The pot bubbles and steams as I stir the liquid, boiling the water hot. Tiny bubbles pop up and float, temping me to touch them with my finger. I clench my fist tight, holding back the urge.

With a sigh, I set the spoon down and rest my forehead on the hard cabinet, letting the sound of boiling water flush my worries away.

I can almost imagine waves creasing past my head and fish flouncing by. Coral and sea grass drifts in the wind and tiny sand particles are dragged deep throughout the ocean. I imagine the soft humming of the whales in the distance and splashes of fellow divers.

“Madeline?” Grandpa called. I snapped out of my daydream and leaned back from the counter.

“Yes, Grandpa?”

“Is the water coming?”

“Of course!”

Diving would have to wait.

The day started fine. I was cleaning the dishes and left the house near 11:00, but now I stand on the frozen lake, miles from my home.

I came over to ice skate. The kids in the neighborhood love coming here. It's one of the few times we get to have fun, especially during the winter. The ice was thick and slippery and I was the only one who didn't have skates.

One of the neighborhood kids, a little boy named Tommy, went too far out. I ran out to get him and pushed him further away before I started to hear the dreadful sound of ice cracking. I knew at that moment I was doomed.

The last thing I remember is screaming at Tommy to run before the ice cracked beneath me and I was instantly submerged into the freezing water. I remember the feel of it against my body and the darkness of it that made me instantly close my eyes, after that, it went back.

Then I woke up. I was in my kitchen, standing at the sink doing the same dishes I washed earlier. The same soft tune played in my ears and I no longer felt the chill of the water or my body sinking. I look over at the time on the stove. 10:37.

I stood there in shock and all I could think was, what the hell just happened?

Room to Rent

From my phone screen to the house to back to my phone, I was transfixed. Hydrandras edged a bright green expanse of lawn. A curved cobble stone driveway led up to prim three story Victorian It was storybook worthy. The Facebook classified was for a room for rent in large house with an eldery couple. I looked down at my busted up Converses. I was regretting my choice of outfit, denim jacket and tights. Heading towards the back, I took a deep breath and started up the long winding driveway.

Spacious en suite in a Victorian house with pool and hot tub

Over text, I reached out and made an appointment for a tour. Ray texted the address and said to meet them around back. The whole drive over I beat down my anxiety of walking nto a Dateline-inspired hellscape. Instead of a potential crime scene I was transported to a spread from Better Homes and Gardens. A yellow winged butterfly fluttered across my path. The backyard was as beautiful as the front. Splashing, a guy who looked looked Santa Claus in a Hawaiian shirt was fishing something bright from the bottom of the pool. Mrs. Claus in nothing but a wet tee shirt lounged poolside. She tossed me a provocative smile. I’m never one to yuck somone else’s yum but I didn’t know what to look.

$400 a month, utilies included, full access to home including laundry room

Ray ushered me through the grand home. Right now, I’m subletting a one-person apartment with two other girls. I’m sick of being 24 years old and having a pinned up sheet as a door. I need my own space. I need a breather to save up for a bigger place, I need space. Ray was friendly and the interior was lovely. I can put up with anything.

Has to be seen to be believed.

“Ida made fresh lemonade. Have a glass.” Ray asked. “You wouldn’t want for anything if you move in, Emily. Paper goods, groceries, you could join us for dinner.”

The sun drenched kitchen was chef worthy with shiny new appliances and old fashioned Nonna vibes. I could picture making snickerdoodles in a kitchen like this.

“Most people freak out when we tell them we’re swingers. We have gettogethers once a month. You’re welcome to join us or of course you can stay in your room. No pressure, my lovely. Thanks for taking the tour. So when can you move in?” Ray asked handing me a lemonade.

Cocking my head, I thought about swing dancing. Not my thing but then I thought of my roommates, one who has taken up knife throwing and the other won’t flush the toilet. Finally things were looking up for me.

“It’s not my thing. But I’m willing to try anything once. I can move in Friday,” I said.

"

The underwater train left a trail of bubbles. The little girl, Mira, bounced up and down. She and her dad were heading to the best restaurant in the world. The Koral Kitchen. The restaurant was in the Great Barrier Reef, and food was catch fresh. Like caught only minutes ago, washed, cut, and put onto a plate for consumption. The Koral Kitchen had another great thing about it. It was owned, built, and run by Sari Saffron, who has a little girl named Mira.

He deep in a dirty, brown water. He had gone head first into it, falling into the darkness, into the frigid water. The fall had been a shock and Jack had not been able to get a full breath before he was sinking beneath the surface. He felt his body go into a sort of shock from the chill. He had not yet started to regret going into the house at the end of Culberson Circle after Cydni yet, but as he sank deeper and deeper, desperate for his eyes to train to the dark and get his bearings, he wasn’t sure if he would make it out of here alive.

Jack had been standing on the porch of the dingy, rotten house, surprised when Cydni had actually taken his dare at last.  Had actually reached out for the door knob and turned it.  And then she had been thrust forward, Cydni stumbling in through the doorway, the door shutting hard behind her.  Jack stepped back with a start.  He had not pushed her, though he was sure Cydni would never let him hear the end of it.  Then he approached the door,  “Cydni?”  He called out.

There was no answer.

“Cydni, come on.  You can come out now.”

Silence.

“Okay, Cydni, very funny,” Jack said, approaching the door.  He reached a hand to the knob and turned it gingerly.  It did not budge.  He tried again, but still nothing.  The door would not give.  He started to pull back and forth on the doorknob, trying to pull the door open.  Panic started to set in.  It was just a house, he told himself, don’t be so stupid.  But the door would not open and he did not hear anything from inside.  It was almost like Cydni had just…disappeared.  

Jack paced back and forth on the porch, waiting a moment.  Maybe she had been knocking unconscious, taken a nasty fall.  Maybe she would come to and open the door.  After a handful of minutes with no sign of Cydni, his mind went wild with ideas of what fate befell her friend.  Maybe she fell onto a loose nail and was bleeding out in there.  No, maybe there was a squatter in there and she was being chased—maybe she was hiding.  Maybe the door was stuck and with all the windows boarded up, she wouldn’t have another way out.  Jack didn’t have the tools to pry the boards off the windows and he knew Cydni didn’t have the strength to try even if she found a pry bar in there somewhere.  He would have to find  another way in.  Resolve clicked into place and gave way to action.  Jack landed on a plan—find another way in.  Maybe somewhere on the outside there was a crack or something overlooked or…

“A basement.”  He said to himself.  He grew up in this area.  The development was the same in its make.  They all had a basement.  Like his house and like Cydni’s, there would be an exterior hatch that led down into the basement and, within, a door that would lead back up inside.  Jack stopped for a moment and wondered if Cydni had come to the same conclusion and was looking for it, or, as Jack rather expected, perhaps she hadn’t thought to as fear would have certainly gripped her by now.  Jack swallowed.

He started around the side of the house, hopping off the side of the porch through a break in the splintered railing to the left of the door.  He hopped into the tall grass and started wading through the waste deep weeds around the side of the house.  The weeds certainly would aid his search.  It would be all but hidden because of them.  He cornered the left edge of the house and came up around the side of it.  It would be in the back, if he was right about the structures being near-replicas.  The exterior was, though the insides of these houses had their own personality and lay out.  

Jack came into the backyard where a splintered and sun blasted fence stood in the back, torn and tattered through the years and lack of maintenance.  He squinted his eyes and pushed weeds aside, searching for the hatch.  And surely enough, near the middle of the house, rusted and brown with age, a two-door hatch sat.  The handles were corroded and flaking as his hands gripped around them.  He pulled and heard the metal groaning in the night air.  But it, too, did not budge.  “Fucking things.”  Jack swore to himself and mustered his strength, rallying for a second attempt.  Jack pulled again, throwing his back into it and putting his feet on the edge of the crumpling wood trimming, groaning with effort.  The hatch doors screeched as he pulled it open inch by inch, revealing a dark descent of ruined stone stairs.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, Jack sighed and pulled his phone from his hoodie pocket.  He turned on the light and started down the stairs.

To his memory, there should only be a handful of steps before reaching the basement doors.  But there were more here than he remembered.  His light dimly revealed the path before him, but he couldn’t see two or three steps ahead of him before the light seemed to be swallowed by an unnatural darkness.  As he continued downward, growing increasingly puzzled, the steps became more treacherous—the stone becoming more worn.  Before long the steps transitioned into a downward stone path.  Despite everything screaming inside him that this was wrong, that something was off, he pressed forward, determined to find his friend.

Then he knew something was wrong.  As the walls on either side of the stone path went from wood to stone as well, craggy and rough.  Jagged rocks peaked out of the walls, growing closer with every step, as though the path was narrowing.  And it _was_ narrowing, Jack decided.  He stopped, considering only for a moment that maybe he should just head back up and call the police.  He turned around and his stomach dropped.  The path was gone.  Where he had come from was gone.  Just a stone wall stood cold and careless behind him.  He shook his head.  It was impossible.  That’s impossible.  But there it was.  A wall where steps had been.  He had only been going straight down—and for far too long, he noted—he knew what he was seeing was impossible but still, there it was.

He turned back to the path ahead, to the sharp jutting stone.  There was no way but forward.

The path narrowed further and further.  The rocks started to catch his clothes, snagging on his hoodie.  He moved carefully to avoid ripping it.  But the wall closed in more.  He turned to his side, sidling against the wall, the sharp stone grinding against his back.  He grimaced and kept moving, one small step at a time at moments.  Until there was almost no room to move.  He became pressed foot to heel against the wall and now every movement was torture.  He grunted and groaned in pain with every forced movement, sliding his skin between the stone walls.  He felt something warm trickling through his shirt.  He refused to look lest it be blood—he had always been the queasy sort—something Cydni always teased him about.  

Jack made one final grunt, pressed against the walls, tearing his skin, pulling himself between the stones, and then he felt himself loose his footing.  His phone tumbled out of his hand and fell in front of him, falling below a hidden precipice, vanishing into an inky black darkness.  And then he felt himself falling too.  He gasped as gravity took him.  And then he felt something cold hit his ear as his head was submerged first.  Shock struck his body as the rest of him fell in the water.  It was dark and merky and he couldn’t get his eyes to adjust to the darkness.  He held his breath, wishing he’d had a moment to take a deep breath before falling in.

He searched the depths fruitlessly, panicked, the cold setting to his bones.  He could feel his limbs becoming stiff in the water as he sank lower and lower.  Then he saw a light flickering below.  His phone.  It hadn’t been destroyed from the water damage yet.  He could use it with what little time the thing had left.  He dove deeper, ignoring the tinge of pain panging  through his back and stomach as he swam.  Jack reached out and grabbed his phone and quickly panned around.  A flurry of shadows dancing with the light played with his eyes.  He scanned in a panic.  There had to be a way out.  There had to be.  But, then, he supposed there didn’t have to be anything.  There shouldn’t a basement that went this deep, a stairwell that went down so far.  None of it made sense.  Especially what was apparently a small lake under a house.

Then he saw it, some sort of opening in the rock at the bottom of the water.  His phone died the next moment, plunging him in the dark once more.  He tried his best to remember where it was, swimming—flailing mostly—toward where he thought the opening was.  His head collided with the hard wall and he grimaced in pain.  He fumbled his hands against the cold stone, desperate to find the opening.  His lungs were on fire.  He could feel himself giving up, his diaphragm heaving, begging him to find air.  He followed the wall to the left, slowly, until he reached out to meet his hand with the wall and found only open space.  

Jack pushed his body to the space and found he would have to crouch to get through.  Another tight, sharp space.  His bones felt like lead as he pushed himself down onto his chest in the water, using his momentum to push his torso through the hole, his arms in front of him.  Half of his body pushed through.  But then he was stuck.  His hips caught on the stone.  He put his hands on the stone the opposite side of the wal and tried to force himself through, but he wouldn’t budge.  He put his weight against the wall and could feel his skin tearing, his clothes ripping.  His hips were burning.  Then his thighs.  Then his legs as he _ripped_ himself through the hole, screaming as he went.  

There was still water on the other end and he was moving on borrowed time.  Jack pushed off his stomach and planted his feet on the stone floor and kicked off as hard as he could.  He emerged from the water and took a gasping breath.  He swam lazily, his strength leaving him, looking for any surface to pull himself onto and get out of the frigid water.  He sighed a breath of relief as he reached another rocky surface and pulled himself up out of the water. 

Jack laid there for a moment in raspy breaths as he let his eyes adjust to his surroundings.  Then he noticed a door behind him.  It was another splintered, rotting door that sat against the jutting stones ajar.  Jack picked himself up to his feet and stumbled toward the door.  He stopped before it and opened it gingerly.  The door swung toward him silently, revealing wooden stairs.  Some of the steps were missing, rusty nails sticking out of the boards.  But they led up to an open doorway at the top.  Jack climbed the old staircase, holding his weight against the wall to make up for his newfound limp, careful not to end up with a nail in his foot.  

Pulling himself up with a grunt, Jack reached the landing at the top of the stairs and stepped through the doorway.  It was the kitchen.  His gambit had paid off.  While the basement wasn’t at all what he was expecting, if you could even call that dank, cold hole a basement, the hatch had indeed led inside the house.

“Cydni!”  Jack shouted.  “Cydni!  Where are you?”

Jack carefully surveyed the kitchen.  The cabinets were all layered in dust—the colors muted and drab.  There were a full set of cabinets that lined the walls, an island which would. Have been of impressive marble now sat cracked and chipped and settled in dust.  The floors were warped and the wood was fraying.  

“Cydni!”  He called again.

Silence.

There was nothing in this house.  At least that is how it seemed.  He would have to explore more thoroughly before trying the front door again, this time from the inside, to get back out and contact the authorities.  His phone was back in the cave below.  And he wouldn’t dare return.  

Jack surveyed the kitchen once more and spotted something out of place.  Amongst the dust and the cobwebs and the muted, dead colors, sat a mug.  It was clean—polished, even.  And from the cup, steam rose from a piping hot drink.

My lungs are burning with in intense feeling, like I’m being lit on fire from the inside. My eyes closed tightly under the lake water as I kick my legs, reaching my arms up to break though the water’s surface. I need air. Now.

I gasp, rubbing my eyes with my fist as I adjust to the setting. A camp counselor is looking at me dead in the eyes, a frown on his face clear as day. “You failed.” The only words he’s said to me other than “can’t believe I got stuck with this one.” Which I’m pretty sure he was just muttering to himself.

It’s been two days since I arrived at camp Ridgeview, a wilderness camp for troubled teens- and I already hate it here. The mages here? Crazy, complete psychopaths who I’m pretty sure are out to get me. Spiders in my cabin, dead rats left on my bunk daily, roommates who try to murder me with their freaky powers, and food poisoning.

Now, I have to pass test to given to me by my sour camp counselor, Roen— a short redheaded, brown-eyed, telekinetic— just to earn supper. And failing? That means cleaning up after supper. A fate far worse than death. And now, because I couldn’t hold my breath underwater for twenty minutes, I get to help with that duty. Fun.

Roen smiled— a crooked, evil smile, but a smile— for the first time ever as he opened the broken, molding door with one hand, a paper with a big “F” written in bright red in the other. I walked into the foul smelling room, dusted floors, paint peeling off walls, dishes stacked high in a run downed sink, unidentifiable food splattered in every direction.

“Well, better get to work.” Roen chuckles at his comment before walking out of the room and tossing the paper into a empty trash can. I look over at the sink, reaching for a not so gross looking plate stuck between two bowls filled with strange brown-green liquid. Putting on pale yellow gloves full of holes, and grabbing a bottle of dish soap, I get to work. One dish at a time.

Toothy quietly munched on the last of his classmates, a delicious teenaged grouper named Bloop, as Professor Darkcloud swirled his tentacles through the last of some ink to demonstrate the basic principle of diffusion.

“So you see, even though when it was condensed in a small space my ink was enough to hide me completely, because the ocean has so much more water than ink, when the ink is no longer condensed in a small space and is instead diffused across the water, I am once again visible. Now who can tell me…” Professor Darkcloud twirled around in confusion.

“Toothy, where did all you classmates go?” he asked suspiciously, catching sight of a few rainbow fish scales glittering on the tip of one of Toothy’s razor-sharp canines.

Toothy gulped, incidentally swallowing the last bit of Bloop as he tried to come up with an explanation that would not get him permanently banned from every school in the ocean.

“Umm, well, you see Professor, when Stripey couldn’t see you, she forgot she was supposed to be paying attention to the ink cloud to watch diffusion. So she, well, she realized that the many rows of teeth in my mouth was a valid area of scientific inquiry and so, um, well, she inquired. I didn’t want to be rude, after all, Principal Arthropod was very clear that rudeness would get me expelled, so I opened up so Stripey could study my teeth. She, well, she swam in and called everyone else after her. Then Bubbles swam too close to my tongue and his fins were ticklish so I closed my mouth to scratch. And now, well, they’re all exploring my stomach Sir. I’m sure they’ll come out eventually.” Toothy finished with a rush, gazing hopefully at Professor Darkcloud, hoping he’d sounded confusing. After all, Stripey did regularly forget what they were learning about and try to get the rest of the class to join her in new topics. And Bubbles had tickled on the way down his gullet. It was plausible.

Professor Darkcloud did not lose his inquisitorial expression as he asked “If Stripey forgot she was supposed to be watching a demonstration of diffusion, how did she remember she was supposed to be studying science?”

Toothy hung his head, realizing one of the obvious flaws in his story. When Stripey came up with a new topic, it was new, and never seemed to be related in any way to what a class had been learning before. If it was science class, suddenly she’d be talking about the best ways to store algae for later consumption. If it was reading class, she would start talking about how to blow the biggest bubbles. When her brain forgot a subject, it forgot it.

“You’ve been warned Toothy. You were warned when you started that the only reason you were being allowed in school at all was to see if education could make a shark a productive member of the ocean’s society, rather than a menacing bully. You knew you only had 3 chances to get it right. You used your first chance beating everyone to the finish line in swimming class and turned around so they would all swim into your mouth. You used your second chance when you decided to make sushi of your classmates in cooking class instead of the seaweed parfait you were supposed to be preparing. You’re done. But we need to make sure everyone knows it.”

With that, Professor Darkcloud swam up to Toothy’s side and just behind Toothy’s gill, Toothy felt a paralyzing pain. And it kept going. He tried to wiggle his caudal fin to get moving, not sure if he wanted to get away or eat Professor Darkcloud more, but his caudal fin just hung there. The only movement he made was his teeth grinding together, and that wasn’t even something he was trying to do, it was just happening.

A few minutes later Toothy could move again. His side burned terribly and neither Professor Darkcloud nor a telltale ink cloud were anywhere in sight. All he wanted was to get to the nearest kelp field to wrap the long, flowing leaves around himself and get some relief. He took off northward, trying to remember the magnetic signature of the kelp field he thought lay in that direction.

After a few days staying hidden in the kelp field, Toothy was starting to feel a bit less stung. And he’d hatched a plan. He’d originally decided to ask to join the school system near Australia since they tended to be the most open to trying new things, and he knew the idea of a great white shark in school was not normal. But a different school system wouldn’t know about his issues in the Australia school system and would accept an explanation that he was a transfer student and they were the school system on his new migration route. Especially the system off the coast of China near Hong Kong- they didn’t like to communicate with the other schools, as they believed their education system was superior and so anyone coming to them would have to start learning again from the beginning. They didn’t NOT accept transfer credits, ever. So, they would have no need to find out what he’d done in the Australian school system. And as a bonus, since most great white sharks didn’t swim near Hong Kong if they had other options, the Hong Kong schools would be less likely to know about his potential predatory instincts toward his classmates. Having thought through all this, he set off at once.

Headteacher Yu poked his eyes up through the sand and flexed his barbed tail as he studied Toothy closely, including the scars of the jellyfish stings that stretched between Toothy’s gills and his second dorsal fin on his port side. She didn’t need their pattern reading “Danger: failed out of school for eating classmates” to tell her not to admit Toothy. Headteacher Yu was unfortunately familiar with great white sharks and the devastation they caused the local population when they visited the South China Sea. And she knew that this devastation would be yet another set back in her schools task of making the neighborhood safe for young, native fish families to lay their eggs and thrive. Another shark? An apex predator shark at that? Ridiculous. They were already dealing with that choking red tides, the plastic bottles that the little ones just could not be taught to not play in, and the huge boats with their dragging nets catching up everything and only throwing back the plastic trash and a few dying, unwanted fish. But the thought of the dragging nets gave Headteacher Yu an idea. She burrowed down further in the sand to contemplate, twitching her tail barb toward Toothy in warning when he moved closer to her.

After a long silence where Headteacher Yu’s black and white spotted skin blended into the rocks and sand so well that Toothy only knew she was still there because she kept flicking her tail at him, Toothy finally heard her say, “Well, young visitor, I think the idea of an exchange student could be useful to us. However, we simply cannot admit any sea life that cannot do the basic tasks of reading, writing, and arithmetic. And those Australian schools are notoriously bad at teaching them, so it’s no use asking your so-called professors down there if you learned them. Therefore, an entrance exam it must be. Here is your first task: if to get to a harbor you swim 6 klicks north, then turn 90 degrees and swim 8 klicks east, how many klicks would you need to swim in a straight line to get back to your starting point?”

Toothy thought it through. Envisioning the route in his mind, Toothy saw the beautiful triangle shape coming together. He had always liked triangles- they were a lot like his teeth. So despite Headteacher Yu’s aspersions on the Australian schools system’s education system, Toothy was very familiar with the 3-4-5 triangle and promptly answered “10 klicks, ma’am.”

“Well young visitor, perhaps the Australian school system rubbed off on more than just your skin. Very good. Now, your next task is to swim t the hypotenuse of that triangle, which will take you near enough to Victoria Harbor to see the names of the fishing boats. You will need to surface, read the names of the first three trawlers that you see, then return here and tell them to me. That is your reading test. Off with you now.” Headteacher Yu waived her tail barb in the general direction of Victoria Harbor and off Toothy went. He could read trawler names, he couldn’t believe how easy it would be to get into the South China Sea school system.

Headteacher Yu breathed a sigh of relief watching him swim away. She didn’t expect to see him back, but just in case, she detailed a young barrelfish named Longeyes to follow him from a distance, warning Longeyes to stay far behind. She wanted Longeyes to come back and report, after all. Unlike Toothy, Longeyes was a useful student and if he grew up well, more barrelfish pods would come back to the South China Sea.

Longeyes was excited to be trusted with the task by Headteacher Yu until he heard his destination. His sister had gotten too close to the fishing trawlers near Victoria Harbor and never come home. Mama said the trawlers were even able to get deep sea fish like him. She had been very clear about exactly how close to the Harbor he could get. But she’d also told him to mind Headteacher Yu. So he followed. At a distance. And he was just close enough to see Toothy get caught up in one of the large nets stretched between two trawlers. And to grab his classmate Tina to keep her from swimming straight into the net too. That Tuna was always following him. He turned around to report in to Headteacher Yu, dragging Tina along with him.

Toothy couldn’t believe the strength of this current. Or the direction. Currents went side to side, not up and down. He’d barely surfaced and read the trawler names- luckily he was right between two of them, the “Fishery’s Flight” and the “Tanker, Trawler, Tonnage”. But when he dove down again to find some more he couldn’t move anywhere but up. And all the other fish around him were going the same direction. Except when they were getting closer to him. He didn’t dare eat them- it might get back to Headteacher Yu.

Then suddenly he was going down. Fast. And all the water disappeared. He stopped abruptly on his back. It hurt. And then it didn’t.

When he was right-side up again, he was confused. The ocean was somehow a lot smaller. He could barely swim a meter in any direction without banging his nose against something. And the light. He shut his eyes, but couldn’t block it out. Sighing, he opened them again. In front of him but on the other side of the barrier was a grayish cylinder with a yellowish flicker underneath that he’d never seen before. A collection of what looked like long, silvery teeth that were razor-sharp on only one side floated to the side of the cylinder. And the strangest fish he’d ever see was reaching a pectoral fin over the cylinder while his two long, skinny pelvic fins kept him in place. It’s other pectoral fin held something with writing on it that it kept glancing at. It was too hot in the room.

The strange fish turned the writing thing toward Toothy. Toothy figured maybe it would count for his reading for Headteacher Yu, so he tried to make out the words.

What he read told him he wasn’t going to make it back to Professor Yu:

“Shark Fin Soup, a delicacy.”

Gasping for air, all I see is red. The water surrounds me, yet I don’t feel like I’m drowning. Again - up - and again, gasping for air. Isn’t it funny how we can feel torn from our homes, everything we’ve known, at a moment’s notice? Life is cruel that way, I’ve found. I’ve seen people close to me hooked away by something or other clutching at their minds. Now, it seems, it’s my turn to succumb.

I feel his grip around me, holding me like a barrel of trash. I bounce, thrown down on a counter. This ending seems all too familiar; I’ve heard of this in legends, myths whispered by my parents and elders. Now, it seems, it’s my turn to be sliced and eaten.

There was a time when we lived on the land, long ago before the water submerged everything in its path. Life on land was the way of living, humans were born from their mothers wombs, brought into the world screaming, raised by their parents, went to school, made friends, had relationships, grew older, survived on their own, and started their own families.

That’s been over hundreds of thousands of years ago. Since the water, none of us know that life, we live and survive in the water. They say humans adapted to the sea, some say it was the magic of science, others say a witch cast a spell. We don’t age past 35, and some of us have gifts.

My gift, I can’t quite figure out. “Raelyn, I need you in the kitchen please.” My mother called out. As I swim down, I notice my mother getting ready to hand me a list. “ I need you to go to pick up some things for me from Ms. Fins, she knows your coming. “Okay mom, I’ll be back later.” As I race to the door my mom brings me to a hault “ah ah, I need you to promise me, you won’t go to the surface! Ms. Fins and back! You know how your father gets.” “Yes! Mother I know, I won’t get distracted, I have no interest in the surface whatsoever. Love you bye.”

I floated under the water for a moment and let the smile widen on my face. It was almost too good to be true. I almost couldn’t believe it. I kick my feet and ease my way back up, turning my face to the warm sun as my face breaks the surface, the smile still lingering on my lips. As I open my eyes, a splash of water hits my face and a cackle of laughter hits my ears. I turn toward the sound and immediately start swimming, chasing the trailing sound and the splashes ahead of me, just out of reach. As we reach the shallows, I hear clammering in the water ahead and dig my feet into the soft sand trying to gain purchase. I reach forward, groping and loose my balance, falling face first back into the water. Wild laughter fills my ears and a wild joy fills my heart. I look up and see you in front of me: hair wild, mouth open, eyes closed, cheeks flushed. I am consumed by a feeling I can’t explain, but it fills me with warmth and drives me to my feet. Chasing you towards the house, wanting only to catch you, to draw you close to me and feel the laughter echoing in your chest. I follow you inside, through the sliding doors of the breakfast room and finally make contact. Electricity spikes through my hand as I grasp your arm and spin you around. I pull your body to mine and bury my face in your neck as I wrap my arms around you. Breathing in the lingering hint of soap mixed with the loamy smell of the lake, I feel your body tense. I pulll back and look into your eyes and decide right then to kiss you for the first time, right there in your aunts kitchen.