[i]It was dark by now, and the humans had all gone home. Xicca had returned and the merman was going back to the pod with him when he suddenly remembered something. "Xicca, go on ahead. I'll catch up in a minute." After the dolphin left, Runo started off toward a jetty near the shore. He had left something there earlier that day, and he had meant to bring it back with him. 

After several minutes of searching the rocks, his hands finally closed around an object that fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. "Gotcha! Now when I get back, I can...?" The boy stopped for a moment as he noticed an odd sound coming from somewhere. It was unlike anything he had ever heard before, but as he looked around, he couldn't see where it was coming from. "Xicca? That's not you, right? Xicca?" The dolphin didn't appear, but the noise kept getting louder...[/i]

A loud screeching sound from somewhere startled the merman awake. Though his eyesight was still blurry from sleep, he looked around frantically for the source of the noise and found that his movement was a bit restricted. Shaking his head, his eyesight soon cleared enough to see that he was in an enclosed space of some sort. Something like...glass? Where was he? 

The green-ish surroundings were strange enough, but there seemed to be other cases of some sort around as well. What were all those? There some really strange shapes in them. As he continued looking around, completely confused and starting to get a bit scared, he jumped and hit his shoulder on the glass of his tank when he saw the strange creature moving just a short ways away outside the glass. What was that? Why were there so many snakes? Those were snakes, right? Did they capture him? Was he going to be eaten? He shrank back against the glass behind him, away from the creature and tried not to be noticed.