Mer Song
The mage inside the prison fort heard the choir-like singing of a merperson. The haunting sound comforted his lonely existence and filled a hole that eroded him steadily from the inside. Silence and solitary confinement he could deal with, but the loss of his memories was a dull ache whose yawning chasm got bigger and wider with every passing day. It was an emptiness that nothing had been able to fill. Syryn wanted to find the merperson whose singing it was that he was hearing.
The sweet voice was androgynous. It lulled him with its hypnotic melody and gave him a semblance of peace he hadn't found since the fateful day at the ship.
____
When the door opened again for a second time, several days had elapsed since his confinement. Without sun or moon to tell him how long it had been, the human had felt the time drift by with the tiny aquatic bits that floated in the water passing through his prison.