RIPPLE

{Five}

* * *

It was easy enough for Lachlan to find, and the door opened easily for him. Lachlan pulls the shades closed on the windows, and lights few candles, bathing the room in an eerie orange glow.

         There were plenty of desks, four per five rows despite no use for half of them. There was a projector in the middle of the room, a clean whiteboard with markers below, maps of different kingdoms that surround the room and a teacher's desk with a small globe on it.

          Lachlan puts a silver disk into the projector and comes to sit in the desk beside mine.

          Images float all around the room, and a dead-pan even voice floats around the room. I watch the images with fascination: merpeople. “Long ago, merpeople and the human race lived in harmony. We adored merpeople. They protected our oceans and our people, and their curious personalities made it impossible for the typical human to suspect anything out of the ordinary. Our people often mated, but although merpeople could come on land, most grew unhappy and sad being away from the ocean. Eventually our kind turned on them — few finding their beauty unnatural and cruel — and we began to hunt them.

         “Scientists wanted nothing more than to study them. Three were captured, and so the mermaid sanctuary was created, a loving place where all mysterious sea creatures and magical beings alike are put on display for the world to see. But — ”

        “Turn it off, Lachlan.”

          Lachlan immediately gets up to shut it off. “Our scientists claimed they were helping the merpeople they took into the sanctuary, and the mermaids there are actually happy, Nerissa.”

       “Have you ever been there?”

         Lachlan shakes his head. “I've hardly had a chance to get out of the palace. I don't think it'd be a good idea, you know with. . . ”

          “Please, Lach. I have to see them for myself.” My gaze meets his.

          Lachlan smiles, but it doesn't meet his eyes. “I'll see what I can do,” he says. “Come on, Rissa, we still have enough time to catch a small flick at the theatre?” And just like that, it was like an internal switch flips and Lachlan is usually playful self again.

          I wanted to see as much of their world as I could and spend more time with Lachlan, so I follow him out of the classrooms and towards the theatre, where Mikhail already lounges in the back row with a gorgeous looking redhead.

          “Well well well,” It looks like we were interrupting something. “you and your friend are late, brother.”

         “Fashionably late per the norm,” Lachlan leads us down a few rows. The chairs are comfy and the screen is huge. The sound from the television echoes here, although I can still hear Mikhail and the redhead giggling and kissing a few rows back. “My brother adores being as wreckless as possible before we turn twenty-one. His betrothed is a wicked Princess from one of the Outlying Kingdoms.”

         I chance a small glance behind us as I see Mikhail plant a kiss on the girl's cheek, “Your brother is going to be King.” I finally realized. Maybe Mikhail and I weren't so different, after all.

         “He doesn't want to be. But he doesn't have much of a choice.”

           “Neither do I,” I find myself whispering.

           But Lachlan hears it. “You always have a choice here in my world, mon amour.” his tone was very serious and his eyes bore lovingly into mine.