A Scaly Tale

From a Walker to a What Now?

4

Was I dead? It sure felt like it, I could see no lights just complete darkness and a floaty feeling. I tried to take a deep breath in breath in but when I did water gushed into my lungs causing me to start choking, coughing and spitting out bubbles into the water around me. My body quickly grew tired and I tried to let it rest. I stopped gasping for air and just let my body fall into a deep slumber.
*
When I woke I saw two faces peering at me. My eyes were still very droopy so I couldn't make out there faces very well.
"Move back, she's waking up!" A man with a long beard warned the others around him. When I opened my eyes, salt water stung them but still I studied my hands, arms and legs. Everything seemed to be fine. Everything except the fact that I was in the ocean! Oh yeah and the fact that I couldn't breath! My lungs were screaming for air, they needed it so badly my whole body was in pain. I looked up to the man with the beard. Fear and worry filled my salt water stung eyes. He looked at the person next to him.
"She's not dangerous but she will be if she returns to the dry land." The girl next to him with a pale face gasped.
"Don't kill her! I was the one who bought her here!" She said in a sad yet somehow bright voice. Kill me? What?!
"Ianthe, you haven't done us any good by bringing her here, but you are right, the fault was yours, not the girls'. You will be punished by your leader, as for the girl, she will not be killed but we will have to do something with her. I do not trust her." I saw a bright light before blackness and then I fell into another deep sleep.
*
I had been asleep so long it was hard so open my eyes but when I eventually got my eyelids open but closed them again quickly remembering that I was in salt water but when I pried them open slightly, they did not sting. I took a deep breath and my body wasn't just filled with oxygen, but relief as well. I looked around. I was surrounded by a cube of glass with a few leather handles on the floor and two of the walls. The man with beard and the girl with the pale face were off to the side but my attention was focused in the beautiful woman swimming towards me. She had a kind face and a beautiful mane of golden hair with stripes of light green at the tips.
"Hello child." Her voice was calming and it made me relax and trust her instantly "What I'm about to do won't hurt much so just stay calm." I listened to her hypnotic voice, following her instructions and I stayed calm until I realised what she said. 'It won't hurt much!?' What was she going to do?! My thoughts stopped when another bright light with swirls of blue and green came shooting out of the woman's hands. It hit my whole body with a large force bringing me pain everywhere, hurting most in my legs, neck and feet. Light flashed in front of my eyes but not from the woman's hands. It was from my eyes, something was happening to them! Once the light faded I looked up and saw my hair flying in many different direction but that wasn't the weird part. What was really weird was my hair started to curl itself and soon blue stripes painted themselves in the tips. I held my neck in pain and felt two large lumps on either sides swelling just like glands. My legs felt as if they were being stretched on a medieval stretching rack. I looked down at them and they were moulding together in the most horrifying way and they looked like they had started to grow mould on them! My feet were looking uglier than ever, they had thinned out incredibly and the bones that you could now see clearly had stretched out nearly three times their normal length. With everything going on I didn't even notice that I had been floating upright in the water until everything stopped and I started falling down. The glass box that surrounded me had opened up and I started to descend through the water. My body was too weak from all of that pain to try and save myself. I knew better than to take a breath in because of what happened last time. I started sinking further and further in the ocean. I held my arm out to the trio who were just watching me sink and letting me drown. They kept themselves up in the water by flapping their tails too and fro. I started going through my last thoughts when new ones invaded my head. TAILS?! I looked down and right where my own legs used to be was my very own tail! By this point my lungs were screaming for air so I took in a slight gasp and to my amazement my need for oxygen was fulfilled, although, was it actually oxygen? I didn't care because I could breath again! I started swimming back up to the other three using only my arms. I tried to move my tail the way I would walk but with both legs at one time. It was uncomfortable but it boosted me through the water rather quickly and within a few seconds I had caught up to the others. My face still showed a sign of shock and I had no idea what was going to happen next.
"So why-" I started to ask the man with the beard.
"Ianthe will answer all your questions." He cut me off and left with the beautiful mermaid just like that. Ianthe gave me an excited smile and said,
"Come on, let's go!" in a bubbly voice. She grabbed my hand and pulled me along beside her. "I bet you have so many questions to ask and I'm not surprised because like you just turned from a walker to a mermaid all in under eight hours, are you tired, or hungry? Tell me if you are! I'm so excited to talk with you I bet we will get on like a house on fire! We don't say that down here but Simon told me to say phrases from the dry land to make you feel at home. Ooh, almost there!" Ianthe continued on, speaking almost too fast to understand. After a few minutes of swimming we stopped outside a very large clam shell. Ianthe pulled a stressed face.
"You have to sing the password, I don't know it." She said to me, a hint of worry in her voice.
"How am I supposed to know the password!?" I questioned her.
"It's said that any true beautiful mermaid knows the password." She informed me. 'Awe thank you!' I thought to myself, I would have to compliment her back later on. I thought of what the password could be and nothing came to my mind. I opened my mouth anyway and was about to sing a made up tune when a golden light shone out of my mouth, not in a creepy way but a nice way. It gave me a sudden boost of confidence and I started to sing. My voice came out more beautiful than I had ever heard it and I sung a beautiful tune without even trying. The clam shell opened and Ianthe and I wondered inside. The clam closed and there was no light inside of it yet somehow I could still see things around me in blue.
"Ianthe what is-ah!" My question was cut of by a jolt to my body when the floor suddenly descended about twenty feet. It stopped with another jolt and light flooded back into the large space. In front of my eyes there was large room that had sand on the floor and shells all over the walls. Scattered around the room were different sized and shaped bubbles.
"Take a seat!" Ianthe said, gesturing to a small pink bubble. I sat down and was in immediate comfort.
"So, what would you like to know about the mermaid world?"