Welcome back, everyone. Enjoy and review.

Math Tutoring

Eventually, Rikki went off to her interview and Byron arrived so Lewis could tutor him in math. Lance not being too great at math himself stayed and listened. He hated math, always had. Had it been the fifth or sixth grade that he started having difficulty in math? He could not remember he had been either ten or eleven so around that time. After that, he had been enrolled in an after-school math program, though he thankfully only had to go once a week… Or had it been twice a week? Whichever it had been, it eventually got too expensive, so now Lance simply did not attend the program and he was doing… Alright, always ending in the sixty to seventy percent area, but he could do better.

"Sixty to seventy percent?" Byron asked, incredulously. "That's not bad!"

"Tell that to my mom." Lance commented, looking out to sea for a moment. Tapping a finger upon his cheekbone. Was he expecting to see anything? A basking shark? A blue whale? A sea monster like the one that the crew of the Daedalus saw back in… What had it been? 1825? If only… To see anything so incredible as a basking shark or a blue whale or a real sea monster, not a hoax, now that would be something.

Always a dreamer…

Anyway, it was nice to see the ocean. It was a nice change from where Lance used to live. He could remember his neighbour Charlotte something-or-other laying on the hood of her family's car, wearing a bathing suit trying to get a tan. The place he had previously lived had not exactly been known for beachfront property.

Tapping his finger upon the table, Lance thought back to that storybook version of "The Little Mermaid" he had seen and then looked at Emma as she served drinks to some classmates. Her hair was golden and curly, while the mermaid had been depicted with straight hair of a lighter shade of blonde, so perhaps it was not a perfect resemblance. He then looked once more out to sea. Why? If only he could think of an answer.

"Hoping you'll see a basking shark if you look long enough, Lance?" asked Emma, teasingly of course.

Confused, Byron asked: "Basking shark? You mean one of those big ones with the big noses?"

"Yeah, those ones." Lance said with a nod.

"Pretty specific." Byron commented. "Why that kind?"

"One appears in a documentary I've seen. Well, we are in the general area they'd show up in, so why wouldn't I hope to see one? Probably a better chance of seeing a basking shark than a blue whale."

"Hard to argue with that, but there have never been basking sharks around here." Byron stated. "You might want to hope to see something else, Lance."

"What about near Mako Island?" asked Lance.

"Especially not near Mako Island." Byron replied. "Most I know about are hammerheads."

"No basking sharks, no horn shark, no leopards or angels." Lance grumbled. "Is there any species around here that does not bring to mind a Peter Benchley novel?"

"W-Wasn't that a great white?" Byron asked.

"Yeah, it was." Lance replied. "When people think sharks, they always think that one… Any garibaldis around here?"

"There is a type of shark called a garibaldi shark?" asked Emma, more than a little surprised at a shark having such a name. She then looked at Byron and asked: "So, that was what a lemonade, Byron?"

Smiling at Emma, Byron nodded and said: "Yeah."

"No, it's a type of damselfish." Lance answered.

"I don't know what that is…" Byron commented, completely honest.

"To be completely honest, I'm not exactly sure what a damselfish is either." Stated Lance, rubbing his chin as he spoke. "When it comes to fish the most, I know are sharks, rays, fish and pet shop fish… And eels."

"Not to sound rude or anything, but Byron and I have a tutoring session here." Lewis said, sounding only somewhat annoyed.

"Sorry, Lewis." Lance said with a nod as he once more looked out to sea. What was out there? The sunken ruins of some lost… No, there was nothing out there, nothing but his dreams. He heard the allure of the Deep, but what was there that no one had not ever seen before? He was torn, torn between wanting to explore Nature's glory and torn by the cynicism that there was nothing new to see, no mysteries… No Atlantis, no sea monsters, nothing. He was a dreamer and half the time life killed the dreamers.

Half the time life killed the dreamers? Perhaps he should have considered getting into philosophy?

People said there were no mysteries anymore, they had all been solved and yet if they had all been solved, why did people still try to solve them? It was like believing in magic. There was no magic, not anymore. The Age of Science had killed it.

And yet perhaps not… Magic lived in many forms, such as the magic of literature, which was able to take the reader away to places never seen before or places they could never hope to see or until then never even imagined…