Chapter Text
Peter almost misses it, at first.
Between his listening attentively to Ned as his best fish-friend chatters away about his day, and the dimmed way with which the light shines through a jungle of seaweeds in this little corner of the vast ocean, Peter would have missed it if not for the perfect way the light just happened to strike metal -- pure, lucky chance.
The faint glimmer catches his eye. Because he’s the most curious of all the merboys, he investigates.
It’s absolutely lovely. He can’t conjure up the perfect words to describe it, but it’s breathtaking in a way which lets him know that he must pilfer this object and hide it with the rest of his small collection of precious treasures. And he has a feeling that this one will become his absolute favorite.
This… he’s not quite sure what it is. It’s a circular object, a little larger than his delicate palm, and heavy to the feel, even with the buoyancy of the water surrounding them.
“What is it?” Ned questions, swimming close to Peter’s palm in an effort to examine the object.
“I - I’m not sure,” Peter murmurs in awe, turning the object over and over in his hand, feeling it’s weight and the smoothness of it. It’s so solid. Against the silky softness of his skin, the object feels heavenly. The edges lay, silver and gleaming, constructed in a pattern which is pretty, but in a manner the opposite of delicate. Instead, it’s the definition of sturdy and powerful.
The inside, though, is something entirely different to behold. It’s comparable to the richest and rarest of seaglass -- faintly blue and completely transparent. Perfectly cut, too, into precise shapes which Peter finds absolutely astounding. How does sea glass get cut in such a way? How is that possible?
“I think,” Peter ventures, noting the way the treasure appears dead and unfulfilled in an eerie, indescribable way that some land things just do, “this is one of those treasures that only work out of the water.”
“You think?” Ned asks.
“I’m almost positive,” Peter says, assured in his ability at this point. He may not know what all his treasures are, but he understands them in an intrinsic way, he’d like to think. He understands their souls and their personalities, he believes.
And the more he knows about his collection of treasures, the more curious he grows. The more he wants to see, for himself, how they look when they’re in their natural home. When they come alive on land, in the hands of humans.
Oh, how he longs to lay upon those sandy, golden shores which look warm to the touch, and feel the gentle kiss of the sun over his slippery skin. He yearns for legs and toes -- to dig them into the sand and feel the sand between them, the way he imagines it feels to dip his fingers through seasand, except dry and balmy. He longs to run and lean and skip and jump, the way he’s seen humans do along the shore.
And now that he’s thinking about it…
“You’re going up again, aren’t you?” Ned asks. “Even though the Queen has forbidden you. Oh, MJ is so going to kill us.”
“Are you coming or staying?” Peter asks, though he already knows the answer, because he and Ned have not been apart since Peter was the smallest merchild, barely learning to swim against the current.
He’s already tucking his discovery safely in his satchel and angling his fair visage up towards the outline of the sun, a wavering, shimmering circle which ripples from the movements of water.
As beautiful as it is through water, it’s even brighter and more vivid up above.
Peter feels the fierce tug in his merboy heartstrings and he follows that pull, upwards and upwards, towards the shore of that place -- his favorite place.
City, he reminds himself, a city. Full of palaces and houses and people.
The city called Monaco, which is just about one of the loveliest and most delightfully simple combinations of syllables Peter has heard. Monaco. He mouths it again to himself, for the thousandth time, just to feel it roll off his tongue.
To Monaco, Peter thinks, and he rises.