Okay, chapter 2, set a year and a bit later on Sapphy's birthday. Shorter than the first, but necessary, gonna hopefully have a longer one next time - and Faro's definitely in the next one. Maybe tell me what you think of the poem, since it popped into my head and inspired most of this fic? xxx GC


It was an okay birthday. Not the best I'd ever had, but, I'd begun to realise 'special days' stop being so special as you grow up. I hadn't felt anything at Christmas, not a single grain of the bubbling excitement of my pre-teen years.

There was a chocolate cake, Mum made it, and it probably tasted great – if I could taste anything, but my mind had been elsewhere, as it so often is now. What am I going to do with my life? What should I do in college? Should I go to Uni? What job could I do?

I didn't know. I doubted my results were gonna be all that good, and I still hadn't chosen any college courses. Why couldn't I know what I wanted to be, like everyone else did? Well... I knew something of what I wanted, actually, I knew a lot, but couldn't do anything with it.

I wanted to stay here, in Senara, in this house, I wanted this house to be mine forever, and for Mum and Roger to have to move, not me. I wanted to keep the cove as part of my life, the cove, and Ingo, and... Faro. But I also wanted Conor, and Sadie, and Rainbow, and Granny Carne (even though she scares the piss out of me sometimes) and everything there is in Air, particularly sweets. Oh I could never learn to live without sweets, they're just too yummy.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, like I do far too often, its the reason my grades are going to be so terrible and ruin whatever life I might be able to plan. And that's what I'm doing, planning my life. I'm sat on my bed with my brand new embroidered diary and a gel pen that writes in bluey-green, making lists of my talents, and trying to deduce what to do with them.

So far, my list is rather unhelpful, comprising of: read minds, speak full Mer, swim well enough to keep up with Mer, ride dolphins, hold conversations with whales who are about to kill me, send an ancient monster to sleep and generally save the day.

All in all, not a very useful set of skills here in Air. I sighed as I looked out of my window to the sea, and the track, plants and general stuff which was in the way.

I'm sixteen, I think to myself, what should I be doing now that I'm sixteen? What do normal, human sixteen-year-old girls do? What do normal, human sixteen-year-old girls want?

So I started trying to list those instead, heading it with 'Girls Just Wanna Have...' then writing: parties, shopping, boyfriends.

It seemed I was in trouble, cos I didn't do parties, I couldn't dance or talk to people in that way, I didn't have the money, or the fashion-sense to shop much – I only ever went if I needed something, or Rainbow dragged me – and I didn't have a boyfriend, or anyone to be one. I only knew a few boys well enough to say anything, and they were all taken, not my type (what is a type anyway?) or my brother.

And by brother, I mean broder as well, because Faro is my family just as much as Mum, or Conor, or Sadie, or the man I will not think of but who still has an unwilling place in my heart. Faro is the link to my other family, the mirror image of it, a brother and sister, a mother missing a father, but my Ingo family has differences, like Mordowrgi, the fact Mellina is Faro and Elvira's aunt, not their mum – something I repeatedly have to remind myself of – and that Elvira is almost never there, she's 'moved out' already, only more than a thousand miles to the ice of the North!

I can't decide whether I hate Mellina, or pity her. I should hate her, she lured my father away from us, to become Mer, and caused him to put me in a very bad position. But I should also pity her, because she loved my father, I've seen it, and she mourns him in Ingo still, these two years later, just as I do here. I should also pity her because unlike Mum, Mellina has no Roger, no boyfriend to help her, and she has to look after a now three-year-old boy all on her own. But, I suppose, more than anything, I am envious of her, because she had that year or two with my father, and I didn't. She had the time that was stolen from us, and it was her that Dad chose, not me. These are all reasons to hate her, but I don't, I forgave her long ago, I forgave her when I saw how Dad spoke of her, even dying, and knew he loved her, and it was not her fault.

My babbling mind ceases suddenly as I look to my aching hand, all this time it has been writing, flowing over the page with my apparently illegible handwriting. Putting the pen down, and flapping my hand about to loosen it, I stare at the page. And laugh.

I sat there for quite some time, just chuckling over the irony of it. I probably failed English, and there, in perfect sea-green, was a poem. Three stanzas long, four lines per stanza, standard ABCB rhyme. It was a simple poem, but it could've got me somewhere near a pass grade for my GCSE when my Ingo-head probably had written next to nothing when in the exam hall. It was just too ironic, I get bad grades because I watch out of windows too much, and a good grade could have just come from the exact same action!

However, when I actually took in the words of the poem, my good mood and laughter were gone, replaced by a pensive irritation. The poem was this:

Eyes like kelp,

Hair like weed,

How I feel for you, friend,

Is strong indeed.

We race through currents,

Then rest on the sand,

And all this time,

You've held my hand.

Now that I'm older,

I'm beginning to see,

I look at you,

The way you look at me.

Oh dear. I was in deep trouble, and by deep, I meant fathoms below the water, as in Deep trouble. Because it was true, I had noticed that certain someone looking at me when he thought I wasn't looking, just as I did when I thought he wasn't.

I couldn't let Conor find this, and if I knew brothers, I knew they'd read the sister's diary eventually. He'd certainly got his hands on my last one, and laughed at me for crushing on a certain male singer I refuse to name due to the mocking that then ensues – and of course, I don't fancy the guy anymore. But this was more important than that stupid singer, the person in the poem was nearby, always. And Conor didn't like him very much.

No, Conor must not know what my subconscious was doing, what it was thinking about, who it was thinking about, all the time. My brother could never know about how I still spent my every waking hour in Ingo, either physically, or just in my head, but I am always there, and am never alone.

Even as I think this, my thoughts turn to him, to my best friend besides Rainbow. I lay down on the bed, hugging the diary to my chest, picturing him, realising that I captured certain things perfectly in the poem.

His eyes are the colour of kelp, when the sun shines through it, a deep green with just a hint of some other colour, blue, or grey or golden-brown, I've never been sure as it changes with the light. His hair is like mine, but darker, more black-brown than red-brown, but somehow they match and blur in our deublek bracelets.

But that's where the poem stopped, there are so many things it forgot:

The tan of his skin, so deep as to be toffee, but not dark enough to actually be brown. The pearl-white of his faultlessly straight teeth which constantly irritated me, particularly when he showed it off by smirking – usually at my expense. The strength of his arms, the tight cable of tendons and ligaments, the steel of the muscles beneath, yet the softness of his skin, the smooth suede feeling of it beneath my fingers. His hands, long-fingered and capable with nails far nicer than my torn and chewed ones. Not to mention the blatantly obvious thing the poem had missed out on, the powerful tail of a seal, fused seamlessly to the waist of a human boy, yet looking natural as it did so.

Yet, none of these descriptions do him justice, oh yes they can get the picture of each part in your mind, but they do not show you the whole. Only one thing can get him across in a way that he would be happy with, only one word that will do, and that word, is Faro.

No, I must stop thinking about him, how much I miss him, how after all this time I still want to know him, yet in truth I know him as I know myself. Faro, Saldowr's scholyk and holyer, though I think you could sum up his purpose by saying disciple – you know? Like Jesus had? A person who follows you around and learns from you, then spreads your wisdom with their own.

STOP! Stupid brain, stop thinking about Faro!

Okay, what I needed to do, was think about what I was going to do with the piece of paper. I didn't really want to rip it out of my new diary, but I had to, to stop Conor finding it. I also didn't want to just rip it up, it felt wrong the idea of destroying it, something I had created, almost like murder. And I couldn't hide it, on the off-chance someone – Conor especially – might find it and know I had written it.

But what could I do with it then?!

Sssssssaaaaaappphire... Kowethesssss

Oh shut up Moryow, I'm trying to think here! Oh... The seas' whispering gave me an idea. A crazy idea. A possibly immoral idea, or is it unethical? I'm not sure, whichever means going against something you believe in.

I was going to throw the paper into the sea.