Eren's POV

It's been six weeks since the humans first caught me. I discovered that I can survive off of smaller fish than I usually eat, though they don't taste anywhere near as good as the ones I'm used to. I don't know why, but Levi hasn't told Hanji that I can't speak. She hasn't pulled out any more of my scales, for which I am thankful for, though she has tried injecting me with a couple of her "serums." That didn't go well for her. I ended up confiscating her syringe and squirting the contents over the side of the tank and onto the floor before splashing her face with water.

I overheard Hanji and Levi talking, and it should take one more day to get to their lab. I'm not looking forward to it, though I heard that instead of a small tank, I'll have a whole saltwater lagoon. I just hope that the lagoon is more than thirty yards deep so they can't see my trying to tunnel my way out at the bottom. I would tunnel out of my tank using my scales to dig, but for some reason I don't want to leave a hole in Levi's ship.

The familiar sound of thunder crashes overhead pulling me out of my thoughts. I look around and I see Hanji disappearing out the door. I hear singing that sounds both familiar and foreign at the same time. I think that I've heard the song somewhere before, but I don't know where it's from. It can't be sirens because instead of a melody of notes, the song has words. The source of the singing hits me as soon as I hear the nets being fired. It is the song of mermaids. Mermaids who will try to drown every human they can get their hands on. And Levi is a human.

I don't know why, but for some reason, I can sense that Levi's life is in danger. I don't know why I care, but I open my mouth and start singing. If a human hears the song of a mermaid and the song of a siren at the same time, he'll come to his senses. The songs counteract each other and the human won't fall under their spell. For this reason, mermaids don't trust sirens. They see us as liars, thieves, and cheaters, and they don't trust a single scale on our tails.

The door bursts open and I see two unfamiliar faces carrying a merman. He glares at me with eyes full of hatred and distrust. I would stop singing, but I still fear for Levi's life for reasons I cannot fathom. The merman is probably going to try to kill me as soon as they put him in the tank, but my bioluminescent scales serve a purpose besides helping us attract mates. The light they give off temporarily blinds mer people.

As soon as he hits the water, I light up my scales as bright as they go. I can't stop singing or someone might die. The humans hurry away, apparently not wanting to by lured in by my song. Luckily, they leave the door open, so more people will be safe from the mermaids. With the door open, the sound of my song can travel farther, reaching more ears.

The merman growls at me and says, "So you're the reason why that woman didn't fall under my spell. Why would you want to help the humans when they stole you from your pack? Don't you hate them?"

I don't reply because I would have to stop singing. While the merman is blinded by my glowing scales, I observe him. His hair is cropped so short that I can't tell what color it is. Where the scales start on his waistline, they're bright red in color. The red blends into orange about a third of the way down his tail. Two thirds of the way down his tail, the orange blends into yellow, which continues to his tail fin. It's quite the display of color. I can't tell what color his eyes are. He has them closed to shield them from the light of my scales. I can tell just by looking at him that if he was a human, he would stand almost an inch shorter than Levi. He looks like he would usually be outgoing and friendly, but under the current circumstances, he looks ready to kill someone. That someone being me.

The sound of the footsteps alerts me that humans are coming this way. I turn my head towards the door and see that the same two unfamiliar faces who brought in the merman are carrying an unconscious mermaid with brown hair and a sand colored tail, and from the look of her stomach she's what you would call "pregnant," not that I know anything about that sort of thing. Sirens don't get pregnant like mermaids do - we lay eggs in the bodies of dead humans. That's why we drown people - to attract mates.

The humans throw the mermaid into the tank rather harshly, considering her swollen stomach. They leave more quickly than they came, closing the door behind them. I let the light die from my scales and click to the merman, "You might want to look at this."

He opens his eyes hesitantly and when he sees the mermaid sinking down towards us, he immediately grabs her in his arms and pulls her in tight against his chest. He caresses her face and I look away, trying to be polite. He obviously cares about her very much, and is most likely the father of her unborn child. She stirs in her unconscious state and mumbles, "Potatoes..." before falling still.

The door opens suddenly, and the merman immediately becomes defensive. Levi walks into the room with a bucket of fish and closes the door behind him before sitting down in Hanji's chair. He looks at me and says, "I've told Hanji to stay out of here until we get to lab. She shouldn't bug you until tomorrow night, but I'm not sure she'll listen to me."

I swim to the top of the tank and he passes me the bucket. "I should be able to get you something larger than that when we get to port, but you'll have to deal with it until we get there. I know it isn't much, but that's the last of the fish we have."

I nod and sink back down to the bottom of the tank, dragging the bucket with me. Levi walks out of the room, leaving me alone with the mer people. I take the smallest fish off the top before I offer the bucket to the merman. He ignores me, so I put the bucket down beside him before retreating into a corner with my single tiny fish.

I look at it more closely and I see that it's a herring so small you could consider it bite sized. I stare at it for a minute before swallowing it whole. I grab the small fish bone from underneath my scales and I start carving a picture into the wall. I'm not even sure what I'm carving until I finish it. I blink in surprise as I stare into the eyes of my friend Armin. The friend that I grew up with. The friend who was always there for me when I did something reckless or stupid. The friend who tried to warn me about the net. But he's also the friend who abandoned me.

I see movement in the corner of my eye and I turn my attention to it in case the merman is going to try to kill me. I see the mermaid has woken up and has her face stuffed into the bucket of fish. She must be really hungry or something. Maybe it has something to do with her being pregnant. Either way, it isn't my business.

I put the fish bone back in its place and I lean my head against the wall. I stare at the ceiling, and out of boredom I try to find pictures in the wood. I don't get very far before I hear a loud gasp. I turn my head to the sound and I see the mermaid staring at me with shock, fear, and distrust written all over her light brown eyes. I sigh and lean my head back up against the wall, closing my eyes.

"It's ok, Sasha. I don't think he's going to hurt us." I hear the merman say softly.

"But he's the whole reason why we got caught! If he hadn't been singing, we would have been able to drown the humans before they caught us!" Sasha almost shouts.

My eyes fly open and I snap my head in her direction. "You probably would have been caught even if I hadn't been singing. The brunette woman with glasses is somehow immune to our songs, and she can pull others back to reality. That's how they got their grubby hands on me - Hanji got Captain Levi to snap out of it and he ordered the crew to start firing the nets. Don't blame me just because you didn't get away." I click. It's not my fault they got caught - it's their own for trying to sink this specific ship. The mer people growl at me, but I ignore them and go back to staring at the ceiling.

The hostility rolling off of them is so thick that you could almost see it. I'm actually surprised that neither of them have tried to kill me yet. I sigh and close my eyes, trying to get to sleep to pass the time. After what feels like hours, I hear soft snoring coming from the direction of the mer folk, and for some reason the snoring comforts me. I relax a bit more and my consciousness slowly fades away as I fall asleep.

~The next morning~

When I wake up, Sasha is still asleep in the merman's arms. He's watching her face so intensely that you would think he was trying to memorize it in case he never sees her again. I pull the fish bone out of my scales and I start carving another picture in the wall. I sense the merman look up as I move, and I can tell that he is watching me warily, like he's waiting for me to strike at any minute. I don't blame him. If I was a merman, I probably wouldn't trust me either.

I work more slowly with this carving, taking my time with each new detail. As I watch what my hands are doing, I realize with a pang of hurt what it is I'm carving. It's the cove where my pack hatched and started our new life. I see all of the friends I grew up with, the cave we called home. Every pack of sirens hatches with no parents to take care of us. We know everything instinctively or we learn it the hard way. The pack leader is chosen the minute we hatch, because he or she is usually the largest of us and is almost always the first to hatch.

When I finish the carving, I almost break down in tears. It has everything from the kelp beds we played hunting games in to the small coral reef where we observed fish and divers. It has the turtles hiding beneath the coral and the dolphins that we decided were friends and not food. It has the enormous great white shark that was too large for us to take down. What makes the carving feel even more real is the fact that it is shown through the rock that had a hole in it where I used to practice carving until my hands hurt from holding the tools I used to carve with for too long.

"Are you ok, dude?" The merman asks, startling me. He looks a little concerned.

"I'm fine. Looking at this carving brings back a lot of memories, that's all. It's nothing you should worry about."

He opens his mouth to speak again, but he is interrupted from a loud human above us who shouts, "Drop the anchor!" In doing so, he wakes up Sasha, who smiles up at the merman.

"I love you, Connie." She says so softly I can hardly hear her. I look away as she kisses him, and I try my hardest to ignore the sound of them making out by listening to the sound of waves crashing against the side of the ship.

I hear footsteps coming closer, and I look at the door. It opens and one of the two men who brought in Sasha and Connie steps in. I take a closer look at him and he suddenly looks really old. He's bald and there are notable wrinkles underneath his golden eyes, and mustache is grey.

He flips the switch that opens the wall of the tank, and the next thing I know, I'm falling with the water and the two mer people into the green water of a lagoon.