Phew boy! Do we got a longer chapter for you today!
Hello merfolk and humans and all inbetween! My name is Annie and why am I starting this like a vlog entry? I don't know. I blame the exhaustion. It's currently 1:30 am and I am buzzing right now with how much I love mermaids and summer and joy and life and I don't know maybe I've had too many sweets tonight. Anyways, in this chapter we have a lot of things happening. I've literally gone straight from typing it to uploading it here (and editing it in Doc Manager). So I apologize for all the for sure going to be there typos and mistakes. But I'm tired and I just want to get this up and out so I may go and do other things! Have I mentioned yet that this is going to probably be my longest fanfiction ever yet? Yeahhhhh, well, now you know! Lol, enjoy. Remember, Review!
Shirayuki stirred just before Obi swam up to her side. He looked down at her, an unconscious Zen in his arms. Out of breath, he told her; "Good, you're up." Then he leaned down and slipped Zen next to her. Shirayuki groaned in protest and shifted to the side to make room for him. She gasped in surprise when her arm touched his arm. Not because of the contact, but her skin brushed through air when she did.
"The Blessing of the Sea." Obi explained. "The Sea is holding a layer of oxygen around him so he can breathe. It'll go stale soon, so we need to hurry." He reached down and hoisted her from the Bed of Light. Golden lines of light dripped from her back into the pool. Shirayuki watched them purposefully swim around and down into the bed again with soft plops. Immediately, the normal salt water rushed around her and she covered her mouth as she coughed. "Obi, I don't feel good." She complained.
"I know." He helped her sit on the edge of the Bed. Below her, Zen muttered something incoherent and his eyelids fluttered. But he didn't wake. The Sharkman met her eyes. His spear was tucked into a seaweed belt at his waist, and it tilted down gently towards Zen before bopping back up. "Shirayuki, you need to kiss him again."
"What? No. Ew." Shirayuki shook her head, and immediately regretted it. The world spun and she nearly fell back into the Bed of Light. Her tail flung up on natural reflex and nearly smacked Obi down with her. But Obi managed to catch her and push her tail down in the same motion.
"This is the only way the both of you will live." Obi's voice was tense, like he was giving an order.
"But-what will it do? The last time n-nothing happened!" Shirayuki still tried to protest.
Obi grabbed her shoulders. Shirayuki thought it was to make sure she listened, but then she felt him push her so she was straight up again. "Shirayuki. The Sea will never lie. Therefore, neither will I. If you do not kiss him right now, both of you will not live."
Maybe it was her embarrassment, or maybe it was her sickness, but a flare of anger made her stiffen. "Why does the Sea care about us so much?!"
Obi looked hurt. "Shirayuki, the Sea cares for all her creatures."
"Then why did she let Atlantis sink? Why does she care for this barnacle scum?!" Shirayuki pointed at Zen angrily.
Obi grasped Shirayuki's cheeks. "She cares because he has a destiny that is intertwined with you, and the entire ocean. Please, Shirayuki." Suddenly, Obi's eyes darkened. Shirayuki watched as the color seemed to swirl in his eyes. A silver mist clouded from the outside of his irisis, and then when he spoke again, the voice was deep, slow, and feminine. "Please."
Shirayuki blinked, and his eyes were back to normal. He hadn't moved, and was still blinking at her pleadingly. She could almost believe she had imagined it. But the water seemed like it was moving around them. Shirayuki closed her eyes. One more kiss. And she would save her life. And…Zen's. She took a deep breath through her gills. "Okay, okay fine." She relented.
Obi sagged in relief and let her go. She leaned down over the bed, using her arms to hold her up. She studied Zen's face. His eyes were twitching under his eyelids, and he had massive bags. His brilliant white hair floated in the sky blue water, the lines of light zipping in and out of the strands. It gave him a sort of halo effect. His skin was a little paler underneath his tan. Shirayuki let her eyes wander to his lips. She expected to feel revolted, but she remembered how he had kissed her last.
The feeling wasn't even remotely close to disgust.
Shirayuki leaned down, and pressed her lips to his.
The effect was immediate. The Bed of Light glowed golden. Shirayuki felt herself getting her strength back. She spread and closed her fin in a stretch. Her lips tingled and she felt herself floating upwards. The constant headache she had been nursing for days now finally faded. Salt water flowed in and out of her gills easily. She pulled back, and sighed in relief. Then she gasped and propelled herself backwards away from the Prince.
The Bed of Light stayed golden as Zen's body began to…melt, it almost seemed. His skin turned the light blue the Bed used to be. His legs were gone first. Then his torso, and finally his head.
"Obi!" Shirayuki screamed, thinking Zen had just been killed.
"Calm down." Obi soothed. "He is being reborn."
Shirayuki stared at the Sharkman. "What?!"
Obi gave her a look, then nodded back to the Bed.
The glow faded as Shirayuki turned. The water went back to its usual light blue properties, complete with strands of yellow light darting around in swirls and random motions. And a fully formed Zen was thrust upwards from seemingly nowhere. He didn't leave the bed, but he was different now. Shirayuki gasped aloud, covering her hands with her mouth in shock.
Obi nodded. "I see now."
Soft singing was the first thing Zen picked up when he opened his eyes. It was not a calm awakening – his eyes flung open as if something in this world had just controlled him. His legs felt heavier and sore. He had one arm down by his side and another over the top of his head. His hair was soft and gently tickled against the base of his palm. He took a deep breath, but it didn't come through his nose. That thought made him sit up. But it was wrong. When he sat up, he felt sticky tendrils of bubbles cling to his back and his arms. He ripped himself free with a grunt of effort and found his hands grabbing two small rock walls for support.
The singing stopped.
"He's awake." A familiar, female voice said.
"So he is. Hello, Prince Zen." Another familiar, male voice said.
Zen's head felt filled with clouds. He took a few breaths, but it wasn't comforting. His lungs expanded, but when he breathed out the rush of air didn't come from his nose or his mouth. Instead, it rushed out from the side of his neck. He rubbed his eye with one hand and looked up. A girl with bright red hair was sitting on a rock a little ways away from him. Her eyes were a brilliant green and her cheeks were flushed red. The blue light in the cave they sat in made her skin look paler. But what it did to her skin was nothing compared to what it did to her tail. An even green to match her eyes was turned emerald, the streaks of gold on her undulating fin turned silver.
"You're my dream girl!" Zen blurted, so shocked about seeing her he didn't think what he was saying.
She froze and stared at him with a frown on her face, her eyebrows creased and she leaned back slowly with confusion. And possible a bit of disgust.
There was a scoff of laughter.
Zen noticed the man with the tail of a shark floating a little ways away, towards the cave's entrance. He held a massive spear that Zen had an odd feeling about – like how he felt when he held his sword. Speaking of, his sword and shirt were gone. His torso was bare. He tried not to feel embarrassed about that. The man standing at the entrance turned and swam a few feet back towards Zen. His skin was pale and he rippled with muscles. He had extra gray fins on his forearms and bright golden eyes.
Feeling embarrassed and confused, Zen stammered out. "I – I just meant you were, um, in my dream. Not that….um, where am I?"
The man held up one finger with his free hand. "First thing, you need to look down and not panic."
Zen looked down and felt his heart stop.
When he was very young, and his mother would still make time to tuck him into bed, she had once told him that he should stay away from the ocean. The only reason being that earlier that day his older brother had nearly drowned. "There are many things under those waves we don't understand, little one." He remembered her saying.
Now, staring at the expanse of blue, purple, and golden scales he found in place of his legs, he could finally understand what exactly she did not.
He couldn't form words to say anything to the other two. What words could possibly describe what he felt at his tail? From his waist, his skin darkened to a purplish color, before the scales began and the purple slipped down his sides, letting a dark blue take over until his fin. His fin was nothing like he imagined it would be. It looked more like a fabric, but as it curled and twisted against the light blue water he was sitting in, he could feel the power it held. It had a line of white over the very edge, and the purple and blue mixed in his fin underneath a sheen of gold.
He looked up at the two merpeople in front of him. "What did you do to me?" His voice was calmer than he expected.
"We had to." The man explained. "What do you remember?"
Zen couldn't believe they were asking him to remember things - right now all he really thought he was capable of was staring at his tail. Where was his penis, exactly? "Um?"
The mermaid scoffed.
He looked at her and she turned away, avoiding his gaze. "Were you singing just now?"
"Yeah." She clipped the word.
"This is Shirayuki. Do you remember her?" Obi explained.
"Shirayuki." Zen repeated. With some difficulty, he pulled his gaze away from her mesmerizing red hair and looked at the shark mermaid. "I think so? It sounds familiar."
"I'm Obi, do you remember our battle?"
Zen blinked, then stared at Obi's weapon. He remembered the heat of sparks flying past his face, the motion of wrapping chains around a soaked weapon. "Maybe bits of it?" He finally said.
"Good enough." Obi swam forward and settled on the wall in front of Zen's tail. His tail bent in a way a shark's never could. "Shirayuki saved you from being killed by pirates. The rules of the Sea dictate that a human never live under the sea for more than ten minutes. By saving you, Shirayuki and you violated that rule. I had to try to kill you. But during our fight, the Sea told me that you were to be spared and sent back to your homeland."
"Okay. None of that makes sense but okay." Zen said slowly. The memories came back to him, but they felt like something he would have read in a book somewhere. They couldn't be something he had experienced himself, because if it was…
He looked to Shirayuki. "Did you kiss me?"
She turned as red as her hair. "You kissed me." She defended.
Obi heaved a sigh. "To stop you from trapping me, she sang to you. A mermaid's voice is hypnotizing to human ears."
Zen felt his own cheeks get hot. "Um…and…did you do it again just now?"
Shirayuki's tail lashed the water. The water pushed back Zen's hair from the force of it. "Because he made me!" She defended again, pointing to Obi.
Zen looked to him for explanation, trying to keep his ears from going hot.
"The Sea commanded it." Obi met Zen's eyes. "No mer has kissed a human, or vice versa," he spared a glance a Shirayuki "in hundreds of years. The law of the Sea is that if it is to happen, one of the two must change. The mer must change human or the human must change to a mer."
"Or….?"
"Do you remember being sick?" Obi asked.
"Uh, yes, actually." Zen remembered Garack feeding him crushed herbs of all kinds to try and cure him. He remembered the hot flashes and the sudden pains. And he remembered a storm. "Did you pull me back to sea? I don't remember how I got here." He tried to move back a little, and his tail naturally splashed at the light blue water. It scattered water droplets and lines of golden light. As Zen watched, however, they simply stopped in midair. Or, water, he supposed. The droplets and the lines then turned and darted back into the small little nook of glowing water.
Obi didn't bother to explain that impossible feat. Which was fine with Zen, he could only take so much fantastical before exploding. "The sickness was fatal. The Sea calls it love sickness."
"That name makes me feel a little sick." Zen admitted.
Obi shrugged. "The cure was, well." He gestured to Zen's tail.
"Um, okay." Zen gripped the sides of the rock wall and looked at Shirayuki, who was staring at his tail as well. "Why couldn't you become human?"
Shirayuki looked up, appalled. "I would never! Not on your life."
"Or yours, apparently." Zen argued.
Shirayuki opened her mouth, then closed it again. She huffed. "It doesn't have to be permanent, right, Obi? You said before that the Sea wanted Zen to return to land."
"She didn't know about the kiss. And it's true."
"Really? Well, thank god for that." Zen managed, though his voice was tight and he was shivering slightly. He wished he had his shirt still. He looked at Obi. "Why did she choose to spare me, then? I remember the pirates kidnapping me and throwing me overboard. Why am I still alive?"
Obi twirled his massive spear and looked out to the open water. "I don't know all the details. I know that the Ocean believes herself to be in danger, and believes you…" He paused, then pointed at Shirayuki. "And you, are the keys to saving her."
Shirayuki and Zen exchanged a look.
"As for your tail, Prince, I don't know how long you will have to remain like this. For now, we must await further orders." Obi sighed and put his spear's end against the ground. He leaned on it heavily.
Zen wanted to stand, but he didn't think he could. "I can't wait forever, Obi. I've already been gone for what, almost two weeks? I have people who will worry about me. I have duties I need to attend to – Clarines needs me."
Obi held his hand up. "I know, but Zen, I don't know how to reverse your transformation. Only the Sea knows how."
Zen couldn't really believe any of this. He tried to breathe through his mouth, but it naturally occurred through his gills instead. "I-I'm sorry. I just…need a minute." He leaned forward and put his head in his hands, staring down through his fingers at the expanse of glimmering scales and trying really hard not to cry. He wasn't sure exactly why he wanted to cry. But he bit back the tears anyways, and just tried to believe there was a way out of this endless whirlpool of insanity he had been sucked into.