15,107 / 50,000 (30.2%)

I've always wanted to have a clay fight :)  Oh, vicarious experiences...
 

This was fun. I was getting bored attempting to be subtle about the magic.

12,027 / 50,000 (24.1%)

Happy 4th! I've been having a lot of fun today pushing the little brother - he's off to boy scout camp on Sunday, and won't be able to be doing and Julno for a week. Slight problem for him, there. So he's a thousand words ahead of me, and I'll probaby be obnoxious tomorrow as well and push him to get to 14/15k. Anyway: the second installment:

8,104 / 50,000 (16.2%)

I will be participating in Julnowrimo, Nano's July equivalent. And it is July 1st. Therefore: there shall be lots of prose coming at you. I apologize. But please, if you have time to read it, comments and thoughts would be lovely. (Oh - and if you can figure out what's up with the mop, I am in awe of you.)

Prologue: Visit on the Wind

2,222 / 50,000 (4.4%)

Walking though the cold cloudy day
I saw the snowflakes fall onto new grass
The greening glimmering springtime called through
From the freshly robin raked o’er clay
To the tips of stately branches waving past
Natural spaces following their cues
Little blooms peeking through the rising tide
of grasslets and rootlings and Spring’s fair smile
searching for the source of life-light and warmth
Trees stretch, stiff from the chill, and the wind chides
As each the other’s rightful place will take
Spring flirts with the wind, sending him her dearth
Empty branches only – then buds, and birds
Blossoms opening on every tree
Happy stretching, rising, flirting, flaunting
While the animals prance still winterfurred
Spring offers Winter her remembrance
Thin white petals float – his memory daunting

Very rough - and it doesn't flow. But I think it gets my idea across.

So it certainly needs editing. But not for a while.

Chapter 22

Venet looked at his son, who was lying on his bed staring at the ceiling.
“You know that it wouldn’t have lasted anyway. You were just a summer fling to her.”
Venedig ignored his father, and went on staring at the ceiling.
“This isn’t helpful, you just lying around. I know that we can’t offer to take people out in the boat while the ocean is like this, but I haven’t seen you this lazy in your life. You’re always doing something – if it isn’t trying to make an impression on the ladies, it’s like you’re trying to prove yourself to me, or – just the ocean, perhaps! Come on. Get up.”
Venedig made a noncommittal noise.
Venet sat on the edge of his son’s bed. “You’ve also never cared when your spoiled little rich girls leave you alone and completely drop contact.”
This, at least provoked some reaction. “They weren’t. Rich, I mean. From what I gathered, their family was only done here because of some favor of the father’s boss.”
Venet grimaced. That didn’t really make Venedig’s lovesick and guilt-ridden self-imposed coma any better. “Look. I’m sorry I can’t bring them back here. But you need to pull yourself together. Where did your bright ideas go? Your mind always running, and running, in every direction. You are as bright as your mother was!”
Venedig stilled, if possible, even further. His father never, ever, talked about his mother. His eyes, though, slid around and locked onto his father’s face. Venet noticed the attention, sighed, and began to pace around the room. He threw open the French doors and the foot of the bed, letting the ocean breezes in. (Though the ocean was still partially putrified through the red tide, still, Venedig had deteriorated since the day Tayin’s family had left – the ocean’s smell was preferable to the stink of sweat and unhappiness that permeated the room.)
“Come sit on your porch with me.”
Venedig sat up, slowly, and tottered out to the porch, landing heavily on one of the white plastic chairs. Venet didn’t sit, but paced up and down the little porch, forcing Venedig to pull his legs in close, so his father didn’t trip over them. They looked out over the sea, recovering but still a brownish-blue rather than the crisp tropical blue that they knew and loved.
“Your mother came back with one of my tours. I had taken a bunch of tourists snorkeling out by the reef, and I remember that we had had one empty seat going down. But when we pulled away from the the island, she swam up, calm as you please – no flippers, no mask, just a little bikini – your little rich girls have bikinis that look like that – as little material but screaming expensive.” Venedig hoped that his father wouldn’t continue to go off on side rants about his mother’s clothes – it was the personality, and the plot, that he cared about. Venet saw his impatience, curtailed his reminiscing. “It was cute. She was cute. She was tanned, but lighter than me.” Vendig’s father smiled, his white teeth stark against his dark skin. “She asked for a ride back to shore, and when we got back, she hung around the boat and asked if I knew someplace she could get a room for pretty cheap. I was staying with your grandmother at the time – your aunt owns the inn, now, you know – the one in the rainforest?”
Venedig nodded. He knew the one – not only was it where he had spent a good portion of his life, but it was where he and Tayin had heard about Kaia (and hence the one place he had gotten rip-roaring drunk in his life, ever).
“So I offered one of your grandmother’s rooms to her; and your grandmother was rather… not unhappy, but kind of scandalized, that I would bring a young lady (and one not wearing many clothes) to her establishment. I gave her rides back into town, when she needed them, and lent her clothes when she asked. Those drives… those drives were wonderful. She knew all manner of folklore of the island, and we discussed what could and could not possibly exist, the philosophy behind our belief systems, current movies. Eventually we got to the bigger questions of life, and love. We got married the next year.”
Venet smiled at his son. “I just wanted you to know that I understand what you’re talking about, when you speak –or don’t speak, in your case – of love. She died after you were born. Remember that you have the ability to see this girl again, if you really want to. Though you’re going to have to show me that you’re able to stand on two feet, to hang onto your dignity, before I’m sending you all the way to Ziemia, understand?”
“You would send me to her home? But we don’t have enough money for that!”
“We’d be able to manage.” Venedig knew the finances as well as his father did. Plane tickets were expensive – to get there and back, Venet would have to dip into his retirement fund.
“Thank you.” Venedig stood, and gave his father a hug. Venet’s life goal was to ferry around tourists until he could finance taking the boat out by himself, or with Venedig, and just let the sea toss them back and forth across the waves.
Venedig walked back inside, stripped his bed, and began to clean his room, his whirlwind of activity a little slower than it usually was, but sparked by his mental goal: once he didn’t feel like a slob anymore, he would be able to relocate the slip of paper Tayin had written her phone number on. (He was sure he knew where it was, but was putting that bit of his room off until he had unslobified.)

&

Kaia reached for the telephone. Everyone had assured her that it would work, then withdrew from the sunlit balcony. Her hand shook. There was no way she could do this! She hated telephones to begin with – they were such horribly disembodied things, and though they could transmit voices, you lost that sense of how the person was saying what they were saying – the emotions were muffled – and what was she going to SAY? She stared at the black telephone with loathing. Yes, she needed to call home. Like ET, it was something she needed to do. Unlike that little green guy, she was happy in her new environment. It was weird, yes, but the ability to fly through the water, letting the water slide past her eyes, her face, her gills. How could she explain that to her parents – or rather, how could she explain that to her parents in a way that they would understand? She could just see it: ‘hi Mom, Dad. No, I’m not dead. Some crazy mermaid came across me when I was mostly dead, like that old Princess Bride movie, and was able to make me alive again by turning me into a mermaid.’
It wouldn’t work. Was it really better to let them know that she wasn’t dead, or would it be too much?
Testhys came out with a glass of water, ostensibly for Kaia, and sat down next to her friend. “You need to do this”
“I know. It’s just – they won’t believe me.”
“They’ll believe you aren’t dead.”
“But what do I tell them about what I… am?”
“You don’t need to. It’s a secret, remember?”
“But what do I tell them about being not dead? How long has it even been?”
“Two months.”
“But what do I tell them? That I went on a drug trip and overdosed? That I hit my head and randomly got amnesia? That I was abducted, chained up, and guarded by a slavering dog?”
“The second wasn’t bad, anyway.”
“But… they’re my parents. I don’t want to lie to them.”
“You were hit over the head. And you didn’t remember anything when you woke up after Sistern fixed you up.”
“And I’ve just been larking around for two months?”
“You have. But you needn’t tell them that.”
“Is there any way I don’t have to use that – thing?” Kaia threw a hand at the telephone.
Testhys smiled, sadly. “Not unless you know anyone else on the island.”
“Well”
“Do you?”
“My older sister was going out with a guy – he lent me books”
“Name?”
“Venedig. Venedig Thomias.”
“Go grab a dress from the closet. We’re going into town and you’re going to run into him and your amnesia is going to disappear. Just like that.” Testhys snapped her fingers.

When Kaia ran off to grab ‘real clothes’, Testhys flipped through Sistern’s phone book – which was a little different than normal ones. Though it was the same bright yellow and ridiculous thickness, the names of people on the island were color-coded. No one really knew what the codes meant except for Sistern, but most of them weren’t important. All of the tourist places, for example, had yellow highlighting, while the people who knew Sistern’s family, even a little, had red.
Venet Thomias’ number was in orange.
Testhys wondered a bit at this, but knew she had to make this quick if th boy – whoever he was – was going to meet them in town.

Venedig picked up the phone, slightly irked that he the line would be busy while he attempted to be polite to the customer, and he wouldn’t be able to call Tayin for a while yet. Whatever he heard, it was enough. He sprinted out the door, calling over his shoulder a plea to borrow the car as he went, and was in town seven and a half minutes later. As it usually took him ten to maneuver the curves around the cliff-top roads, he might have been speeding. A bit.
He found a place to park and went to go sit in the specified café. A few minutes later, two girls walked up. One was unfamiliar, the other shocking. She had lost some weight and held herself differently now, but there was no mistaking Tayin’s knowledge-thirsty little sister. Venedig sprang up out of his chair – it fell with a clatter and earned him a disapproving look from the waiter – and ran through the door scooping her up in his arms and spinning her around. He heard a rather confused “what?” and saw the shock in her eyes as she recognized him. “Venedig!”
“You know her then?” the other girl asked, sounding confused. Venedig thought he had heard the voice before somewhere, and connected it to the phone call he had just gotten.
“Yes. But you know that, somehow, don’t you?”
“She talked a lot while she was out of it. Your last name was one of the only ones we could find in the phonebooks for the island, so I called you in. Sorry for the shock value. I just thought that it would do her some good – possibly shake her into remembering – if I showed her someone she knew.” Then, to Kaia – “are you remembering any more now?”
“Yes. No. Maybe? I dreamt there were mermaids. I dreamt you were a mermaid. And now – now it’s just so confused.” Tethys smiled, though a little sadly. The drug that she had put in Kaia’s water worked, then. Perhaps better than she had hoped. It did seem cruel that she would think of her time with the mers as mere fantasy, but Sistern said that for particularly strong-minded individuals, its effect was not too lasting. And if Kaia ever started telling her children stories about the mers, then maybe it would come back. Or if Naoise got his wish, and got into that little prestigious college near her home, perhaps he would help her to remember.
“Has she been like this for two months? And why did she never get put into the hospital? Her family’s been worried sick!”
“My uncle, name of Sistern, has been a registered doctor in these parts for years and years. Your father might have heard of him – he did retire a while ago – but he was perfectly qualified to take care of your –“
“She’s the younger sister of my girlfriend”
“of your almost-sister, then”
“And she didn’t go to the hospital because we were worried that the quality of care there has diminished something awful. Sometimes they even let their patients go before they’ve been treated! Imagine that. We knew that they wouldn’t have had enough staff to look after her.”
“But – the Amber Alert!”
“She was on the Amber Alert?” Tethys looked impressed. “Our communications were completely shot during that last big storm. Took us weeks to get stuff back together – we’re down on the other end of the island. Didn’t hear it – I’m so sorry. Do you know how we can get in touch with her parents?”
Kaia, curled up in the crook of Venedig’s arm, smiled. She was going home, and everything would be all right again when she was home. Venedig put off calling Tayin no longer, and it was arranged that he and Kaia would take the next flight off the island.

Testhys, upon returning home, looked out at the brightening ocean. Finally, it looked clean enough to swim in. Disregarding Uncle Sistern’s warnings (they mostly applied to the littler ones, anyway), she sprang off of the rocky edge of their property, shedding clothes once she got in the water. It wasn’t perfectly clear, but the little dinoflagellates were dead, now, obscuring the water but not polluting it. Testhys dove down to the caverns, and unstoppered one, knowing that she’d be yelled at when the rest of the clan came down, for letting the messy water into the caverns.
She wandered, drifting through apartments until she heard voices, not particularly happy with each other, but having some kind of a discussion on – girls? And shrieking?
But she knew that voice. She went barreling in the direction of it, and landed, sopping wet, on the hard, dry, floor of Sistern’s workchamber.
Her shriek of Ahab’s name as she barreled him over probably won Evert’s side of the argument.

55,731 / 56,000 (99.5%)

Ahab's not dead any more. Because... I like him too much. And his sister may have broken the fourth wall to kill me. And Kaia might have a personality, now!

Changes to chapter 20:

But the eggs were the thing. Naoise needed them for his experiment; he had promised to et them to Naoise; so he would do it. With the alarm bells, though – Ahab didn’t think that Naoise would still be in the cave, the one he had started to call his “lab” – but Ahab knew that he certainly hadn’t heard the bells while inside a structure, so there was a possibility that Naoise wouldn’t be able to hear them as well. Shore was closer: but doing one of his completely unexpected pleasant turns of mind, Ahab aimed himself – in the swirling water, difficult to navigate through – towards the lab. There was no one there. But the lab room was warm, and comfortable, so he made slings for the eggs and tucked them in, hoping that they would stay, and grow, and live to be happy little dinosaurs. He wrote out, for Naoise, where he had found each one, then looked around the room one last time – making sure that there weren’t any tell-tale bumps of heads or feet of little spies – and dove out, to make the swim to shore.
The red waves were more of a struggle to swim through, this time. Ahab noticed that breathing, though through gills, which should have been comfortable enough – you get used to having a flap of skin float up with each exhalation when it’s been you’re normal state for the vast majority of your life – but now, his gills were feeling uncomfortable, and feeling lightheaded, Ahab tried to swim faster. After all, as he needed to get to shore anyway, why not cut through the clouds of the red things?
A less than prudent idea. Ahab’s gills were swarmed over by the red things, drinking in every possible nutrient that they could get, and Ahab was getting less oxygen each time his blood pumped. He saw the rising of the ocean floor, meaning that he was near land, but his blood pumped through his ears and his gills began to cause twitchings in the rest of his body. He needed oxygen – was getting none from the water – and knew the end before it came. He shook out the mess of his hair – hoping that it would trap some of the creature, filter out his water – and grasped the small piece of coral he wore around his neck. Inscribing it with a message to whoever found him took most of the rest of his energy. Remembering, vaguely, that the water farther down was a little clearer, he started back that way. Yet even he was not sure if he managed to make the clear, dark waters below. Stranded in no man’s land – no mer’s land – Ahab surrendered to his inability to breathe.

Sistern had realized Ahab’s disappearance as soon as Roosevelt house was calmed down a bit, and had assumed that the younger one would realize that if he was safe, he could stay where he was. Of course, safe was always a relative term, but better turning pale and listless in a cave at the bottom of the sea than washing up on the beach as some sort of flotsam, hoping to stay rather than let the tide carry you away.

Chapter 21:

Evert arrived in Sistern’s area as the red tide shifted off towards shore. His first hope was to get his relations out of the area. Though sistern had never – quite – condoned Ahab’s hunting spree, he had never really spoken against them either. There would be no reason for Sistern to waste time or energy – or possibly the life of his immediate family – to help beings he saw as simple sharks. If they were killed by the tide, then the reef would be safer for the young ones; if they weren’t, then they would have less food and might just disappear anyway. Either way – Evert knew he wouldn’t have hope from Sistern’s group.
Arriving, Evert didn’t bother with the usual precautions against the red tide. The Council had gifted him with a little ointment to spread over his gils, which would allow them to function even better than normal in this environment. He wasn’t sure exactly what was in the ointment, but sometimes it was better not to ask. He navigated the covered reefs, a little thrown off by the lack of color, the lack of life evident under the mers’ coverings. It was deserted, and a little eerie under the red glow of the sunset.
Twisting and undulating through the corridors between the coral, Evert noticed a shadow hanging limp. Was it one of his relatives? He circled closer, wary of the teeth. Instead – he saw dark hair and the flash of light on the scales of a tail. Uncle Sistern had managed to leave one of his people behind? And – he came closer – the mer’s gills did not have the protection his own did. Evert brushed off the flakes of dead-looking bits of tide, smeared some of the ointment on the mer’s neck – and noticed the face. His hand stilled. The destroyer of his life lay there, gently floating in the water, swishing back and forth with the waves. Ahab. Mostly dead. Evert glared at the inert body. Ahab had no right to take his revenge away from him! For the past few years, he had pestered the council specifically for the revenge he needed. He deserved a decent fight with Ahab. The stupid mer had no right to go off and die on him!
Irrational, perhaps, but Evert was furious. He heaved the bigger mer up with him and dragged Ahab over to Uncle Sistern’s dwellings. Finding a way in was annoying – Sistern had made some changes to the architecture since Evert had last been here – but he managed to find a way in. The lower rooms had some of the same red impurities that the outside, so he dragged Ahab up to the upper rooms. These were cleaner, but Evert wanted to shock Ahab back into life. If only to kill him for being such an idiot as to let himself nearly drown. He had GILLS, for Pete’s sake. It was horridly embarrassing for someone with gills to drown.
Evert switched, pulled himself out of the water heaved his rival out of the water and into the clean air of one of the underwater rooms. It looked like Sistern’s doctor-room, all white and ridiculously clean and dry. They were making rather messy puddles on the floor. Now, assuming Ahab switched – which he did, with a convulsion and a hacking cough – he would cease being mostly dead. Good.
Perhaps the eyes rolling to the back of the head was less good. Evert didn’t know, or particularly care. (The cough, however, gave him an excuse to smack Ahab between the shoulder blades – help that gunk come right out.) Oh! And the attempt at language was always a good sign. (though Unguh is not usually a sound that has a whole lot of meaning associated with it). Perhaps some stimulation would get a more articulate response.
“Hey. Ahab”
“Wha?” Better, but still less than coherent.
“I’m going to kill you if you’ve managed to kill yourself. You should be embarrassed. Drowning? Really? So gauche.”
“When… did you learn… such a big word as ‘gauche’?”
“About the same time that you ran me out of town”
“We’re not in… some stupid Western. You… left. Not my fault”
“Not your fault? Not your FAULT?” Evert was a little irritated. In the volcano-boiling-over sort of way. “You – you – landlubber! You’re the only reason I left. Didn’t you understand that? I’ve been getting support to come back here ever since – and getting ready to take you down somewhere that you won’t come back from. You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”
Ahab pretended to drift off into unconsciousness in the middle of Evert’s tirade. A move calculated to irritate his rival to no end. He was a little surprised to hear Evert curb his rant and subside to just muttering to himself, for from what he could remember, Evert would have continued yelling, even at a dead body. Ahab’s brain pondered. For that matter… had he drifted here? No – he was in air, he could feel that. Had Evert… rescued him, then? Oh, that would be unfortunate. In debt to Evert? He shuddered at the thought, then subsisted as he heard Evert walk over and felt the breeze as a – towel? – was shaken out over his body and gently settled over him.
“Honestly, for such a double-crossing family killer, you certainly don’t take care of yourself very well, do you? New scars – well, I suppose you tell Sistern not to take care of them because they amuse the ladies. Wonder if you’ve actually settled down. Bet you haven’t. You’ll be one of those annoyances who go after the little ladies even in your old age, don’t you. I wonder if any of them escaped. Hope so, otherwise you’ll have to do something worthwhile and actually –God forbid- court the ladies you want to like you.” Ahab zoned out as Sistern’s mutterings floated around him. Yes, yes, Evert was peeved with him, that was nothing new. And had always been jealous about his success with the girls. But the first bit – what had he meant by family-killer? Ahab vowed to have a serious discussion with Evert before they had whatever kind of epic battle the silly boy had dreamt up. But – after a nap.

&
Naoise helped support Kaia up the stairs. Her lungs hurt, yes, and her legs felt wobbly, but she felt that in another situation she could have made it by herself. It was nice, though, that he was helping her out. And his hug was warmer than she had any any right to expect – he was half fish, anyway. (And, she realized belatedly, so was she.)
“Kaia?”
“Mm?”
“Sistern said you might go into shock. We need to get you warm, and get some fluids into you. Fluids first, I mean.”
“Alright”

“So how does it feel, to be on land once again?”
“Decent”
They sat, companionably side by side, on the bed in the room Kaia was sharing with a couple of the others.
“Still doesn’t feel real, you know? This seems justlike an extension of the dream – I was a mermaid, now I’m not – but I still haven’t woken up.”
“Want to wander around outside? That may help you wake up.”
She shrugged. “It might help – and I don’t think it could hurt. Let’s go.”
“Alright – let me go let Sistern know where we’re going.”
“I’ll tell the girls I’m off. Mind if I ask them along?”
“No problem.”
Kaia wandered around the house, looking for Pele and Tethys. She found Pele in the salt-water pool built into the roof, switched back into mer form, and wearing an actual shirt while playing with her dinosaur. The sight of the little one’s bright red hair and the dinosaur’s elegant green and black striped scaling was incongruous, but the way that they frolicked in the blue water was adorable. Kaia sat down on the edge of the pool, and waited until they noticed her. The dinosaur actually saw her first, and when it swam over to nuzzle Kaia’s hand – invite her in to play with them – Kaia giggled. At this, Pele noticed her and swam over as well. Pele wasn’t content until she showed her dino’s new tricks to Kaia – she had trained it to swim through a hoop, and do flips up and out of the water.
Kaia applauded, gave both the dino and Pele a kiss on the cheek, and asked, “Pele? Naoise and I were going to wander down to the beach. You want to come?”
“Can we go in the water yet?”
“I don’t think so – but Naoise’ll probably know when he gets back.”
“Dino can’t be out of the water for too long. So if we can’t go in, then no. Some other time, though?”
“Okey-dokey! Enjoy the sunshine, little ones.”
“I’m not that little. I’m thirteen”
“But didn’t Sistern say something about how time runs differently here? You’d only be seven or eight if you grew up on land. Thus, little.”
“No fair!”
“Well, how old would you say I am?”
“Um… twenty, maybe? You seem older than Khanty, maybe the same age as Tethys, but older than me.”
“I’m not fifteen yet.”
“What?”
Kaia smiled at the little one’s incredulity. “You heard me. I’m 14 and a few months.”
“Well – well – psh.” And thus declaring the subject closed, Pele swooped down to the bottom of the pool, her little dinosaur following after her like a duckling after its mother.

Kaia smiled, trying to stuff down the rememberances of her family – of Dafne at that age, and how – Dafne would be 13 now, wouldn’t she? Had she missed her birthday? Dafne was going to kill her! Kaia always got spoiled with presents by Tayin, Dafne by Kaia, and then Mother and Dafne always got together to plot what to get for Tayin (as most of Tayin’s birthday wish lists were names of guys, and those were a little hard to wrap up in a box.)
She found Tethys on the balcony overhanging the cliff, staring into the red water, smashing into the cliffs, then being sucked out by the next wave’s impending strike. In – and out. “Tethys?”
The older girl didn’t turn around, didn’t make any motion that she had heard. “Tethys!” Still no response. Kaia contemplated leaving her alone, but she didn’t look right. Walking out to the edge of the balcony (it was quite a long drop. Kaia wasn’t sure shy she had no problem with airplanes, but was insecure on the upper floors of tall buildings.) she grabbed Tethys’ hand (perhaps harder than necessary; her apprehension transferring), and drew her slowly back from the edge. She didn’t have any response from the taller, stronger girl, other than a grip equally hard on her own hand.
“Come sit with me, Tethys.” Two of the lounge chairs on the balcony were dry. Kaia spread towels over them, and sat Tethys down on one, while sitting on her own. Their hands stayed locked, so they sat across from each other rather than lying in the seats as the tanning crowd would.
“What on earth is wrong?”
“Not on earth.” When Kaia looked more worried, Tethys grimaced. “Sorry. Horrible pun. Under the earth is where the wrong is.”
“You’re not making sense, honey.”
“Ahab… didn’t make it in.” The cold – the stiff – the stolid expression on Tethys’ face melted away, and tears started raining down her face. “We can’t live in that sort of an environment. There’s no air.”
“Well, when you’re underwater, of course there’s no air.” Tethys glared daggers at Kaia. “Sorry. Attempting a horrible pun of my own.”
Tethys sighed, and tried to explain. She knew Kaia wasn’t trying to make this harder for her, but it certainly seemed that way. “You’ve never known what it’s like, to have somebody there, always, to help when you’re sick, injured, whatever. Sure, sometimes he was out doing something else, taking care of the shark problem, learning stuff with Sistern – but he was always there, if I needed him. All I had to do was call. My big brother, Kaia – and I’ll never see him again. We’ve been here a week, Kaia. He knows what the alarm bells mean, knows that he was to get to shore if he heard the one that played. He’s been around for a while – he knows. But he didn’t make it. Even if he made it to a different island, he would be able to call.” Her voice sunk, and added, barely above a whisper, “He’s dead, Kaia. I don’t have a brother anymore.”

Kaia hugged her friend, and Tethys’ words sank in. She whispered as well, shocked with her own sense of guilt. “Oh God. What have I done to my family?” Tethys hugged her back, then released her. Her tear-streaked face glowed with color, with emotion, with passion. “You need to let them know that you’re alive.”

53,370 / 60,000 (88.9%)

Chapter Twenty

Evert was back at the council, restless again. He couldn’t face going through their entranceway, he knew that if he did they would do their best to leave his only coherent thoughts popping like bubbles in his brain yet again, but he needed to know what they were doing. The council had finally let him go, hoping that a tour of the surrounding water, to check on the sharks that might have been long-lost relatives would make him happier, more easily coerced into sitting around and doing nothing.
Sure, they were allowed to do their part in order to keep the peace, and Evert knew that his thoughts, at least, wouldn’t tend towards the peaceful if left alone, but still. Was draining him of the ability to think, the ability to put names and faces together in his mind, really the right way to go about fixing that? Evert wouldn’t admit that, as a hot-blooded young thing, his was not the path of calm, of right, of happiness. But still. The idea of that deadly calm, like a monstrous iceberg right before it killed you (because mers had gotten stuck underneath, before, and it wasn’t fun, as far as he’d heard) of cold and silence and stillness, and this enormous pressure – he wasn’t going back in. The guard in lonely duty smiled sadly at the boy’s persistence; he didn’t seem like he was willing to leave without confronting them.
“They’re not in a particularly good mood today, boy.”
“Mm?”
“I wouldn’t recommend going in. There was some trouble in the Carib isles – you know where they are?” Evert did, though the council seemed to have really odd naming systems for locations – or perhaps they used the names that had changed over the bazillion years that they had sat there in their throne-like chairs. He nodded to the guard. “There’s a pretty severe red tide over there. The fish, the reef, the mers – they’re all going to be effected. Their chief, Sisyphus, was it?”
“Sistern”
“Yeah, him. Sistern rang the alarm bells earlier, could almost be heard out here. All the nearest tribes got their people out. Council’s trying to figure out why it happened, what will happen if something like that happens again. They’re not used to trouble in the Caribs.” The guard continued his garrulous ramblings, while Evert tried to understand what this would mean. There was always the possibility of his once-time rival getting himself killed, though he wasn’t sure if he wanted the red flagellates to take care of his own job for him. Evert had always meant to take care of Ahab’s disposal himself, but he wanted the sanction of the council and to reveal how incredibly despicable the boy was, before he would strike: he wanted to be in the right, revealing the great wrong Ahab had done to him, and he wanted it to be resolved so Sistern’s tribe looked on him, evert, as a savior from some sort of horrible darkness in their midst. Somehow, dinoflagellates didn’t seem to fit his mental picture of what would happen.
Evert cut the guard off in the middle of his sentence, left the entrance to the council, and swam off with all speed towards Sistern’s area. They were probably too far away – but he could come to ostensibly help his relations (though he had moved as many of them as possible away from Sistern’s reef long ago, hoping that Ahab would not stray far afield, and that the carnivores he found to slaughter would not have Mer origins) and in fact get his revenge.

&

“Come on – didn’t you hear?” Naoise grabbed Kaia’s arm, nearly carrying her towards the shore.
“I heard the bells, but what are they there to mean? Danger, I’d suppose, but from what?” Kaia’s eyes were bigger than usual, she had no wish to die underwater or to never swim again – though, in general, she’d rather never swim again than not see her paerents – and she wanted to at least try to listen to Sistern’s advice on keeping herself in the water and not trying a change, for as long as possible.
“red tide.” Naoise’s voice was terse, and unhappy.
“But they don’t harm humans. What’s the rush?”
“We’re not strictly human, remember?”
“OH – the whatchamawhosits – “
“dinoflagellates?”
“yes, those – they eat up all the oxygen in the water, right?”
“They can. And then we suffocate. Rather embarrassing, don’t you think?”
“I’d say painful.” Naoise regretted his joke – she had almost suffocated rather than breathe in the water, she knew what such a process entailed.
“Sistern told me to stay in the water. Said I don’t know how to control the change yet. What do I do?”
“I have no idea. We get you to Sistern.”
“and he is… where?”
“He’ll be down at the boathouse by Roosevelt house, keeping everything organized.”
“Then let’s get down there.” They swam for it – not too far away, but uncomfortable. Their beautiful blue water was murky, and in the haze they ended up running into more things than even a small Mer child would in the dark. But they made it, though slowly. Their gills protesting at the deficient quantity of oxygen in the water, they experimented: it was a little easier to breathe, when down almost touching the bottom, and the visibility was a little better there as well. But they made the boathouse, and Sistern was, as predicted, standing there, wearing an old pair of swim trunks and organizing everything. Naoise popped his head out of the water, and addressed his “uncle” on what they should do about Kaia.
“She really shouldn’t turn back. But there’s nowhere else that she’ll be safe, if the red tide grows. Let her know that it’s her decision.”
Kaia chose land, as Sistern had known she would. “Very well. Tell her to get a good mouthful of water, and force it all out through her gills, two or three times. I’ll be right in.”
Sistern shucked the shorts – it wasn’t as if anyone was looking, as the two smart ones were both underwater anyway – and dove in, changing as soon as he hit the water. It was harder to breathe down here than it had been a few minutes ago. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Kaia? I need you to focus. You’re going to pop your head up above water, and your gills are going to stop working when you inhale air. Keep that head out of the water, and breathe deeply a few times, then remember what it was like to be human. Remember what it’s like to have a tail – or we may never be able to bring you back down here - but just think of having legs, and toes, and not having everything from your hips down fused together. Whenever you’re ready – I’ll bring you in as soon as you make the switch.”
Kaia nodded, took a few more breaths, and flipped herself up to the surface with her tail. Air – fresh, cool, clean – flowed into her lungs. Breathing in, and out, she felt her arm caught and drawn towards shore by Sistern. He hauled her out, gave her a big striped towel to wrap up in, and promised her a drink (he could see how much her lungs were paining her; they tended to be irritable the first few times one made the change) as soon as he was sure everyone was in. Kaia sat, still, in shock. She had been a mermaid. And, in theory, could be one again.
Glancing over, Naoise noticed the tears trickling down Kaia’s face. He put an arm around her shoulders, hesistantly, afraid to be presumptive, and she buryed her head in his shoulder, silently crying. She couldn’t tell him why, what for. Some combination of the reef, her pain-free childhood, her parents. The word she was able to get out was “why?”, and to that, neither she nor Naoise had any answer.

&

Ahab did not notice the alarm bonging of the bell until he made his way out of the second volcano, two normal-sized eggs and two the size of sea-turtle eggs cradled in his rucksack. That sort of peal – that was Sistern with one of the big old bells. Why would he be hitting one of those? Ahab raked his brain, looking for the signals that Sistern had drummed into all of them – oh – that peal was the low tide bell, maybe? Then there was the problem of where to go, with that sort of a ring. Some – Sistern still told stories of pirates – you could just go and hide anywhere convienent. But for this one… it was probably Roosevelt house. Wasn’t it always Roosevelt house?
Mostly, at least. He wrapped his arms around the rucksack – worn the wrong-way-around, so he had a pouch somewhat like a kangaroo’s, and emerged from the dim, stillness of the cave into what should have been clear water. It was murky, though, the sun not filtering down to lay golden bars on the sand, but instead stuck, fighting through the masses of whatever kind of nasty bug this was in the water, and feeding them. Glowing brighter, an orangy-red, they seemed to pulse when the sunlight hit them. Ahab didn’t really like the look of those.
But the eggs were the thing. Naoise needed them for his experiment; he had promised to et them to Naoise; so he would do it. With the alarm bells, though – Ahab didn’t think that Naoise would still be in the cave, the one he had started to call his “lab” – but Ahab knew that he certainly hadn’t heard the bells while inside a structure, so there was a possibility that Naoise wouldn’t be able to hear them as well. Shore was closer: but doing one of his completely unexpected pleasant turns of mind, Ahab aimed himself – in the swirling water, difficult to navigate through – towards the lab. There was no one there. But the lab room was warm, and comfortable, so he made slings for the eggs and tucked them in, hoping that they would stay, and grow, and live to be happy little dinosaurs. He wrote out, for Naoise, where he had found each one, then looked around the room one last time – making sure that there weren’t any tell-tale bumps of heads or feet of little spies – and dove out, to make the swim to shore.
The red waves were more of a struggle to swim through, this time. Ahab noticed that breathing, though through gills, which should have been comfortable enough – you get used to having a flap of skin float up with each exhalation when it’s been you’re normal state for the vast majority of your life – but now, his gills were feeling uncomfortable, and feeling lightheaded, Ahab tried to swim faster. After all, as he needed to get to shore anyway, why not cut through the clouds of the red things?
A less than prudent idea. Ahab’s gills were swarmed over by the red things, drinking in every possible nutrient that they could get, and Ahab was getting less oxygen each time his blood pumped. He saw the rising of the ocean floor, meaning that he was near land, but his blood pumped through his ears and his gills began to cause twitchings in the rest of his body. He needed oxygen – was getting none from the water – and knew the end before it came. He shook out the mess of his hair – hoping that it would trap some of the creature, filter out his water – and grasped the small piece of coral he wore around his neck. Inscribing it with a message to whoever found him took most of the rest of his energy. Remembering, vaguely, that the water farther down was a little clearer, he started back that way. Yet he didn’t make the safety of the deep, dark water or that of shore. Stranded in no man’s land – no mer’s land – Ahab surrendered to his inability to breathe.

Only when the red waves washed Ahab’s, now distorted, body up onto shore did Sistern’s tribe learn of their loss. Sistern had realized Ahab’s disappearance as soon as Roosevelt house was calmed down a bit, and had assumed that the young one would realize that if he was safe, he could stay where he was. Of course, safe was always a relative term, but better turning pale and listless in a cave at the bottom of the sea than washing up on the beach as some sort of flotsam, hoping to stay rather than let the tide carry you away.

Sistern had nothing else to attempt; not even Pet could help him to ameliorate his grief. He believed that it was his fault for sending Ahab to work with Naoise; if not for this, Ahab would (perhaps) still be flirting with everything wearing a top, and though exasperated – he would still be around.

51,219 / 80,000 (64.0%)

Well, yay, Zokuto's back up. Though... I probably won't get all the way to 80K, and right now, that's depressing. Ach, ja. <3 Fellow nanoers, I would like moar!

... and not inspi(red), either. (though hints of expi(red), I suppose...) Yes, more doom.
(So does this really seem like a medical drama? B/c that wasn't really what I was going for, I just love to spout AP Bio termage at y'all)

Chapter Nineteen

“So Ahab? Can you head back to where ever you found the first one and figure out if there are any more down there?”
“Very well. Though if you’re right, and I get fried, I’m going to come back and haunt you, you understand?”
“You believe in ghosts?”
“No, but I may change my mind if you happen to be annoying… and I’m dead!”
“For all your anger, you actually do have a sense of humor, don’t you?”
“Perhaps. Is your entire project centered around dinosaurs, though?”
“No – but I’m looking for things out of the ordinary in the reef. A decline in such-and-such or an increase in something else since the last comprehensive survey was made.”
“Who else had the time or inclination to do this sort of thing?”
“I think Pet did the last one.”
“Really? Why?”
“No idea. But I’m glad I have something to compare my results to.” Naoise pulled out vials (full of air) and let the bubbles escape to the surface before collecting a sampling of the various algae and plankton in the water. “Off you go, then. See you later?”
“I’ll bring back another one of those eggs – if there isn’t one where Pele found hers, I’ll keep looking. There’re a couple of other spots around here that might very well have them as well.”
“Would you mind checking the other spots anyway? The actual numbers of the dino eggs that you can find would be more useful than a sample, as much fun as having a dino would be.”
“Very well. If I have to.”
“Hey, Ahab? Where did the eggs come from – and how do you know where they are?” Ahab raised his angry eyebrows, looking fierce once again, and Naoise regretted the question. He was surprised to the utmost when Ahab deigned to answer.
“There are a few around. Always have been. The eggs need to stay warm, and have really long gestation periods, so pretty often some get blown up as the volcano they’re sitting in explodes. Though from what I’ve seen, they’ve been a little easier to find lately.”
“YES. That’s what I need. Numbers. Do you know if anyone would know the rough numbers of dinosaurs found in the past?”
“Well… the council might. But they don’t tell anyone anything if they don’t ‘need to know’. And they wouldn’t think your possibly getting into college – no offense intended – worthy enough to dump you into the ‘need to know’ category. No, mostly it was just legends, and every so often someone would find a dead/dying one swimming around sadly, all alone. I got bored, went looking for them. Got a couple of nasty burns while looking for them, but they were too interesting.”
“but wait a second – the story I heard had Pele going into a volcano by herself. You’ve been burned before, but you’d let a little kid go in?”
“First off, she’s not that little. Ridiculously little, as far as her mental state is concerned, but not too bad otherwise.”
“Please tell me you haven’t been hitting on the little kids, too.”
Ahab glared, affronted. “She sees me as an older brother. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Rumors would say otherwise.”
“Yes, yes, rumors spread by whom?”
Naoise remembered that all the supposed rumors he had heard where spread by Mirovia, probably on Khanty’s orders. Khanty, who was completely obsessed with Ahab. “Fine. So they’re prejudiced, so their opinions don’t count. However: she’s obsessed with you. Why do you ignore her?”
“Why are we having this discussion? You want numbers of dinosaurs, I can get those for you. That’s wonderful. Association ended.” Ahab swam off, to find those dinosaurs.
Naoise went back to taking samples of the ocean water. When his vials were full, he took them back to one of the underwater caves that Sistern had said he could use as a laboratory, and looked at it under a microscope – Sistern had had some of Ahab’s gang, who seemed as bored as their leader, lug down piles of stuff that Naoise could use – and through means of a centrifuge (and a long, long time figuring out the useful, but unbelievably irritating thing worked), he was able to figure out what the proportions of algae in the different parts of the reef had been.
He hadn’t labeled some of the vials. Slightly peeved – he had spun them the requisite half hour, he wanted to use them – he dumped the spun, separated liquid back into the entrance, and figured out where he hadn’t gotten water from. Over by the butt-corals, and down by the purple fans. He shook his head, not for the first time, when he got to the first location. Some of the young ones, many years ago, had decided to give the tourists something to look at when they came down for their snorkeling and scuba diving, and had formed the corals into two mounds right next to each other. Over the year, the brain corals had been convinced to grow together, and pretty soon they resembled the rear ends of humans. Tourists were confused by this odd phenomenon. The mers shook their heads at the impetuosity of youth, and continued their lives.
The water seemed a little hazier by the time Naoise got over to the purple fans. Odd, that, as there weren’t supposed to be any storms today, and the water only got kicked up like this if there was some big sort of disturbance.
Spinning the vials, again, thankfully took less time this time around, as the centrifuge was all ready to go, and Naoise didn’t have to figure out how to make it work without a power outlet (the young ones were all ready to light up their underwater caves with electricity, thought it would be the most awesome thing in the world to have plugs under all the caves – and then they would remember what happened when wet things got plugged in, and why electrocution was not their friend). After quite a time of frustration, he managed to fix up an EE to the centrifuge, though neither the eel nor the centrifuge was particularly happy about this combination.
While the two new tubes were spinning, he took out the old ones and checked out the layers: mostly just what Sistern had told him was in the last survey, though hopefully the proportions would be different (otherwise, how could he prove the adverse effects of global warming?). There seemed to be an awful lot of richness to this water – not just algae, but random nitrogen that just seemed to be floating around. Hm. Maybe the other vials would shed a little more light on this.
The other vials, as if hearing Naoise’s thought and questions, let off a little sound (or rather, and absence of sound) as the centrifuge stopped its hum. Naoise opened it up, and was rather disconcerted to notice a layer of completely red things in the separated liquid. Placing them under the microscope, he recognized that they had tails: flagellates, then. Perhaps Sistern would know what kind.

Ahab got to the volcano Pele had dived into, and was alarmed to see that it was brighter, and hotter than usual. Usually it seemed asleep, perhaps it had decided to wake up and build that island that it had always wanted to be. It seemed odd that it would choose now, though, when he just wanted to visit and wasn’t even going to attempt to pre-mine some of the shiny things that lived inside. (And there generally were some pretty shiny things inside the volcanoes. As long as you didn’t get too close to the active part, and there was some escape route, exploring inside of them was fun… and the payoff was pretty awesome, as Drys tended to avoid getting their hands dirty whenever possible. Larimar? A blue opaque stone only found in the islands? There were some deposits. Some pretty quartz, liked because of the small (but recoverable) amounts of gold that could be taken out of them, and various others.) Every so often, the volcanoes got mad if you tried to steal their treasures. But were the dinosaurs treasure? Interesting idea. Ahab didn’t know.
He swam up to the opening, and was greeted with a face full of hot water. Now, the fish parts of the merfolk don’t particularly like hot or cold water too much. It tended to hurt too much. When the temperatures got too extreme for the human bits? Generally it was time to find a different patch of water. But he had promised Sistern to help. And Naoise was, indirectly at least, speaking with Sistern’s voice.
Ahab went in, his tail, torso, and all attached appendages complaining. The water was hot, not just normal warm. Just a quick glance around – walls not glowing yet, which was good, as by the time the walls started glowing, they were usually about to implode. And you didn’t want to be in the middle of a volcano when it imploded. It was rather painful, Ahab’d heard.
The chamber was small, and close, and there was nothing there – the walls were bare, the nooks and crannies dark but nothing hid behind the dark corners – he nearly flew out of the cave, and felt the blessed coolness of the rest of the water. He hoped that he wouldn’t be all burned (again), as Sistern got rather annoyed every time he had to patch the boys (who should know better) up, even though it happened really often. Eh, blisters, but nothing new. He hadn’t hit the stage of third degree burns, and was barely into second. Sistern couldn’t scold him too much. He just hoped that the other little islands to be would be less unhappy at his coming to visit.
The other volcanoes were much more dormant; no heating of the water at all, and rather dark, but not quite dark enough that Ahab’s vision didn’t adjust. He explored along the crevices in the rock that he had come to know, not too worried about missing one of the eggs (they glowed enough that they would be pretty easy to see in this kind of dark) and explored deeper and deeper into the crevice. The silence grew as he went further into the volcano, none of the outside world penetrated this far. It was a sanctuary for the noiseless, the nonmoving, the quiet. Ahab, as a foreigner, paid his respects to the awesome craftsmanship of the halls, keeping his gaze alert for the slight orange or yellow glow of an egg.

&

“Sistern? I’m running across something that I can’t identify. I think it’s some kind of flagellate; it definitely has a tail. It’s red.”
Sistern had been sitting in his small receiving chamber, half hoping that no one came by so he could have a nap. In the dimness, he couldn’t quite see the murkiness of the water, now slowly spreading over the reef. Naoise’s news took a minute to make sense in his brain (he was exhausted, having stayed up all night trying to explain everything to Kaia – that girl asked some amazingly intelligent questions, but sometimes he wished she had been a little less intelligent) - but once they did, his reaction was as quick as if he had just ingested a chunk of C8H10N4O2 and it was flowing through his system like fire in the veins, waking him up with a particularly unpleasant piece of news.
“Red?” Naoise nodded. “Dinoflagellates. Not good. How far has the bloom gotten?”
“Bloom?”
“The water’s cloudy, yes? How far?”
“I was over by the butt coral, then to the purple fans – it covered the entire area.”
“We need to get everyone to Roosevelt house. Now.” Naoise and Sistern moved through the reef, warning everyone they could see to swim as fast as they possibly could to RH. No time to stop to pick up belongings. Just grab your children (and as many others as you could collar) and take them up.
When they had warned as many as they could easily call, Sistern unstoppered the gigantic ship’s bell that had been used in emergencies long ago, that had come from a wreck sometime in the sixteenth century, and that Sistern’s tribe had adopted. The bell was not held high off the ground, but it resonated with the weight of centuries behind it, it bonged and clanged in a raucous manner. None of the groups around Sistern’s were (probably) close enough to be effected by the algal bloom, the red tide, but it was still his duty to pass the warning on – and to let any of his own tribe that hadn’t heard the spoken warning know to get to safety as fast as possible.
Safety, in the older days, had meant land, or at least close to land. Now, for so many of the young ones, it meant the caves under the reef, and those might not be enough for a red tide. Mers had died because of red tides, before. The little dinoflagellates ate up all the oxygen in the water; they couldn’t breathe, they suffocated to death. It hadn’t happened for a long, long, time, and never here. The island here had been pristine, free from any problem of that sort, since the mers had first come to this hospitable climate, following the boats as they made their way across the sea. Still, the caves – some of them had air, and the network was pretty clear. Someone breathing irregularly would know how to get to an air cave. Sistern hoped.

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