Days in the past, but not many

It was weird, what happened on Mako. Rikki's sure Will is trying to figure it out, but Rikki's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It's amazing, how free she feels. It's nothing like kickboxing, where she's limited by gravity and having to breathe. Now she can push her self harder and longer, spiraling round and around and timing herself to see how fast she can go. Two days ago she spent the day swimming as far south as she could. She made it to Brisbane and back again by midnight, with a little time in between to check out the wharf and the modern art museum.

It's weird, but wonderful, because even on land Rikki's lung capacity has increased. She can go harder and longer in kickboxing, too, and she's not nearly as tired when her class rolls around.

She's had more energy to do things, so she ends up having more free time on her hands. This free time gets translated into hanging-out-with-Bella time, because Rikki hasn't seen the other girl nearly as much as she used to.

It's one of the drawbacks, not sharing this with Bella. But it's not her problem, and if Rikki tells even one person, even Bella, it could get out, and the last place Rikki wants to be after all this freedom is in a tank barely big enough to move in.

But it's nice to hang out with Bella, so hang out they do, at the beach or the Ocean Café or even just at Bella's house. (Bella's never been over to Rikki's house. She's not going to invite her, not when Bella has it so much better. Rikki's been working too hard to save up for her future to do much in terms of fixing her place up, and there's only so much Dad will do.)

Anyways, it's nice to have a friend like Bella, and that's exactly why they're at the Ocean Café now, having ordered smoothies and talking about their respective extracurriculars. Rikki's got kickboxing and her class, and Bella has a watercolor class every Wednesday and Thursday. Neither of them are too time consuming, but they'll be year twelves, and Rikki's sure she'll be asking for help come finals.

"Come one, it'll be good for you," Rikki argues. "Help your lung capacity, and who knows, you might just need to use it some day." She's trying to convince Bella to join her kickboxing class. It'd be nice to have another girl there her age as opposed to the two twenty-something year-olds and the handful of sweaty, middle-aged men of all body types.

There's James, who's in his mid-forties and used to compete small-time. He's extremely fit and usually the one to instruct the class if Mrs. Coggs isn't there. He's better than pretty much everyone except Mrs. Coggs, and Rikki recons he goes to the class just to have something to do. It's not like he learns anything there.

Dakota is a few years older than Rikki's and she's not embarrassed to admit that she had a massive crush on him when she first started. She didn't see him outside of class, though, and there was never really any time to talk, though, so that eventually faded. And good thing, too, because Dakota has been dating Kelsey since they were year tens.

Kelsey is the only other girl in Rikki's class, and she's the same age as Dakota. They're similar body sizes, so she'll usually pair up with Rikki for partner stuff. She's really friendly, and she's been giving Rikki advice on uni.

Rikki doesn't remember anyone else's names, but it's still a decently tight-knit group. Rikki's just bad with names.

But it would be great to have Bella there with her.

"I really can't," Bella argues. "We've got our year twelve stuff coming up. Though you could come to painting with me."

Rikki might have considered it, if it was something like acrylic or oils-paints, because even if she's never really done art before outside of school, she's decent, with great hand-eye coordination that comes with the body-awareness required by hand-to-hand combat. Watercolors are a no, though, because the risk is too great. It would probably be a blast, but Rikki has to worry about things Bella has never dreamed of.

Thankfully, Rikki doesn't have to come up with an elaborate excuse that won't hurt Bella's feelings because the waiter comes with their smoothies. "A wild berry smoothie," he says, setting Rikki's drink down on the coaster closest to Rikki, "and a watermelon juice."

Rikki doesn't even recognize that the drink's slipped out of the waiter's hand until Bella stands up suddenly, dripping with sticky, slightly pink liquid.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rikki demands, standing up to discreetly avoid the stream of juice that's slowly making its way across the table towards her.

"I'm sorry, look, I'll get you another one, and they're on the house, okay?" The waiter's fumbling over himself to start wiping the table off. "I'm really sorry, I'll be right back with more towels."

Rikki shakes her head. He must be new, because she's never seen him here before. She'll ask David the next time she goes inside to order. The girl at the little clothing corner might know, too. "Are you okay, Bells?"

Bella isn't there. Maybe she went inside to try to wash herself off, but then she remembers there aren't bathrooms in the café. She asks the closest people if they saw where Bella went, and they shrug until one of them mentions that he saw her run down to the docks. Rikki has no idea what Bella is doing down there, but whatever. There's a hose down there, maybe she's trying to wash off.

It's a respectable-looking dock, the kind that floats so it can rise and fall with the tides. Rikki hasn't ever come here by boat before, but she's been down here with Will and Bella before, so she knows where the hose is, and she's completely baffled when Bella's nowhere to be found.

She couldn't have dimply vanished, and even if there had been a boat here for her to take, Rikki would have heard it, and a smoothie to the chest isn't any reason to run off anyways. Not unless…

Her thoughts are interrupted when the dock starts rocking from a speeding boat's wake. She goes to step back and then winces as she feels her foot land in a puddle.

There's nowhere to go but into the water, but she's going to be as discreet about it as possible. She's got ten seconds, and that's plenty of time to slip into the water before the lightshow starts.

It's close, but Rikki manages to get her head underwater before her tail appears, and she pulls herself under the dock. She has no clue what to do from here except to maybe weave through the boats and hope it's deep enough that no one sees her, but it's busy right now, and the chances of her being able to get away are slim to none. So she just sits there, clutching the algae-covered beam keeping the dock above her from floating away and trying not to move too much. She doesn't know when the next time she'll be able to surface is, so she has to conserve her oxygen.

She's about five minutes away from having to take a breath when a flash of movement catches her eye.

It's Bella, and holy crap she can see her. It's not until a few seconds later that Rikki notices that Bella's got a tail, and by that point, Bells is sure to have noticed her.

Rikki just floats there, staring, and eventually Bella just lets out what could be the underwater equivalent of a bemused sigh and gestures for her to follow. There's a tattered sheet of tarp dangling from a beam of the jetty, and Bella vanishes inside.

Whatever Rikki was expecting, this isn't it. It looks like an underwater bedroom, with a fishing net hammock and some cool-looking shells lining the beams. There are three clear tubes dangling from the ceiling that end in black caps. They go up into the jetty above them.

Bella comes back from the corner she was rummaging in with two underwater writing tablets Rikki recognizes from the website where Will gets—or used to get—a lot of his diving stuff.

How long? Bella's says.

A few days, maybe a week, Rikki writes, before scrubbing it off. You?

Bella looks like she's trying to remember, so it must be a long time, but Rikki isn't expecting the answer that follows: almost nine years.

Rikki doesn't know what to say to that, so she just gestures around the little hideout, a questioning look in her face. It's somewhat impressive, and almost certainly not natural

I made it. I made one in every town I lived. Bella sets down her tablet and reaches for one of the tubes before exhaling and biting the end. They're air tubes, Rikki realizes, and she becomes aware of the growing burning in her lungs. She doesn't know how long she's been under, but Bella must spend a lot of time here to need something to allow her to stay under longer than she could on one lungful.

Rikki grabs a tube and tries to bite it, and her mouth is filled with bubbles. She races out of the room-grotto-thing and surfaces outside of the jetty, coughing. She just barely makes it under again before a head pops over the railing, followed by another and another, but she's pretty sure no one saw her.

She swims back into Bella's nest to find the other girl silently laughing at her. Bella eventually calms down, and then hands Rikki one of the tablets.

Take it slowly, it says, and Bella gestures towards the oxygen tubes.

At this point Rikki thinks the entire things is stupid. Why bother, when there's fresh air just outside? But what if they can't? What if there's some reason they can't leave, if someone's hunting them and knows their human identities?

It's still stupid, but Rikki reaches for a tube, and this time, only tries to let the smallest amount of air in possible. She'll get the hang of this.

An hour later and the two of them are at Bella's sitting on her bed and talking about her past.

"I've met a lot of merpeople, actually," she says. "Most of them were born that way, but I've met a couple turned ones like us." Rikki's fascinated, and she urges Bella to continue. "Born mermaids tend to have pods, unless they've done something to warrant being kicked out. Turned mermaids usually are either loners or have a small group of other turned. Pod mermaids don't trust the turned, and depending on how land-locked they are, some of the turned don't even know born mermaids exist."

"You've met people from both groups, right?" Rikki asks. She adjusts her position at the foot of Bella's bed to make her self a bit more comfortable. She has a feeling she'll be here for a while.

Bella winces. "Turned mermaids and most mermen are pretty alright. Mermen don't really make the distinction between born and turn. If they're born that way, they spend the first part of their lives on land. They're a lot more in-tune with the human world than the pods, who I'm convinced just want to pretend humans don't exist.

"I ran into a mermaid pod for the first time about a year after I turned, so I was pretty young, about ten. They didn't know what to do with me at first, because I didn't behave at all like a born mermaid the same age, and they didn't know that there was a pool anywhere nearby.

"Once they realized I was turned, there was a big movement to take me with them, basically kidnapping me. The only reason they didn't is because their council head was really prejudiced against the turned, so they left sometime while I was sleeping. They were nomadic, so just getting up and leaving wasn't as big a deal. I've been chased out of pod territory before, and I had to pretend I'd lost my powers or something until my parents moved us again.

"I did make a few friends in the pods when I was younger, and they're probably still out there somewhere, but I've never really felt the need to go looking for them. They're fine on their own; they don't need me.

"The mermen have pretty much all been pretty cool, once they found out I was turned. The born ones have this huge rivalry with the pod mermaids, but I guess they see turned mermaids as people they can recruit to their cause. I have no idea how they communicate with each other when they're all so spread out." Bella shrugs. "But they're cool on their own. There aren't a lot of turned merpeople out there, mostly because the pods protect the pools. The one I turned in must have been long abandoned, because there was no sign of a stationary pod."

"Wow," is all Rikki manages to say. "So I guess you're kind of an expert on this, huh?" It's amazing how much Bella's experienced. Even if she wasn't a mermaid, she's lived all over the world, in places Rikki can't even imagine.

"I've been around the block," Bella smiles. "So, do you want to learn how to use your powers?"

Hell yes she does.

Sorry it's a few days late, he weekend was hectic for me, and these past few days have been too. To make up for that, it's a few hundred words longer, and the next chapter will still be up Monday. That's where things start happening, and I'm having a lot of fun writing it so far (the two hundred words I have down).

I've also noticed te formatting on i1 and 5 are wonky, so I'll be fixing that as soon as this is posted. Thanks for reading!

-Bathyal