If you would have asked Mary what went through her head when she saw the mermaid trying to take Collin, she wouldn't have been able to answer you. The girl had reacted out of instinct. When she saw Collin so close to death, she grabbed her pistol, and shot. She didn't think about it, she just fired.
It could have gone wrong, she could have shot Collin instead, she could have killed one of her closest friends, but she didn't, She had managed to hit the Mermaid in the side of her head.
The gunshot snapped everybody out of their trance, and together they stared at the mermaid, who in turn stared at the young girl, who still held the smoking pistol, in shock before she went numb and fell back into the sea. The other mermaids stopped pretending to be beautiful and harmless creatures and attacked. In mere seconds a battle had broken out.
At first Mary tried to reach Collin, which wasn't working, because of the fighting all around her. When she was looking for the boy, a red haired mermaid clawed at her, and she had to shoot it in the chest to get away. She gave up on finding her friend, and started to protect herself.
It didn't take long to fend off all of the mermaids, and soon they continued their voyage to the swamps were Tia Dalma lived.
The fog gave the swamp an eerie look. Collin and Mary sat next to each other in one of the small sloops. The crew was divided in 6 sloops, and the plan was to put the newest members in separated ones, so they could learn how to navigate one, but Mary had refused to leave Collin's side when she'd finally found him.
She knew he didn't like it if she fussed over everything he did, but she'd never felt so scared for someone in her life. Mary opened her mouth for the umpteenth time to ask if everything was okay, but when she saw how Collin smirked at her, she bit her tongue.
"Sorry." She muttered, and they continued to sit in silence. The sloop suddenly stopped when it hit a wooden deck with a thud. In front of the, a large complex of wooden cabins.
Jack calmly walked in front of his crew, and started to speak.
"Alright everybody, we need a few people to guard the sloops." He looked around, and pointed to three men.
"Thank you for volunteering." The captain stated, before turning back to the others and rambling about how to behave in front of Tia Dalma.
Ann saw one of the men appointed to guard the sloops raise an eyebrow at another, but neither protested. She looked at her brown haired friend, who was still trying to act normal towards Collin, although she was failing miserably. The girl looked like she expected a mermaid to pop up out of the swamp and take the boy away from them.
"Alright then, if everything's settled, let's go in."
A/N: Well, hi… This is a bit awkward, the chapter is about half as long as I would like it, but I can't write it further than this. I'm not giving up on this story, but it can take a long time for me to update, and I'm really sorry about that. I'm sorry. Just know, I won't abandon this story.