Momoe seems surprised, at first, when you show up with all the things she asked for, and after a moment of holding her pendant in a shaking hand, she fastens it around her neck and nods, her smile fierce and bright.
She throws the leather glove and herbs you brought her into a large cauldron, followed by a lot of other things from her cabinets and shelves, pulled from a satchel or a trunk or her garden. You look around, curious, as she moves erratically through her home, muttering, grabbing things, throwing some in while putting others back with a shake of her head. At one point, she hesitates in front of a small, clear stone, looking at it for a moment before moving on. You had never seen her make that expression, and you burned with curiosity, but your lips stay pressed firmly together out of fear. “What does that do?” Kanou asks, and you are filled with a mixture of dread at what her reaction might be, and relief that the question burning inside you is given a voice. “It’s a second chance,” she says cryptically, without looking at Kanou, before returning to her task. She continues to mutter to herself, at one point squeezing the juice out of a weird fruit barehanded before throwing the entire thing in the cauldron. You shudder, intimidated, and quietly resolve to never, ever cross her. It takes almost an hour, but by the end, she approaches you with a small corked bottle. “This will make the changes permanent. You have twenty-four hours. Make absolutely sure this is what you want before you drink it. Got it?” You open your mouth to agree, but suddenly you’re choking, and kicking at the water around you, and your vision gets blurry, and fear clenches at your chest, squeezing you in a vice. She tucks the bottle into your bag and shoves you toward Kanou, saying something you can’t understand because nothing sounds right, and you can’t think, and then you’re dragged through the water, up and up and up, and when you breach the surface you take in a huge lungful of air, through your mouth instead of your gills, and cough the water violently out of you as Kanou drags you to the rocky shore. Your skin feels dry and your eyes burn, and the water has never felt so foreign. Kanou wasn’t a faster swimmer than you, until now. Your legs — your human legs — kick worthlessly at the water, partly because you’re exhausted and sluggish, but mostly because they are not a tail. Moving them separately is so strange. You feel the loss more keenly than you thought you would. After a few minutes of lying on the beach trying to catch your breath, you try to stand. It...doesn’t go very well. Kanou laughs at you a little as he tries to coach you, telling you you’re doing it wrong, and you throw sand at him and hobble awkwardly between rocks and realize you have absolutely no idea how to find Abe. It doesn’t matter, though, because, of course, Abe finds you. “M--Mihashi?!” “A-A...be,” you say, not used to your vocal chords making noise in the air instead of the water, but his smile is huge, bigger than you’ve ever seen, and it burns you from the inside out. “How?” He asks, picking you up and spinning you around in excitement. Then he frowns, expression clouding over. “What did you do?” “A w-witch made it… for me,” you manage as you cling to him, a little dizzy, trying to remember to breathe, that you’re supposed to, now, above water instead of below. “That sounds risky,” Abe says, his voice a low rumble as he finally sets you down, and you realize that when you’re up against him you can feel it, all through his chest, and you rest a hand there, wonderingly, now that you can get close enough to reach. “Won’t you miss it? The water, your friends, your family?” You glance up at him and see him looking out towards the water, and shove down a deep ache. Focusing on his voice, you shake your head. “I don’t… I would rather, um. Be… here.” But then you glance at the water too, and you see Kanou, who is watching you, and smiling sadly, and you realize there is a lot you’re leaving behind that you hadn’t thought about at all a few days ago. You won’t be able to swim with Kanou, or Tajima, or repay Sakaeguchi, or explore any more caves or vents or new places. But you’ll have Abe. And that’s all you need, right? Kanou splashes you, and uses his hands to gesture at you, holding up a finger, and miming drinking. “Oh, r-right,” you say, and reach into your bag. You explain the bottle to Abe, who looks relieved. “A day, huh? Well, we’ll just have to make the most of it, then.” He grins at you, and you never want to let him go. The three of you watch the sunset, and then you tell Kanou you’ll be back here tomorrow, before your deadline. He nods and dips back under the water, and you follow Abe as he leads you back to his house. His home. *
Abe’s family is loud, and full of warmth. They welcome you immediately, once Abe has snuck in the back to grab you a set of clothes (clothes were new and weird and you weren’t sure you liked them) and feed you an enormous amount of food, most of which you’ve never seen before. You stick mostly with the fish and familiar things, but you try a couple bites of the unfamiliar dishes — small, white, fluffy stuff Abe calls rice, with a dark, salty liquid on top that reminds you of the ocean, crunchy vegetables you don’t recognize, and gooey, sticky food that has a strong smell.
(Smell is so different when you breathe air instead of water. You haven’t decided yet if you like it.) Some of it is good, some of it you definitely don’t like, but you’re happy you get to experience it all with Abe. You sleep on the floor of Abe’s room, passing out as soon as you crawl between the soft sheets, exhausted from your day. The blanket is a comforting weight on top of you, and you sleep deeply that night, feeling content down to your bones. Your first stop the next morning is, obviously, the park with the baseball field that Abe has told you about many times. Abe’s little brother has an extra glove, and Abe gives you a hat, and brings a wooden bat. You get to try to hit the ball for the first time, which scares you a little, and the bat is heavy. But you love to throw, and Abe teaches you how many different ways there are to throw the ball now that you have fingers that can try all the different pitches, and you’re fascinated and soak up all the information like it’s a part of you, and you were just waiting to be reunited with it. You play almost all day, until you both get too hungry, and then you walk together through Abe’s hometown looking for food, and end up at a small stall that has little fish-shaped snacks with filling inside, which make you both laugh. The day is very nearly perfect. But, as you walk to the beach, the sun getting steadily lower in the sky, the bottle is heavy in your pocket. (Pockets! You have pockets now! Pockets are the best, and may have single-handedly sold you on clothes as a concept.) Abe takes your hand, and you focus on it, on the texture, his skin against your skin, no scales or webbing in the way, both of your hands dry and warm. But… “I don’t...b-belong here,” you say, and you realize how true the words are as you say them. You want so badly, so badly, to belong here, to be a human, to stay. But something has felt… off, the whole time. This is not your world. It’s exciting, and different, and has Abe in it, but it’s not yours. You feel hot tears spill down your cheeks, and it hurts, but you know you’re not wrong. “Yeah, I had a feeling,” Abe says quietly, and he sounds resigned, and it feels like the last bolt on a door locking you away from the dream you had. It was such a nice, beautiful dream, and you wanted it more than anything. Abe wraps you in a warm hug, and you cling to the tiny bottle, and wish it felt right, but after the past few days — collecting all the ingredients, exploring places you’d never been before — it showed you things about yourself you weren’t aware of. Things you never would have learned on land, with legs instead of a tail. “You shouldn’t have to change for anyone,” Abe says, pulling back to look at you. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot today, and it’s not fair to ask you to do this. We were happy before, right?” You nod, clinging to his hands. Giving this up will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done. “There is another option.” You jump, and Abe’s head snaps toward the water, where Momoe is floating with her head and shoulders just above the surface, her arms crossed, looking at you. Kanou is just behind her, only his eyes visible above the surface. “What do you mean?” Abe asks, pulling you behind him protectively, wary. “I mean just because all Mihashi asked for was legs, doesn’t mean that’s the only way.” She uncrosses her arms, and holds up the small, clear stone Kanou had asked her about. “I’ve been holding on to this for a long, long time, hoping someone would come back for it. But it looks like they’re not going to, so I might as well give it to you. If you want it.” Abe narrows his eyes. “What does it do?” She grins, and tosses it to Abe, who catches it, because he has excellent reflexes, and you’ve been throwing a baseball at him all day. Then he drops to the sand, because he no longer has legs to stand on. Abe makes a gurgling noise, clutching at his throat, and lashes his tail against the sand, tossing it up in every direction. You yelp, and drag him into the water, but then Abe drops the stone in his desperate flailing, and his legs are back, and he’s sitting in the shallow water, soaking wet, panting, looking at you with wide, wondering eyes. You’re both now covered in sand and soaking wet. Momoe shrugs. “Just thought I’d give you some more options. Take it or leave it, I don’t need it anymore.” She sinks back into the ocean before you can thank her, but something tells you you’ll get a chance later. You look back to Abe, who stares at you, and then glances at the rock laying on the sand, and then his face splits into a wide, shit-eating grin. “Now this, we can work with.” You spend your last few minutes with legs sitting with him on the beach, and then, when your transformation wears off and you have a tail again, Abe picks up the stone. This time, it’s your turn to show him your home, and you’ve never been more excited in your life. |