Shiro felt Keith’s arms around his shoulders and he felt safe, secure. He felt cloaked in a dream of sorts, one where only he and Keith existed and this feeling of excitement within him filled the air around them. It was so strange, he thought, that a stranger to him like Keith was had become such a prominent thought in his mind. Keith had been on his mind constantly since the merman had first set eyes on him and he couldn’t help but continue to think about him.

A gentle niggling played at the back of his mind, thinking about the arena fight he would have. He knew that it would be dangerous and he knew that he risked losing everything. He wondered how Keith really felt. From what he could feel, Keith was seething beside him. A sense of rage filled the man and Shiro held a small piece of hope to that. Hope that this sense of attachment was returned to him and it made him smile.

When Keith’s voice made sense again in his head, he pulled back away from Keith, staring at him. It happened again. He heard Keith’s voice clearly and understood it as though he were speaking the merfolk’s language. Shiro looked back at the necklace around Keith’s neck and frowned. He gently lifted it and carefully ran his thumb over them, then closed his eyes and concentrated, [i]“I hear you.. who gave this to you? Where are they now?”[/i] Using this method of communication was starting to give him a headache. He wasn’t well-practised in it and it didn’t come naturally to him, but hearing Keith’s voice in his head raised so many questions.

He didn’t know any other species that could speak like this. Whales were the closest, with their sounds that only they could hear and pick up but nothing like this. Nothing as clear and strong as this. That was reserved only for sirens and merfolk. He wondered whether the person that had given Keith the necklace was related to the merfolk or had knowledge about communication between the two species that Shiro could use to learn to speak with Keith. He had to know.