I stand at the edge of the dock, wondering if I'm about to make the right decision. This could completely calm me down and answer a few questions, or it could just make everything worse. I sit down at the dock, and stare into the water, weighing my options. I had decided to sneak out of the inn to find out if this is really real or not, but now that I'm here and about to do it, I'm not so sure.

As I test, I decide to dip my finger into the water, quickly dipping it in, and then pulling it out, leaving a little more than a drop on my finger. I sit there, slightly tense, waiting for the energy feeling, and preparing to grow a tail and have to hurry into the water before anyone sees me. But nothing seems to happen. Maybe it was just a hallucination in the end. I look into the water again. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to dip my foot in. Taking one of my boots off, and placing it on the dock, I put my right foot into the water. The feeling of the water somehow clears my head, and the dizziness and fuzziness in my head is completely gone. I casually sit there, enjoying the feeling, when suddenly.

I turn into water for a quick moment, and that damn tail is back. And yet I thought it was gone. Lovely. My tail hangs off the dock, the bottom fin at the surface of the water. I pinch myself to make sure that I'm not dreaming, and then I lower myself into the water, hoping that no one had seen me. The water feels different on my skin then it ever did before. Better could be a way to describe it, but I feel like natural would be a better word. I couldn't explain it. I couldn't put any words to the difference. But if one thing was certain, it was completely different to the normal feel of being in water.

I stare at my tail for a moment, but then realize that I have no idea how to use it. Can I move it? And if I can, how? It does look like a fishtail, so wouldn't that mean that I'm currently supposed to be in water? But now do I swim? I almost facepalm at myself for not thinking this one through.

All of a sudden, I feel my tail twitch, along with several muscles inside of my tail, ones in spots and moving in ways that I could've never thought I would ever feel. For that quick second, I could tell that this thing was flexible, and I probably wouldn't need to worry about bending it too far anyway.

I make another attempt to move the tail, focusing on the areas that I had felt just a second ago. And it worked. The tail rose up, not too much, I lost focus and it dropped not long after. I could feel almost all the inner workings of the tail moving as my brain sent the signals to move it. It felt unnatural, yet natural at the same time.

I move myself, slowly making it deeper into the lake. It's a little tricky at first, but I start to get more use to it as I push myself out, further from the shore. I'm nervous, and I think it might be fair to say that I'm little scared. I guess you could say that curiosity has killed the cat on this one.

I'm really starting to think this is a stupid idea now, and that I should just go back, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to go back to shore, and get an earful from Alphonse, and then have snuck out for pretty much nothing. So, I guess I might as well stay here, and figure a bit more of this out.

My gut is telling me that I should go underwater, but I find myself not being so sure. I know for a face that I cannot breathe underwater, and my automail might prevent me from surfacing in time for me to breathe so I don't pass out or something. Maybe if I stay close to the surface, I'll be safe, and perfectly fine. I take a deep breath, and put my head underwater.

Expecting to get a typical blurry view under water, I'm left completely surprised when everything is crystal clear. The water doesn't impair my vision at all, the colour of the water merely tints everything lightly in that colour. I try to swim a little bit under to get a closer look, but it doesn't work too well, and I hardly move. I quickly remember that my tail is a thing, and I make an attempt to kick it lightly, and I find myself almost propelled into the water. I end up going a lot deeper than I originally wanted to go, but I find myself mesmerized in the view of the plants swaying and the fish swimming around.

Using my tail, I swim a little bit closer to the fish. Surprisingly, they don't seem too bothered by my presence, and more interested in not crashing into me. They look pretty though, all of the colours moving around in the water, like little kids playing underwater in a pool. Except it lasts more then 10 seconds.

I ponder on what to do now. I'm now under water, I should probably try to do something with my time, and try to at least somewhat figure this whole thing out. I try to think of something, when I remember where it all started. The weird pool. It had a tunnel that had led directly to the lake. Meaning that I could go back. Maybe even more easily like this. That place must have some answers to what is going on!

I begin swimming through the water, moving the fin of my tail up and down as best as I can to move me through the water. I don't think I'm doing it properly, considering it's not exactly the most comfortable. But it is moving me, so I'm not really complaining right now. My gaze goes over to the island, but under the surface of the water, keeping an eye out for the entrance to that tunnel. As much as I kept trying to focus on searching for the tunnel entrance, I keep finding myself looking around at my surroundings, and sometimes I even find myself going into a blissful daze from the feeling of the water flowing against me as I swim.

The water oddly enough feels completely natural against my skin; I could probably compare it to the feeling of air on a person. The water brushing against my head and making my hair seamlessly flow behind me actually feels relaxing to me. The scenery of everything around me, and the look of the sun shining into the water, creating perfect rays of sunlight that actually look really pretty when my sight is this clear under water, and I'm swimming among them. After a while of trying to not let myself go into my daze and stay focus, I almost can't help it. And I fall into a blissful daze, just swimming around, admiring everything on me, and around me. Pretty much loosing every care and worry in the world. I feel happy, content, almost excited. Everything feels so comfortable and natural, it even didn't feel too awkward to move my tail to swim seamlessly through the water...

Wait, that can't be right. This shouldn't feel so natural, especially my tail. I snap out of my daze with these thoughts, and I notice that I had been doing somethings without even thinking. I am still swimming, but my hands are positioned right in front of me, stretched out, with my hands on top of each other. I look behind me, and watch as my tail effortlessly goes up and down, almost like a wave. It feels a lot more comfortable then what I was doing before, so I try to memorize the feelings in the tail and how it's moving so that I can do it again later once I stop.

I stop swimming for a moment, and analyze my surroundings. I have no idea how far I went while I was in that daze, and whether it got me any closer to the tunnel or not. I'm still close to the shore of the island, and looking closely at part of the steep part of the shore, I see the tunnel, waiting for me to enter.

I sigh in relief, happy and relieved that I'm right near the tunnel, and that I didn't swim away from it by mistake. I take a deep breath, and I begin swimming towards the tunnel, hoping that on the other side, will be some answers.

I suddenly stop swimming, and my breath get caught in my throat. I'm underwater. I shouldn't be able to breathe underwater. And yet I am. But how? How long have I been breathing underwater? I start breathing heavily in panic, not knowing what to do. The logical answer would be to swim u to the surface and take a breath up there, but I'm already breathing just fine where I am. I haven't drowned yet, and I'm breathing in heaps of seemingly air underwater, so I guess that says a few things. I take a few deep breaths, deciding to just be glad that I'm not dead yet, and to make my way to that pool.

Once I've calmed down a little, I start swimming again, this time being a lot easier than the last time. I swim down to the tunnel, and enter it, the tunnel being big enough for me to easily go through. Once I get to the pool, I resurface, and I feel an odd feeling in my chest, making me start to cough. I'm not coughing for too long, and after that, I feel completely normal again. At least in my chest.

I look around the cavern, and something about it seems different. More comfortable. More relaxing, I feel like I could stay here for hours just floating around. The relics seem to stand out more, especially the blue crystals. On top of all of that, I feel different. Different from when I first came here, and different from when I was swimming around in the like. It feels like something is resonating inside of me. Like some sort of attachment to this place. An attachment that feels like it's so much deeper than I could ever expect. Like a sense of belonging that was created by something that I could never think of normally. It's also like I'm in a place of importance. A special place that's going to really matter to me or something. I just can't find a single way to describe how I feel being in here.

Taking a while to carefully inspect everything, I get the feeling that I'm probably not going to find answers in here. And although I'm finding myself feeling so relaxed in here, and a part of me wants to stay, I'm already going to get an earful from Alphonse for sneaking off, I should probably head back before I get an even bigger one.

I go back underwater to go back through the tunnel, and I make it out in a decent amount of time, but my lungs start begging for air. Remembering that I was breathing underwater earlier, I carefully, and very cautiously take a small breath in. The minute I do so, the odd feeling that was in my chest comes back the m, and I resist the urge to start coughing. It goes way not even a moment later, and I find myself just floating there, calmly but not calmly doing the impossibly by breathing underwater while having a fishtail.

I start to swim again, taking in the feelings and the sights as I start to head back to where I came from. I guess I'll just have to a more secluded part of the shore and try to turn back there. Well, I think I can turn back to normal. Ugh, why don't I think about this stuff beforehand. My heart beats quickly as I make my way over to the shore. I suppose I'm just going to wing it from here.

Reaching the shore, I quickly find a place to pull myself onto the shore, and I go to the shore, and I drag myself onto the land. The area is nice and isolated from the rest of the beach nearby, almost completely surrounded by trees, and other bushes, in a way that it would be unlikely that someone would see me from a distance.

And I have no way to dry myself off. Just great. I can't believe I didn't think of that either. I let out a sigh of annoyance, and use one of my hands to prop myself up. I look behind me, hoping that some random person won't just walk in and see me. For some reason, my tail starts to sting, and I look at it, and see my hand hovering over top of it, and steam coming from my tail. I watch in shock as all the water on my tail completely dries off, and it doesn't even take more than a few minutes before I turn back to normal.

I stare at my hand, sure that the evaporating water was from me, but also not sure. That kind of thing shouldn't be possible at all, and yet I'm seeing it with my own eyes. I decide to get up and head back to the inn, not wanting to worry Alphonse too much. Just as I'm getting up, I hear rustling from the bushes, and I see Alphonse walk into the small clearing. "Brother!" He says as he looks at me in surprise. He walks up to me. "Where were you? I've been looking everywhere!"

I'm not sure what to tell him; 'Oh, hey Al. Just so you know, I managed to turn into in some half fish thing, and have been swimming around for the last... who knows how long. Oh yea, and by the way, I think I somehow managed to evaporate water really fast to dry myself off.' Like hell, he's going to believe me if I say that! He'd also probably get mad at me for not telling him, and then make me tell mustang or something. "I just went for a walk, that's all." I decide not to tell him for now.

Alphonse sighs in annoyance. "Why were out on a walk for over 4 hours?" I was out there for over 4 hours? Well then... "And you didn't even tell me! You just sneak out of the inn room right after getting discharged from the hospital! Do you have any idea how worried I was? I thought that you might've gotten lost somewhere, or passed out again!" He's just about yelling at me now, both in anger, and in relief.

I feel bad for making him worry about me so much. "I'm sorry Al. I just needed some air." I pause for a moment, not really sure what to say to him. I think of something that isn't completely a lie. "I just lost track of time."

Alphonse, looks at me, seeming concerned. "Brother... Are you ok?"

I nod. "Yea, I'm fine, just thinking..." I trail off. Am I ok? Honestly, I'm not sure.

Alphonse takes a step towards me. "Is there something you're not telling me?" He asks, sounding worried.

I look at Alphonse. Yes, there is something I'm not telling him, but can I even say it? I highly doubt he'd believe me. He'd probably think I was making some stupid joke. I don't even talk about anything fantasy like on a normal basis. He would probably think I'm nuts. I might as well come up with something, at least even if he does think I'm nuts, he'd probably understand somewhat. "I'll bring it up later." I say, walking towards him. "Let's head back to the inn for now."

We both walk back to the inn, and I can't help but think about what happened while I was in the water. Swimming around, the weird daze, and the pool in the cavern. Swimming around in that tail feel completely different to walking around, or swimming with two legs. The sights are completely different too, it kind of feels like you're flying over top of tiny forests sometimes.

But as confusing as it is, I can't help but smile as I think about it. Because it really is really confusing, there's no way to explain what's going on in a scientific way, and it feels really weird and kind of strange to swim around in it. And with all of that, it's probably fair to say that it's a little scary. But I can't help but admit, that in the end, it's pretty damn cool.