Over the course of a few weeks, you manage to develop a combination of hand signs and gestures that you could use to communicate above water. You could understand him, of course, but making noise above water hurt. In the water, you could speak, but he had to communicate with the hand signs, because you can’t understand him through all the useless air bubbles distorting his words. It’s challenging sometimes, and he can only stay underwater for less than a minute before he needs to breathe, but you fall into a rhythm, and the two of you make it work.
He scared you a little, at first. He was loud and yelled a lot, and you would freeze up and sometimes run away. But you always came back, a day or two later, and he would always be there, waiting, and after a while he learned not to shout quite so much, and you got more used to him, and you ran away less. You explore coves together, collect little trinkets to give to each other, yours from deep under the surface at the bottom of the sea floor, his from his home, farther inland where you can’t go. You play catch a lot with driftwood and rocks and, on one memorable occasion, a beach ball, which Abe brought down with him, until you punctured it with your sharp nails, and looked at him in horror, and he just laughed. And you realized, all at once but also slowly in all the time leading up to that moment, in a thousand small pieces of a puzzle all fitting together, that you want him to laugh like that every day, and be near you forever, by your side, but also that being together is completely impossible. You met someone that had such a profound impact on your life, who altered it completely, but it can’t last. It’s forbidden for you to interact at all, but of course you’ve already broken that rule. The real problem is that the two of you are completely incompatible in every way: he needs air, you need water — you could only spend minutes in each others’ domain before suffocating; he’s loud where you are quiet, he is confident while you are hesitant; he is smart and clever and strong and you… are not. You can’t even talk at the same time. You can’t go to the same places, or have the same friends — no one could know, or that would be the end. There’s no way, it has been doomed from the start. Except, maybe, for one possibility. Years ago, there was another who left your people, betrayed them to follow a human. They are the reason it’s now forbidden, because it almost resulted in the annihilation of your kind — the human had told others, and then the news spread, and they’d feared what they didn’t understand, and attacked. Your entire family, your whole kingdom, had to run away, to leave your home, to escape the humans’ destruction. You’d been told the story since you were young. But before that, the mer who started it all — they’d wanted to become human, too. There was a story about a Witch, a former mer, who was exiled for trying to help the mer become human, who set off the conflict by trying to help the mer and human be together. But she still exists, and you think you know where she is, after combining the stories you know with some that Abe has told you. You have no idea if she’ll agree to help you, but you know you have to try. * You’re a little bit of an outcast, so for the most part, your time away from the other mer has been overlooked, with one notable exception. Your childhood friend, the only one that still checks up on you regularly — Kanou. He, of course, notices immediately. You try to lie, because you know your lives might depend on it, and Abe had been very insistent about keeping quiet, but you can only hide so much from your best friend before he figures everything out. He can read you like a book. Or just follow you one day when you disappear to meet Abe, and find everything out all at once. (He was mostly worried, although he did shoot a couple glances at Abe those first few days that were less than friendly. But Kanou is a very good person, and you know they will get along. Eventually.) So, as soon as you realize what you need to do, there is only one person you can talk to about it. Kanou’s only question is, “when do we go?” Kanou is much braver than you, and also kinder, and it didn’t matter how dangerous your mission was, or what risk it might pose to him. You needed his help, and he wasn’t about to let you down. It isn’t hard to find the undersea cove that lay forgotten at the edge of your kingdom’s territory. No one is permitted around here, because there are myriad dangers — sharks, some leftover mines from when the humans fought one of their (many, many) wars, sharp rocks and coral, poisonous creatures. But you have a mission, and Kanou isn’t going to let you back out now. It’s dark, and you have to swim slowly, to avoid the strange-colored substance that coats the walls of the cove, when you hear a voice. “Why are you here, little fishes? You’re a very long way from home.” You startle, darting behind Kanou, who swims right up to the shadowy figure at the center of the small cavern. He’s trembling a little, which you only know because you’re holding on to his arm, but he squares his shoulders, determined, his mouth a firm line. “My friend wants to become human, and we know you tried to help one of us before. Can you do it?” The Witch swims forward into a small pool of light, and looks between the two of you. |
|