Beneath the Waves (Ocean Song Book 1)

*UPDATED* Chapter 5: Trapped

She didn't know how long she spent climbing up the side of that trench, but Serena is thankful when she finally finds that her hands land on a solid surface. She hoists herself up with little difficulty thanks to being underwater and proceeds to drag herself across the surface until she's completely out of the trench. She continues to drag herself across the ocean floor and stops when she gets to a coral reef. She drops her arms in exhaustion and slowly flips herself onto her back. She lays on the seafloor panting lightly while fingering the sand beneath her fingers. Her gaze stares fixedly on the bright light shining above which she figures to be the sun. Its rays seep down and warms the water surrounding her, eradicating the cold she felt while in the trench.

During the time it took her to crawl out of that trench, she had tried to figure out the workings of this unfamiliar appendage as she climbed. However, she was pretty limited in doing so since she nearly lost her grip the first few times, she tried to swim with it. Not that it mattered too much since gravity hardly exists in the sea.

Contrary to the Disney movie, using the thing is much harder than it looks. If climbing out of the trench took anywhere around an hour then surely figuring out how to move must've taken her two.

In the course of the time spent learning to wield the tail, Serena has determined that she has to move her torso a certain way that should be followed by the tail. So if her torso moves a certain way, so too will her tail which will then propel her through the water.

At first, she had tried using her outstretched arms to get her body to move like waves crashing against the shore like those professional mermaids she saw online. However, that didn't work like she expected it to at all. If anything, she didn't even move. She must've looked like a flailing fish caught in a net when she tried that maneuver.

But now, after a lengthy amount of time spent practicing, she has deemed herself at least decent to the point where she can actually travel.

So, the first thing she does is swim to the surface to see how far out she had been carried.

Her eyes flit this way and that as she swims to the surface. All around her is a vast expanse of blue sea and vegetation with the occasional school of fish. The dolphins have long since left and the area is all but deserted save for the one sea turtle passing along at a leisurely pace.

Every now and then a school of fish will come around and poke at her until one of her movements scares them off.

Swimming to the surface is slow going, but when the light of the sun begins to grow closer and the water warmer, relief floods her body. Light pants escape her lungs as she increases the amount of effort put into swimming upward.

A current comes in just then, and drags her down just a little, but she quickly rises back up once more until she's finally broken the surface with a gasp.

Creamy blonde hair sticks to her face as she looks around. Yet there's nothing. Nothing but ocean as far as the eye can see. She turns, and turns, and turns in the hopes that she may have missed a glimpse of land, but ultimately it is just her fooling herself into such thoughts.

Dread fills her heart. She's been carried too far out to determine her location. The sun has already begun its slow descent to usher in the darkness of the night, and she's stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.

Serena dejectedly slips back beneath the waves and distances herself from the surface once more.

She sits there for a moment, wondering what her next course of action should be.

"Well first thing's first, I need to find someplace for the night," she murmurs quietly as she spots the silhouette of a shark swimming along in the distance.