Fins Above:HOPE

CH.6

Red fins traveled against the Seer Summit, gliding towards the spiraling whirlpool that washed grime onto her scales. The mermaid flicked her tail with an insatiable hunger. Her black hair twisted to the side, full of bouncing curls as she hissed at the twirling powerhouse. The summit was curved out and fizzing with metallic foam, which floated into her gills while she stood at the edge of a cliff. The yellow clay sand fluttered around the whirlpool while her cold eyes battered at the ocean's beauty. She had waited patiently for waves to do this.

Her blue splotches inched away as she flexed her muscles and bowed her belly to the earth, balancing on one arm. She snarled when the acid-like ocean sprayed at her. Her eyes flashed with dark orange hues, tail tossing itself to the side as she slammed against the cliff and leaped into the twisting pool. Her body appeared and disappeared through the journey until she gasped and widened her eyes to see the darkness below. As the pool simmered above in a twirl, she slipped into the underwater cave. Her fins touched every crevasse before she sniffed out the rancid smell of rotting flesh and lapped at the walls of fossils. The clay dust wiped off on her tongue after she spit.

Once her tail flicked and she took the scattered gems into her bag, her body yanked upwards and was thrown into the side of the cliff, feeling the bulbs of kelp and seagrass strip the skin on her arm. She staggered for a moment, mouth widening once she watched the whirlpool that had screamed so loudly before begin to die down. The ocean stopped moving. And the silence in her ears was filled with only her rapid heartbeat and the motion of the world around her. There was nothing else. But as she stood to her side and thrashed out of the summit with the gems, she chased the game fish from their schools and disrupted the whale calls of the marine beasts. This was a victory for her son.

Her tail whipped across the surface of the ocean as she traversed against the currents of the sea. She heard boats and human cargo ships call out to the lonely tall palaces on islands from afar. Their lights touched the water and brightened the sky with their symbols of life. A drumming sound in her ear bellowed out as she watched the sky darken above her. The hull of a small boat thumped, hovering as the two beings crossed paths. The mermaid pulled her hair back into a tail before she tucked the gems into her hip belt and drove her body to the surface.

The humans press their fingers into tiny boxes of technology called phones, swiping with their nails at digital worlds not accessible for the merfolk. But if she could take over such a tool, she would rally up a world of followers that wailed against the winds about their righteous plan to create a better world for the dying merfolk. She'll let them know that the help of the humans created waste, destroyed the coral she breathed in, and bleached the lakes her baby should have been able to love. Her lips wetted, she wanted to know if this human was the same as the others. The human that sat upon the vessel took out a net and scooped her into the narrow boat, placing her on a separate raft in front of them. Water dripped from the mermaid's face as she played dead, spitting out grime from her gills so that it was mistaken for crimson blood. She had expected the lanky terrain beast to be smarter, but as they clicked open a camera app and flashed at the raft where she left, the boat rocked a bit. Just like the others.

Merfolk blood is copper, fool. The mermaid wailed and tossed the human's face into her jaws, chewing down to the point where the bones shattered under her bite force. As the sockets dislocated, the mermaid shuffled to the side and tossed the body onto the separate raft. Through her delicate gills, she lapped in salt water to clean the blood that fell into her gill bags. She gushed it out through her nose. Her tail curled to the side while she feasted upon the vacant body, her tongue ripping the skin with the barbs and rolling the chunks of meat into the back of her throat.

Baytooth was hungry. She'd been hungry since she ventured out of the temporary den from the rest of the foolish merfolk. Her eyes lingered on the racing sun above her that was still gray with stormy clouds. A symphony in her belly rang out as she ripped into another mass of flesh from her victim. What was she hungry for? If live prey cannot satisfy her, she'd cook and blister her next one that runs fast enough. Her tongue lolled out at the hot air around her nostrils, swampy metal in her taste buds while she rummaged through the belongings on the boat. A large box containing mechanisms, books, magazines and some extra clothes that would be practically useless to her. She tossed it to the ocean and sneered.