Dangerous Waters

Chapter 14

 Lyla quickly swam for the surface, coming up and looking around. Zac waved her over from where the group was huddled,in the water up to their necks. "What is it Ly? And hurry up, it's starting to get cold out here.. and dark," Zac shuddered from the cold and from the thought of encountering another one of those saddled sharks. Nixie swallowed and looked down as Lyla continued, and Cam gently wrapped an arm around her. "There are thousands of them... below the.. under the ruins. You've got to see this," she said and went to dive back under.

"Whoah.. hold on dude..." Cleo shook her head. "We can't go down there right now, we need to regroup.. like REALLY regroup. Get warm, get food and discuss this. They just took our only firepower," she nodded at Lyla's empty finger. "Your ring was the only magical defense we had. We need to come back when it's light and there's no sharks hanging out. Ruins area sharks best friend." Lyla bit her lip and looked into the black water and sighed before nodding. "You're right.. let's go back for now," she said reluctantly and swam with her newfound pod back to the research center.

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A couple hours later, and everyone was warm, in dry clothes, fed and sitting with their choice of a warm drink in the mess hall. Lyla sat on a table, watching as they all arrived. "So can ANYONE think of a reason why they took my ring?" Serena piped up in her gentle tones "Well we know that they're an ancient tradition given to the mermaid when she completes her training. But did you ever notice that the elder generation don't have them? Like the oldest in the pod. Whenever a new group of mermaids finish our training, the oldest mermaids in the pod suddenly don't have moon rings anymore.. I noticed it as a calf but they told me i was being stupid so I never brought it up again." Nixie furrowed her eyebrows "What if moon rings are becoming rare?" she stood up and Lyla sighed "Nixie..."

She waved her off "NO. This is not one of my conspiracy theories, Lyla! I'm serious. If Serena is right, and judging by the way that merman.. warrior person reacted, she probably is, it looks like everybody is running out of moon rings." Lyla's eyes widen "That must be why our pod has always felt like it was on the run! we had a lot of them.. other pods were probably jealous," she said and leaned her elbows on her knees, wringing her hands. Serena nodded slowly. "And THAT's why there's a prophecy of our pod being attacked.." she said and looked around. "Oh you guys don't know about that? Apparently something is supposed to eventually attack the pod. It's fate. I had wondered if it was that shark, but I think that was just the beginning..."

Nixie leaned back in her seat. "They're going to attack the pod for the moon rings... we need to figure out how, when, and most importantly why. Then we can stop it," she said and looked at Cleo. "Right? We can stop it?" Cleo sighed and shook her head, "truth is I have no idea Nixie.. I'm sorry." Nixie stood and quickly slipped off to her room to think. Cleo looked at everyone else. "She's right. We need to do some digging. Tomorrow morning everyone but Cam and Lewis come down and do said digging. Everyone go get some rest," she said over the sounds of Cam's disgruntled dissent. She headed off to her own room and Lewis clapped Cam on the shoulder. "Hey it's not so bad, being human.. You can learn to use all the equipment!" Cam glared at him ans Lewis swallowed and nodded. "Yeah you're right... Welcome to the B team," he mumbled and followed after Cleo.

Cam headed to knock on Nixie's door. "Hey, it's me" he called out, hearing a sniffle. "Hey me, I'm dad," she grumbled back and he groaned as he pushed it open. "That was bad, I hope you knoe that," he said and shook his head. "Never do it again," he watched her gently. She laid her head in his lap with a weak giggle before coming up and kissing him gently, her lip tasting of salt and vanilla. He kissed her back as he wiped the tears from her cheeks and wrapped his arms around her. He laid down and held her after a moment, her small frame falling asleep in his arms and tempting him to close his eyes too. Soon enough, they were both dreaming of the next day, hopes and fears flooding their head through the night.