A/N: Happy New Year's surprise update! :D I hope you're all heralding in 2015 with much cosiness, laughter, and plenty of good food. Those are some of my favourite things, besides H2O stories. Now I shall go hide from the reactions of this cliffhanger...

Reviewers now get a snippet preview of next time! :)

x.

It had been two hours since the time Zane and Rikki said they'd meet Lewis, and his mild concern had grown to worry. Fifteen, thirty, even up to forty-five minutes late he could understand. Meeting on Mako wasn't like walking to your neighbour's for a chat. But even Rikki was never up to an hour late, so unless they changed plans without warning him first, something was wrong.

He decided to take another trip around the island and quickly do his field work without them before heading back to find out what had happened.

They'd probably prefer it that way. They were never wholly dedicated to what Lewis had begun to consider his project, but once they'd all grown tails there always seemed to be more important things to do than pretending to be interested in data and research.

Before he left, he wanted a closer look at the moon pool—that was what they were calling the mysterious body of water in which their transformation seemed to source. He kept a small sample of it in a sealed container on his bedside table, but it never behaved any differently than normal water.

Until last night when it began to bubble and glow much like the water in the moon pool. When he took it away from the light of the window it stilled and returned to normal. So, he gathered, it was the affects of a full moon that disturbed its natural state and had given it properties to transform human beings into merfolk. He wondered what this meant for other biological organisms but was unable to get a glimpse of the moon from his window by the time he'd realised in his sleepy state what had caused the funny glow.

Lewis would gather more samples from the moon pool today. Rocks, moss, sand, and any other elements he could get his hands on.

His excitement grew as he trudged nearer the incline that would lead to the pool. What if other creatures were susceptible to the change? What exactly happened to the water as it was morphing? Why did they not fully transform until the next morning? He was bursting with questions and couldn't wait to fill his sample dishes with anything that would help answer them.

What he found there wouldn't fit in his containers.

His two friends... associates... chums, were lying on the stretch of sand near the pool. They were wrapped in each others' arms fast asleep, without a shred of clothing on either of them. Lewis blinked in surprise, trying to collect his thoughts. They were in human form; not a scale was to be seen on either pair of legs. He quickly averted his eyes from the entanglement of limbs, telling himself it was for the sake of science that he'd been looking so intently at the shapely curvature of Rikki's bare thigh. She had a birthmark shaped almost like a clover right where her hipbone met her... well, the point was they definitely lost their clothes in human form. Anything they were wearing during a transformation came back intact once dry. Clearly, their... conjugation for lack of a nicer word had not begun as merfolk. Although there was no telling where it had continued.

The intimacy of their positions and the choice of location and timing were not the only things strange about the scene before him. Lewis had read about the desirable achievement that caused a couple to experience an afterglow, but the sand beneath the two lovers was actually glowing. He wondered how they could be comfortable on sand so hot that the heat waves were visible, but then he noticed the little white flakes falling from directly above them. The snow was coming down fast enough to cover them with a blanket of ice, but it melted away the moment it made contact with their skin.

Lewis stood gaping for several long moments. He wished his mobile took better pictures, because he wanted to study this phenomenon in great detail. He took several shots in differing angles, and then grabbed a container with which to collect some of the falling snow before it was dissolved by Rikki's body heat. Just as he reached up to gather a few flakes, a soft moan came from below and Rikki shifted from out of Zane's embrace to sprawl out on her back like a starfish.

Lewis swallowed thickly and backed away with his eyes fixed on the rocky top of the volcano. He begged silently with all his might that they wouldn't wake up until he could make his escape.

As his luck would have it, he didn't make it but two feet back before Zane's startled cry echoed throughout the cave. Zane sat up to try assessing his surroundings just as Lewis's heel struck a rock and their eyes met.

Zane seemed to understand two things as he regained consciousness. The first was that he and Rikki were both naked in a cave, and the second was that Lewis stood over them with a Petri dish and a mobile phone.

"What the hell is going on?" he hissed under his breath, while simultaneously covering as much of Rikki's form from Lewis's eyes as he could by crouching over her. "Why are we here... like this? And more importantly, why are you taking pictures?!"

"To the first, I have no idea!" Lewis said in his defence, "To the second, it's not what you think!"

"Not what I think? You've got a phone open in your hand! Either you're taking pictures for your sick idea of research, or you're ordering a pizza. And I don't think anyone delivers out here!"

"No, I... Okay. I admit; I find the affects of last night's full moon on your current state to be quite..." he shook his head of the images, trying to focus on anything other than Rikki's thigh, "but the point is... Zane! You stopped snowing!"

"What?!"

Lewis was too frazzled to explain, but Zane's rude awakening had made the snowfall cease, and now that there was no balancing the subconscious heat waves Rikki gave off, she was starting to wake up from the discomfort.

And when she did, it was to see a naked Zane nearly on top of her.

She didn't speak a word. Just stared, wide-eyed, mid-stretch as Zane blinked down at her, terrified of what was to come.

"Please don't hate me," he said under his breath. "I have no idea what's happened to us."

She swallowed thickly, looking ill. "Where are my clothes?" she asked with as much coolness as she could muster.

"I don't know," he admitted.

"Where are your clothes?"

"I... I honestly do not know the answer to that, either."

"Why are you on top of me?" she said this almost with some of her old teasing tone, but the laugh she meant to follow the question came out as a weak scoff.

"Sorry, I was trying to cover... seeing as we were already..." he saw he was getting nowhere with his attempted explanations and so peered over his shoulder. "Lewis. Give us your shirt."

Under any other circumstances, he would have whinged over the decisiveness of Zane's command and his lack of asking with a 'please' but now, without question, Lewis unbuttoned his colourful shirt and tossed it behind him.

"And your pants," Zane directed. "I hope you wear something under those."

"What?!" The shirt he understood as payment for his misguided peeking, but his pants, as well? That was going too far.

"Do you want me to walk around in the buff, too?" Zane snapped.

"Oh. You want them for... oh." Once Lewis understood they were meant for Rikki and Zane to cover up with, he made no further protests. Without delay, both were reasonably covered.

And much to Lewis's unhappiness, comfortable enough to get angry.