It's difficult to catch my breath and I'm having trouble seeing clearly. My balance is off and I can feel myself rocking back and forth. His words are having a definite effect on me.

I can't stop laughing.

I manage to finally calm myself and glance over at him as I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye. He looks astonished, his mouth open and gaping, like the fish he claims to rule.

That sends me off again. Another bout of laughter has me doubled over, my good arm wrapped around my waist in a lame attempt to ease my aching abs. Whoever claims laughing isn't a workout, hasn't had a real laugh-attack.

"I fail to see what's so funny," the 'merman' grunts as I fight to contain my amusement, but only manage to downsize to a grin. "Do you find transforming into a creature of the sea to be that comical?"

"Comical is one of the many words I'd use to describe your insistence that I'm going to be a mermaid," I snort. "I'd also call it crazy, ridiculous, impossible. Among others."

Both of his eyebrows lift and I can see understanding dawn on him, "Ah. So you don't believe that I'm telling the truth. Well, that certainly explains your reaction. If you don't believe me, look at your legs. Or to be more precise, look at the transformation your legs are undergoing."

Another chuckle slips out at his words, but I acquiesce to his request. I glance down at my legs and gasp. They're turning the same bright red color that had burned so badly when I was trying to get out of the water. But my breathing evens out again when I realize I'm not feeling any pain.

Curious, I cautiously move my good hand towards my leg. The skin isn't smooth like it's hairlessness suggests. Instead, it's coarse like sand and where my fingertips brush it begins to itch. I scratch the small area and am met with the unpleasant feeling of dead skin gathering under my fingernails.

"What the hell?" I exclaim, bringing my fingers up to look under the nails. Sure enough, there's dead skin wedged under them, like when your face is dry and you can scrape the dead bits off. But why would my legs be peeling like this? Unless the red is actually a sunburn and it's damaged my skin so terribly it's already peeling. But then, where is the pain?

I look over at the man next to me, my eyebrows furrowed. It's difficult to get something out from under your nails when your shoulder is dislocated and it hurts to move your arm.

"You haven't even noticed the most important part," he reproaches, shaking his head at me.

My eyebrows fly up at the audacity of such sass, "More important than my skin flaking off?"

"I'd say so, yes. But I suppose it's a judgment call," he relents, shrugging one shoulder casually. I feel all of my frustration peek into my most successful death glare, until he finally gives in. "Your legs are fusing together."

I roll my eyes once more, something I seem to do a lot in the presence of this freak. Without glancing down, I move my legs a few inches apart. I'm clever enough to realize that he might be using a line to make me voluntarily put myself in a vulnerable position and I'm not going to let that happen. I maintain eye contact, so I see when he glances down at my legs and back up to me with a smirk.

Confused at his reaction, I also glance down at my legs. And I'm frozen. I could have sworn I shifted my legs apart. I try again, while starring at them. They don't move. They remain tightly pressed together without any effort on my part.

"What the hell?" I whisper to myself. I wiggle my toes and roll my ankles successfully, but my legs will not separate.

Frustrated, I try to lift just my left leg and end up falling into the man's side as both legs come up as one unit and thoroughly throw off my balance. I hurry to right myself. My eyes instantly search for some answer to be found on my legs, but they're momentarily covered by sand that's been dispelled by my movement.

"Holy sh-" as the sand settles back down, I'm shocked by the sight of my legs. The sand has rubbed more of my dead skin away, but there isn't normal skin beneath it. It's bright red, like the color my skin was, but this isn't skin. It's…scales?

"How interesting," the man besides me muses. "I've never seen a human turn before. I wonder if your skin became red because of the tail color beneath it, or if they're unrelated. Say, for instance, your tail was to be blue. Would your skin have turned bright blue? Or perhaps just a bluish tint, like humans' lips do in the cold? Or would it be the same bright red and the color has nothing to do with the tail, but more the burning of the flesh?"

"Burning flesh, what the fuck?" I shout, ignoring the burning in my right shoulder as I use both hands to scoot away from him.

"Calm down, nobody's flesh is burning," he soothes, holding up his empty hand in a gesture of peace. When I stop moving he shrugs again and continues, "At least, not anymore. Now sit still and let the rest of the transformation take place. You're almost done. All artificial scrapes and bruises have already been patched up, hence the lack of bleeding. Don't worry about your shoulder, it'll heal soon enough and you won't even suffer the soreness that is typical in humans after such an injury. Your body is making itself more hydrodynamic, which is why your body hair has disappeared. You've already seen that your legs have fused together and that your skin is dying and peeling to reveal scales. In a few minutes, your feet will elongate and morph into the fin at the end of your tail. Then we'll take some sand and rub the rest of the dead skin off. Within the next, oh, 10 to 15 minutes we'll be on our way home."

"Oh, thank god," I breathe out. I only half-paid attention to his rambling, but one thing definitely stuck out. "I get to go home."

"Well, not exactly," he reaches up to scratch the back of his head with that stupid trident. "We're going back to Atlantica, my palace in the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not going to lie to you, it's going to be quite a long swim. Days, perhaps weeks, since you're a new mermaid and you'll have to learn to get used to your tail. But I know a few places we can rest and I'm an excellent scavenger. Ah! That's a great first lesson in Merfolk Culture; Merfolk are what you humans call 'vegetarians.' We don't eat our fellow creatures of the sea, we live in harmony with them. Some Merfolk even keep smaller sea creatures such as fish, crabs, starfish and so on, as their…oh, what's the human word for it. Pets? Is that correct?"

"Sure," I say slowly, trying to process his words. My mind is a bit preoccupied with attempting to wake myself up from this strangely vivid dream. There's no way any of this is real. The man next to me has a tail and my skin is peeling away to reveal one of my own. Mermaids aren't real, that's a fact. Isn't it? Something else crosses my mind, "Hey, how do you know so much about humans anyways?"

His eyes flicker between mine, probably trying to distinguish if I'm aware I verbally inferred that he isn't a human. He finally looks towards the horizon with a gentle smile on his face and I'm certain he thinks I'm convinced. In reality, I'm hoping to catch him in a lie. If this was real life and mermaids actually existed- and that's a really big if- then there would be no way for them to know so much about humans. How could they observe us without being seen? Especially with today's technology. So this must be a dream and I've found a small crack in the story that I'm going to use to blow it wide open.

"My grandfather's a god, remember?" He answers. "My father is a demi-god and my mother is an Oceanid, an Ocean Nymph, which makes me a demi-god as well." He shakes his head with a small chuckle and then meets my gaze, "Not only do I have powers that would allow me to disguise myself on land to observe humanity, but I also have divine ancestors who know all and have passed their knowledge on to me."

I sigh and roll my eyes, glaring at the horizon, "I guess that's a pretty good answer. Looks like I'll have to resort to old fashioned methods."

With that said, I pinch my arm as hard as I can. Nothing changes. Well, I guess I'll have to try harder. This time I use nails, making sure to dig into my skin until my eyes start watering with the pain.

"Nothing?" I ask, enraged.

"What are you doing to yourself?" The man asks, sounding completely bewildered.

"I'm waking myself up," I answer in a tone that makes it sound obvious. "Or attempting to."

"That's ridiculous," he laughs loudly. He has a melodic laugh and it makes me want to punch him, because I'm trying my best to hate this weird man in my weird dream, but my subconscious brain is making him far too attractive for hate. "And useless, might I point out. You're not dreaming."

"Oh yeah? Watch this," I challenge and then throw myself sideways at him, making sure to angle my dislocated shoulder so all the weight will land on it and the pain will wake me up.

Instead, my shoulder makes solid contact with his side and I feel it click back into place. There's a flash of pain that starts as a fire in my shoulder and then radiates down my arm. I cry out, unable to move and desperately wishing to be home.

"I really wish you wouldn't have done that," a voice next to my ear says.

I realize then that I haven't moved. I'm leaning into his side, my forehead resting in the crook of his neck. I roughly shove off him, so hard that I almost fall to my other side, but I catch myself.

"That makes two of us," I mutter darkly, using my good arm to gently massage my shoulder. The pain is disappearing faster than I expected and within a few seconds, my fingers no longer create a soreness wherever they touch. I try rotating my shoulder and it feels brand new, "What the hell?"

"Ah, I'm assuming that means your shoulder is all healed?" He poses it like a question, but his eyes show he doesn't need an answer, he already knows. "Now, then, how about we see to your new tail?"

"Wait," I cry out, awkwardly twisting my fused legs away from his outstretched hand. "This doesn't make any sense. I haven't woken up, yet. Why haven't I woken up, yet?"

He must hear the desperation in my voice, because his face turns sympathetic. The hand he had reached out to my legs gets diverted to rest on my newly-healed shoulder.

"It's like I've been trying to tell you; this isn't a dream. This is real. I'm a merman and I've turned you into a mermaid," he explains. His voice is low and gentle. Compassionate.

"It's real?" My voice sounds tiny. I shake my head to clear my thoughts. "But why? Why did you do this to me?"

"You were dying. The shore was another hour and a half's swim away and that's without trying to carry you above water. You wouldn't have made it. And I couldn't just leave you there," his voice is quiet and he's looking into my eyes with such an intensity, I have to look away. I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears welling up.

"So, instead you stole my life," I continue for him. My voice breaks and a tear finds its way down my cheek, but I quickly brush it away. Then I sigh, "I'm sorry, that's not fair."

"I understand," is all he responds.

We sit there quietly for a few seconds. He takes his hand off my shoulder. I stare at the horizon as the sun continues its descent. The sky is no longer happy shades of blue melting into light purple. There's a sliver of yellow where the sun peeks its head for one last goodbye before the moon begins its reign, but the rest of the sky is black. I sit there silent as the sun dips out of view. My last day as a human is gone. And with it, my life.

I won't be able to watch another sunset while sipping milkshakes with my friends on the beach. I won't be able to surf with my dad smiling proudly from the sand. I'll never hug my father again. He's my only family and I'll never be with him again, from this day on. He already lost Mom to the ocean when I was just a baby and now he's going to lose me to it, too.

I let the tears flow freely and silently down my face for a few more minutes. Then, when there's absolutely no light left from the sun in the sky, I wipe my eyes and push the emotions down. I have a new life to lead now, for better or for worse. I've mourned the end of my human life, but now it's time to start the beginning of my mermaid life. There's no use dwelling on negatives when I can't change them.

"Okay," I mutter, my voice nasally from the crying. "Now what?"

"Now we head back to Atlantis," he answers, kindly not mentioning my emotional moment. "But first, let's see your new tail. Do me a favor, will you, and don't touch this," he cautions, setting his trident in the sand so the three prongs point into the air and the hilt is stuck in the sand.

I see him fill his hands with sand and then he looks up at me with a question in his eye. I realize that he's asking permission to do what he mentioned earlier, rub my legs with the sand. I nod hesitantly.

It kind of feels like a massage with one of those lotions that has exfoliating beads in it. His hands disappear in a cloud of floating sand and dead skin. I glance up at the night sky, trying to locate the few constellations I know. I manage to spot Gemini, but that's the only one.

"All done," he exclaims. I look down into his eyes that seem to be shining with excitement. For a moment, I'm overcome with fear. Then I suck in a deep breath and look down.

I have a tail. An actual mermaid tail. It's a coral-red color. And it seems to be noticeably shorter than his, which momentarily bums me out.

I bend down a bit to get a closer look at it. Up close, I can see the individual scales and now I can tell that each one is a different color, which gives the whole tail a shimmering quality, like the color itself is shifting. There are scales in varying colors of the red spectrum, from pink to crimson.

It isn't like The Little Mermaid where my skin is separated from the tail by a definite straight line in a little ruffle of sorts. Instead, the scales start off as pale pink, an almost fleshy color, right below my belly button and slowly transition to darker colors. It ends in a lighter pink fin, that much be at least a foot and a half wide.

"It's beautiful," I say breathily.

I hear a small chuckle next to me, "Yes, it is. Why don't you try it out?"

"Oh, okay," I acquiesce. I sit there for a few seconds, merely blinking. Then I with a bit of confusion in my voice, I ask, "So, how do I go about doing that, exactly?"

This earns me another chuckle. I look over to see him smiling at me, "How about we start with a little flick? Just the fins."

I try to comply, but my tail does a weird rolling thing and I end up dousing both of us in salt water. I groan. He laughs.

"It's okay, we have time," he comforts. "And speaking of that, we're going to be spending a lot of time together, so I might as well know your name."

"Oh, right," I laugh at the oversight. "Carter. Carter Matthews."

He holds his right hand out to me and I place my own small hand in his much larger one. "It's a pleasure to meet you Carter Matthews. Now, let's teach you how to swim."