Cleo POV
The first thing I felt when I woke up, was water. And my tail. Smiling, I sighed to myself. "Swimming." I whispered dreamily, flipping my tail fin up in joy, allowing the edges to curl slightly before flopping it back down into the water.
'Wait. Water? Tail?' Sitting up abruptly, I twisted my head in panic, trying to figure out what happened last night.
FLASHBACK
"So how are you and Will going, Bella?" Emma teased. Bella blushed a light pink at this, and I giggled at her reaction. Will and Bella had grown a bit more confidence in showing affection for each other, but despite that fact, Bella always managed to find a way out of talking about Will. Not that she didn't, she just talked about him a bit, and then got going and seemed to forget that anyone was there with her.
"Shut up Emma," she mumbled, throwing a pillow at Emma, only, it didn't hit the intended target. In other words, it hit me.
"Hey!" I cried, "It's not funny!" I protested. Emma had ducked out of the way of the pillow, and me being behind her, had been hit instead., and was now laughing as hard as she could. Despite what I said, I felt a smile tugging at the corners of my lips. "Oh, that's how you want to play it then? Fine." I launched my self at her, hitting her on the back with the pillow. Squealing, she grabbed the closest pillow, and smacked me right back in the face. Standing on the bed, we laughed as we continued to attack one another with pillows.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bella reaching slowly for the door. "Oh no you don't." Grabbing another pillow, I chucked it at her head.
"Bulls eye!" Emma cried, holding her hand up for a high five. Returning it, I smiled at Bella.
"You weren't planning on going any where were you?" I asked innocently. Picking the pillow up, her eyes glinted maliciously.
"You. Are. So. On." She smirked, before launching herself at us on the bed, and taking a swipe at our legs. Jumping up, she hit me on the shoulder, before receiving one to her stomach from Emma. I met her pillow with mine and feathers exploded around us. Emma joined in, giving me one final whack, before feathers erupted from her pillow. Laughing, we collapsed in a heap on the bed. Breathing heavily, I was suddenly struck by an idea. Using my control over wind, I swiftly twisted my hand, allowing the wind to slam the carefully covered window open and rush into the room, sending the feathers up in a flurry once more.
"Cweooow!" Emma grumbled, her voice muffled by face full of feathers she had received. Bella and I looked at each other, giggling as Emma tried to spit out the feathers she had in almost swallowed. Looking up at us, we fell into a laughing fit once more, at the feathers in her hair. "It's not funny! Can I please get a little he-"
"Emma?" Bella asked, waving her hand in front of her face. She abruptly stood up, and Bella and I fell back in shock. Jumping down from the bed, Emma walked around us towards the window. Realization dawned on me, and I looked over a Bella, who nodded in confirmation. Cautiously, I followed Emma with my eyes as she walked around us. Standing in front of the window, she smiled at us.
"Do you feel it?" She whispered, "The moon. The water. Mako."
"Come on Emma, let's go find Rikki first." I said softly, walking slowly towards her. Emma shook her head.
"I know you want to come with me, just...look at the moon." She smiled before stepping aside, and allowing moonlight to flood through the now open window and into the room. The urge hit me like a truck, and before I knew it, I was yanking my chin up to look at the moon that had previously been shielded by Emma's head.
'It's beautiful,' was my last thought.
END FLASHBACK
"Oh." I mumbled. As my senses slowly returned to me, I looked around and realized that we were in the moon pool. Only, it was bigger. And didn't look anything like the moon pool on Mako. Also, all four of us happened to be lying on soft sand with the lower half of our bodies in the water. Flopping onto my stomach, I looked to my left, and saw Rikki, then to my right, I saw Emma and Bella. All three were sleeping. I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. How did we get to a different moon pool? Did this full moon happen to be a special one? 'No.' I realized. 'Lewis would have seen and told us if that was the case.'
"Rikki!" I hissed, shaking her arm. Said person snorted and rolled over, showing me her back. I grumbled to myself. She was definitely not a morning person. "Rikki!" said a bit louder, shaking her arm harder. She snorted. "Fine. You asked for it." I huffed. Lifting a ball of water from the moon pool slightly bigger than Rikki's head, I let it hover a good meter above her, before cutting off my magic and letting gravity have it's way.
"ARGHHHH!" She screamed and I winced at the volume. Looking around her, she narrowed her eyes at me. "Cleo! What was that for? Now I'm all wet!"
"You were already wet." I pointed out.
"What are you talking about? Why would I be- Oh." She cut herself off, as she stared at the new moon pool and her tail. "...Is this a forest?" she suddenly blurted. Looking around, I noticed for the first time, that we probably weren't anywhere near the Gold Coast.
"Hey...you're right." I answered.
"What happened? What's the fuss?" Came a sleepy voice from behind me. Turning around, I saw Emma stifling a yawn.
"Yeah, what's going on?" I asked Rikki. "Why are you here? You're the only one who wasn't moonstruck last night." Emma's eyes brightened.
"Oh yeah! I remember, we had a pillow fight, then Cleo blew the window open, but nobody noticed. Then...Then..." She stopped and sighed. "I got moonstruck didn't I?" It wasn't a question. I nodded.
"Yup. Then you got me moonstruck, and Bella too, I imagine." I sighed. "Speaking of which, why hasn't she woken up yet? Rikki was so loud, I swear I went deaf for a minute." I snickered. She huffed, before pushing herself backwards and fully into the water. Emma and I followed suit and swam over to Bella. I hadn't noticed before, but looking closer, I realized that she had a small cut on the side of her forehead, and the surrounding area was badly bruised.
"Shit! What happened to her!" Rikki exclaimed, putting to fingers to her neck in panic. She must've felt a pulse, because she sighed in relief and said, "She'll be alright. She's just knocked out." She had a far away look on her face, as if she was thinking of something. "Oh no." She groaned. "This is all my fault."
"How? What happened?" I asked. she sighed, before she explained.
"After you guys got moonstruck-you must've snuck out the door when I was making the popcorn-I realized what happened and called Lewis. I don't know whether he got everything because I didn't really give him a chance to speak." She took a deep breath before continuing. "I swam to Mako to find you guys, and believe me, it's not easy, I swear that if we couldn't swim as fast as we could, I wouldn't have even made it halfway there. It's so hard not to look at the moon!" She whined.
"Rikki." Emma reminded her.
"Oh, right," she said, "Any way, once I entered the moon pool, you guys were...oh god you were terrible." she shuddered.
"Why? what did we do?" I asked, confused. We couldn't be that bad.
"...You guys were storming the whole of Mako Island! Literally! Well, Bella wasn't really doing anything..."
Emma and I looked at her in confusion. She cleared her throat and continued,
"Well..She was making jelly moons at the edge of the moon pool like a kid, but Cleo, you had a fucking hurricane going on from the inside of the moon pooland it was covering the whole island! Emma, you were had hail and a blizzard raining down on Mako!" She cried out the last bit a bit hysterically. "Snow, Emma! Snow!" My mind stopped working. 'Hurricane?' and 'Shit.' Seemed to be the only two words I could process. In the back of my mind, I realized that Emma was talking at snapped back to reality.
"In my defense, I was moonstruck." Emma managed to get out through the feeling of dread that was showing on her face, Which was better than I could say for me. Rikki snapped her fingers in front of my face and continued.
"Yes, well, nothing we can do now, what's done is done. Anyway, I was going to teleport you guys all back to Emma's room, but then the moon came out over the pool, and Bella started to compare her moons to the real moon. Between resisting looking up, and trying to concentrate enough to teleport you guys, I needed all the concentration I could get. But just when I was about to teleport you guys back, Bella threw up one of her jelly moons and yelled, 'LOOK! ITS THE SAME SHAPE THIS TIME!' and I was really startled. Then I accidentally looked up, and the last thing I thought of, was 'big moon,' and that was just when I teleported us, but I guess trying to teleport to nowhere doesn't work, so between my last thought, and my teleporting, we must've ended up in another moon pool." She finished nervously.
I took it in slowly, before I asked, "But how did Bella end up like that?"
"She must've hit her head or something when we got here." Emma replied thoughtfully.
"Great!" I said sarcastically, "Now we just need to figure out what country we ended up in."
"How do you know that we're not in Australia any more?" asked Rikki.
"No, no," said Emma, "She's right. Australia doesn't have any forests." I looked around and realized something.
"Wait a minute guys," I said, causing the two blonde heads to turn and look at me. "It's night time! Did we sleep the whole day?"
"No, I don't think so." Came Emma's thoughtful voice. "Do you feel that?" She asked.
"Feel what?" I asked.
"The pull of the full moon." Rikki answered, having caught onto Emma. Closing my eyes, I realized that they were right. Even if it was faint, I could feel a slight tugging sensation, just like when the full moon came out and we were outside with nothing to block it.
"So it's probably morning in the Gold Coast right now, so, wherever we are, we're about ten, maybe eleven hours behind. So I'd wager we're somewhere in the U.K." Emma reasoned.
"We're in the U.K.!" Cried Rikki, throwing her hands up. "That's just great isn't it? Oh, I know, let's just find the ocean and swim home!"
"Actually, that's not a bad idea." I said thoughtfully.
"What!" asked Rikki incredulously, "Am I the only one who's sane here?"
"I have to agree with Rikki here Cleo, even if we did know how to navigate ourselves back home, we'd tire out too fast. We only swim around Mako and the Gold Coast. That's not exactly long distance." Said Emma.
"Thankyou, Em," was Rikki's reply, tinged with a bit of relief.
"No, silly! Not that bit, I'm talking about finding the ocean." I answered. It was perfect. Rikki and Emma looked at me in confusion. "Ok," I decided to explain. "Where there's an ocean, there's a beach not too far off right? And we should be able to see it right?" They nodded their heads slowly. "And where there's a beach there is...?" I trailed off, waiting for them to catch on.
"Food!"
"Civilization!"
I looked at Rikki incredulously, noticing Emma with the same expression.
"What?" grumbled Rikki defensively. "I'm hungry." She whined. I rolled my eyes at how typical she was being.
"Ok," I said, coming to a decision and clapping my hands together. "let's look for and opening like the one at Mako, it'll probably lead us to the ocean, because, I don't see one anywhere near by."
A few seconds later, I felt a tug on my tail fin, and came up for air.
"Where is it?" I asked.
"Well, I found one, but what are we going to do with Bella?" Came Rikki's reply.
"We'll leave her here to rest until we've made sure that there is actually an ocean at the end of this tunnel, then we'll come back and wait for her to wake up. If she's not up to swimming, then I supposed we'll just have to come up with something then." I said. As far as i knew, we didn't bring our wallets with us while we were moonstruck.
"Oh wait! I have my phone in my jacket. Once we find the beach, we'll dry ourselves up and see if we can get a signal. Lewis has probably called by now and is looking around Mako. Oh great." Rikki seemed to realize something.
"What?" I asked suspiciously. "Did something happen to Lewis?"
"I'm not sure... He might've gotten caught up in the hurricane..." she said quietly.
"Great." Now if Lewis got hurt, it would be my fault. "Best girlfriend of the year award goes to...anyone but Cleo Sertori." I groaned, planting my face in my hands.
"Don't worry, I'm sure he's fine" soothed Emma, "but first, we need to get outta here and to that beach before the full moon shows up. I can feel it getting higher."
"What about Bella, what if she wakes up when we're gone?" I asked worriedly.
"Well, I think it's ok if she gets moonstruck, because when we get moonstruck, we usually want to go to the moon pool right? and she's in one now, so if she gets moonstruck, she'll probably go back to doing what she was doing last time she was moonstruck." Rikki reasoned.
We all giggled at the thought.
"Jelly moons," I snickered. "Seriously."
"Ok, Let's go." Declared Emma, before plunging down into the water, taking the lead before Rikki and I followed side by side.
AN: think of the moon pool as something like the one in season 3 where the showed us Bella's backstory on how she became a mermaid when she was 9, only bigger, and the side with the opening has moon rock that has been eroded so that it is smooth and flat with sand over it, like a mini beach shore line for the moon pool. and i'm sorry the hp gang hasn't come out yet, I promise it's the next chapter, it's just that I don't want people to get confused and say that it's weird howthey just got there, I feel like I need to explain why it's like this and how they got there, because I personally hate it when authors don't explain enough and expect us to make assumptions. because you don't know what to assume.
Next update will be in a few days, maybe tomorrow if i'm not busy XD
P.S. did you like it?