Chapter 3: Nesting

Sairaj woke up the next day.

I always carried a vague guilt towards him, thinking that if I hadn’t chosen Tejas, Sairaj wouldn’t have ended up like this. Every time I saw him curled at the bottom of the tank, something twisted inside me.

Kabir frequently performed inhumane experiments on him. I heard that, to test a mermaid’s muscle responses, he once cut Sairaj open alive, without anaesthesia, forcing him to watch his own belly being sliced open. The staff whispered about it at tea breaks, their faces pale.

I poured plenty of restorative solution into Sairaj’s water. Fortunately, his healing ability was extraordinary. After being unconscious for twenty-four hours, he finally opened his eyes. The first thing I saw was a flash of anger—then nothing.

I tried to greet him, but he only shot me a cold glance before shrinking back to the bare bottom of the tank, showing neither resentment nor gratitude. I couldn’t blame him. In his world, kindness and cruelty probably looked the same, coming from human hands.

No matter how I tried to communicate with Sairaj that day, he didn’t respond or even acknowledge my presence. It was as if I was invisible, a shadow flickering outside the glass.

It wasn’t until feeding time, when I tossed a fresh, oily mackerel into the tank, that he finally lifted his eyelids. With a flash of his tentacles, he seized the fish and began devouring it. His teeth tore the flesh with desperate hunger, splattering red against the glass.

Watching his almost ravenous eating, I suddenly felt a pang of sadness.

I’d heard that, to test a mermaid’s digestive strength, Kabir never gave him proper food.

Spiny sea urchins, poisonous jellyfish, and sea snakes were considered good; later, he even fed him plastic waste to see if mermaids could digest it. I shuddered, remembering the way he bragged about it during lunch break, as if it was a clever joke.

He probably hadn’t tasted real food in a long time.

So halfway through eating, he hesitated, then swam to the corner with the remaining half of the bloody fish, as if trying to hide it. His hands curled protectively around the meat, eyes darting as if someone would snatch it away.

I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking of the little stray dog outside my colony that always buries biscuits under the neem tree. Sometimes, in this world, survival teaches you strange lessons.

I knocked on the glass. "Eat up, don’t worry. You’ll always have enough to eat from now on." My voice sounded soft, almost motherly. My fingers nervously twisted the edge of my dupatta, hoping he would understand.

Sairaj just stared at me blankly, as if he didn’t understand.

It hit me then—he probably didn’t know how to speak yet.

Tejas had already picked up a lot of human language and could communicate with me on a basic level.

But Kabir probably never bothered to teach Sairaj to speak. He didn’t see the point in talking to his toys.

I felt a wave of pity and guilt.

I gutted another mackerel, cleaned and cut it into small pieces, and put them in a steel dabba—the kind Amma used to pack for me in school, the smell of fried fish and curry leaves forever lingering.

Then, as usual, I carried the dabba up the ladder to the top of the tank. My hands trembled a little, afraid of dropping the whole thing and causing a commotion. Under my breath, I whispered a quick prayer: "Bappa, protect me."

The top of the special bulletproof glass tank, which couldn’t be blasted open even with a bomb, was covered with a steel mesh. Even a mermaid who could tear steel apart couldn’t break through it. I ran my finger along the cold edge, remembering how many times we’d been told to double-check the locks.

I sat on the tank’s ledge, reaching my hand through the gap to feed Tejas. The blue water shimmered below, and the smell of the fish made my stomach rumble.

Sairaj, who had been ignoring me while eating, suddenly stopped and turned to watch. His eyes followed my every move, suspicious, but curious.

Tejas had already swum over as I climbed up, nuzzling my hand affectionately before eating the fish from my palm. The sensation was strangely comforting—like feeding the goldfish at the temple pond, but more intimate.

His eating style was completely different from Sairaj’s ferocity—he ate elegantly, bit by bit. Those sharp teeth, capable of shredding a pomfret, never scratched my skin. The way he looked up at me after each bite made me smile.

When he finished, I stroked Tejas’s silky golden hair. It was soft, cool, and impossibly beautiful—like touching sunlight underwater.

He circled in the water, happily nudging my hand like a puppy, then propped himself up and poked his head out of the water, his wet brown eyes gazing at me. I could almost see my reflection in them.

He called my name:

"Meera."

"Meera..."

Meera—that was the first word Tejas learned. The way he said it, almost reverent, made my heart skip a beat.

I’d taught him countless words: eat, pain, sad, happy...

But the first word he learned was my name.

The huge tank shimmered with dreamy blue. Tejas’s tail was like gold flickering from the tank’s floor. Sometimes I thought he belonged in a palace, not a prison.

The beauty of mermaids, so similar yet so far beyond humans, always reminded me they were not of our kind.

But that dreamlike allure kept pulling me in, sinking deeper and deeper. Like a moth to a flame, I found myself unable to let go.

Tejas began to sing.

For a moment, I felt as if I were a sailor alone on a midnight sea, adrift on a wooden boat in the darkness. The world outside faded, replaced by the low hum of his song.

On a distant, damp rock, the beautiful incarnation sang softly to me, trying to lure me closer with a voice as delicate as silk, inviting me to sink into the dream with him. My breath caught, my heart ached with longing.

Yet beneath him, that massive golden tail swayed in the ink-dark water, waiting to wrap around and drown me. Danger and desire, so close together—like the stories old women whisper at weddings.

I couldn’t help but reach out my hand.

Tejas’s sharp nails carefully avoided my skin, gently holding my hand and dropping a cool, reverent kiss—like seawater—on the back of it. My skin tingled, as if marked by something sacred.

I stared at him in a daze.

My reflection shimmered in those brown eyes, love and dependence entwined within. The lab, the tanks, the world outside—all of it faded, replaced by the soft glow of his gaze.

Those soft, rose-petal lips spoke a word:

"Love."

Tejas stammered, but said firmly:

"Tejas, love, Meera."

I turned my head. In the distant tank, Sairaj had stopped hiding his fish.

The half-eaten, bright red mackerel floated in the water, but he paid it no mind.

Those burning, ruby-like eyes were fixed on me and Tejas.