Waking up, I expected myself to be in a cloud-like heaven of a bed.
I woke up floating in the water beneath our bungalow, shielded by the long shadows as sunlight spilled over the horizon. I felt weightless and safe in this calm water, wiggling my fingers and toes. My fingers didn’t feel like prunes when I splashed my arms. A yawn dunked me under a moment and warm water soothed my limbs.
My legs eased down, planting bare feet on the sand. With hair plastered to my back and shoulders, I wiped at my face.
Last night felt like a dream. There were no words I could pluck from my brain, no right way to describe just how amazing it was to be here. Everything fell into place just after a few hours on the shore.
Above my head, I could hear the faint sound of Jane cussing and shoving things. Last time I checked, Josh had taken the couch and pulled his suitcase out with him. I almost offered my room when I saw the stress lining his face but then remembered why I hurt now.
My parents complained about my vindictive inclinations when pushed, claimed my emotions were like the tides. I was the first to admit I had a sadistic streak if the occasion called for it and I wasn't above tormenting someone who wronged me. Their complaints were more because I didn’t simper and pretend to be a sweetheart when they pulled me out from whatever room they’d hide me in to play dress up and happy family. We didn’t know each other enough to do it effectively. Hugs were too stiff, smiles too plastic.
Then again, not many bothered to wonder why I stuck close to housekeepers and servers rather than my parents the four times I had been taken along to tea parties or events.
I didn’t like them and they didn’t like me all too much either. ‘You should practise patience and forgiveness, not be such an animal’, was a common lecture that Mum forgot about four glasses into the evening. We both knew it was a losing battle.
I should call them.
"Enjoying yourself?"
I strained my neck back to stare up to the deck. "G’Morning, Morgan," I grinned and forgot all about dysfunctional relative issues.
She scrunched up her nose. "Don't tell me you slept out here. You didn't, did you?” She answered her own question before I opened my mouth. “ That's crazy, even by your standards," She scoffed, offering a hand. I hoisted my body up and onto the deck, dropping beside her and dragging my fingers through my heavy hair. “Is the trip here with dickless and hussy worth it?"
"So worth it," I purred, peering down to the water. "I feel free. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah, it does. It's liberating to be able to let your hair down and those sea legs loose," She smiled, tapping my knee while my legs swung back and forth under us.
I rolled my shoulders back, eyes slipping shut. "No, that's not it. It feels more. I don't know. I'm comfortable in my own skin for once," I mused while willing my body to soak in as much of the water before Morgan made me shower.
"You've always had a bad self image. I was so happy you wore that dress last night. You look amazing in that sort of stuff," Morgan stated, helpfully pulling my hair into a wet braid and tying it off with an elastic. "You looked ready to ascend with how happy you were."
"I feel one heroic deed away from becoming some higher being. I’m sure this is as close to heaven as I’ll ever get. Expect me to be a sobbing mess when we have to leave," I said and wriggled my toes to work off the tingles seeping into my skin.
Cheshire smile in place, she leaned around to be in my eyeline. "And that has nothing to do with that gorgeous beefcake that wouldn't let your hand go yesterday?" She asked with voice pitched higher, a tease. "He looked lovestruck, like those hallmark movies. Not even Josh looked at you like that."
Still a sore point, I didn’t want to dwell on my first relationship that had gone down like a lead balloon. "Like what?" I asked, not willing to consider more about romance at the moment. His attention on me had been over the top and weird.
"Like you were everything. The stars, the moon. It's the way my Dad looked at Henry when they first met," She said with all the wisdom of a girl raised in a loving home.
Morgan and Miles had a father who, after divorcing their bitch of a mother, had found love in the arms of Henry Fink. Henry had been in their father's company to propose a business venture and no truer love had ever been found. The way they looked at each other, constantly orbited one another like they were each other’s world... Eighteen years and not a day went by that they didn't tell each other ‘I love you’.
Henry had adopted Miles and Morgan before their eighth birthdays and the family was complete.
For her to claim Atlas of all people threw similar looks my way, she must have been romanticising again. She had her step fathers’ romantic heart. "Are you sure? It would’ve been a trick of the light or something. We just met yesterday."
"I am aware," She retorted, punching my arm. It barely jostled me and I frowned down to my pale arm. White freckles from childhood mottled the pale skin, shades lighter. No bruises though. She had a powerful right hook that usually sent me keeling over. She must have held back some so early in the morning. "Are you forgetting Dad and Papa? They were practically serenading each other the next day and after that, they were stuck at the hip. That being said, you should go see Atlas. He all but gave you an exclusive invitation to go meet him for meals."
"He probably has other people to hang out with," I excused. True, that enigma of a man offered in passing but there must be a whole army of women ready to please him. A whole army of women much more attractive than me with a lot more substance too. "I'm just a student of animal and environmental studies on a long holiday. I have no ‘prospects’ and I'm boring. When I’m not wallowing in anger and frustration."
"I’ll call Miles out for his ‘bad self talk’ lecture,” She threatened and smirked when I cupped my hands over my ears. They felt a little tender and I couldn’t handle another grumbly loving talking to. Not yet. “You don’t see yourself like others do," She said, leaning on me and not bothering to care about her silk pajamas getting soaked through. "Hips to die for. You've got the loveliest hourglass figure and softest eyes. That and your silver tongue."
"I feel so objectified," I feigned offence. "You know what? I'm going to go for a dip in the black lagoon. I'll take a towel and hope there aren't as many people so early."
"Could you please take two towels? I have no idea how you're not dying of hypothermia," She muttered, looking over the exposed, very un-wrinkly skin along my hands and legs. "And this. I knew you’d forget the keycard."
A small toiletries bag was shoved at me and I spied the access card tucked inside. The waterproof bag was a blessing.
"Really?" I asked when I caught the additional supplies inside.
She winked. "In case that Atlas comes around. There’s waterproof lip gloss, strawberry flavoured," She said and stood up, tilting her head back. "This place really is the watery Eden. Experiencing it first hand, I’m not surprised it’s such a hard place to get invited to. We must have hit the jackpot to get our invitations all together.”
"I’m not going to question my incredible luck,” I shrugged and stretched out my back, bowing my spine back. “I better get going before it’s swamped with people," I announced and padded away barefoot. I wrapped a towel around my shoulders that fell down past my knees. The warm morning and the sun strong did a better job of drying me out than the towel.
Walking through the sleepy island path, some employees nodded in greeting or smiled as I passed. I caught sight of only ten people on the beach near the bungalow and two coming from the direction of the lagoon on my way. I made it in record time to the pool, looking to the inky depths and loosening the tied towel. The stretched screens and little four walled changing rooms far from the lagoon were unoccupied with lockers of bamboo and sanded wood tucked around their corner.
It went by bungalow and room numbers and I browsed the numbers, noting that there weren’t nearly as many as I thought before we reached the shore. For such an exclusive place that people would sell their organs for, the bungalows went up to forty three.
The hotel rooms had fifty five.
Bungalow No. 3 opened with a tap of my card. I set the bag in, then the dry towel and slipped the lanyard into the (expensive but worth it) water proof thigh satchel. Miles had been especially proud of finding such a slim, comfortable one for me on my sixteenth birthday. Josh had stitched in pretty blue and green seaweed patterns as well as a few little crab outlines and a stray octopus figure on the strap. I never went on a big swim without it.
Dressed down in my one piece, thigh bag and hair in my messy braid, I stepped over the grass. The near trance-inducing scent of salt in the air and the placid surface of inky black drew me away from the buzzing lights. Sand shifted underfoot and I picked up my pace, almost running into the black water. Once the water splashed up past my waist, I dove in. My ear flooded with the cool water and pulled my hair away from my face. Water was my friend, and here I could just be.
Scales brushed along my shoulder and I darted further into the depths. My skin prickled as it followed. A barrage of squeals and guttural rumbles caressed my skin and burrowed into my eardrums. My head turned to the left, dipping down where I was sure something glided in a wide circle.
The clicking storm that met my ears spurred me into action. I scrambled up to the surface, into fresh air as my lungs burned. Further from the beach and closer to the centre, I paddled in a small circle. Docos about sonar and the way oceanic creatures would signal to each other had my favourite, along with that mock-umentary about the mermaids.
I ducked my head, hoping that had been a momentary hallucination.
The clicks were softer this time, then the soft croon that interrupted it.
Whoever or whatever it was, they hadn’t rushed to attack. The lovely creature from the evening before came to mind and I perked up. If it had been him, that would mean I had a second chance to see more of him. I dove under the surface, muscles burning with adrenaline and tremors racing up my spine.
The sunlight didn’t penetrate the darkness of the water like the moonrays had. I always relied on gut instinct, especially in water. I picked a direction and more often than not, came out safe and relatively sound. I trusted that weird internal compass that I was descending. My hand brushed against sand far faster than I had thought. With nothing more than darkness surrounding me this time, I righted myself and hovered there.
The messy braid floated up around my neck when I turned, catching on something sensitive at the skin there. My hand brushed up against weird jutting skin there as I took a rattling breath in and... didn't drown. My nail caught on the fleshy bit just under it, a slit. Then two more below it. The same fluttering bits of membrane were on the other side of my neck. I grasped them, then a smaller set just behind them.
I could breathe underwater and I had a set of weird growths on my skin. Miles would be laughing right now if he saw this, would say that I was only a tail short of my true self.
With every deep inhale and exhale, the membrane fluttered.
A little giggle sent more streams of hot water from my throat flaps. I hopped up and down and left the sandy bottom while slowly sinking again. The constant filtering sensation of water through my lungs and out my lips took some getting used to, a cycle of smooth water in through my skin.
My tongue tingled with the burst of salty water coming from my mouth.
A nudge to my side from a spindly limb felt corded underneath the scales, like muscle on muscle. A claw lifted my hand and I startled, tipping my head back to beam at the familiar big eyes.
In the pale columns of moonrays last night, he had dwarfed me. This time I relied on my expanding senses and the strange warble along the water. As intimidating as before, its approach had been drowned out by the other noise and clicking. Ridges underneath my fingertips brushed rough against my skin.
I let go of the anchoring limb and waved. Gleaming claws of liquid silver echoed the gesture.
Adorable.
The stare off filled the water with a bubbly kind of tension until I broke it. I pointed to my face. "Niamh," Bubbles poured from my mouth while I tried my hand at speaking underwater. It came out as a soft burble but the vowels were there. I could speak!
A click and a few ticks from the toothy mouth vibrated around me. No consonants or vowels but it tried. The sharp screech that finished off their sentence scattered the encroaching entities. The silver from the claws crept up and over something like a ridge of coral as my eyes got better at discerning the shades around us. They formed a gruesome mockery of a shoulder and then grew over what must be the back of the creature.
Another arm and a long sharp tail covered in gorgeous silver scales came into view.
It looked and moved like a giant eel tail with barbs as big as my clenched fist along the length. His head was last to completely materialise in that soft glow.
With huge teeth and those bright eyes, its maw opened wide to show off very pointy long teeth. They could rip through my body like my bones were butter with one big snap. The kindness in his eyes overshadowed the mouthy part. It made a clicking noise, cocking the alien-looking head and I smiled at the palpable confusion.
"You look amazing!" I shouted and it warbled along the water. I felt its tail wind around my waist and back like a bumpy blanket, the ridges soft against my squishier skin. No blood to be drawn today, hopefully. Aw! "Do you have a name?"
A bellow of his breath made the water thrum and I pushed up with my legs to get closer to him. "You remind me of one of those deep-sea angler fish. But you have this feel about you," I mused to myself and tentatively touched one of those huge teeth. My new friend kept still as I felt along the jaw and then the little dips and bumps of what had been wounds in the past.
Everything else looked semi-human at a glance. The nose pressed a little flatter than most humans but not Voldemort flat. I could trace the bridge of a nose between his eyes, then a hooded brow that would cast a shadow over his eyes in the light. It gave him a naturally broody look. Short strands of inky black hair chopped and uneven in sections almost covered his eyes.
I ran my fingers through the strands to catch some of the longer chunks and tutted. “Can I cut your hair? I promise I'm not that bad. I cut Morgan's when she got gum stuck in Year 7.”
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