| |
|
Lol, sure I can start! It's late for me too so it'll be tomorrow as well haha |
|  |
|
| |
|
(sorry wound up being busy with day 2 of moving into a dorm on the fourth floor with no elevator just me and my mom lol) Sage woke to darkness. That wasn't new, he'd been cooped up in a glass tank for nearly a week now. He barely fit in it, and it was crowded enough that it took effort to move around or shift positions at all with his tail. He let out a sort of sigh as he readjusted, gills flickering as he tried to take a deep breath. That was the other issue.....the amount of oxygen in the water wasn't quite enough to move around much, so he had to be careful about breathing. It wasn't completely airtight, but it was pretty close. He settled down against the glass again, sluggish from the heat. He was used to cold water, deeper than most humans could go. Unfortunately, he was out on his own and had to hunt near the shallows, where he'd been caught by some sort of bounty hunter. Since then, he'd been in the glass container meant for goldfish. Well....it had been strong enough to hold him, and he knew by now thrashing around did nothing more than use all his oxygen up. He was almost dozing off again, since there wasn't much else he could do, when the whole tank jolted. He let out a noise of surprise, pressing his hands against the glass as he tried to figure out what was going on. He could feel the tank moving, and his heart and breathing sped up as panic slowly set in again. He could hear a man speaking into a loud microphone, and a large amount of people talking nearby. He couldn't see anything until they stopped, though, as the cover over his tank was ripped off after a moment or so. He cringed away from the light, but of course he couldn't get away. Even so, he shifted hurriedly, trying to at least cover his face with his tail, as he could already feel his skin burning. Everything was too loud, too hot, too....scary. Really, really scary. And he'd already learned fighting would do no good. He had let out a furious hiss at the man with the microphone, snarling at everyone nearby but...they paid him no heed. |
| |
|
| |
|
(No worries, I'm not heading back til mid sep so feeling lucky xD) The heat and noise struck Elira the moment she pushed through the canvas flap of the auction hall. The air reeked of sweat, spice, and damp wood, thick enough to cling to her skin. Merchants and bidders shouted over one another, their voices rolling together into a din that made the wooden rafters creak. She slipped through a cluster of sailors and traders, her boots tapping across the warped floorboards, chin held high. Her gaze swept the hall with practiced ease. Trinkets glittered beneath torchlight: bowls spilling over with foreign coins, jeweled daggers, strange hides stretched across poles. A few of the relics were clever fakes, though most looked genuine. Her father had brought her to enough of these gatherings to know how to tell the difference. “Elira, watch the sellers more than the wares,” he used to say, hand resting firm on her shoulder. “Men lie, but their eyes don’t.” She smirked at the memory, tilting her head as she studied one nervous auction hand fumbling to display a necklace. The jewel was real, but the chain was plated. She could practically hear her father’s dry laugh in the back of her mind. Elira adjusted the strap of the dagger at her hip and wandered closer to the stage. Riches she had in plenty — coin enough to buy half the room, if she truly wanted. But she hadn’t come to spend blindly. These auctions weren’t just about goods; they were about information. Who was buying, who was selling, and what rare things were suddenly washing up in port. The crowd hushed as a heavy thud shook the floorboards. Elira leaned on the back of a chair, her hazel-green eyes narrowing as men dragged a massive tank into view. Water sloshed violently against the thick glass, catching the light in fractured ripples. This wasn’t treasure, wasn’t a gilded relic or rare hide. The tension in the room shifted, growing sharp with curiosity, as if everyone sensed it at once. The auctioneer barked for silence, his voice bright with anticipation. Then, with a practiced flourish, one of the men ripped the cover free. Elira caught her breath. The glare of torchlight spilled into the tank, revealing a figure coiled within the water. Not a beast. Not some oddity dredged from the deep. A man — or at least, something shaped like one. His hair floated in dark strands around his face, his eyes catching the light in an unsettling, golden glint. A long tail shifted where legs should’ve been, black scales rippling like shadows in the current. The hall erupted in whispers, greedy and awed. Elira knew how they felt. Her father should be in the crowd somewhere - already eager to bid. She could practically feel him waiting. This was something they wanted. People would pay fortunes for... whatever the freak of nature was. Her eyes lit up as he mind wandered to the gold that'd come with it, a slight smile spreading across her face as she sat up, looking for her fathers hand waving as the bidding commenced. |
|  |
|
| |
|
(ooo, yeah that's pretty late lol. Lucky you xD) Sage jumped again as the people below started yelling again, the noise deafening to his sensitive ears. He pressed as far away from them as possible, which still didn't do much good, as the tank was so small. He had gotten a pretty good idea of what was happening to him though, as the man with the microphone called out numbers and pointed at men and women waving their hands. He stilled when he heard the word 'sold' echo through the chamber, turning his eyes to the man standing with his hand raised, stomach churning slightly at the sight. He didn't like the idea of being sold ...he knew well enough what that meant. And the thought of being in a tank like this, up on the earths surface forever.....it was a very scary thought. The tank was wheeled away then, and he was brought down to some sort of communal area, where men and woman were trading bags of coins for different oddities. He recognized the man from earlier soon enough, his gaze piercing enough to make Sages skin prickle in fear. He bared his teeth slightly, but was also still trying to curl up and hide from the sun, which was now starting to make red patches on his back and along his tail. There was a girl behind the man.....she looked to be about sages age, if he was any good at judging human ages. They didn't have fins, so there was no good way to tell really. But she was an adult....a young one, but she was mature. Even with a muddled mind from the heat and lack of air, he could see that. He locked eyes with her, gills moving at a rapid pace and mouth open slightly in a pant, desperately trying to draw on as much air as possible, still dizzy from everything that was happening. The smell of a large truck didn't help much, and his gaze whipped around to the large vehicle pulling up alongside them. That scared him too, and he pressed into the bottom of the tank, making himself as small as possible. |
| |
|
| |
|
Elira trailed behind her father’s man as the tank was wheeled into the communal yard, the clamor of coin and trade loud in her ears. The heat here was worse than inside the hall, heavy with sweat, iron, and the acrid stench of smoke from the hulking truck pulling up beside the platform. She lifted a hand to fan herself, wrinkling her nose at the scent, though her eyes never left the prize sloshing miserably in the tank. So this was what all the fuss had been about. She tilted her head, lips pressed thin as she studied him. Not beast, not fish — not entirely human either. The long tail shimmered in the light, black scales edged with faint gold, curling and shifting with restless, weak movements. His hair floated in tangled strands around a sharp, too-pale face. His back was red too... like the sunburn she got on the ships. And those eyes — golden, burning, but wide with something she couldn’t mistake. Fear. Elira felt her stomach twist at the sight. Not sympathy, not really. Just… unease. She had grown up among men who dealt in treasures, relics, and curiosities, things dredged up from distant coasts and stranger seas. This one should have been no different. Yet the longer she stared, the more unsettled she felt. Still, her father had been right to claim him. Something like this would fetch more than gold if handled wisely. The creature’s gills flared rapidly, his mouth opening in shallow, desperate pulls for air. The sight made her lips curl faintly — not quite a sneer, but close. She couldn’t quite look at him as she would a man, though he had the shape of one. His fear was too raw, too obvious. He reminded her of a cornered animal, and she disliked the way it made her skin prickle. And yet, despite that disgust, she couldn’t look away. “Half-human,” she murmured under her breath, tilting her head as the men began fastening ropes to haul the tank onto the truck. She sort of stilled and watched.Did it even speak? That would be... priceless, really. “What in the depths are you supposed to be?” Her words weren’t cruel, exactly — more curious than anything. But her gaze lingered on him, sharp and unflinching, as if she were trying to solve a riddle carved into living flesh. She'd seen nearly everything... but this was awfully... odd? She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting. Maybe some vicious beast that did nothing but look human. This one looked terrified. (I'm sorryyyy I vanished) |
| |
|
| |
|
(that's ok lol....life hits all of us hard sometimes haha) Sage met the girls gaze unflinching, despite how terrible he felt. He knew there was nothing he could do about the situation, of course ...but even so he bared his teeth at the men now moving around the tank, wrapping ropes around the glass. Or was it a sort of modified plastic? In all honesty, he wasn't sure. What he did know was that he hadn't expected a sort of vehicle to drive up to them and lift the tank with him still in it. His eyes widened slightly as he was lifted into the air, stomach dropping as he watched the world spin around him as they swung him towards a truck. This one seemed to be owned by the man who'd bought him, and he let out a grunt as he was dropped into it, closing his eyes as he tried to calm his breathing. Panicking wouldn't help the air situation. His ears twitched slightly when he heard the girls voice....she was speaking to him, he knew that, but he didn't want to respond. He opened his eyes when the sun cooled, and he looked up to see the top of the truck closing in over him. He shifted so the fin of his tail blocked his face and most of his upper body from them, trying to keep calm as the door was shut, locking him in the darkness. He knew he should be thankful he was out of the sun, but it was even hotter now, and he couldn't see what was happening. Or anything, for that matter. He preferred to see where he was going. But now? Now he could sense they were moving, the water in his tank sloshing around as he was jostled back and forth. He tried to keep steady, so ce he still had a few decent cuts from the nets they used to subdue him now and again....but there was only so much he could do. Eventually, he just let himself pass out, which wasn't hard due to the heat and limited air moving through his tank. He was jerked awake when the truck was opened, and he squinted against the light and his blurry vision as he was lifted again. He closed his eyes this time, not trusting himself to watch as he was moved. Where were they taking him? What would happen? A million questions were racing through his mind, but the most pressing one was how much longer he was going to last in this tank. It couldn't be long. Even now his vision was going on and out, his chest and gills burning in a really quite uncomfortable manner. |
| |
|
Steady Rain all Day
