going crazy here. Like, I don’t know. Wave with both hands if you understand what I’m saying. Clap twice. Literally anything.” Blurr let Orange go, who suddenly seemed extremely interested in anything other than the mer. “Please sweetheart?”

Nothing.

Blurr sighed, rubbing the heels of his palms over his eyes. “Yeah okay. I’m just loosing it.”

The mer considered the “penthouse” one last time before putting it out of his mind. Blurr finished getting strapped in and Orange quickly followed suit.

The duo ventured into waters not yet known.

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“Okay, so the other delivery guy is totally panicking now right? Swindles got a bloody axe, the health inspector is still screaming from inside the floorboards, and there’s FIFTEEN GODDAMN SEAGULLS LOOSE inside the liquor cabinet.”

Blurr turned a random corner, not really minding his surroundings.

“And all of this is happening right in front of the freaking Senator.” Blurr can’t help but snickering at that point.

Orange rattled off some random human noises, Blurr waited patiently for his turn to talk again.“The Senator was a doll honestly. Very sympathetic to the whole situation. He was the one who got me through the door into professional racing actually.”

Blurr dropped the tenor of his voice dramatically. “He said: Blurr, you’re a young mer with incredible talent and unparalleled drive. But if you ever take another delivery job you’re going to end up in jail.”

Orange made an enthusiastic sound, kicking his feet slightly.

“Anyways, that’s how Swindle and I met at some kids birthday party.” Blurr rolled his eyes with a smile. Swindle was never going to believe this.

Taking a break from telling stories, Blurr stuck his head underwater to refresh his face, careful to keep the human top side.

They were swimming a few stories above the ground here. Sand pulled inward by the rip tides had settled across former streets, numerous species of sea life flit by exploring the flooded structures that were absolutely tangled in seaweed. A wild mer hunted some smaller fish through the interiors of a nearby building.

Glassy eyes flicked up to Blurr. Webbed hands paddling slowly to creep closer.

Blurr barred his teeth, locking eyes with the wild mer and sending out a few warning clicks. Low and echoing.

The possible predator got the message and turned tail.

Blurr puffed out his chest, radiating smugness. After the mutant leviathan from yesterday, it was going to take significantly more than some casual uncanny valley to rattle him now. Blurr was a hardened survivalist now.

The wild mer swept down close to the sand, keeping one eye trained upwards at Blurr in distrust.

The sand exploded and the mer vanished with a flash of massive ivory mandibles.

Blurr watched blood drift out of the newly revealed manhole like reddish smoke.

He popped his head back above water. “Hey did I every tell you about how much I hate the outdoors?”

Blurr hoped Orange couldn’t feel his rocketing heart rate through the bag. “I hate it! Loathe even! And oh wow my tail is sooo tired, I could really use a break from swimming so whatcha say we switch off for a while m’kay?”

Blurr kept a death grip on his nerves, refusing to bolt again. Instead he swam between a cluster of buildings with several shorter ones in between just beneath the waterline.

Maybe a just a little briskly.

Blurr was just about to signal Orange they where going to flip when a shrill metallic whistle cracked through the air.

The thin layer of sand beneath them exploded and for a single second Blurr choked on his own heart.

Gravity smashed into him as Orange instantly doubled in weight, crushing Blurr face first against a lattice of ropes.

Orange was shouting, frantically trying to push against the net and Blurr wasn’t behaving much better. He at least managed through sheer panic to twist them around enough that his spine wasn’t going to break from the weight.

Blurr and Orange swayed several feet above the water, hopelessly tangled and completely upside down.

The mer picked up the sound of many humans hollering. Jubilant and excited. The collective pitch was in a higher register than what Orange sounded like.

“Are you actually shitting me right now?” Blurr pressed his face to the netting. He watched as a ragtag pack of mini humans clambered from their hiding spots, armed with pointed sticks and blunt metal instruments.

“Of all the psychotic ways to die in this place are we seriously gonna get poked to death by a bunch of kids?!” He whistled irately, tail thrashing within his limited movement.

Orange was still being loud and noisy, but instead of continuing to just scream, he’d started chattering away at the juveniles surrounding them at a frantic speed.

Shockingly, a couple of the larger ones responded. Kicking off an honest to god dialogue. Albeit, one that clearly wasn’t weighted in Oranges favor.

While Orange barked at his back, Blurr noticed one of the smallest humans approach him specifically.

The wide eyed and gap toothed human opened its mouth and, “Ello there govna’!”

“What?” Blurr blinked. “What the fuck?”

The tiny human had a contemplative look on his face, frowning slightly before whistling back, “Ello what the fueck?!”

“The FUCK?” This wasn’t real. All of the blood in his body was rushing to his head and Blurr was having a stroke or something.

“Oooh, the fuck!” The tiny human annunciated, pretty closely mimicking Blurr’s speech.

The tiny human waved at the others, yelling some human nonsense that gathered their attention.

Interspersed, Blurr could hear them saying “Fuck” repeatedly.

Soon, all the other baby humans began repeating the “whistle-click” of the cuss word.

A chorus rung out.

“Fuck?”

“Fuck!”

“Fuck fuck.”

“Fuck fuck fuck?”

“Fuck fuck!”

“Ah, hokay.”

Somewhere in the distance, a deep bellowing mer voice called out. A classic two note song for recalling wandering children. The baby humans all stopped. Swiftly, they retreated back the way they came. Orange desperately called after them, where the largest responded with a clipped series of human barks.

Just before the littlest one left, he turned back to Blurr with a tiny hand waving goodbye, “Thank ya’ for the word-gift Mister Fuck-Fish! Fare thee well an’ safe travels!”

The moment after they disappeared, the rope was cut and the two of them crashed back into the water.

Disentangling themselves. Orange and Blurr both sat in the shallow water, each staring at nothing, slightly slack jawed.

The baby humans showed no signs of returning. For good or for evil.

Blurr broke the silence first. “We.. will never speak of this. And if we must. There was twenty of them. And they were fairies.”

Orange nodded, thousand yard stare unbroken.

A muggy wind began to pick up, rolling in from the east.

Orange, eventually, stood. And continued their journey on foot across the apocalyptic jungle gym.

As the hours of alternating travel between land and sea slipped by, a grey cast began to overtake the sky. Fat drops of dark rain spotted dry concrete. The water nipped a little louder at the edges of their pathways.

Orange began to shiver.

And as the first distant flashes of lightning flickered across the reflective buildings, Blurr felt his heart cinch.

All he saw was a still image. Quickly gone. Of leopard seal spots, and a blood bright visor.

Hunting.

———————————————————————

Aight. The Lethal Grandma joke will come soon but not now, because pacing is a thing.

Blurr and Swerve are cursed to have the worst possible encounters with every other survivor in the Apocalypse. Because it’s funny.

-SSTP

#apocalyptic ponyo #writing #ye

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