same world, different life

Chapter 5. swimming into the school

We would be meeting up every other day from the morning and into the evening. I'd since gotten acquainted with my new friends aboard the ship, but one day they had us go swimming, and it would be an opportunity missed just because of it.

"Nathan, did you put on what I gave you?" Machiavelli asked me through the door.

"I did, and I can't feel my legs. What's this supposed to do anyhow?" I asked him.

"Well, once you have a feeling there, tell me," he told me.

"that doesn't answer my question," I replied.

That sounded weird, but I knew what he was talking about. He had me put on an odd wrap shaped like a fishtail over my legs. When I did, I at first felt a lot of pain in my legs then no feeling at all, but now the feeling was coming back to me, and my legs felt a lot different.

"Ok, now I can feel whatever happened to my legs," I told him. He then came in and had me remove the wrap, and that's when I realized that the cover changed my legs into a scaled dolphin-like tail.

"Perfect, wait till they see you are swimming in this," he told me.

"I can only imagine, I just hope you can reverse this after the fact," I replied.

"I can, just not now, at least," he replied.

He picked me up and walked his way to where the rest of the group, but as he did, I saw my family in the distance. I would have run off to them if it wasn't for the fact I had that fishtail. Once we got there, most of them were a bit confused, but Daniel looked as if he was about to laugh.

"Nathan, what did he do to you?" He asked me.

"The same thing that happened to you and a few others," I replied.

"Well, this shouldn't be an inconvenience in the water; it might help when we get in," he replied.

"Here put these on," Machiavelli told me as he applied two patches to me and Daniel's face. I would have said something, but my ability to speak was suddenly hindered by sharp pains and a slight inability to breathe. "Nathan, you might want to stay under the water for a while," he said to me as he pushed me into the water.

Once in the water, the patches fell off and floated to the top, and I could breathe again. I felt my face, and I realized I had gills on my face. Then Daniel fell in to, and the same thing was on him. I tried to speak, but the sound wouldn't travel at all. That's when we saw the others jump in, some of which were scaled and had a similar fishtail as I did.

after a few minutes of swimming, I decided to try to surface only to realize that I wasn't receiving oxygen through the air too quickly. "Nathan, it might be up to 2 hours until you can breathe out of water properly," he told me. I dived back under and played with the others in the water. It was probably one of the best feelings for me as I loved to swim.

After 45 minutes, I started to get tired, so I laid down in the sand under the water near the shore. "Nathan, can you breathe out of the water yet?" Someone asked me. I stuck my head out of the water, and this time I could breathe.

"Maybe now I can enjoy myself in the sand," I replied.

"Yeah, let me get you under the sand," she replied. She pulled me out of the water and laid me in the dry sand. Then she packed the sand over me up to my neck tightly.

"This feels good. I'm starting to warm up from the heat being trapped, too," I told her.

"I knew you'd be alright," she told me. She then called some of her friends in the water, and they started to carve and build with the sand around me.