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Maia floated, adrift in an abyss of choking black darkness and twisting spires of bone. Nightmarish things slithered through the depths beneath her, great twisted things of teeth and spines and oily scales and skin. The young woman was frail and blind- an easy target for any of the numerous horrors that called the deep sea their home.

All of them had killed. Almost all of them had wreaked havoc at some point in their long, ageless lives. Most of them had tasted of merfolk flesh and found it desirable, and any one of them could have seized the slip of a woman in their jaws and torn her to bloody bits. They had torn armored warriors asunder before. It wouldn't have been difficult to rend her in half, to cleave through flesh and bone alike in one bite.

And yet-

"You don't need to baby me," the woman said quietly, as a great shape brushed against her. The serpent hissed, and she gently swatted her on the snout, lips turning down in a pout. "You've already told me I'm safe here! I know my way around already. I'm blind, not helpless."

"You still shouldn't wander off," the creature said in a voice that was like metal tearing metal. Maia didn't seem to notice. Maia *never* noticed, no matter how many things simply didn't add up. "What if we find your people and they wish to collect you immediately? It would be embarrassing for everyone involved if you were stuck under a coral reef, hunting for eels and we had to delay your reunion."

Sareliax was, by all accounts, the most well-spoken of them. None of the creatures that dwelled in the Boneyard could be described as friendly, but she was the most eloquent, and the smallest. She had walked and swam and flew amongst mer and men in ages gone by, in a dazzling array of shapes that had hidden the monster underneath layers of flesh and lies. Maia had spoken to most of them, but it was Sareliax who the others had strong-armed into handling her. Though she hadn't taken another shape- Maia had assumed they were simply very, very large marine life, and nobody had told her yet- her experience actually talking to mortals certainly helped.

(Everyone liked her, they were simply too big. One wrong move, they had argued, and she might be crushed between their great tails and one of the mountains of bone that marked their territory. It had not taken much effort to convince her to look after the mermaid. At least until her people could be found.)

"Its been ages," the mermaid said morosely. "I'm starting to think we'll never find them. And besides, you always seem to know where I am."

"We're only concerned about you," Sareliax said because it was the truth, if not the whole truth. They were concerned because while their territory was vast, it was not the only part of the black abyss that lay beneath the sea floor. And Maia had demonstrated a tendency to wander off. How else would she have found them, of all creatures?

"I know you are. You're all a lot more... um..." The mermaid searched for a word.

"... Protective?" Sareliax suggested softly, as her words faltered.

"Protective." She swished her pearly white-scaled tail, biting her lip. "My tribe wasn't this... this protective of me. I want to go back, but... Vaseli sounded like he was going to have a heart attack when he realized I'd swam away to go poke at the reef."

(Vaseli had once destroyed an entire civilization, drowned them, and dragged their continent to the bottom of the sea. The old squid had demanded that she look after the girl with something approaching child-like panic because he had looked away with only a few of his many eyes for all of a second and she had swum over to poke at a pillar of skulls, just the right size for crushing mermaids if they toppled over).

"Perhaps I should have a word with them," Sareliax suggested. "About loyalty to their kin. They are taking their sweet time looking for you." She would have been a better fit, for looking for Maia's people, but she had been *volunteered* to stay and watch the girl. Another one of the abominations that swam beneath the seafloor had been sent, the strongest of them.

(Krezlin had returned with tales of apathy, of a lack of any search parties, of no effort being made to find the girl. They held out hope that he had just been unable to find them, that they had seen a leviathan of old and fled. That they hadn't decided to leave a young, blind woman to her fate in the depths).

"No, I'm sure they're just... not sure where I am. We've always talked extensively with whales, anyway, so eventually they'll figure out you guys have moved in here," Maia said hopefully.

The elder thing looked at her charge and sighed. "One must hope. Until then, we will take care of you," she said. "For as long as you need."

It was the truth. They had cultists, before, when they were more active, when they had been more than just lurking horrors in the depths, when they had been active destroyers of civilization and life.

None of them had ever been so attached to any of them as they were to Maia, though.

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Submitted by Cwest5538 on Mon, Mar 28, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

A blind mermaid lives in what they think is a magnificent coral reef, surrounded by friendly sea creatures. In reality they are in a boneyard surrounded by hideous sea monsters. The monsters decided to play along until their leader can find her real home.