Watersports
"Zac!", Lyla said, and smiled at him as she came around a corner. She and the other Mermaids had just been lazily hanging around in Rita's secret lair, after they'd talked themselves into a stalemate about the trident.
"Have you found out anything new about that trident." Nixie asked, and Lyla noticed mild judgement on her face.
"No, but I'm still on it." The smile on his face as he said that, showed he'd noticed the judgement too.
"Actually I had something else to tell you." He briefly looked around the trio, then practically locked eyes with Lyla, and continued:
"I dreamt of the night I fell into the moonpool."
Lyla looked around briefly as he paused, and saw the same horror in the eyes of Nixie and Serena as she felt herself.
"You were all there, and you were all Mermaids."
"So you had a dream, and came all the way here to tell us that?" Nixie said, almost instantly.
Zac's face turned lightly red, but he caught himself again and said:" It felt real! And since I have no memory of the night I changed, it was . . .", he briefly lost track, "I was just asking."
"I can understand you would want someone to be on the same page as you." Lyla said.
"Yes!" He sparked up, "It's nice that you know, and Cam too, but it'd just be nice not to be the only one."
"I understand what that must feel like." Sirena added.
"I don't think you do." Zac said firmly.
"Yes, we all do." Lyla confirmed.
"We're already alone together, we wouldn't need to be mermaids to understand you." Nixie finally concluded.
"I appreciate that." He briefly smiled at them all, and then jokingly added: "Are you sure you're really not mermaids?"
"We can't even swim." Nixie quickly said, but in the same joking manner.
Zac left shortly after.
"For the time being we've evaded exposure pretty good." Sirena said proudly as she and Nixie slouched down on the couch in the secret lair behind the bookshelves.
"Did we really?" Nixie asked and gave her that look.
"I think we should come clean." Lyla suggested. She was nervous, walking up and down the room.
"Lyla we can't come clean now." Nixie said, and arced her back.
Lyla stopped in her pacing and fixated Nixie: "But we have to eventually! You don't know Zac like I do, he's going to keep pushing, until he finds out anyway."
"I know that about Zac," Nixie said, went back to her slouched posture, and answered Lyla firstly with a sly grin before she continued:
"He's gotten that dream for a reason."
"So you think he's supposed to be after us?" Sirena asked.
"You could be right." Lyla had to admit, "the trident is very powerful, no one knows what it's capable of."
"Probably destroying us, that's for sure." Nixie added.
"If we distract Zac now, it will only draw him closer to the truth." Sirena finally said, but it sounded like a question, fittingly directed at Nixie.
Nixie just shrugged.
It was up to Lyla again to think of something. She got up and started pacing again.
She briefly noticed the other two exchanging questioning looks. She quickly lost herself in thought. What was it that she could do to disprove them? Maybe douse herself in some liquid and not turn into a mermaid, but was that possible?
"Is there some liquid that doesn't turn you into a mermaid?" She asked the others.
"Interesting plan; deodorant, I think." Nixie said.
"But Zac uses deodorant, it wouldn't fool him at all." Lyla reminded her.
"So soap, oils and sunscreen are also out of the question then." Nixie concluded.
"Maybe Rita's got something that grants us temporary immunity to water?" Sirena suggested.
Lyla exchanged a knowing look with Nixie, who smiled like she was just as eager to find out as her. Then again Sirena looked a little worried
"Maybe we should ask Rita first." She suggested.
"Rita is stingy with her potions." Nixie cut her off, and off they went, looking for something.
Lyla had been rummaging through stuff for some minutes already, as she heard Sirena's concerned voice again.
"It says nothing about water immunity in Rita's book." She said.
With that knowledge they gave up, went back to the main chamber and slouched down on the sofa again. Lyla felt defeated, and it was easy to see the others felt the same.
"So there's nothing we can do than." She spoke it out loud what they probably all thought.
"Maybe there still is a way." Nixie said, almost whispered, in the most conspiring voice.
"I'm not going to like this though, am I?" Lyla guessed.
"Maybe, but that's why it might just work. Do you remember our first time on land?" Nixie began her story.
"How could I forget?" Lyla replied and briefly relived the awkwardness.
"We wore clothes for the first time, and I had no Idea of the concept of toilets." Nixie explained.
"So you wet yourself and didn't transform?" Sirena asked.
"Sounds interesting." Lyla said and swallowed.
"You look all too eager to try. Be rest assured Zac would never repeat that stunt and get behind it." Nixie replied with a devilish smile, which Lyla failed to match.
When Lyla came to Zac's shack her heart pounded heavily in her chest, so she rehearsed their plan in her head once more: Finding out whether he was still hanging on to his dream, and if so how much he already knows. Looking for clues was mostly asked of her, as not to jump the gun. Wetting herself had to be done; in case Zac seemed normal, or after she'd talked him out of holding onto the dream, she would have to do it, simply to make the lie perfect; she still wanted to some day come clean to Zac, but alas that would be another day.
She knocked on the door, and Zac opened it immediately.
"Zac!" she exclaimed, a little startled.
"I had hoped you'd show up." He explained himself, while leaning on the door-frame, "I wanted to show you something."
With that said, he just turned around and entered. Lyla followed him closely. She joined him on the couch as soon as he sat down and looked into his laptop, quietly looking over his shoulder, just reading what he read without commenting anything. He seemed a little less tense as usual, when she had sat down this close to him, but what was she to do; you couldn't see anything on his laptop from an angle. It told her nothing new, and neither did it to Zac apparently.
He typed: "What to do with a trident?" and she caught herself wanting to reach out for the laptop and close it, but caught herself mid movement.
Sly Zac smiled at her, "And you almost seemed calm."
"I'm calm. It's your hobby, a dangerous hobby, but still." She defended herself.
He typed: "History of trident and mermaids." Lyla bit her lip, Zac smiled over again.
"You have to admit you're at least a little fascinated."
"I'm concerned! For you." Her voice was a dead giveaway of that.
Zac smiled. "I appreciate that. But I'm still interested in this trident."
Lyla wanted to reply something, but he continued: "I appreciate you're not driven away by my curiosity," quieter, "like some other people."
"Evie." Lyla said in a dry voice. She had to compose herself not to laugh out loud as Zac just compared her to a landgirl.
"And Cam." He added. His face looked hot, he'd briefly flushed as she said Evie.
Zac turned on the TV for her, slouched down on the couch, and continued his research while they watched. Occasionally she felt his eyes upon herself, and pretended to watch intently. As fate would have it, it was a documentary on the great barrier reef. She really didn't know where to take it from here. He didn't seem like he still thought about the dream, sadly so he still was after the trident. She looked at him, his eyes fixed at the laptop, then down at her black corduroy hotpants. The coast was clear, for now, but the evening was still young. If she had learned one thing about landpeople in her brief stay, it was that they paced things very slow. Maybe Zac, if he ever not just glanced at her from behind his laptop, was still to come to this topic. Maybe even contemplating how to best bring it right now, while she contemplated how to best wet herself. It had to be subtle. She tried, just for trying's sake, but tensed and nothing came.
She was shaken out of her thoughts as Zac suddenly got up from the couch. She looked after him as he made his way to his mini-fridge, and spotted Sirena and Nixie at the window. They turned invisible as they realised they were spotted, and Lyla shot them an evil glance.
"Do you want anything?" Zac yelled over from the fridge, standing there, still halfway bent down with a small bottle of water in his hand already.
"No, thanks." She answered. Her heart was pounding again; it had been an extremely close call, wetting herself would have probably went awry in a horrible way, and that in front of Sirena and Nixie. She knew what Zac was up to when he returned with his bottle of water, unscrewed it, and set it on the table in front of himself. The dream was definitely not off his mind already. He leaned way back on the couch, and suddenly she felt his warm arm around her shoulders. She looked at him, a little shocked, only to see a smirk develop on his face, as he started using his powers on the water. She watched as a huge bubble of water levitated out of his bottle and slowly flew all the way over his stretched out body and into his mouth. He smiled.
"It's really great to be a merman sometimes."
She just smiled back.
"Open your mouth." He said, as another bubble of water escaped from the bottleneck.
"No Zac, please!" She plead in panic, but he just chuckled.
"It's still plain water, Lyla." He tried to calm her down.
"I said I wasn't thirsty!" She cried out, in full panic now. Then the unthinkable happened, Zac dropped the bubble of water.
It was definitely enough to leave a visible spot, but would it all be absorbed by her pants, or go through and touch her skin?
She watched the water fall in what seemed like slow motion and wished she could risk evaporating it in mid air, but Zac would probably notice it. She braced herself for impact.
The water landed in her lap, a visible wet patch formed, but her skin still felt dry.
She slowly looked up from her lap, while panic turned into rage.
"Looks almost like you've wet yourself." Zac joked.
"You need to be more careful with your powers, Zac!" She scolded him.
"This isn't even enough water to go through clothes." He defended himself. He then slouched back against the backrest of the couch.
Lyla sighed. She wasn't really satisfied with that excuse, but she knew he wouldn't use his powers in public.
She also slouched back in the couch, and forced herself to look like she was watching the TV intently. Zac might just have dropped the water on her on purpose, and while she may have lied to him first, this was a major break of trust.
"I wish I'd have someone who I didn't have to be careful around." Zac said out of the blue, almost as if just talking to himself.
"You have Cam." Lyla answered, not looking away from the TV.
"I meant to say I'd like to have someone who's on the same page." He started again.
Lyla caved, and, with a sigh, turned her head towards him again: "Is this still about your dream?" She asked.
"Yes and no. I just want a fellow mermaid or merman." He answered.
"And you'd want that to be me?" Lyla asked, perhaps to bold. Zac blushed a bit, and so did she.
"We connected before, before we found that trident. You understand me the best." He explained. It was obvious to Lyla that this was a nod to Evie and not to Cam.
"I do." She said, not so sure how to feel about the direction this was going.
"And I'm not even a mermaid." She added. Brief silence ensued. Lyla smiled at the window, signalling her invisible fellow mermaids that everything went alright for the time being, as she felt Zac's arm reach around her shoulder again. She tensed up a little, and Zac probably noticed, since he quickly got up from the couch.
"But you're no ordinary girl, I can tell." He tried again.
She rose to her feet too.
"I might have been a little weird when we first met." She tried to play it down.
"A lot of things were messed up when we first met. I got my tail, for example." He answered. He shook his head, then started his argument anew:
"You admitted you understand me."
"I do." She said firmly, and put her hands against his shoulders.
"And I believe you, even though I really shouldn't." He said, and put a hand on one of her hands, gently removing it from his shoulder.
"But you won't keep quiet until you've found a mermaid, do you?" Lyla guessed somber. Zac let go of her hand, contemplating.
She briefly bit her tongue not to tell him then and there.
This was her call; she had to wet herself now, and as she tried, she felt a hot, kind of stinging sensation in her crotch, but it was far too little to be noticeable. She wanted to try again, but Zac started to talk to her again:
"I can't even tell Evie." With that said he turned around and started to slowly walk around his shack. Lyla decided to follow him close behind, talking to him.
"Where is it written that you can't tell her?" She asked, and got no reaction.
"It would make things a lot easier for you two." She added, and couldn't mask a little sadness in her voice. She liked Zac, more than she wanted to.
He turned around, with a pleading look on his face, and said:
"It wouldn't make a difference."
Lyla was a little stunned.
"It made a difference for me." She heard herself say, "I really got to know you, and I like you."
"And it would make the same difference for me." He retorted, with the same melancholy.
"It wouldn't even have to be Evie." He whispered after a small pause.
Lyla grabbed him by the shoulders again, and locked eyes with him. He smiled a small smile, that she knew was sincere, even though his bloodshot eyes told a different story. She figured he too had understood she would never tell him her secret.
"I will probably regret this." She whispered quickly, so her voice wouldn't break while she spoke. With that she kissed him; just a brief peck on his mouth, but a meaningful one. She kept a hard face after; Zac was stunned. She pushed again, the coup de gracé. This time it worked: She felt the warmth expanding in her pants and knew there was no stopping now. A brief glance down revealed a fast growing patch in her hotpants. It felt warm and weird.
She looked up at Zac's face again, who must have followed her gaze, and was now mesmerised by what he saw. He too looked up again soon after; shock was written all over his face, but it disappeared as soon as they locked eyes. Her blue eyes felt just as bloodshot and close to tears as Zac's had been previously, and still now, which was probably what had just made it click for Zac. He no longer believed her to be a mermaid, she could be sure of that now.
She watched him struggle for words, and decided to relieve him, and spoke first:
"I really like you, isn't that what's important." she said, not quite whispered, hoping not to sound to sad.
"I really like you too, Lyla, and you're right, that's most important." He was telling the truth, but his raspy voice surely gave away how much he actually longed for her to come clean.
"Zac." she said, with an equally raspy voice, and reached out for his cheek, but briefly withdrew her hand at the last second, as she saw a tear roll down. She wiped it away; there was no danger of transforming.
Zac let himself fall on back on the couch again, visibly exhausted from the events transpired. Lyla followed suit, in wet pants, but she didn't care, and neither did he. She leaned against him, in exhaustion and mutual misery, and let her head fall on his shoulder, while he wrapped his arm around. She just sat there, sharing the pain in silence, while neither of them even looked at each other. She was just staring into the void, her head felt empty.
(15.3.020)