'Dad, you've been fighting again.' Ariel Pacificus glared at his father, Eric. Eric used his hand to tousle his dirty blond hair. There was a red mark across his brow that bled 'Just look at you!' '
Eric laughed, 'You should see the other bastard.'
'Can't you and Gabriel leave each other alone?' he said tersely, he snatched up a towel and threw it at his father who caught it and dabbed at the cut. 'You guys act like a couple of kids, you know. And let me guess, it was over Irene.' Ariel didn't like Irene at all. 'What's she to you? She's just a piece of candy.'
'Some candy,' leered Eric.
'Dad, it's disgusting,' he said narrowing his eyes, 'Irene has a daughter my age.'
'Relax, Ariel,' chuckled Eric. 'It's nothing serious.'
'Oh, so she's just a piece of ass to you, huh?' he retorted.
'Watch your mouth, kid,' warned Eric lightly. When Ariel folded his hands across his chest, he sighed and said, 'Look, your mother died nearly two years ago and it gets lonely. Sometimes want a lady next to me.'
Ariel gritted his teeth in annoyance; couldn't Eric at least talk to him like a dad? He shook his head, 'Do you have any idea how embarrassing your behavior is? Like I'm even ashamed to admit I know you when the whole place is yapping about you behaving like a horny teenager.'
'Maybe you should act more your age,' suggested his dad with a grin.
'You know what?' Ariel threw his hands up, 'You go right ahead, kill yourselves for all I care because for your information, I am done with your attitude.' He whirled around and ran upstairs to his room and slammed the door furiously.
'Don't slam it, boy!' Eric yelled through
the house.
Much better, he thought petulantly then sighed. He didn't really enjoy being mad at his father, it was just that lately, it seemed all they ever did was disagree and yell at each other. Mostly because of Irene and that irritated him to death. He shook his head and sat on his bed facing the Pacific ocean. The breeze carried the scent of the sea into his room and he sighed with content.
Ariel's life wasn't all harsh words. There had been a time in his life that he was deliriously happy. Ariel was an Enfant de la Mer. A Child of The Sea, a metemorph. He and his family had the power to transform into mernaids. Ther was magic in their blood,magic of the sea. Their ancestors had gone to the Sea Goddess, Nymue, and had asked to join her world. Nymue had given them the power to transform into the most beautiful sea creature, half man and half fish. But the mermaids could not just live only in water, they could make themselves fully human and mix with people, but their home was the water and they could never stay very far from it for too long. When they entered the water, they traded their legs for glorious tails and swam with the fish, the dolphins and whales. But there was the danger of detection, the humans would hunt them for sport so they could be displayed like animals and so the merpeople had to be extremely careful to avoid being spotted. They swam far out into the ocean and seas and only dived and met in the open at night when they were absolutely sure thhey would be alone and safe.
Ariel had been born on Prince Edward Island, Canada and had lived practically his whole life in the water. He never had to hide in the scarcely populated Canadian wilderness. But one night when he was fourteen, some mermaids had been spotted by a coast guard who followed them and found their clan. Ther had been plenty of violence and blood as the humans attacked, much of which he tried to forget but couldn't. His mother, Harmony had dived into the sea to save a childand had been shot wiith a bullet. They pulled her out of the water but she was already dead. His father, the leader then had voted that they would all move, this time to America. They had first settled in Virginia along Chesapeake bay, but then rcently they moved up. Eric said they had hit 'rock bottom', and that was Cape Heron, Rhode Island. Ariel had turned sixteen recently and he didn;t think much of the New England town. To him, he was just passing the time until he was eighteen and then he would leave. He would go so far away until no one ever found him. Worse, he stayed away fom water now, except for the occasional swim to keep from forgetting how to be a Sea Child. If the mermaids stayed in one form for too long, they would forget how to change and be stuck indefinitely and Ariel didn't want that.
He had started his junior year of High school at Cape Heron High, home of the Whales. Cape Heron High had a swim team and some times Ariel would fantasize about trying out. He would love to see the looks on their faces as he swam the whole lenght of their swimming pool and back in less than fifteen seconds without any air, if there wasn't the problem of testing for steroids and other things that would involve them prodding around in his insides. The kids at school ignored him, he was a shadow, just in the background which was how he liked it. He didn't want anyone getting close enough to know the secret. There was the Law, iif a mermaid knowingly let the secret out, he would be cut off from all his own, trapped in his human body forever and never feel the sea again. Harsh, he couldn't deal with that. He avoided swimming in gym and basically everything else that involved strenght and speed. Nobody ever bothered to talk to him, but he could see the looks of interest in the
speed. Nobody ever bothered to talk to him, but he could see the looks of interest in the girls eyes when he walked by, the aware looks the other boys gave him. They wondered about him, but too bad they would never know.
His other problem were the Sirens. Four mermaids who constantly at badgered his life, being led of course by none other than his nemesis, Leslie Armand. He had payed with Lez right from when he was a baby up into the teens. It had seemed obvious then that they were destined for each other, but then the raid came and messed with his whole life. He saw another side to himself that made him admit that he was different from the rest of them. He wanted a different life. He had realised that he wasn't in love with Lez and he would never be. Then, it looked as though they had never been friends. She irritated him to the point that he couldn't be next to her for up to a minute without feeling like blowing his brains off. He constantly wondered if a bullet to the head would kill him or just leave a big pile of mess to clean up, maybe both.
Ariel was handsome, beautifully and hypnotisingly so. His eyes were undefinable, bot dark enough to be green and yet not light enough to be blue. His body was lean like the blade of a sword and toned with rippling muscles and impressive pectorals. His face was angelic and smooth, like any polished jewel. He walked in an confident and liquid manner, with a type of swagger that belonged solely to him. He knew all of that quite well, he wasn’t conceited or vain, it was just there.
Sighing, he looked around his room and spotted The Wave, the school's weekly publication by his pillow. He picked it up and flipped it open to the literature section where his essay had came out top in his English Literature class. It hadn't been that much of a big deal to him, he had never tried to make good grades, he was just naturally intelligent. He had written an essay on the sea, it’s magnificence, how it made him feel strong and how he felt free in it. He smiled ruefully when he remembered his father’s praise over it. He scanned the page again and caught the title of another write up. Funny how he had never noticed it before, he never missed anything. It was titled Haiku for Sea Angel. Intrigued, Caspian raised an eyebrow and read on.
On a dark, black night,
I am dreaming of a mysterious
Sea angel.
Ariel gasped to himself, he hurriedly checked the poet. Sage Skylar. Who was this Sage Skylar? Did she know about them? The Haiku was clearly talking about a mermaid, why would she just write a poem for a mermaid? Then he checked himself, he was just being paranoid, but he realised, he still wanted to know who Sage Skylar was. She had to be a girl, but he had never noticed her, in fact he had never noticed anyone. She talked like she knew the sea, like she knew HIM even though he was no sea angel He had to know her, just see her face and see if she was really it. He had too, the poem spoke to him in waya he could not fully understand but he knew that something pulled him to her.
Ariel looked out at the sea and smiled, 'Don't worry, Sage. You'll see your sea angel very soon. He's coming for you.'
