Resonant

Chapter 7

Fen

I felt when Zale left campus and stretched our bond thin with distance. I wasn't surprised he was going, but it was undeniably disappointing. It had been hard not to hope that he might work things out in his head overnight, and that we would be able to talk a little more about our bond and what that meant sometime today. Instead, he was gone without a word.

Usually when I was feeling down, I holed up in bed. Sometimes, if I wasn't feeling totally wretched, I would visit with my best friend, Luin. I definitely wasn't feeling social enough for that today, but laying around in the quiet with nothing to distract me from my thoughts was only making things worse.

I worried about whether Zale would ever come around.

I worried about having to go to his underwater kingdom if he did.

As it got later, I worried he wouldn't come back tonight and that I might have to spend another night with him gone.

Sometime in the afternoon, an idea occurred to me. It was just the right balance of being a distraction from my thoughts while also letting me maybe feel a little closer to Zale. I decided to try swimming.

I wasn't a very good swimmer. I could barely keep myself afloat, but that didn't matter so much since I could always teleport out of the pool if I started sinking. Even knowing that, I hesitated on the edge of the pool and was about to walk toward the shallow end, where I could stand and ease my way into the deeper parts, when the door opened. I jumped so hard that I went toppling over and fell flailingly into the pool. I opened my mouth to scream and water rushed down my throat and nose. I kicked in utter panic, but I had lost all sense of direction and found my hands scraping the bottom of the pool.

Arms wrapped around me and started tugging me upward before I could collect myself. My head was thrust up into the air and I happily sucked in a few deep breaths. By the time I had recovered some sense, I realized my hands were clutching my captor, who wasn't a hideous sea monster at all. It was that mer student, Adras.

He was still pulling me along, I realized, and he didn't stop until we were against the wall of the pool. My hands automatically grasped at the edge so I could hold myself, and I nodded my thanks at a wide-eyed Adras.

"Are you okay?" he asked, sounding breathless.

"Fine," I assured him. I coughed out some water and then pressed my forehead against the edge of the pool, focusing on trying to breathe. "Thank you."

"This is why they don't want people to swim alone," he said. "This could have been so much worse."

I should have just agreed with him, or maybe I should have explained that I could teleport and that I would have collected myself enough to do so before I could drown. Instead, what I said was probably the stupidest possible response. "But you and Zale swim alone all the time."

His brows raised and he looked at me like I was an idiot. "Yeah... but we're mer."

I looked down into the water and saw Adras' tail. It was my first time seeing one close up, and I couldn't look away. The scales glittered in the low light, and they were the color of pure gold. My people, the Seelie, tended to have metallic eye colors – my own eyes were golden in color – but irises were so small and his tail was so big. It was stunning.

Not as beautiful as Zale's, I recalled. His had been silver, with gold accents all around his body. It was much more interesting than one color ever could be.

"Mr. Martritz, are you okay?" Adras asked, and I realized I had never answered him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry." I shook my head and forced my eyes up to meet his, which were exactly the same shade of blue as Zale's. Maybe it was a common color amongst sea-folk, but it would stand out among humans. I had never seen anyone else with such a vivid shade of aqua.