From the Depths

“Hold still would you!” Henry was attempting to grasp onto the material at her waist.

Her body lulled to the side again, her legs had almost completely fused and the tip of her newly formed tail splashed out of the shallow water spraying them with a fresh layer of salty liquid.

“You try staying still when you grow a god-damned tail!” She protested. “I can barely bend this thing, let alone stay sitting!”

He’d moved her to the shallows so he could better help her remove her underwear. Getting her up onto the ledge had been a feat, the addition of the tail made her extremely heavy and he was barely able to lift her onto the area.

Having enough of the wet nightgown sticking to her still slightly burning skin, she'd stripped it off. The motion made her rock from side to side. He sighed but waited for her to steady herself again before he reached down to grasp the material again.

With her skin fully exposed, he couldn’t help but cringe at the scratch marks she’d given herself along her hips when she had attempted to remove them herself. She wasn’t used to her new hands yet, if you could call them that anymore, they appeared more like claws at this point.

Ammoungest their struggles, they’d managed to tear one side, but given the situation, both sides needed to be torn before the material could be removed from between her fast-fusing legs. He yanked on the thin cotton causing her to gasp and flop to the side, dunking her into the water with a rather hefty splash.

With a groan, he grasped her flailing arm and heaved her back upright. “Hold on to me will you!”

“But the scales!” She protested.

There she went again worrying about him. Her body was filling out with raver-sharp hardened scales, Ren had been able to control them, alter them. But she figured since this was the first time growing them she couldn’t do that until they were fully formed. But all she had at the moment were theories.

“Quit worrying about me and just do it! I’ll heal, been through worse.” He slapped her noodle-like limbs around his neck while glaring at her.

She winced but complied, holding on to him more firmly than she wanted to. With his next tug, her body was jolted toward him. Tightening her grip and hugging herself to him she heard the material finally tear. Lifting her backside gently up, using Henry as leverage he was able to pull the material free and quickly tossed it aside.

As she was about to disengage from the death grip she had on him he abruptly hissed. That was when she felt it, the sliver of liquid that trickled down her breast and ran off her side. With the gentle sound of a drip impacting the water’s surface, her heart sank.

“Careful, careful. I’m okay, just slowly...” His hands rested on her shoulders.

She nodded grimly as she tried to gently remove herself from his embrace. The green-blue scales that covered her breasts now extended down her sides and began to form on her abdomen, extending down her still-growing tail. They clung to the wet material that covered his body threatening to shred the clothing. Where her arms had contacted his skin at his neck was now heavily scratched and lightly bleeding in places.

“Sor-” She watched a small droplet of blood pool at the edge of a wound and slide down his collarbone, only to be caught on the material that was gapping open at his chest. She tilted her head narrowing her eyes on the injury.

Clenching her eyes shut she shook her head, taking a moment she opened her eyes to study the tiny wounds again.

“You okay?” He asked slightly taken aback by her abruptly cut-off speech.

“My sight... It’s changing.” She muttered still entranced by the area around his neck.

Colours had become more vivid and vibrant, It was an understandable change given that underwater it would be harder to see in the depths than it was on land.

But what fascinated her at that moment was the faint glimmer of light she could see at the very edges of the broken skin. It flaked off and vanished as though his body was emitting some sort of energy that she could see as it tried to clot the blood and stop the bleeding. She wasn’t sure what it meant.

Growing curious she lifted a submerged hand from the water to touch the fading line of light. Droplets of water cascaded down his skin causing a hiss to escape his lips. What she felt when the water contacted the wound was something she’d never felt before. And yet it was surprisingly harmonised, as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

A part of her deep within knew what to do and how to act. She felt her body warm with a pleasant hum as she called on the water to do her bidding. Connecting with the droplets was surprisingly easy and felt natural. They stopped sliding down his skin, retracing the lines they had created until they pooled together around the wound, covering it completely. She allowed the energy she felt rushing through her to join with the water, to her amazement she watched the scratches heal at an alarming rate within the small biome of water she had created. Letting the power go she gasped as she was hit with an overwhelming feeling that left her drained and shocked.

But one thought lingered once the warmth of the power faded. This was him within her. It was the same feeling that encased her when she had been within. A feeling she could get lost in.

“You... You just did what Ren did.” Henry was dumbfounded. His hand gently touched his neck.

She allowed a small smile to spread to the corner of her lips. “It seems he’s given me much more than just life.” She couldn’t help but wonder what else she could do, what else she was capable of now... But a lingering sadness crept in. More than anything she wanted to share this with him... to have him here beside her.

A silence fell between them for quite some time as Kirea’s body finished the change.

Henry sat with her, his own hands becoming like wrinkled prunes in no time at all.

All the while Kirea filled out with glistening scales in a beautiful uniform pattern as she took on a new but familiar appearance.

“So, what...” Breaking the silence she was hesitant to bring this up. “What do we do now?”

“We stick to the plan.”

Kirea’s head shot up, he couldn’t mean!? “I can barely swim let alone... let alone...” She lowered her head looking to the water’s surface, staring back at her was her newly formed tail.

“I don’t know if I can.” She admitted, not for a lack of wanting to, it was more that she felt unprepared and weak.

“I’ll get the cook on our side, I’ll bring him down to meet you and fill him in.” He conveyed. “We will need a witness besides the siren who kills him or me. Just as Ren suggested.”

“Can we still make this work, what if I can’t hold him under!?” She protested.

“You have me, I won’t let this end any other way.” He gave her a half smile. It was hard to be optimistic, but what else did they have?

“For Ren.” He added with a mutter. Stretching he hoisted himself out of the shallows and began ringing out his clothes.

“You’re leaving!” She attempted to turn around in a panic only to flop onto her stomach in a flailing heap.

“Aren’t mermaids meant to be beautiful graceful creatures?” He questioned with a raised brow.

“Don’t change the subject!” Using her arms to hoist herself from the water line her arms soon began to tremble under the weight of holding her torso up.

“I’ll be back in a few hours, maybe practice swimming and do some pushups or something. You’re gonna need to work on that upper body strength.” He pointed out.

The last thing she wanted was to be left alone, but she knew he needed to go. Tomorrow was the big day and they were far from ready thanks to what had just happened. If anything they were far less prepared than they had been before.

Her arms gave in and she plummeted down, submerged in the water, rolling onto her back she crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. She watched as he changed into dry clothes. When he headed for the exit she flicked her tail splashing him with a small amount of water.

“Seriously!” He exclaimed with his arms wide.

Though it wasn’t as big a splash as she was trying for she was still satisfied enough with herself to smirk. Lifting her head just above the water line she retorted with. “Thought you wanted me to work on my strength?”

He left shaking his head, leaving her alone to sink back underneath the water. Blowing bubbles she emptied the air from her lungs and allowed the water to take its place. Her body felt anything but her own and most of all... she missed him. It was hard not to let her mind wander and think of him.

Alone and submerged, emotions flooded her, an unexplainable weight crushing her, pulling her down into a pit of despair deep within herself as the grief of his loss took hold.

He hadn’t desired to die, but she also knew that she couldn’t waste this chance, his chance... his life. That fact hurt more than anything but it helped ground her, helped her focus.

She could feel her nose tingle and her eyes strain as though she were about to cry. Maybe it was the fact that she was underwater, or maybe she just couldn’t produce tears anymore. Slapping her hands against her cheeks she tried to wake herself up from the darkness that was threatening to take hold. She needed to keep it together, at least for a little longer.

She rolled over to the edge of the shallow pool. Her tail toppled over the edge, the weight of it dragging her down and over the edge completely. If she was above water she would have gasped, instead, she gurgled a mouth full of salty water. Her elongated claw-like fingers clenched onto the rocky edge, her arms immediately straining in protest.

‘No! Don’t give up! You need to learn to swim again!’

Determination rose within her, she’d do this, she had to. She couldn’t use her legs like she used to, having a tail was an entirely different feeling. There was power in the new addition she just had to figure out how to harness it. She’d studied Ren for weeks now, seen him swim countless times. She just needed to mimic it.

Starting from her lower abdomen she attempted to roll motion from her stomach to her hips and down to her tail. She felt her body rise in the water slightly releasing the tension from her arms for only a moment.

Again! She needed to get used to moving like this.

She practised for what felt like hours, She pushed through the point of exhaustion and willed herself to keep going until Henry returned, whenever that may be.

She thought she was doing well when her fingers slipped from the edge. She began to sink at a rapid rate as the shock of the mishap made her body freeze. She sank to the bottom of the pool in a slight panic. Only to release that if she had just kept up with the movement she wouldn’t have sunk and been able to grab the edge again. She crossed her arms over her chest in a huff as her bottom lightly collided with the rocky surface.

It was darker down in the depts. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but when they did her mouth fell open in awe.

This was how he saw the world...?

The water around her held a gentle blue hue, the plants were a vibrant green almost fluorescent with the light they seemed to emit. She reacted out a hand to touch a stray reed only to notice that her own markings on her skin were glowing in a similar way. She was sure it couldn’t be seen by human eyes. Testing her theory she poked at the plant beside her channelling the energy she had used to heal Henry. It was only a minimal amount and she only felt the warmth of the powers embrace for a moment, but the interaction seemed to make the plant burst to life, it relished in her touch as though drawing on the energy she offered. Was this how he’d made them glow that night so long ago?

It was utterly beautiful. She looked to the surface of the gently lapping surface. Was it wrong of her to feel thankful...

Her head tilted to the side as she heard Henry outside, well before he had reached the cavern entrance.

Fascinating. However, he wasn’t alone.

Using what she had learned from her small ‘training’ session she pushed herself up from the bottom of the pool and swam to the surface.

The young man with the knight was frightened, it was the oddest thing to be able to smell fear.

She gently breached the surface and allowed her lungs to empty of water before she breathed in the air.

The young man must have been in his late teens. The King was utterly despicable! She felt anger boil to the surface as her hands clenched into fists below the surface of the water. No one else would be sacrificed because of that devil! She wouldn’t allow it.

“Yosof, this is Kirea. The woman I told you about.” Henry introduced the two before continuing to drag woven saps full of fresh produce into the makeshift kitchen to the back of the cavern.

When she swam forward closer to the ledge he backed away afraid.

“It’s okay Yosof, you can speak freely here, you're in no danger from the King in here. It’s protected with magic.” Kirea encouraged.

He glanced at the Knight for confirmation, Henry nodded to him with a weak smile. “You know you’re not meant to be here until tomorrow, I wanted to bring you here today for this very reason.”

“I have to cook a mermaid!” The boy regurgitated suddenly. “I knew I had to cook something exotic, but this!” He was trembling as he shook his head in denial. “I can’t do that! She’s a person!” Sinking down to the ground his hands cupping his face, he looked terrified.

It was clear that he was in shock and extremely frightened.

“My... My family...” He muttered.

“The only one that’s going to die is the King.” Kirea’s stern gaze locked with the young boys.

“That would be treason!” He squeaked as he spoke.

“Not if it’s self-defence. And at risk of destroying the treaty of peace between the elves and the humans.” The knight crouched down beside the boy placing a reassuring hand on the youngling’s shoulder.

“Wha- what happens if you fail?” He stuttered.

“All our lives are forfeit. Regardless if we do what he asks or not.” Henry’s words weren’t gentle.

“WHAT! But you said I would be returned safely.”

“I was ordered to say so, after he has consumed Kirea’s heart and gained immortality he would kill any that knew of the secret. Mermaids are a myth even now after the war, if this got out...”

“They would be hunted for their hearts... Men would fight for the supernatural powers, more war.” The boy was still slightly shaking but he looked up at the knight with an unmoving expression. “W-What can I do to help?”

All the pieces were in place, now all they had to do was wait for the King to show up tomorrow night. And hope, no pray, pray that nothing went amiss.