“Was that Baodoe?” Sophie turned as she heard Devin’s inquiry and her heart stalled in her chest. She stood up as the other woman approached. She had an infant Mer in her arms. The baby had the same dark skin that Baodoe had and only some scales had grown in on the tail, but dark orange shimmered beneath the thin surface layer of skin and Sophie imagined it wouldn’t be long until there was a proper layer of scales coating the fragile limb. Devin had the baby nestled in the crook of her arm and the other arm was looped under the baby’s tail and also helping support the bottle of milk the infant was nursing from.

“Yes, it was,” Sophie replied.

Devin smiled. “Good. He’s been so skittish the last few weeks, I’m glad he’s warming up a bit. Sweetheart though, isn’t he?”

“He really was,” Sophie agreed. “I think he maybe wasn’t supposed to be over chatting with us though, he got called away pretty quickly.”

Devin nodded. “Here, would you like to hold him?” she offered as she stepped a little closer.

“May I?” Sophie checked. When Devin nodded, she reached out and carefully took the infant from her. The baby shifted and made a small, muffled mewling sound as his tiny fins twitched and his tail curled. His little fingers squeezed into fists and then he fell still. Sophie couldn’t stop the wide smile that spread across her face. His skin was so delicate and soft that she was afraid she might break him. “What’s his name?”

“Svirnan,” Devin replied as she handed off the bottle. “He and Baodoe are brothers.”

Sophie tilted the bottle down into Svirnan’s mouth and her smile grew even wider. “I don’t know if he wants this anymore,” she reported when the young Mer did not resume nursing.

“Don’t take it away, he’ll get upset. They’re sporadic nursers. It usually takes him three or four hours to finish a bottle. Really, you’re just giving my arms a break.”

“I certainly don’t mind,” Sophie murmured as she held the baby closer. “Is it okay for him to be out of the water that long? Where’s his mother? Or father,” Sophie added when she remembered that male Mer could give birth. That was going to take a bit to wrap her head around.

“It’s alright,” Devin agreed. “We try not to have him out of the water for too long, but it’s good for him to be socialized and feel someone’s heartbeat. We rescued Baodoe and his mother from a cosmetics company in Japan a few weeks ago. At the time, she was heavily pregnant and underweight and we were worried that she would miscarry. She was so hostile, even Az couldn’t get through to her. Her entire focus had narrowed to a primitive survival state, trying to protect her young boy. She was so sickly I’m amazed she survived her labour, but it was just barely and she died a week or so later.

Svirnan spends most of his time in a special bath to make up the additional nutrients he’s losing without his mother, and he’s sickly from the drug trials they ran on her. Az was getting through to her in the end, enough to know names and try to explain she was safe, but I think her will to live was so broken that she didn’t have any strength left to fight. Davyrence was one of a few we’ve lost over the years, but our goal now is just to make sure her children have a better chance in life. We’re pretty certain she was a mid-dwelling Mer because Baodoe’s eyes glow in the dark – which is a trait of the Mer from the depths – and Davyrence had thicker skin to withstand higher pressure and colder climates, but neither of them resembled a true deep-water Mer. Svirnan here doesn’t have those survival traits though; we’re hoping to find a surrogate open-water pod to adopt him once he’s healthy. Right now, he can’t spend too long out of his pool or his body begins to fail,” Devin explained.

Sophie’s heart squeezed as she glanced down at the baby in her arms. He’d been given such a terrible hand in life, right from the start, and yet was sleeping so peacefully in her grip. She pulled him just a little bit closer. She knew Mer infants depended on their parent’s warmth and heartbeat for survival, and while she didn’t know how long they were like that or how old Svirnan was, she did know he had to be lonely, even if he had limited ways of voicing it.

“Poor little trooper,” Lewis sighed. Sophie felt his arm press against her back as he pulled her close to his side and peered over her shoulder. “You don’t think his health complications will compromise his ability to survive in the wild in the future, do you?”

Devin shrugged and shook her head. “Only time will tell, really. We’re prepared to raise him for the long run if we have to, but it would be better for him to go with a Mer family, so that’s what we’re aiming for. I wish we could return them to their birth waters, but we don’t know where that was. The Mer are so varied and diverse that it’s hard to pinpoint based purely on visual markers. The files on them were incomplete at best, so our only real range is somewhere in the South-Atlantic ocean, possibly off the west coast of Africa, but where or how deep, we’ll never know. We’d never find the original pod, if Davyrence even had one. I don’t even know if she had a mate, whether they were captured too and perished or if they might still be out there.

It breaks my heart, but these boys are realistically orphans and the best we can do is get them adopted. We have a pod here at the moment that want to take Baodoe with them. Jarcco over there has really taken a shine especially.” Devin gestured to the Mer who had called Baodoe away from them originally. “And Baodoe spends most of his time now over there. He’s pretty skittish of us and I don’t blame him after everything he’s been through. They’ve asked about Svirnan too, but he’s not healthy enough to leave yet.”

Sophie frowned down at the baby. She hoped he would be alright and she didn’t like the sound of the two brothers potentially being separated. “Will they come back for him?”

Devin shrugged. “I really don’t know,” she admitted with a shake of her head. “As unfortunate as it is, Mer are constantly rotating their hunting grounds and migratory routes as the oceans change around them. This pod is here and in a position to take Baodoe with them. He and Jarcco have really bonded the last week or two, so unless he wants to stay, Carson and I aren’t going to stop them from taking him, but they might not be in a position to take Svirnan too when the time comes. But I won’t deny Baodoe the chance to settle with a pod and live a happy life just because Svirnan can’t leave. The two barely know each other as it is and Baodoe is still young enough he may not remember these experiences and can just live a happy life with a new family and have that be all he knows.”

Sophie carefully lowered herself back down so she wouldn’t jostle Svirnan, and crossed her legs. The baby stirred and mewled again before his tiny nose scrunched up and he opened his eyes. Sophie’s breath hitched in her chest as pale gray eyes stared up at her with a lazy, content gaze. She smiled brightly and waggled a finger in the baby’s face. She was rewarded with a kick of his little tail and another burbling coo.

Lewis sat down with her and she leaned against him. Sophie tore her gaze away from Svirnan to smile at Lewis, who only chuckled and smiled back. “Do I have competition?” he teased as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

She elbowed him and shook her head. “Of course not,” she murmured. “But he is precious, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Lewis agreed.

Devin flopped down next to them and dipped one foot into the water and pulled the other one close to rest her arm on her knee. “Not to dampen the mood, but we have a couple of things to discuss still. I left Lukshia guarded back in the breakroom. It feels wrong to lock anyone in somewhere, but in this case, I’m not willing to take a risk of her disappearing on us. And I spoke to Michelle, I’m genuinely appalled by how Riley had to experience this place, but it won’t be happening again. She didn’t want to risk re-sedating Riley because of how much longer it took for her to wake up compared to the others, she was worried it would put her system into shock. Michelle is a talented physician, but her bedside manner needs some work. I just didn’t weigh the potential consequences of that properly, and for that I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to Riley as well, but she seems a little preoccupied at the moment.”

At the comment, Sophie looked out over the water and found Riley hauling herself up a staircase of padded, stacked cubes. It appeared to be quite slippery with the water rushing down it, but Riley was making impressive progress and Sophie smiled. “I’m sure she doesn’t harbour any ill feelings towards you,” Sophie assured the other woman. “It wasn’t really your fault anyway.”

Devin shrugged. “I have to take responsibility for it. Most of these Mer have put their lives in our hands, whether they think of it that way or not. If I hire people who make them feel unsafe, then I have made them unsafe by putting them in the presence of those people,” she sighed. “But, for the moment, there’s something else we need to discuss. I was wondering if you would allow Carson to accompany you when you go after Katie. Lukshia said she would take two people, and if Lewis means to stay here, I would feel more comfortable knowing you weren’t alone and that you had someone with you with medical knowledge just in case. And honestly? I’m worried about how much Lukshia knows. After all of this…I need to know if our existence is compromised. I won’t risk the Mer we have living here and we’re unfortunately not set up to move on a whim, we need to be prepared.”

Sophie glanced out over the pool. It was impossible to get a count, but there had to be at least thirty Mer ranging from adults and some elderly lounging in the water and along the edges with just their fins trailing down, to children frolicking through the water and over the play structure.

Most of the Mer seemed to be giving the three of them a wide berth, but Sophie hadn’t missed the various curious glances that they’d all been giving them the entire time she’d been sitting on the edge. Despite their wariness of strangers, none of the Mer seemed to feel unsafe. Devin, Carson, and Az had clearly set out to create a safe haven and they’d succeeded.

“Of course,” she agreed. She still couldn’t shake the smallest needle of doubt still pricking at her heart, but they were depending on Devin and Carson – she supposed that dependence was where her uncertainty stemmed from – but even Riley had decided they were trustworthy and Sophie did trust her. She had no reason to refuse and understood their desire to tie up any loose ends that posed a potential threat. “Honestly, I’d rather not go alone…just in case.”

“Thank you.”

Sophie hummed. Then tiny fins in her lap flapped up and Svirnan twisted his head, dislodging the teat of the bottle in the process. Milk dribbled down his chubby little chin and his face scrunched up as he began to whimper. His fists gripped at her shirt and the whimpering grew louder. “Oh, honey, it’s okay,” Sophie murmured. She cradled him closer and when he continued to fuss, she stood up to rock him on her heels.

“You need me to take him?”

Sophie shook her head when Devin offered. “No, he’s okay,” she whispered. She very carefully shifted Svirnan from the crook of her arms and pulled him vertically against her torso. She hooked an arm across his tail to support him and began to gently pat his back.

It was almost instantaneous that his fussing died away to softer, more content murmurings. His fingers fisted in her shirt and she could feel the tiny digits kneading at her as he settled in. Her heart melted and she kissed his little fuzz covered head.

Sophie clucked her tongue. “There we go. You just wanted a cuddle. That’s better, huh?”

“He looks good on you,” Lewis whispered as he came up behind her and wrapped his good arm around her waist.

“He’s not an accessory,” Sophie shot back with a chuckle as she leaned into his embrace.

“You know what I meant,” Lewis countered as he pressed a kiss to her cheek. Sophie hummed in response. Lewis was warm and she still appreciated him immensely.

Devin picked herself back up off the floor as well and reached out to rub Svirnan’s head. “He actually does look good on you,” she stated. “We’ve dealt with infant Mer before, but Svirnan is a grab-bag of issues. He should be a little bigger and more active for his age, and he should have all of his scales by now. Not his adult ones, baby Mer have flakier, more fragile scales, but it is better protection. Instead, he’s just lethargic most of the time, unless he’s fussing and he’s rarely soothed that quickly. His skin dries out and he gets dehydrated very quickly, and his body is atrophying despite our efforts. It’s why we have to keep him in a special homeopathic bath for so much of the day or he gets really sick.”

“That’s terrible,” Sophie replied. She continued rubbing Svirnan’s back, but now that Devin had said it, she could feel how dry and delicate his skin was. It made her want to dip him in the pool to help cool him off and keep his skin damp, but she wasn’t sure if that would be good for him since Devin kept mentioning his water had very carefully balanced concentrations.

“It is,” Devin continued. “But he’s lonely and under-socialized and I can’t fix it. He doesn’t like many people – human or Mer – and we can’t leave him in normal water or out of the water for very long, so some of us hold him when we can, but he’s completely alone otherwise.”

Sophie sighed. Svirnan had settled down rather quickly for her, but he was starting to squirm again. She picked his bottle back up and tried to entice him with it, but she had the suspicion that it wouldn’t keep him calm for very long either. “I bet he misses his mother,” she murmured. “From what we’ve heard, Mer parents keep their babies in near-constant skin to skin contact for the first chunk of their lives, right? If she was all he knew and now she’s gone and he’s got a bunch of different strangers holding him some of the time…is that bath you’re keeping him in safe for others to be in?”

Devin nodded. “There’s nothing dangerous, it’s mostly just packed with extra nutrients his skin can absorb, and an aloe mix to sooth the skin problems. I’m worried he was affected in the womb because Davyrence had the same problems. I’m just hoping we can either cure it or he’ll be able to fight it as he gets older.”