A/N: Here's that new projecthappypugficshave had in the works for a while. I hope you guys like skimmons and mermaids. The title is from the song by Florence + The Machine.

"No, I don't want to go to your stupid boat party, Ward," She shrugged the taller man off, having been annoyed with his persistent presence for the past half hour. He kept messing around in her room, flipping through her sketch books, messing up her desk. When he almost tipped over a sculpture by her bed, she panicked.

"Oh my god, fine! I'll go, just s-stop touching everything!" The girl was by her nightstand in an instant, carefully putting the statue back into place as she glared over at the dark haired boy by the door. He had a wicked proud grin on his face and it made her want to throw a soft ball at his face.

"It'll be fun, Skye. You won't even be in the water. You'll be in a boat. You can wear that stupid orange vest if you want," he was twirling one of her colored pencils around in his hand, which she snatched from him and put back on her desk.

"I'm scared of the boats too, not like you care," The brunette mumbled and turned, shoving Ward out of her room, "And I'm not wearing that ugly ass vest."

The two walked down the hallway of the small two story teal colored house and down the stairs, emerging into the kitchen, where, Ward snatched an apple off the counter on his way out the front door.

"It starts in an hour, kiddo, so you better get to the dock before then," He took a large chunk out of the apple before shoving it back into Skye's hand, who glared down at it in disgust as the man walked down the small concrete path to the white gate to leave the Johnson property.

"Don't call me kiddo! We're the same age, goddamnit Ward!" She threw the apple as hard as she could and it hit the boy in the back of his head. He shouted, throwing up both of his hands back at her, middle finger sticking straight up into the air.

"You throw like a girl, Johnson!"

"Fuck off, Ward!"

Skye slammed the door shut and stomped angrily back into her mother's house. She was the manager of the best diner on the island, downtown on the pier. She had late hours, which usually led her daughter to do as she pleased. She took shifts at the diner too, sometimes, when she wasn't in class, but most of the time she was wandering around the island somewhere, trying to find something to turn into art.

She was a third year art major at the island's only community college. Not many people left to go to college elsewhere. Skye had tried to be one of them, but her grades from high school hadn't been the best, and consequently not good enough to get in anywhere. She regretted it, having run around with Ward and his gang wreaking havoc on the island and being a general idiot. Yet here she was, still hanging out with him and now, apparently, going to his big beginning of the school year party. On the fucking ocean no less.

Skye hated the water. Highly hydrophobic did not even begin to cover it. If anything more than a shower she felt herself start to panic. Nevertheless, the hour passed, and then another and then another and Skye found herself out on her, for lack of a better term, 'best friend's' boat.

She had managed to find herself a corner, by the bow, avoiding everyone in the center and the stern dancing to the ridiculously loud music and yelling at each other. Empty beer bottles and red solo cups rolled around on the deck and the sun had long since gone down. She was surprised the local coast guard hadn't driven by to put a stop to the nonsense.

Ward had long since come over and thrust a drink into her hands and had a short chat and left. The drink, she promptly dumped overboard and turned her attention to the moon shimmering out on the waves. It was a nice picture, and so, to hopefully try and speed the night up some, the artist took out a tiny sketchbook from her satchel and started to draw.

The loud music and flashing lights of the boat attracted more than just the attentions of the students on board. Normally just the presence of people scattered them like a fox in a hen house, but not Jemma. Jemma was different, she was curious. The rest of her pod was very adamant about staying away from humans, especially her older sister, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect on the young girl.

Humans were exciting. Of course Jemma loved the sea and her pod, but she wanted to see what else was out there. She'd been to almost every ocean during migrations and relocations, and Bobbi had tried to convince her that she had seen the whole world, but Jemma didn't think so. That wasn't the world she really wanted to see. The world she wanted to explore was the one of the creatures on the tiny floating island. She wanted to know how they had strings of tiny suns lighting their moving island...and why were they moving their bodies like that when the black boxes were singing? How did the black boxes even sing?

Jemma wanted to know the answers to everything, but she knew she couldn't. She'd been told more times than she could count that people were dangerous.

Jemma sank back under the surface of the water, hair previously sticking to her head now flowing freely around her. If anyone saw her, the consequences would be severe. She wasn't even supposed to be here observing so she definitely wouldn't be able to get the answers to any of her questions. It had taken quite an effort to get out here to take a look, Bobbi kept a close eye on her most of the time.
All thoughts of her pod drifted out of her head as she swam under the strange floating island, propelling herself gracefully with her tail.

She reappeared on the other side, her head emerging just beside a white wall. She'd never gotten this close before, and it was thrilling. Her heart hammered in her chest for just a moment she feared she would be seen. Curiosity won out, though. She stuck to the side, her head barely above the surface, listening and observing. Their music was strange, much louder and more blaring than it sounded whenever she and her pod sung together sometimes.

The noise wasn't at all distracting. Skye had long since been able to tune it out but what she couldn't stand was that the dancing had migrated to the front of the boat and were bumping into her. They had already caused her to mess up twice, and the third time her pencil slipped and went tumbling into the sea. "Perfect…" She was too afraid to lean the few inches over and look for it, not that she could have reached it if she saw it anyway. There was no way she was touching it.

After being bumped a fourth time, the brunette shoved her sketchbook back into her back and wormed her way through the small crowd of people towards the now, less populated stern. Careful to avoid the cups and broken glass, she almost missed the ice. Apparently someone was drunk enough to have spilled an entire cooler onto the deck, which seemed to be the reason for the party migrating to the other end.

Skye almost fell, catching herself on the railing and clutching her satchel strap with one hand, having suffered a miniature heart attack. She was anything but seaworthy and she already regretted two hours ago having stepped foot onto this sinking death contraption. Blood and music still pounding in her ears, she missed it.

"Grant, you idiot! S-schtop playin' with t-the wheel! You're drunk!"

"So are you, Kara! It's my fucking boat!"

"It's your daaaaad's boat!"

Ward had a solo cup of some concoction that he was throwing back, using the helm of the ship to steady himself until he staggered, causing the wheel to turn sharply to the left. The rigging followed suit and by the time Skye had caught her breath from having almost slid on ice, the closed mainsail and boom had swung around and the thick wooden rigging hit her square in the head.

She didn't have time to yell before the boom swung all the way around, knocking the young artist off the side of the boat and into the water. She collided with a splash that couldn't be heard over the pounding music. Skye's body started to sink, which it would have done anyway had she been conscious because she didn't know how to swim.

The yelling and blaring music had been more of a pain to Jemma than any real threat, but when she heard a loud splash she was startled back into reality. That could have been a person that just jumped into the water, a person that could see her. She was way too close, Bobbi had probably been right. Jemma immediately began to panic and dove underwater, trying to get a good look at whatever had just entered the ocean with her.

Jemma didn't have to know anything about humans to know that something was wrong with this one. As far as Jemma knew, humans weren't really meant to be in the water like she was and would probably try to swim, not just sink like that. Concern bubbled up in her chest as she watched a female slowly descend, seemingly unconscious. Bobbi had said humans were violent, but did they really hurt their own species? Was this human hurt?

Directly under the boat, Jemma's mental debate with herself and her own imagined version of Bobbi continued in her head. Humans were bad, that's what she always knew. But this human didn't look very threatening at all, she was just the same except for legs rather than a long tail. If the stranger's people really had hurt her and abandoned her, Jemma couldn't very well leave the woman to drown, could she?

Jemma's head hurt at just the suggestion of helping the quickly sinking human, and she could already hear Bobbi in her head telling her not to be stupid and to just come home. She couldn't, though. Something about this human made Jemma feel compelled to help her, not run away. Nobody seemed to be helping her, Jemma was apparently all she had left. If the situation was reversed, Jemma would want someone to save her, so she had to do the same, right?

Without thinking much longer and now sporting a "to hell with it" attitude, Jemma surged forward and practically tackled the woman, wrapping her arms around her torso and holding her close while she continued to pump her tail behind her, headed for the nearest stretch of land. This was very strange and Jemma couldn't believe she was actually touching, holding, a human. Human. Humans can't hold their breath.

Jemma shot back up to the surface, grabbing onto the back of the woman's excessive clothing and yanking her head above the waves. She was still breathing, and it made Jemma very relieved, even though she wasn't supposed to care about the life of humans.

It was much more difficult and time trying, but Jemma managed to haul the human all the way to a sandy bank surrounded by large rocks and boulders without letting her head slip underwater. Jemma couldn't imagine having to stay up like this all the time.

Jemma only realized the real task once she got too close to shore to swim. She couldn't very well drop the girl here, she would just float back out to sea.

Grunting with effort, Jemma dragged herself up the sand a few inches with her arms before stopping and pulling the woman with her. She repeated the process what felt like a thousand times before she finally got the woman she'd saved far enough onto the shore to avoid the tide, leaving a deep track back down to the waves where she'd dragged her up.

Jemma finally let go of her clothing and took a deep breath, several, actually. She was breaking a hundred rules right now and she knew it. For one, she shouldn't have even been within ten miles of that floating island, two, she wasn't supposed to touch or go near a human, much less carry one back to safety, and she definitely wasn't supposed to be out of the water and on the sand like this. She was hardly mobile and it was very unsafe for them, lying about in the open for any human to discover.

Jemma wanted to stay and look the woman over a little more, but she wanted- needed- to be gone before she woke up. Jemma placed her hand over the woman's chest once more to make sure she was breathing and her heart was beating before she dragged herself back to the water to hopefully get back to her pod before anyone realized she was missing at night.

No matter how hard she tried, Jemma couldn't get the girl out of her mind as she swam back. She would be fine. Jemma was worried and there was no denying it, but she still wanted to know why.

The words 'sweet Jesus' were followed by a long groan while the brunette touched a hand to her forehead. It hurt. A lot. It was throbbing so much it took her longer for her brain and body to adjust before she could even think about opening her eyes.

Had she passed out at the party? Skye couldn't believe it. She hadn't even had anything to drink. The sound of gulls and another groan finally spurred the girl into action and light flooded in when she opened her eyes. The hand on her head flew quickly to shield her eyes and bits of sand fell down into her face, making her cough and quickly sit up to brush it all away.

"Who is the idiot who brought a bucket of sand onto the boa-" Eyes wide and mouth agape, Skye stopped speaking as she gazed out over the small grotto she was in and out past to the ocean. The ocean. She was on the shore, and Skye sat dumbfounded there in the sand for a series of seconds before scrambling up out of the sand as a wave startled her, creeping up the shoreline as the tide began to come in.

Her head started to throb again with all the quick movements, and as she moved to hold her forehead again, it all came crashing back. Literally. She had slipped on the ice and the last thing she remembered was the rigging hitting her hard in the head.

"Ow…" She rubbed her forehead some more and looked around her, taking note of her location, "I must have fallen over…" And if she had…then how did she end up here on the shore? Skye was certainly no expert, but she had been fairly certain they were too far out in the boat for her to just wash up. Her eyes darted down to the sand as she tried to steady herself and her thoughts.

Once she focused, she noticed the place she had been lying, now all messed up by her scrambling about, but there was another interesting pattern in the sand. The groove was deep and looked to be right alongside the path she had washed up by. Only, this meant she hadn't washed up at all. Someone…or something had brought her back.

"But…what though?" Skye hadn't seen any dolphins out on the water last night. She had heard stories about the water mammals saving people, but she doubted it would have beached itself for her. The marks were both fairly far up. Whatever had brought her knew where the tideline ended and was smart enough to put her there so she wouldn't float back out to sea and die after all that effort. Something had put in the effort in the first place.

These were all really the least of her concerns though. Her clothes were still damp and clingy, and now covered in globs of sand. Her hair felt sticky and frizzy and just as equally covered in sand as the rest of her. When she checked her satchel, she was even more disappointed to find that her sketch book was ruined, soaked through to the backing and still dripping, pages having bleed through on one another.

"Damnit…" she kicked up a good bit of sand and it caught the wind, coming back into her face, which only made her groan again and string another few expletives together.

The morning sun was already hot and she felt it drying her off fast. She'd been missing all night, which wasn't unusual…Ward probably hadn't even noticed and her mother was used to her not turning up again till morning. She doubted anyone had searched for her and Skye found she couldn't really blame them. This was common behavior for her. Being missing, not falling over the side of a boat and almost drowning in the night, but still.

Whatever miracle had brought her back to the island was long gone by now, the tide having made sure any other traces were gone, so Skye trekked her way back up through the sand and up and over the large wall of rocks to the other side of the beach. She didn't know how far away she was from the nearest access point and when she tried her phone, of course, it shorted out. She was going to need a large bowl of rice, or a new phone, and Skye wasn't sure she could even afford the rice.