Warning: this story will contain a really skewed view of mermaid-people, human-people, and most things in general, will probably contain copious amounts of horrible, horrible puns though those aren't entirely my fault, and will most definitely contain slash. At this point, I should hope that you're hardly surprised by any of these things.

---

“What are you doing?”

Douglas started and looked up. “Oh—hello Sal.”

“Hey.” Sal swam closer and peered over Douglas's shoulder. “So? What are you doing?”

Douglas sighed and held up a seaweed scroll. “Just thinking about the banquet next week. I've got about fifty people to learn about so I can whisper all the information into the King's ear.” He flipped his tail, knocking a few pebbles into a bed of coral. A small angelfish swam out and bubbled angrily at him before swimming off. He watched its path morosely, sort of wishing that he was just a fish too. They didn't have things like banquets.

Sal swatted him on the head. “You stop that. You've got this great memory, so you got picked for the job. It's only once in a while anyway.”

“I know,” he replied. “I know, but I hate banquets. Everyone looks at you, or tries to talk to you, and I may be invisible for half the time, but the King always takes the spell away to give me time to “mingle” and then I get mobbed since everyone knows who I am and that I'm an 'in.' And I hate talking to people; I drop all my words.”

“Only when you get flustered,” Sal told him in a consoling tone. Douglas just looked at her. Sal sighed and pushed back her long green hair. “Okay, so you're always flustered. But only for introductions.”

“They're all introductions,” he mumbled, going back to the scroll. “It's not like they look at me twice afterwards, and then they forget we ever met. I already know most of these people.” Rolling the scroll up, he looked at Sal again. “Don't even need to study anymore. What do you want to do?”

“Ooh, wanna go to the surface again?”

“The surface?” Douglas wrinkled his nose. “What for?”

“Air breathing contest!” Sal did a loop and then swam back to Douglas again. “Betcha I can beat your record.”

Douglas sighed again, but there was a hint of a smile there as he flipped his tail to swim up next to his friend. “Fine; you're on.” So saying, he high-tailed it past Sal, heading up. “Loser's a jellyfish!”

---

“You're cheating. There's no way you can breath air for ten minutes!” Sal lashed her tail indignantly. “Do you have extra gills or something? You have to be sneaking water.”

Douglas just grinned. “Nope; just got plenty of practice. Few people are willing to follow me all the way up just to sleaze their way into conversation.”

“Well you've certainly—found a way to avoid grubbers,” Sal replied, sounding a little out of breath. They were both lingering right below the break where water met air so that they could get their strength back. Even Douglas had to admit that ten minutes was pushing it for him, and he'd been air breathing for ages.

Speaking of ages... “Hey Sal, didn't you have some big music practice thing today?”

Sal's eyes grew wide. “Oh carp, I forgot! I've gotta go!” She started back towards home, calling over her shoulder, “Sorry to cut and swim, okay? I'll bother you later!”

“Bye Sal!” Douglas called as she swam away; he was used to this. Sal was great, but she did tend to have a one-stream mind. He shrugged, thinking about what to do next. It was still a bit early for him to go back, and he wasn't so sure he wanted to anyway; with Sal busy, all he had was more studying or trying to avoid people.

With a quick stroke, he broke the surface again, floating right where the sun met the water. It was nice and warm, and he lay back contentedly, letting his tail hang down so that it was still below. The other thing he didn't tell Sal about why he was so good at air breathing; he did it for fun too. It was sort of calming, at least until it gave you that dry, icky feeling that meant water was a good idea now.

But lying the way he was, all he had to do was turn his head every so often to keep that feeling away, so he stayed and floated and let his mind drift too.

“Hey there! Do you need help?” Douglas's eyes popped open at the call. What—Sitting up so that his upper half was entirely out of the water, he found himself staring at an enormously ridiculous looking vessel that was floating on top of the water and, more importantly, looking up at something that could have been a mermaid if it wasn't for the odd-colored hair and had his tail been split in two?

His first instinct was to flee. So that's what he did. He dove back under the water and then dove deeper, watching the giant shadow that was so close above him.

Curiosity ending getting the better of him though. He was an intellectual who spent most of his time studying one thing or another—Douglas wanted to know what these things were. Especially what the giant thing was called. And whether or not the person on it was a horrible mutation or just...another kind of mermaid. That maybe could split his tail? It didn't make a lot of sense, but he intended to find out just what did.

Determined now, the mermaid swam back up towards the surface, careful to hide in the shadow of the thing, watching and listening, trying to learn everything he could.

And that's how Douglas began his interest in humans.

---

“I've barely seen you all week,” Sal told him, not-quite whining. “Where've you been? What've you been doing?”

“Studying,” Douglas replied absently, not looking up from the notes he was writing.

Sal raised an eyebrow. “More studying? But I thought you said you already know all the people who're going to be at the banquet.”

“I do. It's not for that.”

“Well?”

Douglas finally looked up. “I think I've discovered a new species. I've been watching and making observations.” He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “It's just really tough. I'm doing all I can, but there's such a gap—I wish I could get closer to them.”

“Closer to what? Is it a new type of fish? It's easy enough to get close to a new type of fish.”

Douglas rolled his eyes. “No, it's not a fish. Seriously Sal, would I really be complaining about fish?”

“I don't know—you complain about a lot of things!” Douglas glared at her, and she held up her hands, mollifying. “Okay, okay sorry. So what is it then?”

“It's like people, but above the water. On the surface.”

“But lots of things live on the surface. It may be tiny, but there are those things that swim in the air--”

“Birds,” Douglas reminded her wearily.

She nodded. “Right, those. They live on the surface. Can't be much else though—it's not like it's that big a place.”

“I think it is though,” Douglas said, frowning. “Sal, I saw people that looked like us. Except they had two tails instead of one and they breath air all the time.”

“Then how come they're not dead?”

“I don't know! That's why I've been spending so much time away lately; I've been trying to learn. So far I've got that they don't live in the water at all, they live on the land in things called houses, and then when they want to come to the water they take this huge wooden things called boats out, and some of them can't even swim. Their tails are called 'sealegs' and they walk with them.” He ran a hand through his hair again, batting the short green strands out of his eyes. “If I could just get a few days to be with them on the surface—ask a couple of questions and maybe just watch them I'd learn so much more.”

“So why haven't you gone up to one of the boats and asked?”

Douglas muttered something and averted his eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “Right. Well, if you get too nervous, you can always swim away, right?”

“I guess...” he mumbled.

“Never know until you try!” Sal told him brightly. “Maybe you could try getting one alone?”

He thought about that, remembering that one of the humans on the boats kept mentioning “shore.” No doubt that was an all-land place. Maybe if he went over he could find one of them taking a walk on their sealegs.

“I suppose I'll give it a try tomorrow,” he said decidedly. He did want to learn more, so if this was a way to do it...

“Don't you mean the day after tomorrow?”

He looked at her, questioning. “Huh?”

Sal chuckled. “Well tomorrow's the banquet, isn't it?”

“That's not until afternoon,” he said, waving the inconvenience away. “I'll be back before then, no problem. I'll get an early headstart.”

---

It took way longer than he thought it would to finally reach shore, and even more time after that to spot a lone human. Douglas was pretty sure it was a good idea to avoid large groups of them, so he swam around until he found a human sitting by himself near where the water met sand.

Here goes nothing. Taking a deep lungful of water, Douglas popped his head out into the air, careful to keep out of sight. He'd observe the human first and then see whether or not it would be a good idea to reveal himself.

Douglas started when he saw who the man was; it was the self-same human he had discovered a week ago. Unsure now as to whether or not appearing to someone who had seen him already was wise, the mermaid stayed hidden and continued to just watch.

The man wasn't bad looking, as far as humans went. Even though his hair was an odd reddish-coral color instead of the perfectly normal green and, of course, that matter of him not having a proper tail, he looked all right. And Douglas suspected that neither of these characteristics were considered faults on the surface anyway; he had yet to see a single human with normal-colored hair instead of brown, or yellow, or red and so had determined that those were, in fact, normal colors. For humans.

Deciding to just stay hidden and watch until he could figure out a way to best present himself, Douglas stayed right near the surface of the water and peeped up. It was tricky in the shallows to maintain the right balance of just under the water what with the tide and all, but he managed it and then settled back to observe the human.

He wasn't doing much, actually. Just sitting on a rock and staring off into the distance. Douglas recognized the look and posture as a Thinking face. It seemed as though he and the human had more in common than he initially thought.

Just when Douglas decided that he needed to either make himself known or find someone new, as this wasn't going anywhere, the human abruptly stood up and began divesting himself of his upper garments. Soon the man was bare-chested and was bending down to roll up the bottoms of the cloth covering his sealegs. Curious and bemused, Douglas watched this happening, only realizing why the human was doing as he was until it was too late.

The human took a running leap and jumped into the water, bypassing most of the shallows and landing just next to where Douglas was hiding. Jerking up in surprise, Douglas burst from the water to find himself staring face to face with the human.

The human who as smirking. “Hello there.”

Completely caught off-guard, Douglas thrashed backwards, his tail accidentally coming up out of the water as he tried to right himself. The smack that fairly echoed over the little stretch of beach was not a good one at all.

Finally able to calm down, gasping for breath, the mermaid broke the surface again to see the human lying unmoving in the shallow waters, a slap of red standing out on his face.

Oh. Oh dear.

Douglas had to fight down his urge to panic as he quickly glided over to where the human lay and hoisted him up so that his face was out of the water. He managed to calm a little when he found that the man was still breathing, just knocked out, but he still felt terrible.

“Oh seas. I am so, so sorry about that,” he babbled, as he towed the unconscious man farther up the beach so that Douglas was able to lay him down away from the tide. “I-I didn't mean to, uh, hit you! And oh dear, when you come to please don't count that against us-- I really don't think a war is a good idea. That's not, um, that's not to say that that's the only reason I hope you wake up. Please don't be badly hurt, please don't be badly hurt...” He trickled some water onto the man's face. “You just wake up and be fine and then I can g—oh no! Nonono don't wake up yet I'm still here!”

The man stirred and Douglas scuttled backwards into the water, waiting just long enough to see that yes, the man was sitting up and looking fine though dazed, before swimming as far away as fast as he could.

That had...not gone as well as a first meeting could have.