Sea To Land

Chapter Six

Over the weekend Maire came to swim with Pearl and I at the beach. I waited for her on one of the rocks in the sea. I kept peaking around the sides of the rock looking for her when I spotted some classmates. It looked like Max, Toby, and three other boys I didn't know. Just then I saw Maire walking into the beach. She saw me and smiled. Once Maire was in the sea with me she leaned against the same rock I was.

"So you ready to swim with the fish again?" I asked with a smile.

"Totally."

As she was getting ready to swim I looked over at our classmates again and saw Max looking at us. He was looking at me while in the water. I quickly turned to Maire and said, "Maire, Max has seen us."

She stopped grabbing her stuff and looked up at me. Her eyes read panic. I tipped my head in the direction he was and Maire stole a quick glance at him and saw him looking at us.

Turning back to me she said. "We should just get under the water." After she said that she had her goggles, flippers, and sucba mask on in seconds.

I swam into deeper water, while keeping my tail hidden, and waited for Maire. She was soon at my side and we were going underwater.

~

Not much happened after we went underwater. Pearl meet with us and we explored reefs together. We saw beautiful and colorful fish in colorful corals. We saw crabs and hermit crabs, starfish, and clownfish in sea anemones.

When we got back to shore Max and his friends were gone. I let out a breath of relief. Maire left like normal and I started swimming back into the ocean. Then something moved in the corner of my eye. I did a 360 and saw nothing. I continued on thinking maybe I saw a rock in a weird light. Then something large brushed against my fin.

Now I knew that was something. Yes I have had fish brush against my tail as well as corals and seaweed but that was not any of that. Quickly I ducked under the water. That's when I saw something with a shinny and blue tail swim around a rock.

I relaxed a little bit. It was another mer. Probably doing what I've been doing since I was 10, watching land.

Swimming over to the rock to say hi there was something about this mer that was familiar to me. I swam around the rock and stopped. It was Max. Max was a merman! How? When? We just floated there, taking each other in.

At the same time we said "You're a mer?" Again at the same time, "Yeah."

I started first. "How long how you been half-merman?"

"Only for eight days. How long have you been half-mermaid?"

"My whole life. While I've been a mermaid my whole life and since Monday I've been half-human." I watched as his eyes widened.

"You made yourself half-human? You can do that?"

"Yeah. It's a really simple spell but using spells are banned 'cause they're sea witch spells so I had to search for a while. How'd you become half-merman?"

"I was cursed by, I'm guessing, a sea witch."

"Oh."

There was an awkward silence as we didn't know what to say. Then I broke the silence with a question. "Do you like, this." I panned up and down his tail.

"Not at all."

Then I had a light lunch moment. "I might be able to change you back- with enough digging."

"What! You could?"

"Like I said, with enough digging."

He swam forward and hugged me. "Thank you! I don't want to be anxious about going to the beach!"