Curse of the Seas

The Aquatic Ages

Millions of questions started to flood Amara's mind. Why did she grow a fishtail? Does that make her a mermaid now? Why is she a mermaid? What caused this to happen? While all these are invading her mind, one stood above them all, is she able to breathe underwater? She felt that the answer to that was yes since she felt slits forming on her neck which she could only assume were her gills. She then tried to breathe in her first breath of air underwater. It felt completely natural to her, as if she had been doing it for her entire life. Unfortunately, she immediately realized something. As soon as she finished taking in the breath, her gills started itching and pain started erupting in her neck. For a second she was wondering why her neck was in pain but then realized that chlorine is deadly to fish. She then swam for the surface in order to relieve her gills of that pain. While she desperately swam for the surface, she found out that her tail felt exactly like her legs stuck together like she was doing a dolphin kick. This felt somewhat natural to her as she was used to dolphin kicking in her tournaments as the butterfly kick is always usually a part of them. Once she broke the surface, she took in a breath of fresh air and was relieved that at least her lungs still worked and that she didn't need to stay in water in order to survive. That moment of relief was soon interrupted however when she looked around her backyard.

All of the people she invited became merpeople and they were flopping around in the backyard, trying to make sense of their new appendage. She looked at the girls who were on the lounge chairs and saw one of them freaking out and hyperventilating, a justified reaction given the circumstance, while another one was in awe and stroking her new crimson red tail. She then looked towards another group of people who were on the grass, bikini bottoms and trunks ripped alike, flopping around with their tails and trying to make sense of it. She then looked towards the group who had the water guns and they were now exploring their new tails where some of them were feeling the scales while others were touching and familiarizing themselves with either their tail fins or pelvic fins. As she was looking through all the chaos, she heard someone cry out to her.

"Amara! Help me!"

She turned to look and saw Emily on the edge of the pool, now sporting a light orange tail, and trying to drag herself into the pool.

"Em! Don't go in! The pool water is going to hurt your gills!" Amara shouted at her.

Emily stopped in her tracks, "Oh shit ok... thanks for the heads up, but for real though, what the hell is going on?!"

"I don't know either! Can you help me out of the pool at least?" Amara replied, hoping that she can be removed from the chlorinated pool water before it could do any more damage to her newly formed fish parts.

She swam towards the pool edge and reached her arms out.

"Grab onto my arms!" Amara said amidst the chaos of the backyard.

Emily grabs her arms and told her, "It's gonna be a lot harder than you think. I don't exactly have the stability anymore now that I have a fish tail,"

Amara reassured her, "Just try ok, you got this,"

Emily then whispered to herself, "You can do this,"

She pulled with all her might but Amara felt very heavy to lift up. She figured it was either because the tail weighs a lot or because she didn't have the extra stability of her legs. After painfully trying to lift Amara out of the pool, her arms gave out and she let go of her arms. Emily was panting hard. How can she get her friend out of the pool given their new situation? She then looked behind her and saw a tree trunk. This gave her an idea.

"Amara, I think I got an idea!" Emily said in a hopeful tone.

"It better work. Who knows how much damage the waters caused to my tail by now," Amara replied.