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Three Days Later

Three days passed and interactions between Lance and Rikki had been non-existent. Wanting to give her space, Lance almost reverted to the way he had been at his old school, being something of a loner.

That afternoon, Lance stood on the beach in his trunks, staring out at the waves. The sky was blue and cloudless, the water inviting and the heat was certainly something that would drive someone to take a swim. If it wasn't, would he really have been out there ready to take a swim?

Walking into the water, he wondered how Rikki was doing. She had not seemed surprised when he told her how he felt, but sometimes surprise can come late, so what did he know? If the surprise was delayed then just how much of a delay had it been? If Rikki did like him then surely the surprise to hearing he was in love with her must have been delayed by the conflict he was feeling. She liked Zane and Zane liked her, but… He had no idea. The opposite sex was a complete mystery.

Lance had once undergone a delayed case of pain, been in a car crash two years prior and he didn't feel any pain until a half hour or hour later. Just how long would it have taken for the surprise to set in for Rikki? Immediate responses were better, but sometimes one's reaction took its sweet time.

A little further out, Lance dove into the water. His imagination unlit, he simply swam to the sea floor, while at the same time making sure not to go too deep. As much as he might have dreamed of being some humanoid denizen of the Deep, the fact was such things were just fantasy, there were no such things and if Lance did not surface then he wouldn't ever again. He was imaginative not crazy.

Swimming over to a rather large rock with the remains of a wrecked boat at its base, Lance had no reason to imagine what had happened. It was clear as the sky. Thus, did he begin to swim around the rock and found himself in for a shock.

He had swum into a mermaid and not just any mermaid, but Rikki!

For a moment, Lance thought that maybe Rikki had taken up something like mermaiding sometime before he met her. Then she exclaimed "Oh, no!" her voice unaffected by the water, sounding as clear as if Lance had heard her speak outside of the water.

And with that, Rikki sped away faster than Lance could possibly have swum.

Returning to the beach, Lance had no idea what was going on. Had that been real? Was this a dream? It had to have been a dream, because if it wasn't then that would have meant…

Taking a quick look at himself, Lance saw no scales anywhere and no membrane between his fingers and toes… And yet… He pinched his arm and finding himself very much awake, Lance began to wonder if he was going… Crazy? Crazy like Dolphin City? The Dolphin City Triangle, those weird floating orbs of water… That creature in the bay! The tail was an exact match with Rikki's, she must have been careless while out taking a swim. It all made sense, it was some sort of metamorphosis that a merperson undertook when they hit water, why else would Rikki have reacted the way she did when Lance had thrown water at her? He would have… He would have exposed her.

No, he must have been crazy. How else could such an explanation so easily come to his mind. He had to go to someone, but who?

That was a good question, but suppose he was tested and he came out perfectly sane? What then? There was plenty of mystery in the world, but something like that bordered on the supernatural except this wasn't any power of the mind, glimpsing the future, talking to the dead, something superhuman, dowsing or recalling a past life, this was… What was this? Did this qualify as something superhuman? He wasn't sure.

Still, who ever could have predicted this? Even with the strange things that had happened at Dolphin City, Lance never would have expected that he would have met a mermaid. What next? Would he meet Poseidon or Neptune himself walking the streets? Alright, maybe not that, but life was full of surprises.

Again, Lance looked at himself. His skin was not scaly, there was no webbing between his fingers and toes, there was no merrow blood in him, but what if there was? If there was such a thing as mermaids and merrows were Irish mermaids with some Irish families claiming descent from merrows who had married human men, was it not possible? Was it not said that descendants of such marriages had scaly skin and webbing between their fingers and toes?

How long would it be until such features vanished altogether? Was he being crazy? Maybe he was. Maybe his skin really was scaly and his hands and feet not webbed, but because he was crazy, he saw himself as normal as everyone else. What if he had not actually seen Rikki as a mermaid?

And yet he had to? Did he not?

What was he doing? Going in circles was what he was doing! He had established he was not dreaming, but did that mean he was not crazy? Perhaps he was. With his interest in the world's great mysteries perhaps it had bordered on obsession and had gone… No! That could not have been it!

Rikki a mermaid?

He had to go to someone didn't he? But, who? Did any of her friends know? No, that must not have been the case, otherwise she would not have swum away and… Wait! That was it! He could go to someone else, Cleo, Emma, Lewis, someone who could be trusted, they would confirm whether his skin was scaly and his hands and fingers webbed…

Now he was just being stupid, would he not have been given odd looks for such an appearance? Still, talking to someone was a good idea.