High Tide (boyxboy)

Chapter 18: His sacrifice

"You need to get him to keep quiet"

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Kai's eyes widened, not expecting to be faced with two brown eyes staring at him. This could be potentially disastrous for all involved. 

Kai does all he can do with the little power he possesses. Not being an adult aqualine, his power was limited. He places his hand on the boy's hair and begins to stroke it. Putting him back into a deep sleep, in the hope that when he awoke, he would think it just a dream. He could forget the aqualine who saved him, he hoped for both of their sakes. 

As soon as the boy's eyes close, Kai again curls himself up into a silver orb and rolls back into the sea like a shining bowling ball. He had to get away now, as quickly as he could. Kai finds Rusty next to the rock where he had left him. "What have you just done?" 

Kai looks back at the boy laying on his back in the sand. "Let's just get out of here." He replies, praying to the watergods that the boy would forget. 

***

"What time do you call this?" Kai's mother was swimming around him in circles, arms folded when he eventually entered their underwater sea cottage.

"Sorry...I didn't realise the time." Kai lies. He couldn't tell his mother where he had actually been and thankfully she didn't ask any more questions.

The next day, Kai woke up early. His thoughts went straight to the boy. He wondered if he was still laying there on the sand where he had left him. 

Kai hurries out of his hammock giving his face a quick blast of air bubbles before sneaking out of the stone cottage unnoticed. 

The sun is bright this morning and Kai spends a moment enjoying the sunrise before carefully making his way towards the beach. The tide is out and he cannot get as close as he could yesterday, but he is still near enough to see the outline of a small figure. That of a boy. That boy. Kai squints his eyes a little to focus and sees the boy heading to the cave's entrance, then looking all around him. It soon dawns on Kai that the boy is looking for him. 

Kai can feel his skin lose it's shine a little at the realisation that he may have exposed the aqualine. He knew now he would be in deep, deep trouble. 

"I told you so." Kai turns quickly to see Rusty swimming up behind him. 

"Rus. What am I going to do? My mum will kill me if she finds out I may have revealed our existence." 

"You need to get him to keep quiet, " Rusty suggested. 

"How am I supposed to do that, without revealing myself again?" Kai pulls at his orange hair in frustration. "Why can't I perform amnesia? Why can I only comatose?" 

"You know why, Kai. You have to be over 18 to inherit that power." Rusty tries to reassure him. "Look he's only a kid like us...no one will believe him...ok? They'll say it's his imagination, like the time you thought you saw that white haired angel fall from the sky." He chuckles. 

"But I did." Kai insists. 

"Look, just try not to think about it anymore." Rusty takes Kai's hand, pulling him away. 

Kai reluctantly lets Rusty guide him away, but he couldn't hide the guilt and the worry that he could potentially have endangered his own species. He also couldn't hide his curiosity over this human boy who remembered.

Kai now cannot help but return to that same spot every day. He sees the boy, each time looking for him. It's clear he cannot forget and Kai now knows what he must do.

***

Five years later...

"Kai, are you sure you want to do this? I mean you could be trapped like that forever if you don't find him." Rusty looks at Kai with concern as they sit side by side on a castaway boat, a distance away from the shore. In Kai's cupped hands he had a shell filled with a red liquid. 

Kai looks down at the concoction in front of him. An elixia which can allow an aqualine to masquerade as a human, illegal, dangerous, potentially irreversible, but as far as he was concerned the only way. 

"I need to find him, Rus and now I can perform amnesia. I can rid his thoughts of me and protect the aqualine."

"But if you don't, you will stay as human. You won't remember who you are. How can you find someone when you don't know you are looking for them?" 

"If he remembers anything about what happened in the cave, he will remember me and then I will know." Kai looks at Rusty next to his side. "Either way, I need to pay this price. I can't let what happened to the merkind happen to us."

Before Rusty can utter another word, Kai holds the shell to his lips and downs the red liquid in one. He suddenly grabs at his throat, dropping the shell in the water, before collapsing on his back in the boat, hitting the back of his head. Rusty looks over at him in concern and panic, shaking Kai hurriedly "Kai, Kai." 

A sudden burst of white energy ripples from the heart of Kai's body. Slowly on his pearlescent silvery blue skin, flesh coloured bubbles surface, which expand and grow, covering his aqualine skin. His feathery feet curl in on themselves to create human toes and his hair slowly loses its vibrant orange with black liquid oozing from his scalp like ink. 

Rusty knows he now only has a matter of minutes to get Kai ready for the human world. He grabs the netted bag with some salvaged swimming trunks they had previously found abandoned on the beach and hurriedly pulls them onto Kai. He now gets back in the water and begins to pull the boat to shore, so it is wedged in the sand. He spends a last minute looking at his best friend with a heavy heart.

"Come back safe Kai." Rusty then turns and swims away.