Sea To Land

Chapter Twelve

I woke up to Max almost right in my face. I jumped up silently and saw Pearl already up. I swam over to her and grabbed my own food. Max soon joined us and we again ate in silence. We silently packed our stuff up and set off again.

With Pearl in the front reading the map Max and I talked in the back. I just kept asking him about human stuff, like camping. He seemed pretty amused by my reaction to his answers.

At one point Pearl stopped. As Max and I turned to ask her way we saw it for ourselves. There was a giant shipwreck in front of us. The ship had coral wrapped around it's body with fish swimming all around it.

"Wow, I've never seen anything like this before." Pearl said.

"I've seen smaller ones before but never this big." I gaped.

I only learned about shipwrecks one of the times I swam with Maire. We saw a, well tiny one compaired to this one, one of the first times we swam together. We swam in and out of the different holes like dolphins.

I smiled as I remembered it and almost like they were on cue, dolphins swam from the surrounding ocean and started playing in the shipwreck.

Pearl spoke dolphin that I couldn't understand. One of the smaller dolphins swam over to us and stopped at each of us in turn. I patted the little dolphin on it's head as before it swam off.

"Mermaids can speak dolphin?" Max asked

"Yeah. It's a way we can ask for help. Mermaids used to grow up with dolphins and for a while we lived with them, so naturally in both of our DNA's we help each other." Pearl said as she gently played with the baby dolphin.

"Honestly, I want to learn to speak dolphin." Max admitted.

"I can't really speak it myself." I told him.

"We've been practicing in school during the time you've been on land."

"Oh. Well that explains it." I said watching the dolphins play in the shipwreck. "Let's join them!"

Max and Pearl followed me as I started playing with the dolphins. Pearl kept talking to the pod while Max and I swam along side them. We must of spent a couple hours playing with them before we went our different ways.

"That was fun." Max happily said.

"Yeah." I agreed.

"Too bad it wasted time." Pearl mumbled looking at the map.

"Well then let's get going." I said and swam ahead. "I don't know where I'm going." I turned around and gave Pearl a half smile.

Pearl shook her head at me and swam ahead of me again. 

~

We kept swimming, passing by little pits that Max insisted on checking, and by the time we found a place to stay it was dark.

"Welp, let's get set up." I said swimming into the cave.

Max and Pearl followed me. As I swam in I realized that this was a really small cave.

"I think we'll have to make one big bed." Pearl said behind me.

"Yeah." Max and I synchronized.

So together we made ourselves a giant bed that fit all of us. And together we had food, sharing small talk between bites. After we finished and packed away the map we laid down and talked till we all fell asleep.

~

I woke up with my head on my arm and as I sat up I saw my other hand was next to my head. And Max's hand was on top of mine. I smiled to myself before slowly sliding my hand out.

I held my breath and pose as Max stirred, until he flipped over.

I let out my breath and watched the bubbles float away from my mouth.

As I looked around I saw that I was the first one up. Pushing myself up I had some kelp to fill myself up, then packed away my section of the bed, slung my bag over my shoulder, and swam outside.

I didn't have much reason to go outside, I just wanted to. I dug through the sand and found more shells, sand dollars, and sadly a baby turtle shell.

It's just the how the ocean works. I reminded myself while holding onto the pendant. I'll take this to remember you little one.

I softly put the shell in the bag and swam back to the cave.

When I got back I saw that Pearl and Max were waking up and packed their beds up. I swam in and sat with them as they ate.

"How's mer food Max?" I asked.

"It's weird at first but I got used to it." He said.

"Huh, would've thought you didn't like it and was eating it to eat." I said.

"It's not bad compaired to food I normally eat." Max told us.

They finished eating and we set off following the map. According to Pearl we should be there tomorrow around sunhigh. Imagine that. Day four of an adventure mission and mission accomplished! And we would have plenty of time to get back home.

Thinking about home I turned around and couldn't even see a dot that represented the village. I silently hoped that we wouldn't get lost and kept swimming forward.

~

We passed many holes and pits and ravines that Max again insisted we check. All of them were checked. No on else realized it but the sand was slowly falling away from under us.

As the sand was falling away from under us I saw something in the depths in front of us.

"Guys, wait, stop!" I cried as I sped in front of the group, holding my arms out.

As we watched we saw what was in the waters, a humpback whale was heading for the surface!

"This is amazing!" Max cheered.