Sea To Land

Chapter Seventeen

Max stayed with me for the night. All I had to do was sneak him in after my parents went to bed, it was so easy, almost too easy. So that we both fit in the bed he had to wrap his body slightly around me, spooning as he called it. He had his arm draped over my stomach.

I thought we would've fallen asleep quickly but that wasn't the case. We stayed up for a long time talking. I was so glad that my parents usually sleep in for a bit, it gave me enough time to get Max out.

I gave him a kiss on the cheek before he left, and after he did I spun around in a happy circle, my hair getting everywhere.

I happily swam back to my room and laid down on my bed. I wanted to check on Pearl but I also wanted to figure out what spell could help Max. Deciding to check on Pearl first I got back up and swam out of my room.

I almost ran into my mom as I swam out. I did get a face full of light brown hair. She turned around and looked down at me with her bright blue eyes.

"What's the rush hun?" She asked.

"I was just heading out to see Pearl. She was upset yesterday when we got back." I panicked for a second, forgetting that to them we were out before I remembered and calmed down.

"Oh. We'll go check on her then." And with that she waved me off.

I swam a fast as I could to Pearl's house, only stopped once I was there. I knocked on the door and Pearl's mom, er, non-biological mom answered.

"Hi, I came to see Pearl."

"Come right in. She's right here."

I swam inside and saw that her dad was sitting on one rock while Pearl was on another. Her dad was then joined by her mom. I joined Pearl on her rock.

"Are you OK?" I whisper asked.

"Yes and no. I got more answers but still have tons of questions." She whispered back, keeping her head down.

"Uh-hm." Her dad cleared his throat. "So, um. How did you find her, biological mom? I know she probably wasn't in the other village, any nearby village was told about her, so where did you actually go?"

Pearl and I shared an unsure look about how to answer him. On one hand if we told him the truth who knows what trouble we could get in, but on the other hand if we lied what would we say. I saw in Pearl's eyes that she didn't want to talk.

So it was up to me.

I decided to tell the truth, but lie about some bits. So I retold the story but left out the part of me being half mer or that Max knew me outside of the water. By the time I was done, Pearl's parents were speechless.

"You, A. talked to a human, B. helped the human to become full human, and C. swam out into the ocean without an adult?!" Her dad was fluming.

"Maybe." I murmured.

He sighed while rubbing his face. "I guess we should've told you Pearl, but we thought you weren't ready."

I just sat there awkwardly as they started to have a small fight.

"Not ready?! I'm 16 years old! I should've known about this!" Pearl cried.

"We were going to tell you soon but we didn't know how you would take it." Her dad replied.

"Well I'm pretty sure I would've taken it better if I was told by you and not after going across the ocean to help a friend!"

I could tell Pearl needed comfort. I draped my arm over her shoulders and pulled us closer to each other. She looked over at me and I saw her face soften as she gave me a small smile.

She looked over at her parents again and said, " I need to cool off. I'm gonna hang out with Lilith for a while."

With a sigh her mom said, "OK. Go ahead."

And together we swam out. I was leading her towards the cave I took Max before she said, "No, let's go to the shore and see if Max is there. I want to finish helping him."

And that's where we went.

When we got there we went to the rock that I normally went to and looked for Max. It was a long time before we saw him but he saw us immediately. He jogged over to us and swam behind the rock with us.

"Have you guys thought of the spell that could work?" Max asked right away.

I hadn't really thought about it. I didn't know many spells, I didn't know what to put on top of his curse to change it. I reached for my pendant for comfort when it hit me.

The spell I used! If I did it the right way Max wouldn't always become a merman in water.

"I got it!" I cheered.

Max and Pearl looked at me and gave me a look that said Be quiet! I smiled in embarrassment as I felt heat rush to my face.

I whispered this time. "We can use the spell I did! If you get me an object or something you can wear we can do it when no one's around."

It seemed like Max's eyes got brighter when he heard this. "So I'll be like you but the opposite?" He asked.

"Yep. The spell makes the wearer have a tail when the object is wet and have legs when it's dry, and when the object isn't on whoever's wearing it, they stay the way they were when they were born!" I was beaming. We were finally "reversing" his curse.

~Thanks for reading!
For anyone who was wondering there is step-family members like on land, especially sense there isn't a such thing as divorce.
Enjoy the story :)~