Rita Santos entered her office in a frenzy. The stress of the night before was too much and she was already behind schedule for the day! She was up until all hours of the night when Sirena and Weilan had finally returned with the news: everyone was okay but Chris was, indeed, a newly transformed merman. Relief flooded her at the time but she was still worried about the Mimmi and her boyfriend. Luckily, Chris had many friends surrounding him that knew exactly what he was going through.
Rita set her things down, her bag went beside her chair and her laptop sat on top of her desk. She sat down and began to type in her password to catch up on the emails she had missed overnight and early this morning. It took her a moment to notice the blonde man in his mid-twenties sitting across from her.
Rita jumped, "How long have you been sitting there?"
The blonde shrugged, "Not long before you."
The principal looked down at him sternly, "And what exactly makes you think that breaking into someone's office is okay?"
The young man looked like he had been slapped, not wanting to anger the woman he came to see, "No! I just really needed to talk to you. You're the only one who I could think of to help me." The man had spent his school days being adored by his teachers and didn't want to break the streak now.
"And why do you think that I can help?" The older woman asked folding her arms.
"Because you're a mermaid." The man rushed out.
Rita paled and shuffled over to her office door, closing it gently. She calmly walked over to her desk and sank down in the cushioned chair across from the stranger. She took a deep breath, "Now, I don't know who you think you are or how you know who I am but I'm really not interested in answering any questions."
"No. Please!" The stranger begged. "My name is Lewis McCartney. I've known about mermaids for years since my three best friends fell into the moon pool back when we were in high school. I researched all that I could on mermaids to try and grasp the magic so I always kept tabs on magical activity in the area. I have known about you and your pod for a long time now, but I really had no need to insert myself into your lives. Although, I think I may need to now. My friends and I have long since parted ways, so you were the only person I could think of to turn to."
Rita nodded slowly, taking in Lewis' story. She wasn't aware of three land girls falling into the moon pool a few years back and wondered why the pod had left their sacred island. But that was a question to answer at another time. "Why have you come to me now?" is what the older mermaid asked.
"I woke up on the beach of Mako Island this morning, I had no idea how I had gotten there and no memory of the night before. I stood up trying to find my boat or some way of getting back home and a wave washed over my feet and well-" Lewis stopped and searched around the room until his eyes landed on a tea kettle that was still half full from the day before. He held his hand out and twisted it in the way that he'd seen his old friends do many times before. Slowly, the water rose from its canister and formed a long tentacle and sank back downward. "I think I'm a merman. Like, a permanent, real-life, honest to God merman. And I never thought it would happen to me."
For the second time in a few minutes, Rita paled again. "You mean to tell me that you were transformed last night?"
Lewis nodded.
"That means that the dragon is going after more than one person every moon." Rita thought out loud, drumming her fingers on her desk while her mind raced.
"Dragon?" Lewis asked thoughtfully.
Rita nodded, "Yes, our newest threat. I'm afraid you know much less than you think you do," the principal said to the young scientist. "Come with me, I will take you back to my house and explain everything on the way."
They rose and snuck out of the office, trying not to be noticed. Rita left her laptop on her desk with her email still open, but she didn't even notice it missing.
On the car ride back to her house, Rita grilled Lewis some more about how and what he knew about mermaids and their magical world. "When did you first find out about merpeople?" was her first question.
"Back in grade 10, my three best friends fell into the moon pool and I found out their secret a few days later. I was their biggest help through everything, I knew the secret the longest, researched as much as I could to learn every secret the magic had to offer and helped in any way that I knew how." Lewis supplied.
Rita chuckled at the young merman, "Magic has a way of always keeping you guessing. No one has ever uncovered all that secrets that it holds, and nobody ever will."
Lewis scoffed, "I naively thought that I was very close."
"So, what happened to your friends that fell into the moon pool?" Rita continued down her list of questions that had formed since she found the man in her office.
Lewis sighed, "I haven't seen them in years," He said somberly, "We were the closest of friends, I was even dating one of them. But after high school, we all just went our separate ways. I ended up doing a research project in the States and just ended up losing touch." The young man looked sadly out the car under and stared out at the views whizzing past. "I wonder where they are now."
Rita thought for a moment, "Maybe we should try and contact them. We'll see if they can offer you any guidance."
Lewis sighed and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the car window. He looked longingly at the scene whizzing passed and just through the trees that lined the highway he could catch glimpses of the ocean. The mid-morning sunlight danced on the calm blue water, whose waves seemed to dance to the rhythm of its own song. It was mesmerizing for Lewis to watch.
"Have you been out there yet?" Rita asked, noticing how entranced by the view the young merman seemed to be.
Lewis shook his head, "Other than last night and this morning, I hadn't been out there since before Cleo left."
"Cleo is one of your friends from before, I assume." Rita inquired.
Lewis nodded his head as Rita began to ease the car from the interstate and pull off into a residential neighborhood. The entrance had a large iron gate and Rita had to roll her window down to punch a code into a keypad just to open it. They rolled further down the drive and Lewis couldn't help but gawk at the houses on either side of the road. Calling them big would have been an understatement, none of them were short of mansions. It was a stark difference from the one-story home that Lewis grew up in for his whole life. Part of him wondered how a high school principal with no husband could come up with the money to afford a place like this.
Eventually, Rita pulled into a driveway that led up to a large white stucco house with a direct view of the ocean which crept right into her backyard. They climbed out of the car, letting the fresh sea air briefly fill their noses. The principal produced her house key and unlocked the front door. The pair walked through the ultra modern living room and kitchen, everything was a shade of white or gray, though not much of it looked very lived in. They continued down the hallway until arriving at Rita's infamous bookcase, she pulled on the mermaid mythology book and the decoy bookshelves slid open with a low grinding sound and revealed the hidden passage.
The voices of teenage girls could be heard from inside the secret grotto and as Rita led the way their voices grew louder. Lewis stared in awe at the opened cavern before him. Down in this secret grotto seemed to be the true home of the older mermaid and her companions, it seemed to house many items from the sea, some magical, some mysterious, and some that were just downright fascinating. The scientist in him itched to take a closer analysis of the items that surrounded him.
It took Lewis a moment to realize that all eyes in the room were on him. Rita and four other teenage girls were staring at him as if they expected an answer.
Lewis shook his head to clear the daydreams from it, "I'm sorry, what?"
A blonde haired girl rolled her eyes at him, "I said, who are you and what do you think you are doing here."
"I'm Lewis. Lewis McCartney. I came here looking for some answers." The young man supplied, not wanting to give away too much.
"And what makes you think you can just barge into people's homes?" The same girl asked. He was starting to get really fed up with her attitude, he guessed that she had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way.
Before he could think of a witty retort, Rita jumped in, "Last I checked this was my home and you are the one who I am allowing to stay here. I get to make the calls, and I say Lewis is welcome."
"But why, Rita? What is going on?" A brunette girl asked. She had an American accent that caught him by surprise.
Rita took a deep breath before delivering the shocking news, "Lewis found himself on the beach of Mako Island this morning. It seems that he also fell victim to the dragon's power. His best friends through high school were mermaids after they fell into the moon pool and he discovered their secret. Even though it had been a few years, I think that the magic still remained identifiable in him and the dragon picked him out."
The young mermaids blinked in surprise, "You mean the dragon transformed more than Chris last night?" Sirena asked worriedly. "It's hard enough to keep track of one person per full moon, now we'll have to worry about other people too."
Lewis looked confused, "You keep talking about this dragon. What exactly is it?"
Sirena spoke up again, taking a calming tone as to not cause him to freak out even more, "Well the dragon is a beast whose mission is to create a new race of merpeople, and it transforms one person every month by detecting the magic that has rubbed off on them. The only problem is, now more than one person is being transformed a month."
Rita nodded in agreement, "This is all getting so big. It will start to spread like wildfire if we can't find a way to stop it soon." The older woman turned to Lewis, "Will you stay and help us fight? We could use the extra manpower."
Lewis looked around hesitantly at the hopeful faces that were staring up at him. He regretted the words coming from his mouth before they had even formed but he knew that they needed to be said, "No. I'm sorry, but no. There are some things in my life that I need to focus on first, I'm so sorry."
Rita nodded understandingly, "It's okay to be a little selfish, we need to think of ourselves sometimes. This is a big change that you are going through. What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to track down my friends, all of them. And we're going to come back where it all started. And maybe, just maybe, if I succeed in getting everyone here we can provide some backup for you." Lewis said confidently, the analytical side of him began shining through.
Rita smiled, "That sounds like a plan."
Lewis nodded at the mermaids that stood around him in the grotto, "Good luck to you all. And thank you for your understanding."
Lewis left Rita's house with a renewed drive and mission. He walked a few blocks until he found himself at a public beach, completely deserted now that the sun had finally dipped below the horizon. Lewis looked out onto the water, not being able to distinguish between sea and sky in the dimmed twilight. He knew his old friends were out there. He just had to find them.
Lewis took a running start towards the water and plunged himself into the chilled darkening waters, filled with adrenaline in anticipation for what was to come.
Hey all! Hope you enjoyed this Lewis-central chapter. I thought it might be fun to have an appearance from the original series. Honestly, this chapter was not in my original outline plans, it kind of just came to me halfway through writing so just decided to squeak it in here.
Hope you are all doing well! Be sure to like follow and comment if you enjoyed and want more. Also, feel free to drop a PM, I'm usually pretty good about responding...
See you all next time!