Daughter of the Tide

The Big One-Eight

Dance with the waves,

move with the sea.

Let the rhythm of the water

set your soul free.

—Christy Ann Martine

~~~

"Happy birthday!" Ryan shouted as he jumped on top of me to wake me up. Sunlight streamed in from my windows and I startled away. "Your big one-eight!"

"Ryan..." I groaned, rubbing at my eyes, "get off of me." He laughed and rolled to lay next to me on the bed.

"How'd you sleep last night?" he asked me as I turned over on my side to look at him.

"Horribly," I admitted, "I can't stop thinking about what Taron said." Ryan's smile dwindled down a little.

"Look, if your mother comes today then she comes," he told me, "your dad and I won't let anything bad happen. Also, he went out muttering something about getting you your gift so..."

"Fishing?" I asked with a knowing smile.

"You know it," Ryan sighed, sliding off of my bed. I slid out from under my covers and gave him a shove towards my door.

"Let me change and we can go."

The sky held almost no clouds against a bright blue background, making me smile as we rode Joe's old boat out onto the water. The salt water sprayed my face as we drove right over the waves and we went further out than the day before. We cast our fishing lines and within five minutes, Ryan had caught one.

"Yes!" he exclaimed as he reeled it in. "We're doing this, Rina!" I smiled at him as he took the little fish off of the hook and tossed it into the bucket.

"I hope that's a sign of good luck," I grinned, looking back out towards the water. Nothing stirred beneath the waves. Not my mother or Taron or some other creature. It felt freeing to be out here with Ryan with nothing trying to kill us.

We were out there all afternoon, laying on the boat in the sun as we gradually caught one fish at a time. We talked about all of the things we used to do as kids and what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives. We'd had that conversation many times over and it never changed for either of us. Ryan wanted to become a fisherman like his dad but he also wanted to try new things, nothing specific yet. And mine was to get away from Bernig. I'd never thought about what that would mean, leaving behind my dad and my best friend just so I could sail across the world. Maybe my dreams would have to change.

"You know," Ryan stated, "maybe you ought to find a way to use your abilities."

"Like how?"

"I don't know... become a diver? Maybe you could help rescue sea creatures," he shrugged. "Or like, discover Atlantis."

"Atlantis?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Hey, all I'm saying is that you can breathe underwater and the possibilities are endless," he concluded. I smiled softly and reeled my line in, recasting it further into the water. He was right, the possibilities were endless and I was capable of doing a lot of things that no other person could do. I looked out at the water, wondering what other secrets it had to hide.

"I still can't believe that mermaids are real," I stated absentmindedly. "And I can't believe that I, the only girl on the island who can't swim without help, am one of them."