Meet Me At The Tide - A Lapidot Fanfiction

Chapter One - A Myth

     "Upcoming news: a couple in Florida claim to have discovered what seems to be a merperson. Officials are looking into their alleged claim," the TV spoke out. Sighing, Peridot turned the TV off.
     "There is no way merpeople exist," Peridot muttered, getting up. Closing up her shop, the girl stepped out of her shop. She stared at her reflection in the glass door of the now closed shop, looking at her features.

     She was fairly short, being exactly five feet tall (152.4 cm according to Google). Her spiky blonde hair almost a triangle if you squinted real hard. Her glasses sat on her face, covering her icy blue eyes. She adorned a green sweater with an alien face on the center of the hoodie, and some blue jeans. On her feet were a pair of green and yellow converse.

     Shaking her head, Peridot walked down to the board walk in Beach City, the wood creaking under her weight. Putting an earbud in her ear, she blocked out the oceanic sounds of the world with music.

     That is, until her music paused when someone called her. Staring at her phone, Peridot found a picture of Amethyst looking back at her. Peridot grumbled as she shoved her phone in her pocket after answering. 
     "Hello? Amethyst?" Peridot said into her wireless earbud's microphone.
     "Hey! P-dot!" Amethyst happily exclaimed, making Peridot take out an earbud to prevent hearing loss. "I'm just calling in for you daily check in, dude."

     Peridot smiled at that sentence. Because of Peridot's anxiety, being around people she trusted was her safe space. Back when the two were dating, Amethyst had decided to call her daily to check that the girl was okay. Although now they had decided they were better off as friends, Amethyst still called her.

     "Thanks Ame. What's happening over there?" Peridot smiled, stopping to sit at a bench next to the Big Doughnut. 
     "Just the usual. Steven's been trying to get Pearl to sing karaoke all day, and when she finally gave up, Garnet joined too!" Peridot laughed, imagining the tall woman attempting to sing. Although Peridot wasn't very close to the residents of the Universe house outside of Steven and Amethyst, she found them to be kind and generous. Even if sometimes it seemed as if they were foreigners from another planet.

     Steven and Amethyst of their group seemed to be most "human" or "normal", but Peridot was slightly suspicious of Pearl for how nonhuman she seemed, but Peridot just always assumed Pearl wasn't used to being in America or something. There was no way an American could be that pale or have natural hair the color of creme. Garnet on the other hand was very distant to Peridot, but she was motherly enough to Steven. 

     "Well, thanks for calling Amethyst," Peridot smiled as she stood up and walked along the strip of sand between Steven's house and the Big Doughnut, "I'll visit you guys later. Leave the karaoke machine warmed up for me." Peridot ended the call, and moved to turn on her music again when she heard ragged breathing. Ragged breathing of what sounded like a hurt human being.

     Whoa wait, a hurt human being?

     Peridot ripped off the earbuds (carefully, those things were expensive) and scanned the beach. When she saw a person laying on the sand, their back gently rising and falling to their ragged breathing, Peridot's eyes widened at the cuts on her sides. The short blonde ran over to the girl, but stopped short when she noticed that the girl's lower half wasn't two legs.

     It was a long, scaly mermaid tail the color of the ocean itself. 

     The mermaid looked up at the frozen blonde with gold freckled blue eyes in fear.

     It wasn't just a person who was laying hurt on the beach.

     It was a mermaid.