Seabound

Chapter 3

Seabound- Chapter Three

It was weird to be so close to the sea but not be swimming in it. I was getting more and more used to my legs, but they still do not feel right. I dislike walking, and find myself yearning for the white capped waves that are below me. However, the two-leggers were suspicious of me and kept me under constant surveillance. This I was uncomfortable with, wanting to be alone and to think about my predicament alone. The two-leggers usually asked the male with the cloth to look after me. I was not as uncomfortable with his as with the other males. I had discovered that his name was Lorenzo, that his father was the captain, the male that had ordered them to look after me. I had figured that the so called captain was like the school mother, he had to look after his school, what Lorenzo had called the ‘crew’ and in turn they listened to every word he said. I almost liked Lorenzo. He was kind to me, not asking questions about my past, where I came from or why I had been picked up in the net. It seemed that he had no suspicions about my species.

On the day after they had picked me up in the net, I was given some more cloth, what Adelina had called clothes. They were male clothes. The most I had ever covered myself in was a soft seaweed bodice that did not rub or get caught on my scales. This did not fit properly around my shoulders, legs or waist. It scratched my delicate skin where nothing had touched it because of my protective scales. Now the scales were not there and the skin was exposed to the elements that I was not used to. I had managed to stay beneath the wooden deck of the travel-thing so as to avoid the burning sun.

The journey in the rolling travel thing was brief, at most two moon-turns, which was a relief. I could not stand the smell of the males or the way the boat moved. I knew that I was unable to return to the water for a moon cycle, and living on the water would have driven me mad with longing. I had to at least feel land under my feet if I could not be in the water. There were more bits of weathered timber along the edge of the waters of Venice.  One of the crew members tied a long piece of rope to the pieces of timber so that the travel-thing would not float away. Lorenzo clambered off the travel thing and onto the pieces of timber. He held out one of his soft hands to help me out of the boat. I could not help myself. I smiled at him, a small, shy smile. He smiled back.

I turned to the captain. I thanked him for helping me as much as he did. He said that I had not been a problem to them. He then told Lorenzo to hurry up and climb back aboard. Lorenzo took my hand again and carefully touched his lips to it. Then he turned away and jumped back onto the boat. Someone untied the boat and the boat was cast off.

I could feel the tingling of his lips on the back of my hand. I also had a peculiar feeling in the bottom of my stomach, as if there were schools of fish swimming around inside. I did not know what it meant. I set off walking unsteadily towards the place that I remembered to be Adelina’s land-cave. The stone covered passages were full of two-leggers walking everywhere. There were many long, thin travel-things being paddled down the water ways. I had only seen this place in the dark from those waterways but I knew my way around well enough. The walk to Adelina’s land cave was much longer than the swim.

I eventually reached Adelina’s land cave. I knocked on the entrance-covering as I had seen two-leggers do before. It seemed a way to summon the two-legger owners of the land-cave. To prove my thought, Adelina opened the entrance-covering. She motioned quickly to me to come in to her cave.

“Aura?” she said in awe. “What are you doing here like… this?” she had a shocked expression on her face.

I answered, “I was caught in a fish-catcher.” The look in her eyes turned from surprise to a worried look. I told her what happened from the reason I swam away in the first place. She was fidgeting with the stray strands of her dark brown hair.