Off The Deep End - Chapter 5 free porn video

==================0 =======================0 OFF THE DEEP END Laika Pupkino ~ 2016 ======================0 CHAPTER FIVE: Anemone & Enomena Part 3: Wild Kingdom =======================0 ==================0 TUESDAY AUGUST 26, 2014: Anemone and I woke up within a minute of each other, at right around sunrise. We decided to skip going into town today and take a tour in the countryside instead. But as we made our way to the door Queen Atlantea came swimming toward us with a large sheet of kelp paper in her hand. "Is this today's paper?" asked Anemone. She took it from her, and began scanning the sheets columns of print. "It is. Perri brought us three copies today. One for each of us. She didn't just leave them under the rock like usual, she stopped in, and was hoping to talk to Enomena. She wants to meet her as soon as possible." "Do we have do it today?" asked Anemone, "We weren't even planning on heading that way." "I want you to go down there right now, while Perri's still in her office, so the interview will be printed in tomorrow's edition. We need to dispel these dreadful rumors that have been going around about your sister's intelligence. To nip them in the bud before they becomes 'what everyone knows'..." That sounded good to me. "We really should, Anee." "Oh, all right," sighed my twin, and handed me the paper to look at. It was exactly two pages; a front page and a back page... "You're kidding. This is a newspaper?" "I know it's not one of those big human newspapers you're used to eating, but we're a small queendom and it serves our purposes." Anemone added, "And sometimes he can't find enough news for even that and has to fill in spots here and there with poems or funny anecdotes people submit. Once she printed one of my school papers, about protecting our coral reefs." "That was a good essay," smiled Mom. I asked, "So this Perri person... she's a writer there and she also delivers these?" "She's editor and owner too," said Anemone, "It keeps her busy." Across the top was the paper's name, THE DAILY TAIL, with their slogan "All The News That Fits Two Pages", and then the headline: WELCOME PRINCESS ENOMENA!!! And then: "Everyone knows about Anemone's genie, that gregarious and quite- literally colorful wag who has been a beloved citizen of our fair city for the past four years. It is with some sadness that we announce that Mr. Genie is no longer among us, having emigrated to drier climes, although the reason for his departure is far from sad- PRINCESS ANEMONE HAS MADE HER THIRD WISH!!!!! "All speculation about what our beloved princess's final wish would be can now be laid to rest, for in the early hours of Monday morning she requested that Mr. Genie make her a sister, who our sources say was manufactured from a Florida manatee. The newly minted teen mermaid was dubbed Princess Enomena in a private coronation ceremony shortly after her rebirth, and is from head to tail an exact copy of her sister. Regarding her transformation she was reported as saying, 'One minute I was a sea cow, foraging for foliage down in the Everglades, and the next minute--ZAP!--I'm a mermaid princess, sitting in a castle with a tiara on my head. Life sure is strange sometimes!'" This quote was pure fiction, but it was a pretty good guess about what that might have felt like, and it did support my own fictional origin story... It went on: "When interviewed Monday afternoon (see full interview page 2), our beloved Queen Atlantea opined, 'I was a bit miffed at Anemone at first, since she'd had promised to consult with me before making her third wish. But she did use her first two wishes for the benefit of others, so I suppose she deserves one all for herself.'" I thought that was pretty cool of Mom. It was almost an apology for all that yelling she had done at Anee when she brought me home. I asked her, "Did you say this?" "I think I might have," she shrugged. The article finished with: "The twin princesses caused quite a few heads to turn as they 'painted the town' Monday, treating themselves to a daylong shopping binge. Their nonstop gigglefest whilst flitting from shop to shop made them seem like lifelong pals to the denizens of Shellcastle. Enomena, who prior to her transformation had known nothing of life outside a small patch of Florida swampland, seemed delighted by her new mermaid's life, and as enchanted by the sights and cosmopolitan bustle of our beloved metropolis as its inhabitants are by her. Many of Shellcastle's retailers are offering two-for-one sales all this week in honor of Hatteria now boasting a lovely pair of royal offspring. We hope to have more news on our beloved new princess tomorrow. Until then, have a nice day and safe swimming!" I glanced up to see my sister making a face at me, like she didn't think much of the piece. "It's not so bad," I shrugged, "Except for all those beloved's..." "Yeah, but 'nonstop gigglefest'? 'Daylong shopping binge'?! Where do they come up with this stuff?" "At least there wasn't anything in here about me being a drooling idiot. Or about that... you know," I said, rubbing my nose where that little crab had got me. To my surprise it seemed mostly healed already. I'd really feared the worst from a newspaper with a name that was so close to THE DAILY MAIL, a trashy newspaper for stupid people over in UK---sort of like our NEW YORK POST---that I'd never heard of until last year, when I started browsing LGBT news sites like Transphobia Watch and HumanRightsCampaign.Org. The British tabloid had earned the hated of transgender people all over the world after they wrote such a hostile piece of character assassination about a transsexual school teacher---throwing her into the national spotlight and implying she was a danger to the kids---that she killed herself. And then they printed an equally insulting obituary of "him". The MAIL is constantly being sued for their sleazy fake stories, like when author JK Rowling won an undisclosed boatload of money from them after they claimed she was a satanist and a necrophile. In contrast, this morning's DAILY TAIL might have improvised some of their facts but the article was friendly enough. One of those bland puff pieces full of civic boosterism that small-town newspapers specialize in. "This first paragraph makes it sound like your genie was out running around all over town all day," I said. "He could only leave his bottle for a couple of hours every day, but when he did he really made the most of it." "But I thought he had to wear that diving suit to live outside of his bottle," I said, remembering my single hazy encounter with the entity. "Nawww, he just thought it was cute to come popping out wearing that thing. Genies seem to have a thing for silly costumes." "You run into a lot of genies?" "No, I-" her eyes told me this was something she couldn't talk about in front of Mom. "She read about them in the Arcania Scrolls. Before I hid them where she'll never find them," announced Mom in triumphant tone, "It's a big castle, Dear. Don't bother looking. Magic is a dangerous business, even for those who have made it their life's calling." "But I wasn't interested in performing magic. I just wanted to learn what I could about Genie-" "Oh, but once you start looking through those scrolls it's so tempting. Just one little spell, to see what might happen. But once you start one is never enough. And ordinarily I'd say it would be an opportunity for you to learn by experience, that magic isn't something you want to fool around with, but the consequences of a miscast spell can be utterly cataclysmic; putting our whole nation or even the whole world in peril." "YEEESH!!!" said Anemone. "Then it's a good thing I wasn't trying to do magic." "I know, you were just curious. And a thirst for knowledge is a good thing, generally. But cases like this we need to show self restraint," said Mom. "There's a reason why magic has been banned in this queendom for a thousand years." "But wasn't Anee's asking her genie for stuff magic? You seem okay with all that," I said. "No, because she wasn't mixing potions or performing the incantations herself. Genie was a magical being. It was his nature, and he could handle it. But for us mortals, any seemingly innocent little spell can have grave consequences. Even essentially passive magic, like oh, say... trying to see into the future can draw the attention of malignant forces that we really don't want coming through into our realm." "No, we don't want that," muttered Anemone, her face all serious. "But there's no danger in praying to the gods for a miracle, and hope they're inclined to grant it. I did, and I was blessed by them with a beautiful daughter. Twice now, it seems," she said, throwing an arm around each of us and drawing us close, "And I'd hate it if anything happened to you." "Okay Mom, no magic," I said, and Anemone made some similar muffled promise. She released us, then took the newspaper from me, saying, "This interview shouldn't take you long. Have fun today, girls." "Oh we will," said my sister, "I'm showing her the forest, and the corals, and we might go up to the surface to watch the sundown." "Okay. But you know what to do if you see a ship." "Of course," smiled Anemone as we headed for the door. She put her hands together and pantomimed diving off of something. )))========> COMMUTE When I thought we were far enough out of earshot of the castle I turned to my sister and said: "Mom knows about the crystal ball!" ..at the exact same time she said these same words to me. We gawked at each other. "That was weird..." "It was," said Anemone, "But obviously we'd both picked up on that. I guess I'd better put the orb back when we get home. DAMN! I wanted to find out about Daddy. And about your tall dark stranger." "Don't worry about him," I said. If even a fraction of Mom's warnings were true I didn't want to mess with that thing. "I'm thinking if I'm supposed to meet this boy I'll meet him." "You're supposed to," she said with absolutely certainty, "I've seen it." Across the garden and up the side of our bowl-like valley and over its rim. This could become a tedious little half hour swim if you had to do it every day for years, but it was still totally new and fun to me. Ahead of us Shellcastle's skyline---if you could even call it that--- had exactly two buildings tall enough to be seen above the fronds of the kelp forest; The A-shaped spire of the Church of Atlantis and the building where they held the parliament sessions and had all the departments for our whole government, called The Government Building. I wasn't sure if this eggs-in-one-basket arrangement was such a smart idea. If Amazonia ever got ahold of a torpedo they could take our whole government (well except for me, Mom and Anee) with one shot. But luckily---along with a lot of other technical innovations that these merpeople clearly had the know-how for but didn't seem to want--- mermaid warfare was stuck back in the age of crossbows and broadswords. )))========> CANDY GIRL The Daily Tail's office was on a block where each business shared a wall with each of their adjoining neighbors, wedged between the human artifacts store (LAND, HO!) and Sea's Candy. "What's candy like down here?" I asked. Anemone pointed through the newspaper's big screened front window at someone who was hunched over a workbench, "It looks like Perri is gonna be busy for a while, let's get some. There won't be any shops out where we're going." A little bell hanging over the door rang as we entered Seas Candy and swam up to the counter, where a double row of bins with trays in them were piled with different little shapes and colors of fudgy looking treats. Tidy and clean, with a quaint checkerboard sandstone-tile floor, the shop closely resembled those similarly-named candy stores we had on land. The two main differences were that there was no glass countertop, just a plank above the bins that confections could be put on and bagged; and that the mermaid behind the counter wasn't some little old white haired granny-lady, but a stunningly beautiful twenty- four year old. Or possibly twice that age, it was hard to guess with mermaids, but there was no question about the beautiful part. Lithe, small breasted, with a peaches and cream complexion and long graceful arms and hands; her human half reminded me of a college basketball player. Her hair---a shade browner than ours, more like polished brass than gold---was in a cute pixie cut that went perfect with her delicate, elvin face. She was busy using a pair of tongs to rearrange goodies in the trays. "Can I help you?" She asked as she straightened up. Then she saw who we were, and with a big smile that was sweeter than any candy she said, "Oh! Your Highness! I mean HIGHNESSES! This is a real pleasure!" If I'd been attracted to her a second ago I was in love now. The warmth and openness of that smile left me speechless. I responded with some weird little noise while my sister grinned, "Hi Sandee, glad you're back. It's nice that Mrs. Seas kept your job open for you." "Well she has to, by law. Tho' she says she would anyway." "So when'd you get back?" "Late yesterday. Got in about sundown, figuring the whole shopping district would be closed up by then and I'd have to go catch my dinner, but it wasn't. Downtown was buzzing, everyone talking about our new princess. Funny, because all the way home I was thinking how nothing much ever changes in this queendom. Surprise, surprise!" "I know, nobody was expecting this. Not even her," said Anee, gesturing at me. "But anyway... Enomena, meet Private First Order Sandee Sirenis." She did a mermaid curtsey, graceful as a ballerina,"It's nice to finally meet you, Your Highness!" This intense attraction I felt was making me weirdly nervous and shy, but I managed to half-raise my hand and say, "ULLKkkkk... hi." "So was Camp Neptune as rough they say?" Anemone asked her. "Rougher! I barely got any sleep all month. But it sure got me in shape! I finally worked off all that candy I was nibbling," said Sandee, slapping her shapely green-scaled hip..... Oh my! I'd said earlier that I wasn't sure what would make one mermaid tail more beautiful than another, but as my eyes traveled down the length of hers I knew... ==========> It was confusing to have such strong feelings for a mermaid I didn't even know. This wonderful weak sensation that was familiar to me even if the parts of where I was feeling it in sure weren't- like thr squirmy sweet aching I felt all up and down my tail. And on top of all this there came a stab of guilt, the sense that I was betraying Pepper Davis back on land for even feeling like this; That we had something amazing and I should be so in mourning over never being able to see her again that I wouldn't even notice how wonderful and beautiful and perfect Sandee was... But I knew Pepper wouldn't want me to observe some asexual period of mourning for her sake. She'd tell me human feeling (or mermaid ones) were natural and good and even if you didn't want to act on them you should own and accept what you really felt instead of repressing it, pretending you didn't. Although Pepper would never say it in such Oprah-esque terms. It would be more like: "Stop your wiggin', Bitch!" Which isn't the insult it might sound like (after overhearing us one day my mom took me aside to say "You shouldn't let her call you that!"). But Pepper's calling me bitch had more warmth and acceptance behind it than most people put into nice words. It was her general term for females, which went with her whole semi-fraudulent streetwise act; and was her way of saying I was no different than any other girl to her. Although since that day at the mall and the wonderful stuff afterward I was HER girl, and Pepper was mine... ==========> Anemone looked over the trays of sweet, "What's good today, Sandee? Any amazing new creations?" "Sorry, no. My brain's not quite back in the civilian world yet. But I did just made a batch of your favorites." "Great!" grinned Anemone, "We'll take six of those. And... What do you want, Sis?' "I... I have absolutely no idea." "She's never had our candy," explained my twin. "No, I guess you wouldn't have," said Sandee, beaming that amazing smile of hers at me, and vaulting up onto the counter plank she leaned forward and popped an orangish-pinkish cube into into my mouth, "Here! Try this." It had a nougat-y texture, but in keeping with merpeople's tastes it wasn't super sweet, and to a human it probably would have tasted more like seafood than candy. Like salmon infused with sweet vanilla or something. I gave Sandee a big thumbs-up as I chewed, which pleased the soldier/confectioner. "Those are my favorite," said Anemone, "They're called Salmon-Nilla chews." "Isssh delisshish!" I said, swallowing the gooey lump, but was thinking they might want to reconsider the name. My sister said, "Okay then, we'll take a half dozen of those, a full scoop of Jellyfish Stingers, and... we'd better only get four of the Crunchy Frog. Those are kind of an acquired taste." Our order didn't even fill the whole bottom of a Kroger grocery bag. Sandee grabbed and tossed in what looked like a pair of big white marbles, "And here, a couple of Gummy Pearls. On the house..." The chime over the door tinkled again as we left. Before I could ask anything Anemone said, "Army." "That's what it sounded like. So now she's back from this Camp Neptune; living off base and working here too?" "Our whole army pretty much lives off base. Well, except for a few high ranking officers. About half the people you see around town are in the service. They do their civilian jobs but they're ready to go at a minute's notice." I nodded. That would explain that big wicked spear gun hanging on the wall of a candy store. )))========> INTERVIEW We went next door, where my newspaper interview took about fifteen minutes. The Daily Tail's office was one big room with workbenches, baled stacks of kelp paper and cylinder the size of a kitchen garbage can set in a stand. Perri's printing press looked like you had to stick the pages in one at a time then turn the crank to pull them through it. A second mesh cylinder lie on a table that was scattered with little squares of metal with letters on them that plugged into the holes in the mesh to make columns of works. Perri was the only one in her office, and was breaking down the cylinder for today's page two when we walked in, popping the inky letters out and wiping them clean with a rag and dropping them into the compartments of a large wooden bin-thing. The newspaperwoman was a dark skinned mermaid whose bottom-half scales and tailfin were a pretty lavender color. Her hair was in a mammoth spherical bubble of frizzy hair that shone like stainless steel (I was surprised to see that there were different races of mermaids for about a second. Although technically there weren't- since mermaids didn't have a concept of race like our human one, dividing their species into three or four major subgroups based on physical characteristics. To them it was all about what Queendom you were from---if you were from one---and a single big division between the civilized mermaids of the higher elevations and the "wildmers" who dwelled in the deeper parts of the world's oceans...) Perri stopped what she was doing and took me over to her desk for my interview, and after a bit of chitchat to put me at ease she started asking me questions and writing down what I said in some sort of shorthand. She wanted to know all about me, but there wasn't much to tell. Or rather there wasn't much I COULD tell. I pretended that the changes in my body and brain made my former life as a sea cow all kind of fuzzy, like a half remembered dream, so her questions turned more toward my thoughts and feelings about being a mermaid, about my new family and my impressions of life here in Hatteria; all of which I could give her pretty much without filtering or cautious half-truths. This interview was about me, but I would have loved to know a whole lot more about Perri. She had a lot of mementos on her office wall that I couldn't help asking about, and they pointed to an incredible life. Perri had lived the sort of reporter's life they make movies about. She'd lived all over the world, had traveling with some famous mermaid expedition up the Nile to Lake Victoria, had hitched a ride with Admiral Perry (no relation) when he sailed under the North Pole; although the crew inside never knew there was a mermaid hanging on to the outside of their sub. She had been in Amazonia during the bloody coup and civil war that had brought Empress Remora to power, and had been a witness to several other key events in this mermaid-history I still knew so little about. After her retirement from being a reporter for the Atlantic Times (she was 160 years old, and not the least bit embarrassed about it) she'd toured the world for her own enjoyment, and maybe to write a book about it, visiting all Seven of the Undersea Wonders of the World. My house---which hadn't even existed when she first set out on her retirement travels, but when it suddenly did it bumped some trench or something off the 'seven wonders' list---was the last place she visited, and she fell in love with Hatteria. She settled here and then bought our crummy little local paper the TAIL, because it seemed she wasn't ready to completely retire just yet. So anyway Perri and I really hit it off (I think she recognized the writer in me even though I was just starting to come out to myself about being one...), and I thought that if tomorrow's edition was anything like this morning's she would do her best to make me look good... Which it turned out is exactly what she had done. The interview piece didn't misquote me or try to make me look like a blithering nincompoop. Despite their names being similar the DAIL MAIL was not the DAILY MAIL; I didn't pick up Wednesday's paper to find a headline screaming: PALACE INFILTRATED BY HUMANS or ROYAL SEX-CHANGE SHOCKER!!! )))==> YABBA DABBA DO So now we just had to go pay Fluke a visit before we could get out of Shellcastle and go on our nature-swim, which we were both anxious to do. As we left Perri's office I noticed the sign on the door: THE DAILY TAIL ~Est. 1940~ Perri Winkle, Editor A couple of storefronts down the block it hit me. I groaned. "What?" "Perri........ Winkle??!" "What's wrong with that?" "Nothing, I guess," I said, and laughed. This place was absurd. "Do you think there's something funny about Perri Winkle?" "Well kind of. I mean it's a joke name. Like Moby Dickus, or Hallie Butts." "Hallie Butts isn't a joke," said Anemone, sounding miffed, "She's is a nice lady! I don't think it's nice to call somebody you don't even know a joke." "I wasn't saying SHE was a joke. It's just.... why does everything have to be about fish?" "A periwinkle isn't a fish." "Fish... mollusk... under-the-water stuff. I swear, it's like the freaking FLINTSTONES around here: 'Oh look! It's SHARON STONE and FLINT EASTWOOD, eating ROCKY ROAD ice cream with EMILY BRONTE-SAURUS and TERRY DACTYL!'" "Do you even know what you're complaining about anymore?" "Complaining? I wasn't complaining, it was just an observation." "Well some of your 'observations' about our life here get pretty condescending." "They do?" "Sometimes," she said in a lilting tone that told me this was rare enough to be mostly forgivable. She asked, "And anyway, what would you have things be named? I mean don't people and places tend to be named for what's important in their world? Weren't some of your presidents named after cars?" "Oh. Good point," I said. "And I guess Perri Winkle is kind of a pun," she conceded, "but Winkle was her late husband's name. She broke with tradition and took his name because she didn't like her own last name, Scopes." "Mmmm," I nodded. "And speaking of last names, do we have a last name?" "No. Royalty doesn't use them here." "So I'm just Enomena?" "Well, plus your title." "That's kind of weird." "Why's that?" "I don't know, but where I come from it's usually just pretentious celebrities who decide they only need one name. Like Bono, or Adele..." "So now you're gonna start complaining about a name you DON'T have?!" "I'm not complaining! It just seems odd to not have one." "Well when you get older you can tack something onto your name, like 'The Wise', or 'The Bloody', or 'The-Complains-About-Stupid-Stuff-All- the-Time-and-then-Says-She-Isn't-Complaining'..." "You know, I think I'll do that. I could be 'Enomena the Has-An- Annoying-Sister...'" She stuck her tongue out at me. I stuck mine out an tried to blow her a raspberry, which doesn't really work underwater. She called me Fishface. I called her a Flounderhead. .....How did I get along all those years without a sibling?! )))========> STILL NO FLUKE The grocer's front door was closed and locked and the windows were all shuttered. This alarmed Anemone. "They should have been open for hours by now? Why aren't they open? Let's try around back." She lead me around the side of the store to the delivery entrance. There was a bell, a thing like a big brass wind chime that she hit with the metal rod hanging next to it. There was no answer... "Maybe they're both sick," said Anemone, "There has been a nasty strain of the blue flu going around." "Is that a bad disease?" "It's not much fun, but it's only really bad if you're a baby or like Bassby's age," she said, and pounded on the deliveries door for a while, then gave up. "Oh well... Maybe we can swing by here again on our way back." We swam up to a spot above the rooftops and headed out for the Territories. )))========> THE FOREST, THE REEFS Our swim around the countryside was just incredible. But what was so incredible about it is something that doesn't really come across when you just describe it with words: Scenic beauty. Or maybe it does but I'm just not a good enough writer to convey it. I don't think most writers are up to the task of explaining what's so amazing about a place like Yosemite Valley or the Great Barrier Reef, and that's the reason books and magazines about insanely beautiful places use a lot of big color photographs. I wish I had pictures to show you but I don't, so you'll just have to take my word for it: It was BEE-YOU-TEEE-FULLLLL!!!!!!! We explored a bit of the Great Kelp Forest---which was very green and very pretty, but pretty much of all the same---and then the local coral reefs, which were a lot more interesting. I'd always wanted to go diving, but the closest I'd ever come was snorkeling at beaches where the water was clouded up by surf action and there wouldn't have been much to see even if it was clearer. But this was the kind of place I'd always dreamed about diving in- a breathtaking kaleidoscope of colors teeming with all sorts of fish, jellyfish, anemones, stars, worms and crustaceans. And I was doing it all without having to take lessons or rent a tank. I kind of surprised Anemone by already knowing some of the stuff she was explaining about the reefs and their inhabitants, from hearing my land-mom talk about and from looking through her books. Mom would have absolutely loved it here! ==========> I'd been exaggerating when I told Jasper that she was an ocean scientist, but my mother Shannon had minored in marine biology (with about ten more credits than her minor required), which was qualifications enough for her 30-hours-a-week job as a guide at the Delaware Bay Maritime Museum and Aquaritorum. She conducted scheduled lecture tours every two hours, and the rest of the time wandered around answering random questions and stopping people from banging on the glass. Shortly after she started working there my dad and I dropped in and took the noon tour with her. She was embarrassed for us to see her in that silly sailor outfit they made her wear ("I look like a Japanese school girl!") but she was happy to see us. And though she said she'd probably screw up her spiel now because we were there she did just fine; sounding like she'd been employed there for years and with a real knack for making science interesting to people who usually weren't all that into in it. I wondered what she would make of an ocean specimen like me. She would no doubt say that I was impossible. Physically, I mean, not the way she usually said it. Because there obviously shouldn't be such a thing as a warm blooded, egg-laying half-mammal/half-fish creature with a three chambered heart and lungs that also functioned as gills... It was because of Mom's passion for the subject that I'd signed up to take it as my science course this coming school year. It was a class I figured I would both ace and have fun in, but it looked like I would be missing it now. But lucky for me my new sister and Jasper were the best teachers about marine life I could have found. They didn't just know marine biology, they WERE marine biology! ==========> Anemone and I had been yacking at each other with barely a pause since I'd woken up with a tail early yesterday, but we weren't saying much as we swam around observing life in the coral bed. Our talking wouldn't have scared most of these creatures away but it did tend to change their behavior, the way humans rarely go about there business in quite the same after they discover a camera is on them. Or worse, the lifeforms would stop whatever they were doing and want to join in on our conversation, something that human naturalists rarely have to deal with. I whispered to my sister, "It's just as beautiful here as you said. I'm surprised there's not a bunch of scuba divers swimming around these reefs." "Once in a while we get some, but we're a bit too far from the continent for a one day boat trip. And the islands all have a lot of pretty diving spots around them that are a lot closer," she said. )))========> PRINCESS SHIPS On this swim Anemone had had brought along a cheap collapsible telescope---an "Official Pirate Spyglass" that looked like something a kid might have dropped overboard---which she'd stuck through her belt alongside her shark club. I wasn't sure what use it could be, since telescopes and binoculars don't really work underwater but only magnify whatever silt and stuff is floating within a foot or two in front of you. But towards evening she took me to a flat rock somewhat larger than a grand piano poking up just above the ocean's surface. She showed me how to swim upward real fast and go flying out of the water to land on top of it, which I got on the first try. It was a pretty fun thing to do. I had been breathing water now for a couple of days and had gotten used to the feel of it. To suddenly start breathing air again wasn't difficult, but it sure felt strange. Almost like I had to convince my lungs that they would be able to draw the oxygen they needed out of this thin stuff. But it seemed we were almost perfectly amphibious. Those couple of breaks we took over the three hours we spent up there, slipping off the rock and submerging ourselves for a minute or two were more like something we wanted to do than absolutely needed... And it was up here that Anemone little telescope came in handy. It surprised me when I looked through it and saw how much magnification this toy had. Maybe not 40X, but way more than you would expect from a plastic tube embossed with little skulls & crossbones, treasure chests and parrots. We saw three cruise ships going past in the distance that evening (four if you counted the one that was just a bump out on the horizon, although it might have been a container ship), and took turns watching them through it. "Hey, there's our boat!" Anee said, handing me the spyglass, "Check it out, she's called the ROYAL PRINCESS." "I think they're all called the Princess something or other," I said, but the next one was the CARNIVAL CAVALCADE. The last one we saw that night sure was pretty as the sun went down and all its lights came on. To my sister these ships were so exotic and alien they might as well have been spaceships. To me they were a glimpse of that world I used to belong to, which I could never rejoin but at least I could see the tiny people at the railings and the stateroom's little balconies and try to imagine where they came from and what their regular lives back on land were like... Anemone told me about something she'd seen in the sky one evening above one of these big floating hotels- a series of mammoth colorful explosions. It had freaked her out at first, thinking it must be some rare and dangerous weather phenomenon that no one had warned her about. Like a lot of merpeople, she'd had a childhood fear of the sky and anything to do with it. It was a phobia that kept many away from the surface even after they grew up and knew better, but Anee had mostly gotten over hers as she became fascinated with humans and that whole world upstairs. Or at least until the night the sky started exploding. When she described it to Jasper Five later he explained what a fireworks display was, and that unless one of the skyrockets wasn't coming straight at her it couldn't hurt her. Which confirmed what she had figured out on her own, as she noticed how the people gathered out on the ship's decks weren't all running for cover but were OOOOOOOH-ing and AAHHHHHH-ing over it like it was something fun, and she began to see beauty of these blazing flowers of light that bloomed and died so quick... Our day in town yesterday had gone quickly, today seemed to go even quicker. We stayed to watch the entire sunset, which tonight provided a light show as spectacular as any man-made fireworks---if not as noisy-- -until there was just a purple glow in the western sky. Living on the East Coast I had seen the sun rising over the ocean more times than I could count. But I'd never seen an ocean sunset before; which had been another reason (besides that Weeki Wachee business...) I was kind of bummed out when St. Pete and Florida's whole west coast was scratched off of our vacation itinerary. But I guessed now I would be able to see either, any time I wanted. As we swam home Anemone warned me that we could never tell our Mom we came here. The queen would really get her tail in a knot if she found out we had got that close to a bunch of humans. )))========> DON'T DRINK THE WATER We assumed that we'd missed dinner, but we got home to find Mom arriving at the front door at the same time we did, so we all went in to eat together. At the dinner table---a big long thing with seats enough for thirty stretching out away from the end we usually occupied---Mom explained that a hearing she'd had to attend had run late. It was a case that had been a big scandal locally, a mermaid named Sedna Waverly who had swindled a whole lot of people out of a whole lot of money over the course of several years. The magistrates had sentenced her to banishment, but she'd been expecting at the time so her exile was postponed until her egg hatched. Now that the child was born our mom had gone to the Government Building's Courtroom C to listen to the convicted woman's appeal for mercy; which was something she was pretty much required to do. Ms. Waverly swore she had learned her lesson and begged to be allowed to live here under house arrest, not for her own sake, mind you, your most wise and merciful highness... but because a child shouldn't have to grow up without its mother. The queen told her she sympathized, being a mom herself, but this hadn't been the mermaid's first phony investment scheme---she was a thief and a charlatan who had lost no sleep over all those folks she had ruined financially---and Mom let the sentence stand. Arrangements had already been made for the baby to be put into the care of a couple "of high moral character" who had just had a child of their own, so feeding the baby was no problem, and the convicted felon was given three days to get her affairs in order, say her goodbyes and get out of Hatteria. Anemone had a lot of questions---"So what about the father?!?"---which Mom kept answering right up until Octavia brought our meal out, at which point she insisted we not discuss a topic as "unsalutary" as liars and thieves during dinner... "Wow, this looks great!" I said, looking at the big serving plate between us, holding what on land would have been about a hundred dollars worth of sushi. Mom pointed. "Elbows off the table, Dear." "Oh... right." Tonight we were having Godzilla rolls, my all time favorite, although they went by a different name here. I loved the chewy texture of the greenish-black nori wrapper, even if it wasn't as crunchy as it is on land. And using big gobs of white roe instead of rice probably would of made these little seaweed rolls unbearably rich if I was still human, but the kind of tastes I craved had changed a lot since my transformation. Merchildren are weaned at around six months old and from then on our diet is all about fish and other sea creatures (if you're a kelpatarian there are these evil tasting protein bars made out of pressed-plankton, but those are still animals even though they're bordering on microscopic...). So a really rare steak would probably taste good to me, but I wouldn't eat a slice of peach pie now if you paid me. But what I WAS really wanting was a diet Dr. Pepper or some milk or something to go with dinner, even if this was just out of habit. I hadn't drank anything since I became a mermaid and I the only time I'd felt thirsty was an hour ago, sitting up on that rock, and that had gone away about two minutes into the swim home. "What a peculiar notion!" said my new mom when I mentioned drinking liquids. This was what she said about a lot of the things that came out of my mouth. Like when I asked her why we sat in chairs, and slept in beds, when our swim bladders would let us just hang in mid-water like astronauts in a space station. "Ah yes, the 'space station'," said the Queen in a tone of disgust. "The crawlers aren't content to just pollute the land and the sky and the ocean, now they're setting out to contaminate the moon, the planets, the stars!" "Mommy, don't start!" said Anemone through clenched teeth. "I'm sorry, Sweetheart, if I don't share your love of humankind. We're just lucky you found that genie's bottle, or they would have destroyed us all with their di-bozo-whatever-it-is." "Dibenzylpolyolyoxyphrene," burbled my sister, a word that almost made me drop my chopsticks. I'd been hearing about it at a different dinner table for at least the past year. The U.S. Government was maintaining that more studies needed to be done before they would ban such an important ingredient for fabric softeners, but my land-mom was certain enough that the stuff was harming marine life (larger species more than smaller ones, since it got more concentrated as you went up the food chain...) that she had been e-mailing the Ocean Conservancy's petition to ban Dibenzylpoyolyoxyphrene to everyone she knew. But there was one marine species that had never made it into the environmentalist literature... 'Ohhh God!' I thought, 'No wonder Queen Atlantea hates us! We nearly wiped out this whole beautiful civilization and we DIDN'T EVEN KNOW!' Suddenly I wasn't very hungry... "It's partly our own fault though, isn't it?" Anemone stated. "The way we hide down here like we do. I'm sure if we contacted the humans, sent an ambassador to tell them what was happening they would have done something about it." Our mother looked at her like she'd sprouted a second head on her shoulder. "Are you completely without reason, Child?!! The Yeti, the unicorns, the Fae; even the weres and vampires who walk among them... all magical beings know enough to hide from them. And the Silurian Reptile Folks from the dawn of time, asleep in their stasis pods deep underground, they've chosen to simply await the day when homo so- called-sapiens is no more; and they can reclaim the land above. They know that Man would never be able to live peaceably alongside them; it's just not in his nature. Not to mention all the horrid things the humans do to each other. If they treat their own kind so barbarically, what do you suppose they would do to us?" "But humans love mermaids!" exclaimed Anemone. Mom goggled at her like she now had three heads: "They WHAT?!!!" My sister had told me about these dinnertime fights she got into with Mom. This one was more or less civil so far, but who knew what might be revealed if this spun out of control. And it was nice that Anee was on my side, but it should be obvious that she was never going to convince Mom about this "humans are nice" stuff, so I was wishing she would just drop it. Or would at least stop using things I had been telling her to make her point... "Well they do!" she insisted, "The mermaids they put in their advertisements and things are always really pretty. It's clearly meant as a compliment. And did you know there's a fad among human little girls, where they put on fake tails and swim around like Mermaids, pretending they're us?" And besides, I wasn't sure humans were worth defending. I was still thinking about dibenzylpolyolyoxyphrene. Still haunted by the mental image of all those stillborn merbabies, and that school in Shellcastle they'd torn down in their surrender to what they assumed was merkind's slow but inevitable extinction... "And where did you hear this?" Mom asked. "Well, uh, you know... in one of those human magazines I found." Mom frowned, "I should probably take those magazines away from you. Well those human girls are young. They haven't yet learned to hate anything that's different. But the adults-" "Human adults? Did you know that in Brooklyn, New York they hold a parade every summer that's one big tribute to mermaids?! That doesn't sound like hate to me!" Anee said, which was something else I'd told her about... Two years ago on our trip to New York City I'd read in the Sunday Times that they were holding this parade, and it hadn't been too hard to talk my parents into going. In an expensive city like New York where even visiting the Guggenheim museum had cost us $25 a head it sounded like a cheap way to have fun. But the CONEY ISLAND MERMAID PARADE wasn't like any parades we had back at home. My father didn't seem to know what to think of it and my mother though it was just trashy, the floats being thrown together out of junk, or some beat up old car with seashells glued all over it and waves drawn on with a blue magic marker. Plus the fact that it was more risque than any of us were expecting ("This looks more like the NEW YORK SEX WORKERS PARADE!" complained Mom). But everyone there was having so much fun that even Mom did, sort of, eventually ("Oh well... When in Rome I guess you have to expect a little decadence."); and she eventually decided that half of the parade's "mermaids" being topless wasn't going to permanently scar me. Which it didn't, although I sure was jealous of some of them... "You mean the same Brooklyn where they held poor Bassby a prisoner for over a decade," Mom countered, and waved the whole human question away with her hand, "But as I said, we really shouldn't even be discussing such unpleasant matters at dinnertime. We seem to have upset poor Enomena. Are you all right, dear? You seem a bit green around the gills." "No, I'm... I'm fine." "Then to leave all this nonsense aside and answer your question, the reason we use chairs and such is a matter of civility. We don't need to swim outside to poo, but we do. Some things are just done, and somethings just aren't. It's tradition," she said. I asked Mom, "But how did these traditions even start? Tables, chairs, the steps going up to that temple we saw yesterday... It all seems so, well... human." "We didn't always live under the water, you know. As distasteful as it is to consider, we once had legs and dwelled on land," she said, and grimaced as she admitted- "And were in fact human ourselves. There was a war, some wizards, I'm not sure what all entirely, except that through the misuse of dark magic or some terrible weapon, the land our foremothers we were living on sank without a trace." "Atlantis, you mean." "That would be the European name for it," nodded Mom, "Although now they're saying a lot of the ancient history I was taught when I was your age is completely wrong. That the great continent the legends speak of was only a small island, and that many of the things in our sacred book never actually happened. Your father was quite an expert on The Land That Was, but since he's not here you can ask Mr. Mergolis about it when he returns. I would tell you to ask your sister, but her version of events would undoubtedly be more informed by fashionable radicalism and wishful thinking about humans than facts or common sense." I could feel Anemone quietly seething at this "fashionable radicalism" dig, and hear the smoldering anger in her voice when she asked with a crafty sort of sweetness, "Mom... have you ever heard the expression 'contempt prior to investigation'? "Of course. It's one of the trademarks of humankind. How their tiny minds regard the world." "Yes, humans might be like that. Or they might not. But how would you?" "I know them, Dear." "That's curious, considering how you've never met one. But I guess you feel like you don't need to, since you've decided you already know everything about them. And there's a word for that... What is it?" she asked jeeringly, "Oh yeah: CONTEMPT PRIOR TO INVESTIGATION!!!!" Mom smirked, "Well that was a very passionate outburst, but it was also a very foolish one. I have been studying humans for a half a century, reading everything I could about them, and by them." "They've written some beautiful things." "I'll concede that some of their literature is quite entertaining. Humans should stick to fiction, it's what they're good at. It's when they try to delve into great truths that they reveal themselves to be so sadly flawed. Take their great prophet of democracy, Jefferson. Writing so eloquently about equality and the rights of man, but unwilling to abide by these teachings in his own life. Or all the religious texts they've written. That book about that lovely messiah, the one Jasper's so fond of, who they murdered for preaching love and forgiveness and mercy; A book they carry with them onto their battlefields where they disembowel each other. Or-" Anee interrupted her with: "And I could find a hundred examples of mermaid writers guilty of hypocrisy as bad as George Jefferson! And if you want to talk about someone failing to live by a book they're preaching from, just open one of our history books to any page and you'll see how far short we fall of what's in THE WISDOM OF ATLANTIS. That would be enough to prove that Merkind is evil---HORRIBLE!! CORRUPT!! HOPELESS!!---if that's what you're looking to prove. Not like sitting down with one of them and talking to them; and then realizing, Gee, they're just like me!' Maybe not perfect but having all the same feelings, the same hopes, the same-" "The same old egalitarian claptrap!" sneered the queen, "And how do you suggest I go meet a human? Oh! I know... I'll throw myself up on the shore and say 'Hello! I haven't got the brains the Gods gave a sponge!! Please kill me!!!'" This was so over-the-top snotty and sarcastic---more like one of her daughter's taunts---that I had to laugh, but it just made Anee madder: "What I'm suggesting, Mother Dear, is you might admit that maybe you don't know as much about humans as you think you do. Not when you haven't met any. Daddy did, and he LIKED them!" " Your father always tried to see the good in people, it was his greatest virtue, and his greatest flaw. Those humans were using him. He just couldn't see that." "Him and them were fighting together for what they both believed in! To try and stop a bunch of violent crazies from taking over the world, from killing a lot of innocent humans who were just trying to live their lives. Which sound exactly like what you claim to believe, in your speeches about defending the Northern Nations against Amazonia. And now you're saying that's a stupid thing to do? That Daddy was stupid for that?!" "I SAID NO SUCH THING!" "Well you sure implied it. Just admit that he might know something about humans that you don't, since he's actually met them!" The Queen said quietly, "I've had dealings with humans." "You might think you have, but that's just in books!" "This wasn't just from books, "said Atlantea. Almost muttering it, looking down at her lap. "Riiiiiiiiight! Sure you have. And when was this?" "I would prefer not to discuss it." "Yeah, because it NEVER HAPPENED!" "It happened. Now let's drop this." "Now there's a big surprise. We talk about what you want to talk about until somebody points out where you're wrong, and then it's 'Ooooh it's unpleasant, let's not discuss it!!' I knew you were getting desperate when you tried to tell me you've met humans. I've heard all your stories, and if you had one about meeting the horrible evil humans you'd be telling it every chance you got!" "I might not know everything there is to know about humans, but you don't know everything about me... Now please, can we put this to rest?" Queen Atlantea saying PLEASE?! Something wasn't right here. There was a pain in her eyes that made me think Anemone could be pushing too hard. I started to say, "Anee, maybe-" "NO! I want to hear this," snapped Anemone, "Tell us, Mom! Tell us! Tell us about your encounter with the big bad horrible hewwwww-monns that never-" Mom slammed both her fists down on the table, and roared, "I FELL IN LOVE WITH ONE!" Time itself seemed to stop. Anemone's arms hanging frozen in mid- gesture, our mother sitting there with an open-mouthed look of shock on her face, like she had just blurted out a secret that she'd intended to take to the grave with her. Which I believe she had... )))=======> LIKE DOLPHINS CAN SWIM Finally the water in the room unsolidified, allowing Anemone to to gasp- "Mom!" "Oh dear," murmured the Queen. Anemone sputtered, "Mom, that's just... I mean how... Who... You... You did WHAT?!" Atlantea, momentarily discombobulated by her unplanned confession, had already regained her composure. She said, "I fell in love with one. Yes, that's right, with a human man. And since I've started I shall tell you about it. But you girls had better pay attention; because this will be the last time we ever speak of this... Agreed?" We nodded. "The year was nineteen fifty-four. Shellcastle was still Hatteria Village, your grandmother was on the throne, and I was twenty-five year old princess living in the old palace that sat here..." She was twenty-five in 1954??! DAMN! She looked great for eighty-five years old. "In those days childhood lasted longer than it does today, especially within the upper class. I had led a very sheltered life, and in a lot of ways I was less mature at twenty-five than you are at fifteen. Maybe even less mature than Enee here, who deserves a bit of latitude for being brand new to this life. But don't push it, Dear," she warned me when she caught me making a duhhhhhh-I'm-just-a-liddle-baby-face at Anee. "Back then I had very little motivation or discipline. I spent a good deal of time lost in silly dreams, and writing awful poetry that was long on sentimentality but short on anything like wisdom. A stint in the Army might have done me a world of good, but we really had no standing army in those days. I knew your father then; he was a politician's son, five years older than myself, and he didn't impress me. He seemed so serious, so traditional, so ordinary; like everyone else in this second-rate little country. I just knew I was destined for something extraordinary; and it sure wasn't becoming Queen of this place. I wanted to be free. I wanted to swim away, to some big city in one of the larger queendoms, and become a Dolphin." Anemone and I looked at each other. I came dangerously close to bursting into giggles when she started bobbing her head and silently mouthing: "EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!!" "STOP THAT! Do you two want to hear this or do you want to fool around?" "Sorry," we droned. And if Mom was being this open and honest about herself as this she really did deserve our proper non-giggly attention. "The Dolphins, as they called themselves, were a bunch of foolish young mers who wanted to live like dolphins. Free love, living without possessions, migrating aimlessly from town to town, adventure to adventure- trying to emulate the book that had become the 'bible' of the Dolphinite movement: ON THE SEA. I had gotten ahold of a copy of it, which I kept hidden behind a wall panel in my room." Anee sounded baffled: "You had to hide ON THE SEA?! But it's just an ordinary novel. I mean it's kind of weird how the whole thing was one long sentence, and there's some sex and stuff in it, but it's not like it's pornography or anything." "It might not seem like it today, but those were more innocent times; and back then that book was considered very daring---even dangerous--- for the way it thumbed its nose at all the values of Hatterian society. It was certainly nothing that a young princess should be reading! And I was such a wooly-headed naif in those days that it did have an unwholesome effect on me. Fueling my fantasies, my dreams of escaping from the ordinary---from the 'oppression' of all this comfort and security and belonging---into something that never actually existed. There were a lot of young mers flocking to the big cities over in Midlantica in a quest for some sort of perfect freedom; Where all they found was squalor, hunger, crime, exploitation and moral dissolution. A life of playing all day, which seems to work for real dolphins, just doesn't for us... "And I might have actually joined them; throwing away everything I had; this life, my title, my duties to go try and live out some bohemian pipe-dream. But instead I wound up taking my own 'swim on the wild side' right here at home. Something more forbidden than anything all those would-be Dolphins---who imagined themselves such rebels against convention---were getting up to in their little Deeper East Side garrets. A transgression that I imagine would even have shocked even the author of ON THE SEA, Jack Kippersnack himself..." )))=====> THE UNDERSEA ROMANCE OF... "I don't recall where I was swimming to, or from, but I was out in the coral beds, it was a lovely spring day when I saw something curious. I had never seen a human before, and I didn't even realize that's what he was. I knew that humans died underwater, and if they ventured into our world they wore big heavy suits with helmets on them with a hose stretching up to the surface. But here was this creature who looked like a human, but he seemed as at ease swimming around the corals as I was. He had legs, but his legs ended in fins that he propelled himself through the water with. It was only later that I discovered these fins weren't part of his body were removable things he was wearing, and I thought maybe he was some poor disfigured merman. He had something on his back, like a strange elongated metal egg, which I thought he was carrying someplace, not realizing it was what was allowing him to breathe. "He noticed me watching him and he smiled. Even around that object plugged into his mouth it was a charming smile. And then he did something that I assumed no land dweller would ever do. He didn't rush to attack me or swim away in fear, but waved 'Hello!' "He seemed surprised to see me, but delighted. I waved back, and we swam toward each other. He couldn't speak, but we communicated crudely through hand gestures. It was then that I began to realize he was in fact a human, but even then I wasn't afraid, and was as curious about him as he was about me... "We swam all around the corals, pointing out different beautiful things to each other. I called an octopus over and he handled it, gently, letting it clamber all over him. He may have been born on land, but I could tell this human understood and truly loved the sea... "And later, on his ship, when we were able to converse, he spoke so knowledgeably and so passionately about the world's oceans, especially his home in the Mediterranean. He had such grand dreams, of making films that would bringing the undersea world to his fellow humans, so they would appreciate it and want to protect it. I could listen to this man talk for hours. And I did... "After we'd been swimming together for about an hour he showed me the mouthpiece of his 'aqualung', and the air bubbling out of it, and I realized that the steel thing on his back was his air supply. And in our pidgin sign language he explained that his tank was running low. The things are everywhere nowadays, and humans in scuba gear are merkind's nightmare, but at the time I was seeing something that probably no mermaid had ever seen before; and I didn't realize how devices like this one he'd invented would proliferate... "We went to his ship, where they used a little seat on a hoist to pull me aboard. Everyone was astonished to meet an actual mermaid, but very friendly. The ship's crew was mostly French, but he and some of the others spoke English. When I told him he should have been a merman because he was so much like one, he said, "Pair'aps in anothair life, I was. In my 'eart I am a child of zee sea, like you..." "I would come to learn this was the oldest trick in the book. When a human claims to understand us, and tell you they feel like they're a mer in their heart it's a lie, or at best a delusion of theirs. Their hearts don't beat like ours. What might seems like a range of emotions similar to ours is something we imagine, project on to them, because we want so much for it to be true. I know I sure did, as full of youthful naivety and optimism as I was at twenty-four. I had some hard lessons ahead of me but I've come to understand how the world is... Especially when it comes to humans! "I visited with the human oceanographers for a week, swimming with them when they dove, trying human foods on their boat, singing with them while they played guitars, but carefully- so as not to hypnotize anyone---then swimming home and lying to Mother about where I'd been all day. Although she did find out later. When I was moping around for months, heartbroken, barely able to eat. Jacques and I had grown very close." "How close?" asked Anemone. Mom shot her a peevish look. "Closer than I'm going to tell you about! I fell in love with my funny Frenchman, and he swore that he loved me. He promised he would return. But when the Calypso sailed away that was the last I ever- "Calypso?!! But that was Jacques Cousteau's boat!!" "Yes it was," said Mom, scrutinizing me. So now I guess it was my turn to blurt out something I hadn't intended to. As a human kid I had been watching watching dvd's of THE UNDERSEA WORLD OF JACQUES COUSTEAU since before I could talk (my mom Shannon always telling the story about how I would seem to fall into a trance watching all the pretty fishies). But as a sea cow I had some serious explaining to do. "Jacques Cousteau was totally a legend in our manatee herd! The Elders still talk about when he came and filmed a documentary about us..." Which was pretty lame save, but luckily Mom still seemed more focused on her own betrayal. She said bitterly, "No doubt he promised them he would come right back and they're still waiting. Jacques was such a charmer, and such a damned liar! Of all the promises he made, the only one he kept was when he said he would never reveal the existence of mermaids to the human world, or release the photographs he took of me, some of which were... compromising. For that I do thank him. It must have been a hard promise for Jacques to keep. He was quite the self- promoter even then. But I do believe his love for the sea was genuine. Unfortunately his love for me... (*sigh!*) It seems I was nothing more than a curiosity to him. A way to combine his amorous ways with his fascination with sea life... "He could at least have been up front about this. It would have been awkward for him and painful for me, but at least it would have allowed me to get on with my life. Instead I hung on to his promises, of that life we were going to have together, exploring and photographing the world's seas, me behind the camera and him swimming on ahead, bringing our discoveries to that other world up there. Your grandmother tried to tell me I was being foolish, that my human was never coming back, but I refused to listen. To me, she was just an ignorant ogre," she said, giving Anemone a look that said 'And someday you'll see things my way!' "I'm sorry it didn't work out," I said. "It never could have worked out. But foolish thing that I was I waited and waited---Ten years!---turning away several worthy suitors, just to prove mean old Queen Meredith wrong. But eventually I came to see the truth. We have no place in the human world and they're not welcome in ours. They bring nothing but hearache..." Anemone looked like she was going to say something, probably about "You shouldn't judge all humans by one example", but then she didn't. Letting her mom have her feelings about this, right or wrong... "Anyway," said Queen Atlantea, "that's my story. And girls, you are never to repeat it to anyone, not even after I'm long gone. I want your word on that." We gave it. Leaving the dining hall, my twin looked lost in though. I asked, "What are you thinking?" "I don't know, I'm still in shock. And I don't know why, but I kind of admire Mom more for doing that. It's just too bad that..." "Yeah it is," I nodded. )))=====> G'NITE! That night, falling asleep I thought about my life on land on the people in it again, but I also thought about that beautiful woman who ran the candy story. I think I dreamed about her too... And curled up in my bed did I browse a couple of book from the library briefly, but turned the lights down and conked out not long after Anee did, because she'd warned me we had an early and very big day ahead of us tomorrow; with both a long swim and a long hike on the schedule. "A hike? What are we going to do? Stand on our tails and hop around like a potato sack race?" "Stand on our tails! What a weird idea. And that'd be great if we could do that," she said. "But no, I'm afraid this trip is gonna be something quite a bit more, erm, horizontal..." "What do you mean?" Her grin was positively devilish. "You'll see..." =========================0 NEXT: Who ARE these Guys??? =========================0 (And please do comment. I really, really, really like comments!!!)