Chapter 28

Zane, Ben, Lewis, Emma, Ash and Will all raced to the phone as soon as Bella had got them up.

Everyone started talking at once, the girls on the end of the line could only hear a large noise of voices.

"Guys! Guys!" Emma exclaimed. "One at a time!"

Eventually they all quietened down. Zane spoke first.

"Where are you? Where've you guys been? We've been worried sick – we thought you were dead, well until I got your text Rikki,"

"Okay, firstly we are currently on Cat Island, the Bahamas. As to where we've been, believe it or not, we have been stranded on a tropical island in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle." Anna said.

"For that long? Why didn't you just swim off?" Ben asked

"Well that's the far out bit, there was some sort of magical force field in the form of a current that barred mermaids from leaving."

"How did you escape then?"

"We built a raft." Cleo said

"Did it take that long to build?"

"Well, no. We kinda didn't think of it until more recently..." Cleo said embarrassed.

"Can you swim back home now that you know where you are?" Bella asked.

There was an awkward pause on the other side of the line.

"Girls?"

"Ah, that is kinda hard to explain..." Anna began.

"We can't." Rikki interrupted.

"Why not?" Lewis asked.

"We lost our powers during a full moon," Cleo said, her voice cracking.

Numerous gasps were heard.

"Oh no!"

"You okay?"

"How are you coping?"

"We are all handling it okay," Rikki put in. "There was a moon pool on the island strangely enough and we aren't exactly sure what happened – we were moon struck."

There was an awkward pause.

"So how did you survive?" Ash asked breaking the tension.

"Well we used our mermaid abilities at first they made being stranded on an island much easier" Anna said.

"Thank goodness we had the sense to make 'Things easier for ourselves' and create more permanent human ways of survival before we lost our powers. So it was harder but we managed." Cleo said.

"This is getting to be a really expensive phone call, ah, we'll tell you the details when we get home." Rikki interrupted. "We will be catching the next plane to Nassau, from there the next flight to Cuba's international airport and then we will head home," she said. "We love and miss you all."

"Love you guys," Cleo and Anna said.

Soon they had hung up the phone and sat back, satisfied.

OoOoO

Later that day, the trio had booked their flight to Nassau made their way to New Bight Airport.

Anna's parents – who lived in Nassau, were relieved and thankful to see them. Anna assured them that next time (if she had her powers back or not) that they'd definitely take a plane.

A few hours later they were on another flight to Cuba.

From Cuba they would be flying to Toronto. Unfortunately, since they were so far from home, there would have to be two stop-overs to break up the 32hr flight. First in Toronto and then in Dallas, after four hours of waiting for their flight from Dallas, (shopping for decent clothes and essentials filled the time) the girls were finally on their long flight back home.

Two days after they initially left Cuba, they were put their feet down on Australian soil for the first time in almost two months. Of course everyone was there to greet them.

It truly was a tearful reunion. The kids had gotten the day off school and the adults off work so that they could greet their long lost family members and friends.

The husbands hugged their wives so tightly that it was as if they would never let go. After a long embrace and kiss, they hugged their kids tightly also. They then moved to their friends.

"We didn't think you were coming back Mummy," Andy said. This made Cleo burst into tears, making consoling her daughters hard to do.

"I thought I'd lost you," Zane whispered in Rikki's ear as they hugged.

"You could never lose me," she replied with a half-smile.

Once the initial greetings were over with, everyone had calmed down enough to have a decent conversation.

"Since when were you girls so buff? "Ash asked wondering.

"And so tanned?" Zane added.

Their muscles had become much more pronounced and their skin was much darker.

"Living on an island does that to you I guess," Rikki replied.

They all piled into their cars and drove back home. Everyone went in the boats – Emma, Bella and Ben didn't want their friends to feel out of place and sad that they couldn't swim anymore. When they arrived back at Mako, Rikki, Anna and Cleo raced into their houses, they were so thankful to be home.

Over lunch, they discussed exactly what had happened to them. Everyone listening on with awe, especially the children. The story was told of their lives on that island in Bermuda, how they got there, how they escaped and what happened while they were there. Lewis was especially intrigued when it came to the magical current, moon pool and disappearance of the island. The rest of the day they tried their best to make up for the time missed, this was impossible of course, but they tried their best. The mothers spending time with their kids the rest of the afternoon.

"Hey mum, guess what I figured out," Jennifer bounced up and down in front of her mother as they sat looking out to sea.

"What sweetie?" Cleo replied.

"While you were away I worked out how to get dry quickly." She grabbed her mother's arm and pulled her towards the sea. Jen ran straight into the ocean and transformed.

"Can you drag me out?" she asked. Cleo, now human, obliged. Jennifer lay on the dry sand, her golden tail in front of her. "Watch."

"I'm watching."

The young mermaid reached her hand out and began to use her powers. Droplets of water began extracting themselves from her body, Jennifer transformed into a human again and then flicked the water droplets from her skin back to the sea. She got up beaming with pride.

"Wow, that's amazing Jen," Cleo complimented her daughter. "How did I never think of that." She muttered.

OoOoO

The police called them that night wanting a statement from Anna, Rikki and Cleo about what happened. Lewis took them over to their house on the mainland. Zane and Ben came along.

"Mrs Cleo McCartney, Mrs Rikki Bennett and Mrs Anna Charles," The head officer read off a list, asking for acknowledgement. They nodded.

"I see here that you reportedly went missing while driving your boat to the Bahamas. What happened exactly?" Cleo and Anna looked to Rikki.

"Well, as you know, when we sailed off again there was a big storm. The waves flooded over the boat and we had to bail out the water. Our instruments seemed to have some sort of interference so we had no idea what to do. A fog came over and we couldn't see- wrecking our boat on the rocks. We clambered onto a couple of barrels and by a miracle ended up on an island. I believe it must've been somewhere in Bermuda 'cos I think we sailed a bit too far," Rikki lied without flaw – not the greatest trait but it was handy when talking about mermaid events.

"How did we not find any wreckage of your craft?"

"Our ship was really broken up into little bits – it was a miracle we survived." Anna added in.

The officers seemed happy with this explanation for their report. They knew there were many unexplained phenomena of missing crafts in the Bermuda Triangle.

"So, how did you survive once on the island?"

"Fortunately for us there were fruit trees and resources. In fact there was an old plane where we could scab resources from." Rikki said. They didn't need to hide those facts.

"Very fortunate," an officer said to himself. "So how did you escape?"

"We built a raft." Cleo said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, we used vines and logs to build it. It was a risk but we had been there for almost two months." Anna said.

"The head officer nodded. "Well, we are glad you are back safely, thank you for your time. We will be putting through a report on this incident…"

The police told them what they were going to do and eventually, they left the mainland house.

Rikki, Zane, Anna, Ben, Cleo and Lewis headed back to Mako.

OoOoO

Lewis had his arms held tightly around Cleo as they lay in bed that night.

"Lewis, you can loosen your grip a bit, I'm not going anywhere," Cleo laughed gently.

"I know," he said, his words muffled against her neck. "I missed you,"

"I think that goes both ways."

"Hey Cleo, I think that we could try something to get your powers back." Lewis said.

"Oh?" she asked, rolling over to face him.

"Yeah, get in the moon pool next full moon. Since it wasn't a strange planetary alignment, I'm sure you could get your powers back."

"Well, it's definitely worth a try."

A/N: Please, please review. It makes my day :D

Tell me if this chapter was alright, I know you've been waiting for it for a while.