Dawn of the Mermaids

Chapter 3

Sereia

"So, the same thing happened to you guys as well?" I look at Naia and Isla as they both nod their heads.

"It seems to happen as soon as we touch water." Isla whispers. I'm honestly surprised she managed to figure that out. Not that she's not smart or anything, just that she's usually the "do now, think later" kind of girl.

"This is a nightmare! This... thing that happened to us should be impossible!" Naia wails. "We're like mermaids. Living, breathing mermaids."

"SHHHH! Just yell it out for the whole world to know, why don't you? We can't tell anybody. At least, not until we find out more. Unless you all want to be stuck in a lab and poked at like some newly discovered creature." I say.

"We are kind of newly discovered." Isla whisper-yells, earning a glare from both me and Naia.

"What are we going to do?" Naia says. We all sat there for a while. Not touching our drinks for fear of spilling it. After a while Naia says, "We should go to our little cove and test this out a little bit,"

"That's a terrible idea! What if somebody saw us? And besides, we don't even know exactly what happened to us." I say. What is she thinking? That could be incredibly dangerous.

"No, Naia is right. The first time we... transformed, we were by ourselves and were in shock. If we went to the cove and tested it out a bit, then we'll be more comfortable with each other. And we'll need to figure this whole thing out sooner rather than later" Isla says back. She locks eyes with me and there's a silent plea in them. Although it could be very risky, she's right. Better we find out what happened to us now, or some scientists will.

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After we dumped our drinks at the Juice Oasis, we biked to our secret cove. The cove isn't exactly huge, but pretty decent sized if you wanted to throw a small party. To get here, you have to go off the main walkway for quite a while and walk for about 5 minutes before you find it. The top of the cove is almost completely covered by rocks. To get down, you have to climb down a steep, narrow path. Then you'll find yourself on the beach part. Only us three and Aspen know about it, or at least, we're the only ones who seem to come here. A secret and quiet place away from everyone else. We make our way down to the bottom and set our things down.

"Ok, I think we should only walk out to our ankles. Then we can go from there." Isla says. "I've been wondering if maybe we focus, we won't transform? Or maybe somehow slow down how long it takes to transform." We all walk to the water and hold hands. I close my eyes and repeat in my head "don't transform" like a mantra. For a split second I think it has worked until I start my plummet to the ground.

"No! I really thought that would work." Naia complains. I look at the other two and admire their tails. We all have a different colored tail, and the fins on them are different, but other than that, the length of them, and our tops are the same. We each have the same jewelry, albeit different colors.

"Let's drag ourselves back to shore, and we can try this again-" I began before I was interrupted by a yelp coming from the beach. We all whip our heads around and see none other than Aspen standing there with a beach towel and another one of his science books. We completely forgot he likes to come here and read on Sundays.

"What- but you- and they appeared- tails?!" Aspen sputters out before he drops to the ground and sits, still staring at us.

"Oh um, hey Aspen! Uhm, we can explain..." I begin

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"Wait let me get this straight. This tail appears when you touch water. And you don't know how this happened." Aspen seems to be more shocked than we were when we found out.

"To be honest, we don't really know anything. Other than the water part, of course." I tell him. "Could you help us Aspen? Please? You're the geek of the group, do you know anything about what happened to us and why we turned into fish?"

"Three things. One, I believe the correct term would be mermaids, as in half woman-half fish. Second, I am not a geek. And third, yes, I may be able to figure out what happened, but not without collecting some data. Could you get in the water again so I can observe your transformation?" He says.

"How about you get in the water and you can observe yourself? We are not going to be one of your experiments, Aspen." Isla argues. Aspen rolls his eyes at her and digs into his bag for something. Before any of us can realize what he's doing, he whips around to me and tries to splash his water bottle on me. I face away and hold up my hands, as if I could block water. I wait for it to hit me, and wait, and wait. After a moment I turn around to see what is going on. The water is just... floating in the air. Completely suspended and not moving. Did I do that?

"Sereia, did you do that? Can you like freeze time now or something?" Isla and Naia stare at me in awe, while Aspen just nods his head like this is a normal everyday occurrence for him.

"I wouldn't say freeze time, but more of something that has to do with water. Try to concentrate on the water and move it." I do as he says and stretch out my arms and hands better. I stare at the water for a moment, willing it to move. And sure enough, it does. I try to move it back into the water bottle, but instead just end up dropping it on Aspen, who doesn't seem to care one bit.

"Seems to me you can control water, maybe it's some sort of mermaid power? I'm not completely sure, but considering you couldn't do this before, I say it's the most likely reason." He says.

"That's so cool! I wonder if we can do that too. Let me try." Naia says. Aspen walks over to the shore and fills the bottle with more water before walking back over to us. Naia holds out her hands when Aspen dumps it on her. Instead of the water freezing in the air like me, it just freezes before falling to the ground. "Amazing! I can freeze it!"

"Ok my turn!" Isla says. Aspen repeats filling up the bottle and walks over. This time, Aspen sets the bottle on the sand. Isla holds her hands out to the bottle, yet nothing seems to happen. "Oh, don't tell me I'm the only one who didn't get any powers!"

"Maybe you're just a slow learner. Let's try again." Aspen reaches for his bottle and pulls back his hand as soon as he makes contact. "Ow! It's hot!" I grab for the bottle and sure enough, it feels like someone just put it on a stove.

"So, my power is heating up metal water bottles? Lame." Isla complains. I hold up the bottle and look inside it.

"No wait, I think you can heat water actually. There's no water inside and we didn't dump it out, nor is there a leak." I pass the bottle to Isla who smiles widely.

"Yes! Still got it." She grins at us. Aspen pulls out a notebook and pen from his bag (who brings that to the beach?) and jots down our recent discovery.

"This is incredible. I can't wait to learn more stuff. I'm going to head back home and do some research. See you at school tomorrow!" He yells before running back up the trail.

"Oh shoot! I completely forgot about school. What if we touch water while we're there?" Naia says.

"We'll just have to be extremely careful about it." I say back to her.