Swimming With The Current (Wattys2015)

Chapter 8

      As the waves bob along the shoreline, I wait in the steady light of the moon for Colette, and then I turn my head around and look over at Erika and Mitchell's outlines, splashing eachother and diving and racing to a rock and back. Tears streak my face along with the salty ocean water, and I take a deep breath. I wasn't going to cry over Mitchell being with the wrong girl. I'm going to stick it out and let him decide who is really the right one for him.

I hear a splash from behind me, and I turn around.

"Hi, Colette." I say, trying to be confident. The good thing about being in water is if you're crying it just looks like water unless you're breathing really hard.

"So, those two are Mitchell and Erika?" She asks.

"Yeah." I nod sadly. "So, uh, mermaid thing?"

"Right!" She nods excitedly. "Come on, follow me."

She dives down, and I hold onto her tail as she swims away with me literally: on her tail. Colette swims deep into the ocean, giving me an air break whenever I start to lighten up my grip on her tail because of underoxygenation.

Eventually we reach a large rock towering out of the ocean, and Colette flaps her tail to motion for me to stop holding on to it. We swim up and sit down to rest.

"So, how does the mermaid transformation work?" I ask.

"I wouldn't ask that if I were you." Colette bites her lip, and looks out at the ocean. "You won't be happy if you find out. I've been lonely; I don't want to lose you because you'd be scared."

"Alright." I look down.

After a few seconds, Colette says, "I think we are well rested now. Come on, I'll swim you down there."

She dives down, and I dive in with her. Colette drags me down to a cavern opening, and she treads water there and points into the cave. I nod, and swim in by myself.

I have about twenty seconds of breath left, so hopefully I'll be able to reach wherever I'm supposed to go.

After five seconds or so of swimming, I see a hazy blue glow spilling out into the cave, illuminating shiny pebbles and kelp. I swim towards it, and after what feels like forever, I reach a room with shallow water and room to breathe. I emerge, my head just nearly hitting the ceiling, and take a few more gulps of air, and examine the glowing room.

On the walls, stretching up and down to the ceiling and floor, are carvings and cave paintings. I look at one of the walls, and although I can't decipher the inscription, I try to piece together the story from the paintings.

There was once a group of humans shunned by the other humans for their unusual love of water. In exile, they trekked across the land to the other ocean, a journey taking years. Many died, but when they reached the other side of the continent, they saw a large rock tower. They saw a cavern above the water and went inside. The blue orb mutated them into mermaids, but some became sirens. Both groups tried to live alongside in the ocean, but it became clear the sirens were too vain and selfish. War broke out, and the majority of mer and siren were exterminated, until one fateful day when the ocean called a land girl to the rock tower's cavern, which was now mostly underwater. She swam far until she touched the orb and became a mermaid. Another girl years later swam to the rock tower's cavern and became a siren, and started to try to bewitch land boys to do her bidding by making them mermen. She could not be found as she blended in with the land creatures, and the one mermaid tries to find her to this day.

The rest of the walls were blank. I looked down at the orb in the middle of the floor, which according to the wall paintings had once sat on a pedastel with a bowl shape to hold it but now is half-sunken into the floor. It's hard to look at, as the light is so bright from it, but as I squint my eyes, it seems to call to me. It is calling me. It is calling my name. Speaking to me in vibrations and shimmers.

I kick my legs, take a deep breath, and swim down to the orb, and I reach out my hand, grasping for it until my fingers skim the top of it, sending a pleasant shock through me. The sea salt in my eyes suddenly became bearable.

I propel myself down there again, and when I reach it, closing my eyes and taking a mental deep breath, with hesitation, I reach my hand down and press the palm of it onto the orb. I put my other palm on the orb, and slowly the orb's waves flow into me. Suddenly, I feel a huge shock, but entwined with the pleasantness of my first tiny shock is an aftertaste of pain. First it can be felt in my hands, then my arms, my chest, my head and hips, and then into my legs and feet where it feels the greatest.

The orb is sending off radiations which rack my body with pain as they mutate my DNA to give me a tail, gills, fins, webbed hands, and even maybe an extra few neurons to help me swim with a heavy tail to lug around.

The pain flickers across my body, making me writhe, but my hands are still glued to the orb. I try to pull away from it, but I just don't want to despite the pain. I don't want to. I just can't, no matter how hard I try.

Suddenly, my eyes flash open, and turning the bluest of blues they can, I see some kind of scene of my future play out. Me and some girl standing on a large bubble of water, fighting. She shoots water at me, I send a shock through the water back at her. Then a scene of a tiny baby, and Shayna and Andrew swimming happily together, and me with them, but as a teen. Also, not a scene, but just a feeling, a kiss, a long hard kiss, with electricity. Literal electricity.

Suddenly, the orb throws me back, against the wall in a large CRASH!, taking me out of my daze. I take a deep breath, when I realize: I'm breathing underwater!

I look down at myself, and see gills on my arms, webbed fingers, and a tail with dark purple scales, becoming lighter until at the bottom the fin is white.

I'm really a mermaid.