A/N: This is intended to be a multi-chapter story, though I'm going to be writing it as I have time around other commitments. This means that updates will not be fast. While questions, comments, concrit, and squee are all-and always-welcome, demands to "update soon" cannot be honored. Thank you for reading.

Tipping the Scales

by LadySilver

"I can't keep saying 'no' to him. He asked me to go diving again and..." Evie poked her fork at the fruit salad in front of her. She'd barely tasted the first bite of pineapple, and the rest, along with the strawberries and kiwi, looked as appealing as sea foam. Carly would put the leftovers back in the cool room for her if she asked, but Carly would also want to know what had taken Evie's appetite. And Evie couldn't tell her, her best friend. She couldn't talk to her father. She couldn't talk to David, a person she spent more hours working alongside than anyone.

She couldn't keep living like this.

Looking across the table at the two people she could still talk to, she drew a deep breath. "I'm-I'm going to have to tell him..."

"The truth?" Zac's eyebrows shot up toward his brown curls that were rumpled like he'd just barely managed to roll out of bed in time to show up for breakfast. That was so like him. Where she liked to plan, he preferred a more spontaneous approach to life. In a lot of ways, this contrast was what allowed them to work as a couple.

Mimmi set down the prawn she'd been about to eat and regarded Evie with a solemn expression. She'd had no experience keeping a secret of this caliber from family, so she couldn't say anything Evie was willing to hear.

From Zac's reaction, he still didn't get why this was important to her. He hadn't told his own parents about his mer-identity, and he'd been living with it for months longer than Evie had. But his parents were both still alive, so he couldn't understand how important her relationship with her father was to her. After her mom had died, she and her father had learned to support each other in the way that only widowers and their lone child must. She knew that in hiding her merself from him, she wasn't holding up her end of the relationship. While she understood the importance of keeping merpeople a secret from land people, she couldn't keep lying to her father—not even a lie of omission.

"The truth," she concluded with a definitive nod. Folding her hands under the cafe table, she sent a silent plea that her companions understand and support this decision.

"Why now?" Mimmi asked. Her eyes had gone big and she tilted her head as if examining an unusual clam shell she'd discovered. "You've gone this long without telling him..." She trailed off as Evie shook her head. Evie'd been counting on resistance, since that was all she'd ever gotten from them—when she didn't get outright rejection—and she'd been putting a lot of thought into what she needed to say. With just these two, she even stood a chance. Evie'd never be able to convince the whole mer-contingent.

Evie cast a glance around the busting cafe. Confirming that neither the other mermaids nor Cam were lurking, she leaned in to tell her story. "This morning..." she started...

She'd been helping her dad load the boat, as she did most days when she didn't have to work. Handing him the last box of supplies, she'd automatically stepped back from the dock's edge in case a fish jumped or the boat knocked into a wave just right and she got splashed. Staying ahead of the all the water hazards around her still took concentration, so she didn't notice right away how he was watching her.

"Why don't you come out with me?" he asked. "There's plenty of room and you know I always appreciate the extra help with the tour groups."

"I can't," she answered. Those words took no concentration, she'd said them so often over the last few weeks that they rolled right off her tongue. "I have school."

"Right. School. And tomorrow you have to work. How about this weekend?"

Bowing her head, she repeated her new pet phrase.

Her dad set the box down and jumped onto the dock. He brushed a hand over his graying hair. "My little girl is growing up. I remember when your schedule was limited to diving lessons and ice-cream breaks. Now you're finishing school, you have the shop. Zac."

She couldn't meet his eyes. He was right; her schedule was packed, and had become even more so recently as she had to keep inventing excuses to stay away from water in his presence.

Hand on the side of her face, her dad tilted her head so that she couldn't keep looking away. He used to do this when she was little and he'd caught her lying. The gesture could only mean that he knew she was lying now. He was giving her the opportunity to come clean, and she couldn't take it.

"Do you think you could find some room in your schedule for your old man?" His tone was full of the same sadness she'd heard when he knew his wife was slipping away.

Evie's throat clogged, trapped between what she had to say and what she wanted to say. All she could do was nod.

"He thinks I'm rejecting him," she pointed out to her companions. "He's not going to keep asking forever." Always having to turn down his offers was bad enough, but not getting the offer would be worse. She remembered how broken she'd felt when she thought Zac was pushing her away, and Zac had only been her boyfriend for a few months. How must her dad feel? How much longer before he cut her loose? "I want to be able to go diving with him again, so I have to tell him."

Mimmi ate a prawn, tail and all. The buzz of the cafe swallowed the crunching, lending a veil of normalcy to the meal. A second, then a third prawn disappeared while Evie waited for Mimmi to trot out the usual objections: secrecy meant survival, tradition, law, fear of capture. She was so primed for the tired reasons that she almost didn't understand what Mimmi did finally say: "What if there was something else we could try?"

"Like what?" Evie snapped, reflexively. She saw Mimmi flinch and replayed the words in her head. Softening her tone, she apologized. "I'm sorry. This hasn't been a very good day." And it's only started, she added to herself. Who knew what trouble would crop up as the day progressed, though she had no doubt that any trouble would have something to do with tails. "Is there a something else?" Mimmi hadn't found a cure; she knew that the second anyone did, they'd share it with her. Yet, what else could Mimmi be suggesting?

Mimmi pressed her lips together, then nodded slowly. "Rita's been helping me remember songs-"

"Songs?" Zac asked, and Evie was glad that he had because she didn't know how childhood nursery rhymes could help either. The problem with being the newest mermaid on the block was how little she knew that all the others took for granted.

"Mermaids don't write things down like land people do," Mimmi explained. "Books aren't a lot of use under water." She offered a small smile to take the sting out of such an obvious statement. "Instead, we pass all our knowledge down through songs." The smile grew wistful. "My mother—our mother—" She nodded at Zac who scowled and glanced away—"sang to me all the time when I was very young. Before she left. I thought I'd forgotten most of those songs. With Rita's help, some of them are starting to come back."

Evie thought about the disaster that the pink goop spell had been, how scared she'd been of being stuck in some half-mermaid state, how upset she'd been about not knowing what they were doing to her. And, as she'd found out later, how angry she should have been about Mimmi attempting such an important spell without having it mastered first. "Is it safe to try a spell you don't really remember?"

"This one is. The spell is really straightforward," Mimmi answered.

"So, why isn't it taught in mermaid school?" Evie'd heard enough about mermaid school from the other girls to know that Mimmi had to be leaving something out. The mermaid Council was strict about what information was shared and under what circumstances. Any spell that was forbidden...

"Southern Pod mermaids aren't taught magic like Northern Pod mermaids are. We need to know more just to survive in colder waters." Mimmi gestured down the front of her body, highlighting the pink sundress she wore and the thin arms and petite body underneath that even the most unperceptive person would recognize as not being adapted for cold climes. Since mermaids swam essentially naked, all they had to protect themselves from freezing was magic. "I'm sure that the only reason I forgot it is because I left the Northern Pod when I was so young."

Evie nodded. The explanation sounded so reasonable, and Mimmi so sincere, that she wasn't going to argue. "What does the spell do?"

"It's kind of a rebalancing spell," Mimmi explained. "Normally, you're a mermaid when you're wet and a human when you're dry." She placed her hands out in front of her, palms up, level. "The spell lets you swap one for the other." She lowered one hand and raised the other, then switched the motions, mimicking how scales would move as the weights on them changed.

Evie narrowed her eyes. She thought she understood, but with the mermaids it was never wise to make assumptions. "What do you mean?"

"Once the spell's active, you can stay in human form when you're wet. Balance is important, though, so every minute you spend in one form, you have to make up in the other."

"So I could go diving with my dad, but then I'd have to spend a few hours sitting around on land with a tail?" Evie asked. It...didn't sound all that bad, actually. Besides, all she had to do was learn to sleep with a tail and she'd practically have the rest of her life back. She could go diving with her dad and protect the secret. She could...she could take a proper shower and wash her whole body, including the backs of her knees and in between her toes. She could shave her legs with water instead of enduring the dry version that left her skin nicked and sore. She could focus again on her fashion designs instead of the constant worry that a spilled drink or someone's damp bathing suit would trigger her transformation.

Mimmi nodded. "There is a catch."

Of course there was. Evie squeezed the edge of the cafe table to keep herself from pounding its surface. "What is it?"

Mimmi brushed her hair back, her face contorting like she was debating whether to keep talking or not. Her eagerness to share her knowledge—second only to her eagerness to acquire new knowledge—won out. "The balance has to be made up in full. If you spend two hours with legs, once you switch to a tail, you won't be able to change back for the full two hours." She opened her mouth as if to say more, then snapped it shut again.

"That's it? That's not so bad."

"Not so bad?" Zac interjected, blinking as if finally waking up. "Evie, this sounds like exactly what you need." A slow smile spread across his face, and Evie felt her heart give a flutter; Zac's smile had always been her weakness. "Come on!" He stood up, abandoning what remained of his prawn breakfast. At least he didn't eat the prawn's tails. Though he turned out to be a natural born merman, he hadn't lost every bit of his landboy upbringing.

"Zac, we have school," Evie reminded him. She glanced ruefully at her breakfast, which did look slightly more appealing than before. Maybe it was worth saving for later. She knew where the takeaway boxes were and she didn't think Carly would mind if she helped herself.

"After school, then," Zac replied. He sounded eager enough for both of them. Maybe he did understand how difficult the mermaid thing had been for her.

Evie nodded, keeping her expression stoic, her feelings tamped down. She busied herself with boxing up the fruit and organizing her book bag. First school, then magic. Tomorrow was Saturday. With any luck, she could spend the day diving with her dad. Shouldering her book bag, she linked her arm with Zac and went off to pretend that this was just a regular Friday.

"It's done." Mimmi held up a crystal vial. The grotto's light glimmered through the translucent purple liquid within. "A few drops of this and you can put off having a tail as long as you want."

Evie's hand shook as she accepted the vial. With Mimmi working from a half-remembered spell, anything could have gone wrong, including a lot of things that Evie kept catching in flashes behind her eyes when she hadn't managed to stay busy enough that day. What if she ended up a full time mermaid? What if she got centipede legs, or became half-human, half-frog? What if the spell worked, and then wore off while she was with her dad? "Just a few drops?" she asked. "It's...not going to taste awful, is it?"

Sensing her fear, Zac slipped his hand into her other one and gave a light squeeze. "You can do it, Evie."

She allowed a wan smile. They hadn't talked about Mimmi's offer since it was made, choosing instead to go to school and pretend to be human the usual way. Would she be able to do that again on Monday if she put the vial down now and walked away? No, she had to try. She had to try every spell Mimmi knew, and keep trying, until one of them worked, because one day she wasn't going to be able to play human anymore. Lifting the vial, she breathed in its aroma. It smelled sweet, a simple, clean scent. Another hand squeeze from Zac and she found the courage to put the crystal to her lips. The taste that rolled across her tongue was also sweet with a faint taste of citrus. It was nice. She could learn to like the flavor. "Now what?" she asked, handing the bottle back.

"Now you test it," Mimmi responded. She gestured to the grotto's pool.

"Here?"

"If the spell didn't work, it's better to find out now. We still have time for me to try again." Mimmi nodded at the table full of spell ingredients that Rita kept stocked. "Rita said that it might take a couple tries to get the ratio of-"

Evie held up a staying hand. "Don't tell me! I think it's better if I don't know what I drank." Watching the others eat prawn tails and drink cordials made of sea sponges was gross enough. At least her tail hadn't come with dietary changes.

"On three?" Zac asked. He tugged her to the edge of the pool. The water within was a smooth pane, and it seemed wrong to jump in now and break that peace. "One..."

Mimmi was right. Evie had to know if the spell worked so that she could give her dad an answer. She thought about the way his face would light up, how the sadness that she so often caught pressed into his expression would disappear.

"Two."

But if the spell went wrong, she might never see her dad again. Would he still see his little girl if she had scales over her whole body, or tentacles, or bulging fish eyes and gills? What if she could never turn back and in exchange for getting to dive with him, she lost the ability to have a simple family dinner or to go on hikes?

"Three."

They jumped, and hit the water with a splash that shook Evie's body. She kicked her legs, counting down in her head for the transformation. The water began to bubble. She felt the fine bubbles of transformation tickle across her legs and gave a big kick of protest. Her foot connected with a tail.

"Ow!" Zac yelled. "Watch it."

She peered beneath the still roughened water, now disturbed from her and Zac's treading, and saw what her body told her she'd see. Her shoe-clad feet hung below her. She saw her trousers and above that the stripes of her black and white shirt. "Zac!" she gasped. "It worked. It worked!" For a second she forgot to tread and slipped below the water line, then her instincts from a lifetime of scuba diving and swimming kicked in and she pulled herself back to the surface, the inadvertent mouthful of water already forgotten in her exuberance.

Zac caught her in a hug, using the powerful strokes of his tail to keep them both buoyed. He was happy for her. Genuinely happy in a way that only confirmed that she'd made a good choice in boyfriends.

"Why don't you let me dry you off and you can go make plans with your dad," Mimmi suggested. She stood far enough back from the pool's edge to not get splashed, yet close enough for Evie to sense her own impatience. This was Mimmi's spell and it was working. She'd gotten it right on the first try. Naturally, she was eager to see it put to the use for which they'd planned it.

Breaking free of the hug, Evie swam over to the side of the pool. The climb out was easy with feet that could stand on the ledge and legs that could lift her to the top. She'd never appreciated before how much land mobility assumed the use of working legs. How easy it was to forget a simple thing like that. She'd also forgotten the sensation of wet clothes. Her trousers and shirt clung to her, one layer soaking and squishy over panties, bra, and socks that were also soaked through. Her white sneakers sucked at her feet and made squidging noises with each step across the grotto's rock floor.

Zac hefted himself out of the pool behind her. She heard the wet thwack of tail on the rock, and stilled long enough to draw a deep breath of appreciation that it was his tail and not hers. The spell was temporary; she knew that. But it was so hard not to celebrate as if they'd finally found the breakthrough they'd been searching for. For a few hours, at least, she wasn't a mermaid.

With a twist of her hand, Mimmi began evaporating the water. The steam pouring off Evie burned worse than when her tail was forcibly dried. It wasn't intolerable, but she was definitely going to have to put some lotion on when she got home—and then figure out an excuse for skin that was the wrong kind of pink to plead sunburn.

Evie hadn't yet learned this ability, so they were already a couple minutes into the drying when it occurred to her to wonder: "Do my powers still work?"

Mimmi frowned in thought. "I don't know. That would be interesting to find out. The spell isn't supposed to take anything away. All it does is shift around what form you get to be in. Do you think...?"

Evie saw the question coming as soon as Mimmi started talking. "Later," she promised. "After I'm done spending the day with my dad as a human. And I promise to tell you any other discoveries I make."

Mimmi gave a little bounce of excitement, her face brightening at the idea of expanded knowledge. "I want to know everything! This is my first remembered spell."

"Everything," Evie agreed. She wouldn't have it any other way.

It took longer to dry a full body's worth of clothes than just a tail. As soon as Evie was done, she turned to check on Zac. He was still sprawled on the ground, one hand over the top of his tail in the water boiling gesture, yet no steam rose from the scales. "Zac?"

Zac lowered his hand, a look of confusion spreading across his face. "Evie, I don't know-" Whatever he was going to say next vanished as the transformation swept over him and his tail turned back into legs. He let out a long sigh of relief and rose to his feet. His green shorts and white sleeveless shirt showed no signs of having ever been wet.

"Well," Evie commented, casting a glance down at her own clothes which were wrinkled and stiff with dried salt. "I guess I'm going to have to be more careful about diving into the water fully clothed. Good thing I still have my wetsuit."

"Are you ready to go give your dad the good news?" Zac asked. He brushed at his shorts as if to clean them of rock dust, then lifted his legs one at a time like he was testing them. "Hopefully, he hasn't already booked too many tours for the weekend."

"I"m sure it'll be fine," Evie replied. "Besides, I can always reactivate the spell. Right, Mimmi?"

Mimmi nodded happily. "As many times as you need to. As long as you remember to keep your tail time balanced, the hard part is over."