So, here is one more chapter. Another rather slow one, but at least we finally get some action around here, and also get to learn a bit more about certain characters.
I hope you enjoy.
Credit note: The song Plaisir d'amour, by Jean-Paul-Égide Martin, was written in 1784, and is, as far as I know, in the public domain. As far as I know, the same holds true for the poem by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian from where the lyrics were taken, as well as for Célestine, the novel where said poem appeared.
Chapter 9 – A Failed Approach
Seated on his tall lifeguard chair, Cameron Mitchell, known to his friends as Cam, took a sip out of a large bottle of water he had with him, feeling generally at peace with himself and the world.
It definitely was a good thing living in the Gold Coast, as, in spite of noticeable variations depending on the season, summer weather basically lasted all year round, and thus people could go to the beach whenever they wanted. This also meant that beach-related jobs did not stick to the summer, and for Cam, that meant he could enjoy his lifeguard post for the whole year. Even though chicks didn't actually seem to dig the lifeguard uniform, and there were sometimes jerks like Luca and Gabe to deal with, he overall liked being a lifeguard. For how dense he seemed to be when it came to a lot of other things, at least he'd already done some good in his life with this job.
Today was a relatively slow day; while the winter here was warm, it still caused somewhat of a reduction on beach attendance, and the bathers in his area had so far kept out of trouble. So he had been able to sneak a few moments to look through the binoculars at a very special girl that had been swimming for a long while now: his girlfriend Carly, who had the morning off and, like on other days, had decided to enjoy it at the beach. If he had to guess, she'd be coming out of the water any time soon, and then, once his shift ended, they could go have a lunch date before she went to the café and he returned to the beach.
Satisfied at the thought, Cam screwed the bottle's lid back on and set the plastic container down beside him.
"Nice day, eh?"
Cam looked toward the basis of his lifeguard chair. A green-eyed guy with light brown hair in a buzz cut was looking up at him with apparent interest. Cam fought back a worried look. The guy looked ordinary, clad in a light blue polo shirt, white shorts, and dark-blue sneakers, but Carly and David had made Cam aware of the situation Mimmi and Ondina were facing. This guy matched the description he had been given, and the cartoonish German accent Cam had heard even in that short sentence was a real giveaway. This should be Gunnar, the one everyone suspected was the latest fish boy in town.
"Somezing wrrong?" the guy asked, his eyes narrowed.
"No, not really," Cam replied, trying to keep his heart from pounding. "It's just I don't get a lot of chats at work. Believe it or not, most people who come to the beach don't notice the lifeguard."
The guy smirked. "Well, some of us know how to show ourr apprreciation for zose zat keep ze beaches safe."
Cam smirked in what he hoped looked like a grateful gesture, but which to him felt like the grimaces he made when he had to eat broccoli as a kid. If this guy was a fish boy and was talking to him, he probably wanted something Cam could provide. Cam had no idea what it was, but he also wasn't going to ask, nor was he going to accept. He'd made up his mind about trying to get a tail on the day Erik had tortured him.
What should he do then? He couldn't exactly tell the guy to sod off; he still remembered his last confrontation with a hostile merman who had been turned down.
And come to think of it, was he really a fish boy? The fish chicks apparently only thought he was one because he seemed to know what they were and hadn't done anything to expose them yet. He could just be a regular guy like Cam, and if he was, Cam figured he could beat him in an old-fashioned fist fight if it came down to it.
"Well, thanks for the appreciation, mate," Cam finally said, realizing he had to keep the guy's attention lest he be accused of being rude.
"No prroblem," the guy replied with a knowing smile.
Cam tried to smile in return, but it was difficult when he had no idea what to do.
Maybe a good start would be figuring out whether this guy was the Gunnar that Mimmi and Sirena had mentioned, and whether he was a fish boy.
And it only took Cam a few seconds to have an idea on how to do that.
"It's Camerron Mitchell, rright?" the guy asked.
"Yup, that's me," Cam replied in an indifferent tone as he pulled out his smartphone. "And you?"
"I'm Gunnarr Errxleben," the guy replied, his eyes narrowed as he eyed Cam's phone.
Great. Cam thought. With that name, he's bound to be the guy who's been hassling the fish chicks. But let's just find a way to be sure.
"Can I talk to you?" Gunnar asked.
"In a minute," Cam replied as he activated the smartphone's camera function. "Just let me check this weather report…"
He made a show of running his finger amongst the phone's screen as if he was scrolling down some real time weather report that a few apps could provide, while in reality he was messing with the camera's zoom and brightness functions. After a few seconds of doing so, he pressed the icon meant to photograph what he was seeing. A click rose from the phone as it took Gunnar's picture.
"What is zat noise?" the German asked.
"A sound effect," Cam replied nonchalantly as he saved the picture.
To lend more weight to his words, Cam took a few more random pictures that he passed off as more check-ups on weather reports, and then put the phone away. A scowl started to appear on Gunnar's face.
"I thought you said I could talk to you," he said, looking like he was trying not to sound whiny.
"I told you, in a minute," Cam replied in the tone he used to scold Ned whenever the boss was stuck with duties and left him to serve as babysitter to the brat.
He gave a look through the water to make a show of being attentive to potential people in distress, but in reality, he was making sure that Carly wasn't swimming anywhere near close to where Gunnar would end up running into the sea if the rest of his plan came to fruition. Last thing he needed was for her to deal with him in a place where a water jar wouldn't do her any good.
To his relief, she was already coming out of the water and heading toward him. It would suffice if she had been close to shore and to several other swimmers, but this was even better. Now the rest of his plan could be carried out.
"So, what it is you want to tell me?" Cam asked as he took his hand to the bottle of water beside him, which thankfully still had quite a lot of water in it.
Gunnar smirked as if he was about to tell Cam he'd won the lottery, "I have an offer for you."
"I see…" Cam mused as he looked directly into Gunnar's eyes while he discreetly unscrewed the bottle's lid.
Then Cam abruptly jerked his gaze away from Gunnar's and looked out at the sea and let out a loud gasp, doing his best to deliberately widen his eyes in alarm that he hoped would come across as true.
To his relief, Gunnar's head also snapped toward the sea.
Cam then tipped his water bottle over so that all of its contents in it fell over Gunnar. The dude gasped like Cam had seen both fish boys and fish chicks doing the moment a single drop of water hit them.
"Oops," Cam said in a fake innocent as Gunnar turned to look at him. "How clumsy of me."
Gunnar glowered at him, his arms raised as if he wanted nothing more than to squeeze his hands into fists around Cam's neck. But the gesture lasted all of a second before he bolted into the water and dove into the breaking surf, not bothering to take off his clothes on the way.
He was a fish boy alright.
Yup. Cam thought as he smirked to himself. The Camster still has it.
Far away from the shore, on a patch of sea no one was swimming at, Gunnar growled in fury, his tail swishing rigidly from the anger he felt flowing through him.
His plan to get more intelligence on the mermaids through Cam had failed. Gunnar had thought it would work, as from what he knew the guy was still bitter over the fact his attempt to get a tail all those months ago hadn't worked, but for him to have behaved in such a manner, he had to be in league with the mermaids. He must not have a tail himself, otherwise he wouldn't be in this lifeguard job, but clearly he knew about Gunnar's own, which could only be because of the mermaids. And the way he'd checked for it suggested he wasn't interested in having Gunnar as a friend or in anything Gunnar could have for him, including a tail.
Apparently Gunnar was in way more over his head than he thought. Adopting that blasted fake German accent to begin with had been an even worse idea than he first thought, as that had to be at least the main thing that tipped him off. But he wasn't sorry for not having dropped it in his attempts at interrogating Cam. If Cam had guessed who he was through any other means and noticed the accent discrepancy, things would have been bad for him anyway.
Point was, it seemed Gunnar was on his own.
Hardly a novelty. The system that mermen had adopted to survive on land condemned most of them to spending their whole lives on their own. Some were lucky enough to make meaningful connections, and a few of those actually managed to keep said connections, but most of them lived out the bulk of their lives alone, without families or friends. Gunnar had been somewhat lucky in that regard, in that he'd managed to make a meaningful connection that had lasted several years, but most of the time, the rule also applied to him.
All things considered, it was better for him to go away from this beach before he managed to get himself into trouble. But first, he was going to at least leave a little something for Cam, just so the guy wouldn't think he could push him around and not suffer consequences.
Pacified by the thought, Gunnar pushed himself to the surface, right in front of Cam's chair. Sure enough, the guy zeroed in on him after a few seconds. Then, the nerve of him, he pointed the middle and index fingers of his right hand at his eyes, and then at Gunnar, in the classic 'I'm watching you' gesture.
Gunnar returned it by slicing his finger across his throat with the most menacing look he could muster.
But rather than looking scared, Cam's shoulders quaked as if he was repressing a sudden urge to laugh. Gunnar held back a shudder of rage. Not only had the guy made him look like a fool, but he had the nerve to find it funny!
Repressing a surge of anger at the fact he hadn't managed to intimidate the traitorous simpleton, Gunnar turned around and dove, his tail briefly rising out of the water before he made his way to a spot where he could dry himself and go back to the aquarium for the afternoon's first guided tour.
The mermaids and their moronic ally might have won the first battle, but the war had just begun.
After Gunnar vanished from sight, Cam climbed down from his lifeguard chair to greet Carly with a towel tucked under his arm, any thoughts about the fish boy's true status gone from his mind. His true self had been clear enough when he surfaced without any shirt covering his shoulders, but any remaining doubts had been erased the moment Gunnar turned around and briefly raised a scaly blue tail above the surface when he dove away.
"Enjoyed your swim?" Cam asked as he extended the towel to Carly.
She took it from his hands and started drying herself. "It was lovely. A bit cold maybe, but still lovely."
Cam glanced out at the sea again, both to watch for any people that might need his help and to see if Gunnar was still in the vicinity. He found neither.
"I take it that was the merman Mimmi and Ondina were worried about?" Carly asked as she folded the towel after drying herself.
Cam turned to look at her. "He should be." As an admittedly remote possibility came to him, he added, "Unless there's another merman named Gunnar living in the area."
Carly snickered when Cam pointed that out.
"At any rate, we'll know once I show them the picture of him that I took," Cam added.
There was a brief glint of admiration in Carly's eyes.
"How did you do it?"
"Didn't I tell you I'm a man of many talents?" Cam inquired with a smirk.
The only answer he got to that was a playful smack on his shoulder.
After a brief pause in the conversation to look around the area for anyone in distress, Cam carried on. "At any rate, thanks for coming out of the water when you did. It saved me a whole lot of time in keeping him busy while I tried to figure out whether he was a merman or not."
Carly wiped a stray drop of water from her face with the towel. When she finished, it was as if her calm had also been wiped away, as she now had a worried look on her face.
"What did the guy want from you? I saw him standing by your chair before you splashed him."
Cam shrugged. "He said he had an offer for me." Then he remembered something else. "And he knew my name."
Carly flinched, alarm clear on her face. "How?"
Cam frowned, also puzzled by the issue now that he thought of it. Technically, there were plenty of ways for the guy to have gotten to know his name, but there shouldn't be any reason for him to have gone to the trouble of finding out. If he'd had an offer, he must have wanted something from him, but Cam had no idea either of what he wanted or of what he had to offer.
"I never got around to asking him," Cam replied. "Or to listening to his offer, for that matter."
Again, he paused on his conversation to look for anyone in distress. He didn't see anyone, but he'd better end this conversation before too long. If the boss caught him chatting on duty, he'd get quite a tongue-lashing.
But as he caught Carly's worried face after his brief search for anyone in distress, he realized it still had to go on for a bit longer.
"Is everything alright?" he asked.
Carly took a few seconds to reply, as if she'd wanted to work a few things out first.
"It's strange that he knew your name. No offense meant, but 'the Camster'…" Carly actually made quotes with her fingers as she said the name, a gesture belied by the playful smile on her lips "…isn't exactly an international celebrity. For him to know about you, someone must have told him."
True. For the guy to know Cam, especially to know him well enough to have an offer for him, someone must have told him about him. Someone who would also know Cam well enough and not be too worried about spreading certain dark aspects of him to others. And there was only one person – well, merperson – who fit the profile.
"Oy! Mitchell!"
Cam inwardly groaned as he heard that voice. It wasn't from the one who would have ratted him out to Gunnar, but it was someone who he wanted to see even less.
All the same, he turned around, lest he be accused of being rude and get in trouble for it, right into Luca's smug face.
"I'd be careful about chit-chatting on duty," the other lifeguard said with a patronizing look. "You wouldn't want me to tell the boss, would you?"
Cam lifted an eyebrow with a fake-amused smirk.
"Are you four years old? It's children who are supposed to snitch on others."
Luca clenched his fist at seeing his threat bounce off with no results.
"Mind your tongue, Mitchell. The clubhouse toilets still need cleaning, remember?"
Cam tried to remain impassive, but that one threat had too much of an effect for him to verbally reply. He'd had to clean those toilets once, and no amount of brain bleach had been able to remove the memory of them from his mind. Luca smirked at realizing how affected Cam had been.
"Now get lost," Luca demanded. "We wouldn't want to leave beach attendants in your clumsy hands any longer."
Not bothering to reply, Cam climbed his lifeguard chair, put his stuff in his pocket, and then jumped down to walk off with Carly toward where she had her beach stuff.
"That guy's awful," Carly said, her fingers sunk into the towel. "Mick should just throw him out with a kick to the rump."
She'd get no argument from Cam there. How he and Gabe had managed to hold onto a job like lifeguarding when they were such jerks, Cam would never know. But they had more important things to talk about than Luca or Gabe, and Cam wanted to return to them.
"Back to the previous subject, you said for him to know about me someone must have told him. That made me think…"
"That's dangerous," Carly cut in with an amused grin.
Cam chuckled at the remark, but otherwise carried on as if he hadn't been interrupted, "…and I've come to one conclusion: maybe he knows Erik and Erik told him about us."
Carly let out a tired sigh.
"And here I thought we had seen the last of him."
Cam wasn't glad at the idea either. Especially when he had felt for himself how unbalanced Erik could get when he didn't get his way. If Gunnar knew about him and was here because he was connected to Erik, then he was bound to be some lackey of his. And any fish boys Erik managed to recruit into his cause were bound to be cut from the same cloth – or scales from the same fish, to use a maritime version of it.
But was Erik really the kind of guy... well, merguy, who would get henchmen? Sure, he'd accused Zac of selling out mermen by not starting the chamber, but for all Cam knew, he actually wanted the power for himself. That kind of guy wouldn't get henchmen, especially mermen with whom he'd have to share the power.
Maybe Cam ought to get a second opinion.
"You think he's calling for reinforcements?" Cam suggested. "Maybe trying to get his revenge or something, with Gunnar being a scout of sorts?"
Carly pursed her lips and creased her forehead in thought.
"That sounds a bit too much, even for him," she eventually replied. "He might have been a misguided moron, but I don't think he actually meant to kill anyone. And if this Gunnar is a scout, he doesn't sound like the most competent one."
Cam looked away at the sea. Carly did have a few points. Erik didn't seem like he had wanted to kill anyone. Sure, he had ignored plenty of signs that the merman chamber was dangerous, but even Cam didn't think he had actually wanted to murder the mermaids. But the most obvious way for Gunnar to know about him was if Erik had told him, and to whom would Erik tell such details if not to a henchman who was part of a plan to get revenge?
Cam looked back at Carly and suggested. "Maybe he went off the deep end in the more metaphorical sense as well as the literal one. And maybe he's desperate enough to take anything he can get when it comes to lackeys."
Carly shivered at Cam's words.
"Maybe," she conceded in a scared tone that made Cam wince.
Why did his tendency to put his foot in his mouth have to strike at this time?
In an effort to appease Carly, he reached over and held her hand reassuringly.
"Don't worry," he soothed. "Zac, Evie and the others can deal with Erik and any goons he throws at them. And once we tell them about this, they'll be on their guard."
Carly smiled slightly at the thought and squeezed his hand in return. But even though he had managed to calm her down, Cam made it a point not to bring up Gunnar or Erik or anything else related to mermen until they were at the café telling their suspicions to whatever merpeople were there.
L'eau coule encore. Elle a changé pourtant.
Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment,
Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.
As Alana elongated the last note of Jean-Paul-Égide Martini's Plaisir d'amour, she strummed her guitar's chords one last time, to set her voice to the sound.
When she fell silent, the around fifteen people gathered around her, her instruments, and her foldable stool, clapped loudly with pleased looks or congratulatory smiles. Happy to have done a good job, Alana smiled to thank for the applause and bowed as well as she could when she was sitting on a foldable stood and had a guitar on her lap. She wasn't sure she agreed entirely with the song's lyrics, but in spite of that, she did feel for the 'song's protagonist' for lack of a better designation, and thus could easily get into the music. Also, the melody was beautiful. If she didn't prefer writing her own songs in their entirety, from melody to lyrics, she'd probably write words to set to that tune.
Once the applause ended, Alana stood up from her stool, picked up the blue cap that always rested at her feet when she performed, and walked out toward the crowd, her guitar clutched in her other hand. As usually, most of the people gave her something, ranging from the low tens of cents to a whole dollar. It wasn't much, but this wasn't her first performance of the day, and she still had the twenty dollar bill Gunnar had given her, saved up for a rainy day.
Once she went through the whole audience, she slipped the coins into her denim short shorts' pocket and put the cap back on her head. Most of the crowd started dispersing, but a few – a slim dark-skinned boy who seemed to be a few years younger than her and a heavy-set man in his sixties with a white sailor's beard and a brown-haired little boy who looked at her eagerly from beside him – stayed behind, apparently wanting a repeat performance.
Alana gave them an apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry, but I have to take a break." The dark-skinned teen looked disappointed, and the little boy pouted from beside his supposed grandfather. "Thank you for listening."
The teen turned around and walked away, while the old man gently took the little boy away by the hand. Sorry that she had nothing but apologies to give, Alana turned around and walked to the guitar bag she had put against the wall a few meters behind the stool, to the right of the marine park's entrance. It was a great spot to play at. Here she typically had a small audience, and most of them tended to give her coins after each performance. She had no idea of how long the marine park's staff would let her get away with it, but she intended to earn all the money she could while they allowed her to play here.
That probably also meant she should save a bit more, but as for now she was earning enough money for three meals a day with some to spare, not to mention that she had no extra expense to pay, she figured it was better to invest in her health. It wouldn't do if she was so hungry that she couldn't play or sing properly.
Her guitar put away, Alana slung her bag over her shoulders, walked to her stool, and folded it so she could tuck it under her arm. But as she started to walk away, her steps halted at the sight of a familiar person standing only about half a metre from her.
"Hi, Alana," Gunnar said, his hands in his shorts' pockets.
Alana couldn't reply, too surprised at the fact he was in front of her for the second time in two days. What was he doing here? She didn't think this was the kind of place someone like him would be at so often.
Alana tried to smile at him, but her cheeks seemed too stiff for that. All she managed was to turn the corners of her mouth a tad upwards. But at least, Gunnar didn't flinch or grimace.
"Hi," she eventually said. "Fancy seeing you here again."
She did her best to say so in a polite tone, but the words still sounded wrong. These days, that was the kind of thing one said when they meant to be sarcastic.
"I guess I could say the same," Gunnar replied, before he stiffened as if concealing a wince.
Alana gave a brief shrug.
"This place is good to play at," she explained. "Don't worry, I didn't spend the twenty dollars you gave me already. I'm just trying not to rely only on them."
Gunnar just raised his right hand out of his pocket and waved the apology away with a smile. This time, Alana smiled back a bit more naturally, but at the same time, wariness reared up within her. It sounded a bit odd that Gunnar would be by the marine park two days in a row – supposedly he was a bit too old to want to go there every day.
"Why are you here, though?" Maybe it was a bit blunt of her, but Alana was terrible at subtlety, and she'd never had friends her own age before Evie, so she had no idea of how to behave.
Gunnar tried to smirk in a way that apparently was meant to be conceited, but the way his eyes turned down conveyed it as strangely timid.
"Would you take it too badly if I told you it was because I was hoping to see you?" he asked, his low voice adding to the timid aspect.
Alana's face became redderthan her hair. She clutched the guitar bag's straps in her hand and tried to look everywhere but at him, each of her attempts somehow ending with her looking at him. Even though her very existence qualified as being completely out there for the rest of the world, Alana found that a boy confessing he was hoping to see her was as outlandish as an alien landing in someone's backyard.
Back in Lahinch, she had been quite a loner from a young age, as her mother had home-schooled her until she was old enough to truly understand the importance of keeping her tail a secret. By the time she started going to school, she'd been too socially awkward to truly fit in, and didn't become more than acquaintance to anyone. Then her mother had gotten sick, and Alana had dropped out of school to take care of her. While presumably the foster system or any foster family she got would eventually send her to some school, that hadn't happened yet, and interactions at the group home had been even worse than the ones at her old school. Since her mother's death, Gunnar was the second person – the first being Evie – who actually wanted to see her again.
"I don't know," she finally managed to utter. "I'm not very used to people wanting to see me…"
With a reassuring look, Gunnar told her, "Well, that's not why I'm here." Then his eyes widened in alarm, and he stammered, "I mean, not that it's bad to see you, it's just that I didn't come here looking for you, but I'm rather glad to see you again, but I understand if you…"
His explanations trailed off as Alana burst in chuckles. For whatever reason, his awkwardness had just melted away whatever unease she felt about him.
"I get the point," she reassured, her face back to its normal paleness. And though she wouldn't tell him that, she was rather flattered he was 'rather glad' to see her again. She also was rather glad to see him – as much as she could when they had only met one another for a day and exchanged about a dozen of lines.
With a sigh of relief, presumably from the fact she wasn't sneering at him for tripping over his words, Gunnar explained, "Either way, I'm here because I work here. Or rather, there." He gestured toward the marine park's door as a means of clarification.
Alana raised an eyebrow. She had seen the uniforms of the marine park's workers while she played here. Gunnar's definitely wasn't one, and he didn't seem like he could be one of the people in charge. "Shouldn't you be in uniform then?"
"The marine park has changing rooms, and I prefer to not wear my uniform outside of my work place," Gunnar explained. "But I can show you my card if you want me to."
Before Alana could tell him whether she wanted him to or not, he fished a card identifying him as a marine park worker out of his short's left pocket, and showed it to her for a long period before he tucked it back inside again. Maybe she was being a bit naïve, but Alana was convinced. He seemed to have explained without hesitating, and the card he'd shown looked genuine.
"Are you on your lunchbreak then?" Alana asked.
Gunnar nodded. "For the next ten minutes. Then I have a guided tour to conduct."
Although he seemed to be telling the truth, Alana raised an eyebrow again. He couldn't be more than twenty, and if she had to guess, she'd say he was actually a bit younger. "Aren't you a big young to be a tour guide?"
"I'm knowledgeable about the sea," Gunnar replied automatically, as if he'd had to answer the same question plenty of times before.
Alana had no comments on that. From an absolute point of view, he probably knew less about the sea than she did, but she was also someone who could learn more about the sea than the average person. As far as she knew, Gunnar could actually be knowledgeable about the sea for a human.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to upset you."
Again, Gunnar smiled and waved the words away. Then, before either of them could speak, her stomach made its emptiness known again with another growl.
Again red as a tomato, Alana replied, "And I'm also someone who needs to eat. So if you'll excuse me…"
Gunnar blinked as if he'd just come out of a trance. "Yes. Yes, of course."
Alana stepped to the right so she could walk around him. Right on cue, Gunnar stepped to the left, presumably to let her pass, and got in her way. Alana tried stepping to the left to walk around him, but this time he stepped to the right. He again looking like he had only meant to let her pass, but they weren't getting anywhere like this.
"Sorry," Gunnar muttered.
Alana smiled briefly as she tried to think whether this time she could go left or right, and what was the best way to do it without Gunnar getting in her way.
"Let's make it this way," Gunnar suggested, "You stay put, I move aside, and then you can pass."
Alana nodded, rigid as a statue from the neck below. Then Gunnar stepped aside.
Her body loosening up in relief, Alana resumed her walk away from the marine park.
"Until next time!" Gunnar told her.
Alana turned around to look at him. In spite of what she really wanted to say, the glint of hope in his eyes caused her to say instead, "Yes. Until next time."
But as she resumed her walk, Alana decided that it would be better for everyone if there wasn't a next time. Granted, Gunnar was nice – as far as she could tell, at least – and he was kind of cute as well, but he was a human. For any relationship between them to work, she would have to tell him she was a mermaid at some point, and she couldn't even begin to conceive doing so. She had learned from a young age never to tell anyone about her tail, and she had never broken that rule in all of her sixteen years. And it seemed a weird beginning for a relationship: to meet because he had given her alms. It was better to end it before it even began.
Unfortunately, that meant she would have to play somewhere else, most likely at a spot where she wouldn't have a constant audience, or where she wouldn't get so much money.
But it would be better for her emotionally, and for Gunnar as well, once he stopped thinking about her. After lunch, she'd try to find some spot that fit at least some of her criteria – and hopefully stop thinking about Gunnar.
Alana sighed at the thought, her heart squeezing into itself. It seemed that without her mother, she was doomed to never have anyone to turn to.
Doctor Thomas and his family had been nice to her beyond her wildest dreams, but she could never be with any of them without thinking of some episode related to her mother's illness: the time Mrs. Thomas and Praveer took her to the zoo to distract her on a day her mother was particularly weak, the time Neelam had held her while she cried after her mother's passing, the time Doctor Thomas went with her to the funeral agency to organize the funeral…
Alana shook her head to clear those thoughts. It wasn't Doctor Thomas' fault she couldn't make positive associations to him or his family in spite of how nice they had all been to her. And with all the patient deaths he must have dealt with in his career, he and his family likely had already forgotten her anyway.
As for Gunnar, he probably wouldn't think about her for that long either. A guy like him probably had more than enough girls after him to be able to pick a better one anyway. Someone prettier, normal, and less messed up, less likely to cling to him because she had lost everyone else in her life and would be too afraid of losing him too, in the off chance she ever brought forth the honesty required for a real relationship.
And Evie? An inner voice pointed out.
Shut it! Alana inwardly commanded, an effort that must have shown itself on her face, judging from how several passers-by gave her odd looks.
Beet-red again, Alana pulled her cap farther down her head and walked at a brisker pace, hoping to pass by everyone too fast for them to notice her blush. Of all the relationships she'd had a chance to establish since her mother's death, the one with Evie was the worst, precisely because it also was the best. In the single day they had spent together, Alana had connected with Evie in a way she had never thought possible. Evie had understood her, had been kind to her, and had done her best to help her, and the day she had spent with her had been the only one since her mother's death she would qualify as anything near 'good'. In a sense, Evie was like the big sister Alana had never had, and she would love nothing more than to have already accepted her invitation to go to her workplace and spend more time with her.
But Evie was a mermaid who for some reason, in spite of being a land girl who fell into a moon pool, hung around with a pod of born mermaids who would rip Alana apart the moment they knew of her heritage. Why they had allowed Evie to live, much less join their pod, Alana didn't know, but maybe it was because, although she had been a land girl, they still viewed her as a more natural mermaid that Alana knew they would view her.
The irony. Alana thought. I'm the one who's the born mermaid, and she's the one they view as more natural.
There was nothing she could do about that, though. Only stay away. If Evie learned about what she was, she either would shun her or try to protect her from the pod's wrath, which could lead to her being killed as well. The first scenario made her quake; the second made her heart rip itself in half. She couldn't risk either.
It was better for her to simply accept she was alone in the world. As much as the idea pained her.
Gunnar watched Alana go until she vanished in the distance and the crowd, again finding himself feeling for her. She looked less tired than he remembered her looking the day before, but she still looked exhausted. He found himself relieved that she didn't look undernourished yet; she must be making enough money from singing on the street in addition to the twenty dollars he'd given her. No surprise there. He'd watched her performance of Plaisir d'amour, and it had been one of the loveliest renditions of the song he had ever heard. If some record label actually listened to her, he would bet quite some money that they would want to hire her. Then she wouldn't have to count every penny that her audience tossed into her cap.
She must have some story. Gunnar thought. What a pity I'll never be able to ask her about it.
Gunnar had no idea why he was so curious, or why felt for her like that. After all, she was his kind's biggest enemy. He was supposed to be scared of her, not be worried about her or wish she could help her.
But maybe it made some sense. After all, she was technically a female of his species, and the first one he'd interacted with on friendly terms. If animals and humans as a rule felt drawn to members of the opposite sex they found attractive, it was logical that merpeople like him would also. Granted, physical attraction was never enough for a real relationship, at least among land people - and according to rare reports of relatinships between mermen and mermaids, the rule also applied to merpeole - but maybe things between him and Alana could go somewhere if they got to know each other better.
Gunnar clenched his teeth to muffle those thoughts. He hadn't moved to the Gold Coast to get into a relationship with a mermaid. He had done it to teach a lesson to what now seemed bound to be a whole pod of them, not to mention their human allies.
It was a really long shot, and Gunnar was all too aware that, when all was said and done, he would end up retreating in shame at best, or gutted like a fish at worst. He might have some plans for revenge in mind, but not a single one of them looked like it had any real chance of leading to anything but to him ending up in a very tight spot.
But at the end of the day, Gunnar knew he had to try.
After all, he owed it to Erik.
So, there went another chapter. Again, no fancasting, but it should return next chapter.
I'm not sure of how much of what was told about Gunnar came across as a surprise and how much was already guessed. All the same, I hope you've enjoyed the chapter.
