Chapter 23

Anna's P.O.V

"Do you guys really want to go back in there? We don't have our mermaid powers as protection anymore," Cleo asked hesitantly.

"Not really, but we have to. We need to see if there is anything in the plane to light fires with." I said as we ate our remaining coconuts.

"Also, we need more fruit," Rikki put in.

"True." Cleo said, "I'm going to stay here though." Cleo really did not look like she was coping, though she hated her mermaidness in the first few weeks she had it, after half her life, she really was a mess. I guess I do not understand what Rikki and Cleo are going through – after all, I have only been a mermaid for just over nine years – six less than they have, they can't really remember what it was like before. At least that is what Rikki told me before Cleo was awake. They literally had not been physically like this since they were fifteen – fifteen! I was more mature at twenty-one when I became one, but still for me, I felt like a major part of me was gone, how could they be feeling?

As we left a while later, I looked back at Cleo. She had her knees crouched up to her chest, her arms holding them to herself and she rested her head on them. She looked so pitiful.

"Rikki, should we really just be leaving her like this?" I asked concerned. She stopped and turned.

"Probably not, but we need to do this. Besides, she probably need some time alone to think,"

"Okay," I turned back in the direction we were headed. Rikki really was handling this amazingly. She was still the leader though you could tell she was hurting, as usual she was putting up her brave front. The fact that we missed our husbands and kids desperately added to the tension.

As we walked through the familiar jungle, there was a new sense of foreboding and uncertainty. Every other time we had had power, in our mermaidity, it could protect us from the dangers. I had a knife and Rikki had the spear she had fashioned for attempting to hunt birds with (this usually was not successful, but when it was – boy it was good, the only problem was the plucking. Rikki was the only one who wasn't squeamish enough not to do it, so therefore she got the wonderful job.) She had another knife as well. We were just simple humans. Fortunately, no dangers approached us this journey, but still we felt no better.

When the two of us arrived at the plane, we went into the hold immediately.

"Are you gonna help me?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah." I had zoned out. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"Okay, we need to search all the crates and boxes, for anything of use." She said.

"Meaning?"

"Anything that could help us make life easier for ourselves on this island, and keep us alive.

I opened a something like a large tackle box. It was labelled: 'Überlebensausrüstung'.

The title looked German or something, but really, I had no idea. I looked through it. At the top, there was the weird contraption thingy – it looked useful. I closed it again and brought it to Rikki.

"Rikki, is this good?" I showed her the contraption thing.

"Yes its better than good, that is gold!"

"It is?"

"Yeah! Don't tell me you not know what this is"

I smiled shyly.

"It's a gas cooker." Rikki said rolling her eyes. I never went camping – my dad hated it, so well, we never went. Sure I had stayed in a tent before, but I had never used all the fancy equipment.

"If only there was a gas bottle," she added as an under thought. I thought I had seen one of those in the same box. I looked in it and passed a small gas bottle to Rikki who was still examining the cooker.

"Is this what you wanted?"

"Yeah, thanks!" she exclaimed. "Where did you find these?"

"In this box labelled...something I can't pronounce." I said showing her. She gave a small laugh.

"What?" I asked confused. She was looking at the label. "Don't tell me you know what that means,"

"It's German. It means 'Survival Equipment" Rikki replied.

"Oh," I nodded, then paused and turned to look at her again. "Rikki, how the heck do you understand German?" I asked incredulously. Seeing my disbelieving expression, she replied.

"Come on, I did listen in some classes, regardless of what Emma told you." How did she know what I was thinking? "Anyway, I am part German so I figured that I should know some."

"Oh? How much are you?"

"Well, my Dad's mother was half, so that makes me an eighth." She replied. "He helped me sometimes with homework; he is almost fluent thanks to Nana."

"Okay." In all my years knowing Rikki, I still did not know much about her family background, and I didn't think our other friends did either. We examined the contents of the Überlebensausrüstung box. There was a first aid kit, three boxes of matches and a flint. They did not trust the food, even if it was dehydrated. There was a sewing kit, two knives and a reel of nylon as well as a couple of fishhooks.

Rikki grinned and turned to me, "Perfect."

On the way back to the anxiously waiting Cleo, we picked up some more fruit, we were running low again.

"Thank God you're back, I was starting to worry," Cleo said as she saw us emerge from the jungle.

"We weren't gone that long," I said.

"It felt like it to me," she muttered to herself.

Rikki opened the box, showing Cleo the treasures we had found. Her eyes lit up, "This will make life a whole lot easier."