A Tail of Love - Book One: Forever Fins

Forever Fins-Five

Just as I suspected the second I closed the door Finny was there, with an angry expression on her face. "What did you tell him?" I stalled by slowly taking off my shoes and placing them by the door, then walking up the staircase to my room and laying my bag on my bed.

"Well I'm waiting for an answer." I turned to look at her.

"When are you talking about? When I first met him seven years ago or today at school?" She seemed even more angry because I had talked to him twice and she had not known about it.

"Start from then and then tell me what you said today."

I took a deep breath and told her about most of what Eli and I had talked about seven years ago. I left out the part about the necklace but she put two and two together and figured it out anyways. "Did he give you the necklace?" I nodded slowly, scared of her reaction. "What did you do to repay him?" This is what I had hoped to avoid. When a mer receives a gift we are obligated to show our thanks.

"I gave him a kiss-" She interrupted me.

"YOU WHAT?" She shouted, appalled at my supposed mistake.

"On the cheek." I continued meekly.

See accepted this but she still looked angry with me. "Still a kiss is a powerful thing, I should know." She got this glassy look in her eyes and I could tell she was thinking about Joseph, her first and last potential mate. She had kissed him and the bond had only just started to form. She was so flooded with emotions that she immediately dragged him off into the water to tell her father, and the kingdom. What she had not known was that it takes around twenty-four hours for the bond to strengthen enough for the mate to be able to breathe underwater.

So when she dragged him into the water she did not count on him not being able to breathe underwater, she just thought that he would adjust after a few minutes. By the time she had realized he was not breathing and that she was drowning him, he was gone. She never talked about it but I could tell she has been really depressed ever since.

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" I thought about that. Why had I not told anyone? There was no harm done, it would not have been a big deal, yet something had stopped me.

"I did not think anyone would like it if I came home after kissing a boy after he gave me a gift for saving his life." Merfolk generally left humans alone, it was not that we did not like them it was just easier without the complications of nosy humans asking questions.

Finny seemed subdued for a while, not speaking for a long time. Finally she looked me in the eye. "I'm going to tell Uncle Azuron about this if you don't write to him about it first." That thought scared me even more than telling him about possibly finding a mate. He would not like that I had not told him the truth about that day and he would like it even less that that same boy might be a potential mate.

"I will write and tell Daddy about everything, I promise."

She seemed satisfied with that. "O.k. but be quick about it, I want to go swimming later and I don't want to have to wait for you like last time." I nodded shyly as she left. I took out my secret stash of stationary from Nure and began to write with my favorite quill made from a rare blue fast-frozen squid tentacle. I dipped it in squid ink and started to write about everything about that day seven years ago and most of what happened today that I had never told Daddy.

It took almost a full hour but I finally finished my letter. I rolled it up and sealed it with some wax, then stamped it with my own personal seal. I would send it tomorrow when the messenger gull arrived. I went down the stairs and told Finny I was ready. "Did you write to Uncle?" I nodded.

"I just finished, I told him everything." She nodded curtly, not smiling. "Good, that's out of the way, let's go I'm tired of the air here."

Without another word she started out the door, leaving me to run to catch up with her. When we reached the beach she immediately jumped in and transfigured, throwing her clothes over her head at me. I gently placed them in our bag and glanced around while I took mine off. When I was finished I put them in the bag with hers and hid them under a big rock like I always do.

The water felt cool as I stepped in, relishing the feeling with every step. When I was deep enough I transfigured. My legs started tingling and my nerves felt like lightning was going through them. My skin felt like it was bubbling and just when it started hurting it stopped. I took a moment to admire my beautiful fins, the only beautiful thing about me. When Finny called out to me I jumped. "Have you got jellyfish for brains or what, come on stop goofing around, I want to be back before nightfall." She suddenly dived with a flick of her tail. I followed suit.

She swam so fast that if she had not had bright red fins that stood out I would have lost her. I felt exhilarated, the colors of the ocean were so vivid it almost hurt to look around. How I missed my home. I saw a pod of dolphins in the distance. I smiled, I felt alive down here. When Finny stopped moving I got worried. I swam up next to her and was about to ask what was wrong when I saw it, a black shape in the distance. At first I thought it was a shark but when I looked closer and saw it was built like a mermaid except for the fins. Instead of scaly fish-like fins it had sleek leathery skin from what I could tell.

I did not know what it was. "What is it?" She turned towards me.

"Don't you read history books? She's a selkie." I suddenly remembered. A selkie was like a mer but instead of being half-fish they were humans who had a seal's spirit. On land they would appear human but in water the lower half of their body turned into a seal's. They lived for a really long time and they were supposedly wiped out about fifty years ago. They had been in a war with my kind that stretched back for centuries.

Supposedly the Moon Goddess Osarya fell in love with the God of the Sea, Rao. In an attempt to win him over, Osarya found the most beautiful fish and the most beautiful humans and combined them to create the first merpeople. Meanwhile the Animal Goddess, Aristalk, also fell in love with Rao. In her own attempt to win his affections she granted the most exotic humans the spirit of a seal and the ability to half turn into their seal forms when in water. However Rao did not love either goddess, he loved The Goddess of the Wind, Kaze and they eloped. The two Goddesses fell in to a jealous battle because of their broken hearts, they made their creations fight each other and when the goddesses died they kept battling.

The only reason the merpeople won is because we had magic, while the selkie's did not. They were excellent fighters, much more so than my kind but our magic was too strong for them to keep fighting. Our records say that about fifty years ago the small group of selkies that escaped the final battle fled to another part of the ocean and no more than one has been seen at one time. This was a really rare occasion and I was very frightened.

All this supposedly happened while my father and Finny's dad were just starting to study to rule their kingdoms. Finny grabbed my hand and slowly began swimming for the surface, trying not to bring attention to ourselves in case the selkie saw us.

When we breached the surface we immediately swam for the shore. We transfigured and when our human legs were solid we ran for the rock where I had hidden our clothes. We changed quickly and ran to Sybil's house, it was not yet dark, just like Finny had wanted, but we had been unnerved by seeing the selkie.

When we reached the house Finny turned to me. "Don't say anything about the selkie to your dad. Not just yet. And don't tell your aunt either. She would just go blabbing to your father before we could thoroughly explain what happened." I nodded agreeing with her for once.

"I will not say anything, for now, but we will have to tell our fathers soon." She pretended to ignore me and stomped into the house and up to her room. We did not see her for the rest of the night.

When I went to bed, I found myself thinking about why the selkie was here and who they could possibly be. For an instant I wondered if Vivica or Elias was the selkie. That was absurd, they were no more a selkie than I was a jellyfish. Still I worried about the selkie.

I wanted to get some sleep now, I once again wished that I could sleep as long as humans, and tucked into my blankets. I was humming a lullaby that daddy told me my mother used to sing to me when I finally drifted off into a deep but restless sleep.