"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
— Buddha
The house is silent but for Bella's humming as they sit cross-legged on the floor, a little too close to be just friends but far enough away that Emma longs to be closer. She prays that her heart will quieten its noisy percussion in her chest. Her attempts to be subtle have all but failed; her friends are no fools, and she hopes that the girl making a mess of her coffee table is too shy to notice her feelings, but prays that she reciprocates them, too.
What a mess.
Bella tries in vain to concentrate on affixing the clasp to her necklace. She can feel Emma's warmth emanating from her, though, her body a little cold, and wonders if that is a side effect of her powers or simply a side effect of Emma. Her stomach is churning as she hums a low tune. If there is a world where the moon can turn ordinary girls to mermaids, she thinks, there must be a world where she could feel the same. Right?
Emma tucks a lock of hair behind her hair and lets the question on her mind finally reach her lips. "Do you miss Will much?" she asks.
"A little," Bella mumbles with a shrug of one shoulder.
She gulps. "Do you think you'll get back together when he gets home?"
"I don't know. I don't…" Bella shakes her head. In truth, she had hardly thought of Will at all since he left with his sister. She tries to swallows the impending guilt as she fixes the pendant around her neck, just above the blue stone that sits at her throat, notices that they do not react to each other. "I don't know. What about you and Ash?"
Emma has barely heard the question, though. She eyes the crystal at the nape of her neck with a smile that seems to reach her lips before she can think to stop it. "What about us?"
"Well, you two ended things before you went away, right?" says Bella. "Do you think you'll see him again?"
She reaches out to touch the sunstone. It seems to almost glitter under the light, pinks and golds emerging from its surface in blinding flashes of colour. The crystal is almost too bright to look at, and she is more than happy to gaze at its owner instead. "I don't think so, Bell," Emma says with a sigh. "I've kind of moved on from Ash. I'm starting to think that maybe I didn't like him as much as I thought I did…"
Red heat rises to her cheeks before she can stop it. "What do you mean?" Bella stammers, her mind racing as her hand rises to her neck, seemingly of its own volition.
It would be easy, as natural as breathing, for Emma to take her hand and simply profess everything to her in a jumbled mess of overused clichés and half-baked sentences. She would tell Bella she could feel her in the air from the moment she first laid eyes on her, try to explain the way that being with her is equal parts scary and electrifying, that she would pluck the sun and moon from the sky to make her happy. The smell of saltwater and bravery and something uniquely Bella would assault her senses when their lips met, hands tangled in her golden hair as she smiled through her kiss.
But then the doorbell rings.
Emma rises to her feet with a disgruntled sigh, her fantasy shattering into pieces as she draws her hand away. With her fingers locked around the new pendant, Bella lets out a shaky breath while she watches her walk to the door, transfixed by the way she moves and biting her lip against all that she wishes she could say.
"Ms Chatham!" Emma sings. "Come in."
"I think there's somewhere we need to go." She crosses the threshold to peer at Bella with a friendly expression, but there is that mysterious glint in her eyes that never fails to make Emma feel wary. "Isabel, is it?"
Emma beckons her to the door. "Bella, this is Ms Chatham," she tells her as the other girl reaches the pair. "She was one of the original mermaids from Mako, remember? I have her locket."
She opens the clasp to reveal the old photograph. It is a weathered, black-and-white image of three teenaged girls with fishtails and wide grins. They look happy, deliriously so, and Bella can't help but smile back at their faces. She knows just how they feel.
"Right, of course!" she says, turning to face Ms. Chatham as she stands in the flesh with a far smaller smile. Bella extends a hand toward her. "Emma's told me all about you and um… Julia and Gracie, right? And someone else…"
"Max," says Ms Chatham, grasping her hand in both of her own in a way that strikes her; Bella can't help but notice just how much like Emma the older woman is. It is eerie and familiar and comforting all at once.
"Speaking of," she continues, "I think there's someone else you should meet. Care to join me for the afternoon?"
Bella turns from one pair of icy eyes to the other, but the warmth in Emma's could never be outmatched.
"So Rikki is having relationship issues with this Zane fella?" Max asks. The five of them sit around the table nursing a pot of tea— well, four of them, really; insatiably curious, Ms Chatham is on her feet snooping around the garden, stopping every now and then to examine a stray piece of fishwire or search beneath the barbecue, talking to herself as she sniffs flowers growing from the potted plants in the ordered chaos of Max's garden. To anyone else she would seem to be an old biddy losing her wits, but her friends know her better.
"Just like Julia and Karl," she mumbles, more to herself than the others.
Bella narrows her eyes. "What happened with Julia and Karl?"
"Karl was… a bit of a nuisance," Max answers, biting his tongue against a string of expletives even fifty years later. "He couldn't keep the secret, and it broke poor Julia's heart."
Ms Chatham returns to the table, gazing into her tea with a knowing look. "I think things will be different with our Rikki."
"We'll see about that," Emma retorts.
"And Cleo," Bella says, before Emma's cool temper gets the better of her, "she has Gracie's locket, right?"
Max lets out a wistful sigh, and suddenly his eyes are in a different place, a place where he chased his love through tall trees, her smile brighter than the sun and just as blinding. "Right," he says, his hands clamping around his cup of tea. "I am glad she got it back from that Charlotte. And the girl seemed so nice…" He trails off, shaking his head in wonderment.
"Charlotte, the fourth mermaid?" asks Bella.
Emma nods. "Before we forced her to give up her powers. And then you came along," she says, her smile growing softer and more affectionate. Bella laughs sheepishly, relishing in her gaze until she sees her own reflection in her eyes and has to look away in embarrassment.
"Funny you should say that," says Ms Chatham. "We had a fourth mermaid, too."
Max huffs and sets his cup down on the table. "Ah Louise, don't you think they're a bit young for this?"
"A bit young?" she echoes. "Is there some kind of age limit on love that I wasn't aware of?"
"Ms Chatham, you never told us about the fourth mermaid!" Emma says.
She smiles fondly, gazing out at the sea. "Oh, it is a long story," she sighs.
"Please?" Bella asks. "We want to hear about her."
Ms Chatham's eyes flutter closed. A thousand memories return to her with comforting familiarity, the same ones that she makes herself recall each day lest her ageing mind forgets; red, wind-whipped faces grinning as they climbed the snowy peaks; dozing in the backseat of a foreign car; the silver sky as she swam through the frigid waters of the sea caves for the first time. Her violet eyes wild with intensity, her laughter soft as wind chimes as they wove their fingers together.
"Before my final year of school," she explains, "I went travelling with my family. We went all around the world, throughout Europe and Africa, South America and…"
She trails off, and the sound of her laugh is clear as day in her mind. "It was Ireland that I met her, by the sea caves. Her name was Rose," Ms. Chatham sighs. Yes, she could never forget Rose. "She was wonderful. I knew it was love from the first moment I saw her."
Emma steals a glance at Bella, but she is enraptured by Ms Chatham's story, her obliviousness endearing as she listens intently. "That's so romantic," she gushes.
"Yes, it was, for a while." Ms Chatham casts her eyes to the sea again, a strange sadness in her voice. "We stayed in Ireland for a few months, but when it came time to leave, I simply couldn't. She was the one, you see." The former mermaid is sure to hold her chin high as she recounts the story. "So I told my parents about us and they left without a backward glance."
"That must have been awful," Bella says sympathetically.
Ms Chatham smiles wistfully, staring into her cup of tea as she continues. "We moved to England then, where it was a little more acceptable. We lived a quiet life and told anyone who asked that we were merely close relatives. We worked and travelled and did everything together. I fell out of touch with the others…"
The girls are puzzled at this, and she sets down her teacup, remembering just how naive she had been, too young and blind to see all of the love she had in her life. With time she can see her foolishness, but time did not wait for her, taking her friends before she could forgive herself. All but one.
"You must understand that, when the people you love abandon you," she says, "you'll do anything so it doesn't happen again, even pushing your family away."
Max turns to her, a smile on his kind face. "Little did she know we would have accepted her with open arms," he says.
"Yes, well…" Ms Chatham folds her arms around herself. "I did come home, eventually."
"What happened to Rose?" asks Bella.
"We lived a happy life together, and she passed peacefully in her sleep," she replies. "It'll be ten years this September." When she meets Bella's eyes, there is not an ounce of regret in her expression, only a love ahead of its time, irrevocable, all-consuming. "I am so grateful for the time that I had with her. She truly was the love of my life. I only wish that prejudice hadn't kept us apart from the rest of the world."
When Emma looks to her, apprehension is plain as day on Bella's face, and she can see the same fear reflected back at her in those pale blue eyes.
"Max, dear," Ms Chatham asks, "could you give us a minute?"
Max scoffs. "You're kicking me off my own patio?" Still he rises to his feet, complaining to himself under his breath. "This is what I get for being friends with fish…"
Ms Chatham looks from one girl to the other, waiting until Max is gone before she speaks. "There is something very special between you two. Am I right?" She reaches out to take their hands, pulling them towards one another to intertwine their fingers. Emma's pulse races when Bella squeezes her hand, and they turn to Ms Chatham with relief in their hearts, grateful to have someone else in their lives who understands.
"You do what you can to be safe, girls," she continues, "but don't underestimate the people who truly care for you. When love is real, it finds a way."
Bella wipes away a tear from her eye with the back of her hand, starting when Emma begins to trace patterns on her skin, and the two share a warm smile. "Thanks, Ms Chatham," she says, her voice thick with unshed tears.
"I dated a boy once."
The others start at the sound of Max's voice as he returns to the table. He now puffs on a pipe, unruffled by the girls' exchange as he stares at the sea with a tranquil expression. Don't underestimate people, indeed.
"Max!" Ms Chatham exclaims in surprise. "You didn't."
He nods nonchalantly. "Oh yeah. Wasn't my thing, but hey, at least I know for certain," he says with a shrug. "Women on the other hand…"
"We are pretty special," Ms Chatham chuckles, winking at the girls. "Oh!"
Emma's eyes narrow in concern at her friend's sudden outburst. "Is something wrong?"
She seems to reach for Bella almost unconsciously, eyes transfixed on the crystal at her neck above the moonstone. "May I?" Ms Chatham asks timidly.
Bella undoes the clasp and hands the pendant to Ms Chatham. Her eyes fill with tears as she examines the crystal, its lustre blinding, reflecting the rays of the sun. "Rose…" she murmurs, swallowing a cry as it rises to her throat. "How did you find the sunstone?"
"Sun… stone?"
Pursing her lips, Emma searches Ms Chatham's expression, armed with the knowledge that getting a straight answer from her is as easy as pulling teeth. "Bella found the crystal at the bottom of the moon pool," she says.
She holds the stone before her eyes and up to the light, roses and peaches dancing as it sways in the breeze. "At Mako? No, that can't be…"
Max hands her a wrinkled handkerchief from his breast pocket. "Louise," he says, "what is it?"
Ms Chatham sniffs and dries her eyes, reaching for the chain hidden under her blouse. "My Rose used to wear one around her neck, like yours." When she removes her necklace, Bella lets out a gasp. The stone is practically identical to hers, down to its irregular shape and peculiar colouring; it even weighs the same in her palm. "She found hers at the sea caves."
"In Ireland?" Bella squeaks. "I used to live there. That's where I first… changed."
"Remarkable." Ms Chatham's eyes light up, and she returns the sunstone to Bella. "That's how it happened to her, too. When we gave up our tails, we…"
Her face falls all of a sudden. Emma reaches out to grasp her hand, and Bella does the same, their eyes meeting in the process. An unspoken agreement passes between them, a conversation had without words, and in that moment neither can imagine how painful it would be to lose the other, how it would feel for the world to stop stop turning, or the sky fall down at their feet, the stars fizzling out into dust.
"Hold on a tick," says Max, interrupting their reverie. "When you met Rose, surely it was long after the planetary alignment when Gracie gave it all up. How could you have changed back if there wasn't to be another alignment for fifty years?"
Ms Chatham shields her eyes against the sun, a mischievous smile playing on her lips. It is a long time before she speaks.
a/n: oooo boy! first i would like to apologise for the length of these notes, feel free to skip my ramblings i wont judge. thank you so much for the read, and honestly i cannot tell you how blown away i am with all the reviews recently. every comment just makes my day and i cant believe how much positive feedback ive been receiving. i love you guys soooo much.
i know this one was a lil sappy in places, but im a sucker for fluff etc. for anyone wondering, the emma/bella pairing literally just occurred to me bc this universe needs more sapphic content, and when i thought about it some more i realised they are actually very compatible. ive seen too many fics/hcs where they have some contrived rivalry and its just not realistic imo. i know theyre probably not everyones cuppa tea but hey, i am merely a self indulgent gay who wants to see herself represented by cool aussie mermaids
re: louise and rose, i know im reallllly contradicting canon here lmao but i dont buy the whole 'growing apart' stuff and i think theres a lot more (read: a lot more gay shit) to the original mermaids story. so heres some shameless headcanoning. if you want to put a face to the name, younger!rose is based heavily on kaya scodelario. also ms chatham has an aussie accent in her youth, but its far less pronounced with age. dont try tell me she didnt go travelling/live abroad with her gf bc its canon! its right there in the show! i know theres that bit in season one where she talks about a husband (who she bought a boat with) who died 15 years ago but in that same ep she says no ones been on the lorelei in 23 years, soooo what im saying is if the writers can reject their own canon then so can i !
one thing i completely forgot to mention in the last chapter is my inspo for the sun pool. i did some googling and found this absolutely stunning natural bridge that acc happens to be in queensland, it has the most beautiful light filtering through and looks like it could easily be on mako. but dont be limited by my interpretations/use your imaginations!
ok, promise im done now! i love you all so so much,
A
xxxx
