Changes in Paradise: Part Eight - Perils, Proposals, and Progeny
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Disclaimer: The usual ... if you're underage, stop reading (and how did
you get a hold of this in the first place), if you're offended by
transgender or transsexual ideas, stop reading, and if you're unlikely
to enjoy erotic descriptions of sex, stop reading.
Permission granted to re-post on any free site with attribution.
You really ought to read "Changes In Paradise, parts 1 - 7," if you
haven't already. Those narrative threads must be held in memory or many
parts of what follows will not make sense.
Thanks for the comments, suggestions, and encouragement on the previous
parts. I really appreciate it. A very special thanks to Frank and
Pat(rick). Their comments and feedback have immeasurably improved this
story and inspired me to keep going. The rest of you, please leave a
comment or a suggestion, if you can. If you do, thank-you-thank-you,
and I'm still holding onto the shark. If you don't, perhaps the shark
will visit you?
Changes in Paradise: Part Eight - Perils, Proposals, and Progeny
By Patricia
Seaman First Class Eric Edwards blinked back his fatigue as he poured
through the complex spreadsheet that combined data from several
classified military and civilian Earth Observation Satellite (EOS)
systems for analysis. Algorithms that sifted through the millions of
images of the earth noted 235 variances for the North American
continent that were flagged as possible sites of increased drug
trafficking or terrorist activities. He had made it through seventy-
five flags in the past two days and had found nothing worth reporting.
It was a tedious job, sifting through the satellite images, looking for
the changes in human activity that had triggered the computer to signal
that those locations should be examined more closely by specialists
such as himself.
Eric didn't consider himself a specialist. After several years of
surfing and bumming around, working odd jobs, he had finally gone to
technical school for computer programming, but dropped out when he
couldn't afford the tuition any longer. At twenty-six, joining the
Navy had been difficult, but it gave him the technical training that he
hoped would give him a career when he got out. The Navy did not, as he
had first hoped with he enlisted four years earlier, keep him close to
the ocean. He was stuck in an office building two hours from the ocean
and another five hours from a decent surfing beach.
He stretched back in his chair, looking out from his cubical at the
quiet hum of activities that characterized his otherwise normal looking
office. The OHSCMCEOSDIS (Office of Homeland Security Combined
Military and Civilian Earth Observing System - Data and Information
System) looked much like any high-tech office in Northern Virginia, a
booming suburb of Washington DC. If not for the smattering of military
uniforms, a casual observer might think that the workers hunched over
their desks wrote software. Eric took off his glasses, a necessary
crutch now that he worked with computers, and cleaned them with a
tissue. He replaced them and leaned to his left.
"Lieutenant Commander Bennet?" he asked into the cubical wall.
"Yes?" a soft voice responded, floating softly over the low wall that
separated their cubicles.
"How many?" he asked.
"Twenty-two," the voice replied.
"Seven PM?" he asked.
"Maybe," the voice hesitated. "I've got to finish thirty by today."
"I'm at seventy-five," Eric offered. "I can help you catch up."
"So, that's how you impress and seduce a fellow officer," she teased.
"I'm not an officer, " he countered.
"Yes, I know," she teased. "Come and get a few, and I'll take your
proposal under advisement."
Eric popped up from his seat and jogged around the cubical wall to the
next entrance. A pretty brunette handed him a stack of folders as she
smiled up at him.
"You're still working hard for a short-timer," Sally teased.
"I have other motivations," Eric shot back. "Besides, you are
technically only a week behind me."
"That is IF I resign my commission," she said with a smile.
Sally Bennett was four years younger than he was, but she had gone to
college and was a Lieutenant Commander. She too was leaving the Navy,
much to her father's disappointment, but she was moving to Homeland
Security, which kept her father from completely blowing his top. Her
current job with Eric was part of her training for her new civilian
career in counter intelligence. When she had arrived two months
earlier, the athletic and friendly officer smote Eric with her first
smile. They reported to different commanders, which they hoped would
keep their relationship under the radar. They were well matched,
despite their different ranks and educational experiences, and had
similar interests and passions. Sally's new job would take her
somewhere else, but where they could not know. Eric had no idea what
he would do when his time in the Navy was up. Despite those obstacles,
their affair was a passionate one, and both felt the tug of something
more serious, a tug that they felt sorely tempted to give in to.
"Instead of moving to Homeland Security," Eric suggested, "maybe you
should come with me to California and learn how to surf?"
"I admire your persistence sailor," Sally said with a smile. "Perhaps
someday it will be rewarded."
Sally was a petite woman with piercing eyes that danced beneath her
rich, dark hair. She had learned how to scuba dive as a girl and was a
natural in the water. She always resented the fact that the Navy didn't
allow women to become SEALS, as she could swim circles around most men
she knew.
"You've got four more weeks to make up your mind," Eric offered. "My
plane ticket for California is in one month."
Even at 30, the former surfer still looked and acted (when appropriate)
like a beach bum, and sometimes, in the right light, he still looked
like one. "I'm pretty sure you would totally love the feeling of being
one with the water, feeling the power and rhythms of the waves," he
offered.
"And I am sure that you would love scuba diving," she said. "They are
both nice dreams, but you know how the Admiral has things planned out."
The Admiral was Sally's father, and try as she might; he was a hard man
to resist. With great difficulty, she had tried to carve her own path,
refusing to use her father's reputation and influence to advance her
own career. He nevertheless was a looming part of her life. When she
had decided to resign her commission to move to Homeland Security, they
had fought for weeks. Her father was convinced that Eric was to blame,
that she hoped to follow him into civilian life. Nothing she could say
could change her father's mind, and he hung like a shadow over her
relationship with Eric.
"What area were you working on?" Sally asked, changing the subject.
"North America. You?" he asked.
"South Pacific," she answered.
"Boring, eh?" he asked.
"No, lots of hits in the Philippines, East Timor, but nothing we can
identify as unusual," she answered.
"I'll get started on these," Eric offered, and he turned back to his
own cubicle, five file folders tucked under his arm.
*****
Petra actually wished, in that moment, that she had never changed into
a woman, or even a mermaid.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggg," ripped from Petra's throat as
another contraction wracked her nearly exhausted body, her tail curling
above her head, her arms clutched to her now swollen belly.
"Do I tell her to breathe?" Gabriel asked nervously, looking over to
Pat.
Phoebe giggled.
"No," Pat said. "Her gills are working fine."
"But there has to be something we can do?" Gabriel complained, feeling
completely useless.
"Relax," Pat urged. "We all feel helpless, but this is something that
mothers must do. We can keep her safe, and guard the birth, but her
contractions make it too dangerous to get too close to her. She is
cresting every few contractions to breathe air, so she’s fine."
"I know," complained Galina, rubbing her shoulder where Petra's
thrashing tail had walloped her earlier.
"You were trying to help," Gabriel said, caressing her other shoulder,
"Petra didn't mean it."
"I know," Galina said in the same ironic, monotone. "Still hurts."
Pat smiled. Galina and Petra had become very close over the past
several months, which wasn't surprising given that Galina had modeled
herself on Petra's body, though her coloring was inspired by (his) own
memories of (his) biological mother when she had been a male. Galina
had been alone with Petra during the early contractions, before all the
pods could make it back to the Moon Pool from all the different parts
of the island. Petra would be the first mermaid to give birth, but she
wouldn't be the only mermaid mother for very long. Six other mermaids
were now pregnant.
All four pods were gathered in the Moon Pool, waiting for the arrival
of the newest mermaid. Petra's long period of confinement was ending,
and she had been in labor for nearly six hours. She had become
pregnant with the only child of her now deceased pod-mate, Michael.
Pat, Danni, Phoebe, Xing, Angara, and Liga were all pregnant now as
well, but as with Petra's pregnancy, none of the mermaids were showing
any visible signs of pregnancy yet, though if Petra's pregnancy was
"typical," all that would change in the last month of the eleven month
gestation.
Mermaid pregnancies were apparently longer than human ones, but Petra
had not gained much weight until her last two months, and it wasn't
until the last four weeks that her belly visibly changed. Her nipples
had darkened as well, but otherwise, pregnancy did not seem to greatly
alter Petra's ability to swim, gather food, or any water-based
activity. However, in the last four weeks she stopped leaving the water
at all. It was just too uncomfortable to be on land, even lying on the
beach was difficult.
Moreover, the baby, as far as the three "official" scientists could
tell—Pat, Alexis, and Galina were all well-educated scientists when
they were men in their previous lives—mer fetuses did not curl up, as
human ones did, but rather stayed lengthwise within the womb. Thus,
Petra's body had a long, modest bulge that extended from her sternum
down to just above her vent, just shy of a meter in length. As she
transitioned from her earliest contractions into the hard labor of one
contraction about every two minutes, her tail had begun thrashing with
the contractions, sometimes forward, but increasingly around her back.
Her vent was dilating, and they could see flashes of lavender and black
as Michelle's tail prepared to emerge from Petra's womb. Phoebe had
worried that tail first was a breech birth, but Pat reassured everyone
that marine mammals, which clearly the mers were, were born tail first.
The fifteen mers arranged themselves around the edges of the Moon Pool,
keeping Petra from hurling herself against the rocks. Now, six hours
later, it seemed like an unnecessary task. Although Petra was in
constant motion, swirling in the water as contractions rippled through
her torso and tail, Petra had never actually crashed into the walls or
bottom of the pool. Galina had accidentally swum into one of Petra’s
contractions, earning a stiff wack on her shoulder from Petra’s very
strong tail. Petra crested the surface a few times, which gave
everyone a scare, but she fell back into the water safely each time.
There seemed to be an instinctual reserve in Petra that kept her from
thrashing too far out of control.
Petra had eagerly anticipated this day, but now that she was caught up
in the struggle of actual childbirth, she wondered why. Her insides
felt like someone had hooked up an electric socket to her womb and
flicked on the switch every few minutes, making all her muscles clench
and push down. She thought back to her own transition into a mermaid,
and decided that the "push" she had to do then was nothing compared to
this great effort now.
"The tail is coming," Pat exclaimed as she swam beneath the convulsing
Petra.
Petra arched backwards again into a circle, groaning her pain, her
flukes stiffly quivering above her head, her now stretched open vagina
pointed towards the bottom of the pool, trying to push little Michelle
out into the world, into the family of mermaids and mermen who now
populated this little island. Everyone could now see about ten
centimeters of Michelle's lavender and black tail, a dusting of dark
green decorated the trailing edge of her 20 cm flukes. It was mottled,
like the triplets, but with her mother's and father's coloring. It
hung limply in the water, and Gabriel shot Pat a worried look.
"Just be patient," she reassured him.
Another contraction and the entire tail became visible, and Michelle's
stubby pelvic fins were now fluttering purposely in the water. Pat
gave Gabriel a winning smile, and he smiled back, relieved that
Michelle was moving on her own. Another contraction and her torso was
visible up to her shoulders, and wisps of dark, black hair flowed down
her back. Then, suddenly, a final contraction rippled through Petra's
torso and out squirted Michelle, her arms raised above her head as she
eased into the water, a thin cloud of blood surrounding her. Petra
sighed with relief as her body relaxed back to a straight line.
Pat quickly gathered up the two-foot long (60 cm) mermaid and got ready
to bring her up to her mother's arms, but little Michelle blinked, and
squirmed free from Pat's gentle embrace and headed straight for Petra's
breasts, her umbilical cord still attached, trailing back into Petra's
vagina. Petra gathered her vigorously swimming daughter into her arms,
and gazed in wonder at the beautiful creature she held. Michelle was
somewhat rounder in proportion to an adult mermaid, less long and
graceful, but her tail was fully developed, waving back and forth in
the water energetically, her limbs and fins were clearly under her
conscious control, her eyes open and bright, and locked in on her
mother's eyes.
Petra swam slowly to the surface, the other mers following. Michelle
gazed expectantly into her mother’s eyes, waiting. Petra, recovering
very quickly from her painful contractions, pushed herself out from the
pool and perched herself on a low shelf that was about a half a meter
below the surface of the pool, the water reaching her belly button, but
her head, shoulders, and breasts were out of the water. The rest of
the mers bobbed along the surface, waiting.
"Go ahead, little one," Petra urged, "Breathe."
Michelle gave a little cough, and took her first breath of air,
wiggling her arms and tail in the simple joy of being alive. Her arms
did not have the random movements of human babies; it looked like she
was really stretching. She looked around at the pool, her eyes alert,
watching everyone. She squirmed in her mother’s arms and flipped
herself over pushing herself up onto Petra’s magnificent breasts. She
found a nipple, and started to suck vigorously, staring into her
mother’s eyes.
"Oh, she's got Michael's eyes," Petra sighed, inviting Gabriel, Xing,
and Galina to come look at their newest pod member. "Just like I
imagined so long ago. They are so blue it hurts."
Galina and Xing rose to either side of Petra on the shelf, while
Gabriel leapt out and headed for the store of dried fish at the back of
the cave. The girl's all oo'd and ah'd at Michelle's eyes, which were
indeed, wide and blue, and her head was already covered in a rich,
thick mane of black hair that reached to her tiny, chubby hips. Her
tail was mottled, like the triplets, but hers was lavender and black,
rather than blue and white, and her fins, flukes, and dorsal membrane
were decorated with a light green fringe. As she tugged on Petra's
left breast, Michelle's flukes curled under and around Petra's right
breast, brushing against Petra's right arm.
Petra would remember that first connection for the rest of her life.
The feelings of motherly love, contentment, the supportive presence of
all four pods as they watched the first moments of mother and daughter,
the tug of Michelle's tiny mouth, so unlike feeding other adults as
they transitioned into mermaids or mermen, and the knowledge that the
milk she was giving was now life giving, not tail giving. Petra felt
the barest whisper of Peter, her former male self, rise up from within
her memories, savoring this penultimate female moment of motherhood,
feeling her magnificent breasts pump life giving food into her
daughter's eager mouth. Yes, she recognized, she was truly and
completely a female now. She stroked Michelle's soft hair, remembering
the first moments she had first visualized the color of Michelle's eyes
three nights before Michael died, those same eyes that were now
shinning brightly as the little mermaid sucked at her breast. Her
daughter's eyes were the same brilliant blue as Michael's.
"Xing, Galina," Pat prompted, "Let's cut the cord."
Galina took the small piece of thread that Phoebe handed to her, and
tied it around the cord where it left Michelle, while Xing tied hers a
few centimeters out from Petra’s vagina. Once both were tied, Xing cut
the cord with one of their surgical knives harvested from the
submarine.
"What about the placenta?" asked Petra, stroking her daughter's hair as
she suckled on her large breast.
"Relax," Pat assured her. "Normally it is expelled anywhere from 15
minutes to an hour after birth in humans. It should be similar for us.
You'll feel another urge to push or something like a cramp. It's
probably best to wait on this shelf and simply deliver it into the
water."
"I'll start on the circulation," Danni announced, taking on her
increasing role as domestic goddess.
"I'll help," Cleo offered, and she joined Danni in swimming down the
main tunnel. The mers had discovered that two well-placed mers near
the front entrance could temporarily increase the gentle current that
kept the water fresh throughout their system of underwater caves. The
colder denser water rose up through the very large system of
interlocking caves and pools towards the warmer interior of the
mountain, but they could increase the circulation in the main tunnels
and Moon pool by pushing water out the main entrance, rather than
letting the mountain wick water up into the dormant volcano. When the
Moon Pool was a bit too cloudy or the water seemed stale, a few minutes
of strong mer-tail cleansing worked wonders.
Gabriel returned to his sister-wives and held Petra and Michelle in his
strong arms. Xing and Galina each leaned back on Gabriel's arms, and
all four of them watched as Michelle fed.
"You owe me five bucks," Phoebe said, giving Pat a poke in the ribs.
"We don't use money, goofball," Pat said poking her back.
"Michelle had a tail, fully formed, ready to go," Phoebe countered.
"You said she would be helpless, blind, and flailing, like human
babies, unable to swim right away. I was right, and you were wrong."
"Alright miss-smarty pants," Pat giggled, rubbing her own belly in
anticipation of what was to come. "We are more like other aquatic
mammals, like dolphins and whales, who's young are born ready to go.
What would you like instead of five bucks?"
"First crack at John tonight," Phoebe said wiggling her eyebrows.
"It's not my turn," Pat teased back, "it's Danni's, and you'll have to
ask her."
*****
Hank Connor scanned the island, searching for some sign of John and
Patrick. His broad shoulders tanned by the sun, swung back and forth,
while his now longish blond hair was gathered in a ponytail. He looked
good for 47, and while he wasn't going to win any body building awards,
he had kept in good shape. Beside him, his wife Janice trained another
set of binoculars on the island as well. Slowly they swept their gaze
back and forth over the horizon, looking for any sign of human
activity. Their colleagues might have hid on one of hundreds of small
islands within a 500-km radius of the now inactive nuclear testing
site.
"It’s worth a closer look," Janice concluded. "I don’t see any obvious
signs, but there is enough canopy that they could be hidden in the
jungle."
"It’s better to check than to wonder," Hank agreed, as he paused to
look at his wife of twenty years as she searched the island before them
with her binoculars. She was two years younger, and still trim despite
three wonderful children, who where all helping on this trip. Hank had
figured an "extended family vacation" was a better cover to search for
their missing friends than simply leaving San Francisco for three
months. He admired Janice's long dark hair as it fell down her slim
shoulders and toned body. Janice was a scuba instructor, and many
hours in the water kept her in shape.
"Robbie," Hank shouted below, "Will you please hail the Sea Dancer and
let them know we’ve reached 463."
"Will do," floated up from the hatchway.
"If they weren’t such good guys, I’d have written them off a week ago,"
Hank said. "I almost wrote them off last year."
"We will find them," Janice reassured her husband. "They're not dead."
"How can you know?" Hank asked. "You said the same thing last
summer."
"I just do," she said, still scanning the horizon. "Last spring we
weren't this well organized, we only had two weeks to look, and we
didn't have Bill and his crew."
"It does help to have help," Hank admitted. "We are covering twice as
much territory in half as much time."
"And we have all summer," Janice reminded him.
"Not any more," Hank warned. "We only have six weeks left."
"I know," Janice sighed. "But John is my brother-in-law, remember?"
"Then we will find him," Hank reassured her as he resumed scanning the
island. "Or what's left of him," he thought silently to himself.
John was Janice's sister's husband's brother. Julie had married just
out of high school, and her husband, Brian, was a cocky pilot for the
Air Force. Brian's little brother, John, had become a friend to Janice
and Hank when he had helped on a Greenpeace mission nearly fifteen
years ago. Over the years, Hank and Janice had mentored many young men
and women as they learned to become activists for the earth, but John
would always be their first. They would not easily abandon the search
for him and his sidekick, Patrick.
After a few more minutes, Janice lowered her arms to the railing of
their sailing ship, Freedom III, a Martin 49 (15 m), resting herself as
they cruised towards the small island with only a jib up, keeping their
speed slow. She sighed heavily. They had been searching for John and
Patrick for over nine weeks, methodically going through each of islands
they had agreed, so long ago, that were the most likely sites to be
both habitable and yet still yield enough evidence of environmental
damage to bring to the World Court. They had only a few more islands
marked on their original plans, but four of the six "best" islands that
they had searched so far were not habitable, thanks to recent
eruptions, earthquakes, or a lack of fresh water. If the primary
target island, the first place they checked nearly two months ago, was
not habitable, then it was possible that the two men had gone to an
island not marked on their map. Or worse; they had died long ago.
They only had six more weeks before they had to head back to
California, so that the girls could start college in the fall.
Rescuing in-laws was a hell of a way to spend a summer vacation.
"How many more probable’s do we have left?" asked Janice.
"Three, 463, 332, and 399," Hank answered checking the heavily marked
chart in his hand.
"Sea Dancer confirms and will head to 332," announced Robbie as he
bounded up from below.
Robbie was their eldest son, now twenty-two, had been an art major in
college. Named for his maternal grandfather, Robert had favored his
mother's dark coloring and slim build. He was a dreamer, but a dutiful
son, very much unlike his father, who had been a risk taker and
troublemaker when he was a child. It had paid off handsomely, however,
as Hank Connor had earned millions in the dot com revolution.
"A week on 463?" asked Robbie.
"Yes, that should do it," said Janice as she resumed scanning the
island.
"So, are we in for a day or two or longer?" asked Trevor as he stumbled
up from the galley. He blinked in the sun and stretched his long and
lanky body in a full body reach that sent his bones to snapping.
"One week," Robbie said, turning to greet the taller young man who
slumped onto the starboard bench.
Trevor Green was the boat's resident geek, radio head, prankster, and a
recent intern, as John had been so long ago. A strapping 25 year old,
he had hooked up with Hank and Janice while he was still in college on
a summer internship with Greenpeace. After graduating, he signed on as
crew on their boat because they spent most of their time sailing along
the California coast. When the call came for a "covert" search and
rescue mission, Trevor was one of the few people Hank and Janice could
trust. They were less concerned with discovery and more concerned about
their twin daughters, Kate and Ann, who were both 17 and had inherited
their father's blonde good looks and rangy athleticism. Trevor was one
of the few people the Connor's had ever trusted around their daughters.
"Why'd you let me sleep so late?" Trevor asked grumpily.
"Because someone forgot to wake anyone else up for their share of night
watch," Hank chided. "You can't stay up all night and still function
the next day."
"You can't, old man," Trevor said good-naturedly, "but I can."
"When you can beat him in a swimming race at 100 meters," Janice
teased, "then you can call him an old man."
"Enough," Hank said, kissing his wife gratefully. "Let's get everyone
ready for landfall."
*****
"Sally," Eric whispered.
"What?" she replied, ignoring his breech of protocol?
"You need to see this," he said tersely, unable to believe what he
thought he was seeing.
"I'll be right there," she replied.
Eric rubbed his eyes again but not from fatigue. He stared at the
computer screen; the satellite image was slightly distorted from the
extreme zoom his imaging program had created. Sally leaned over his
shoulder and gasped.
"Can you sharpen the focus?" she asked.
"I've digitally enhanced this photo as much as possible," he whispered.
"Do I need to remind you that this was shot from a satellite 438 miles
(705 kilometers) above the surface of the earth?"
"I thought these things could do license plates," she complained.
"Some can, but not the one that passed over this particular swath of
the South Pacific," Eric said, his fingers flying over his keyboard as
a second image came into focus.
The shot showed one section of a small island. In the center of the
shot was a curving beach that looked to be about 200 yards (183 m)
wide, which only took up about two inches (5 cm) of screen space on
Eric's computer. In the center of the beach were four fuzzy humanoid
shapes that appeared to be lying on the beach. Their lower halves were
all brightly colored and vaguely fish-shaped.
"That's not possible," she whispered.
"I know," he breathed, not believing what he was seeing.
"Have you crossref—?" she asked.
"Yes," he interrupted, swiftly typing commands into his keyboard.
"Here is a composite of images from the last two years. You can see
similar patterns starting about a year ago: here, here, and here," he
said, his finger shaking as he pointed at the screen. "Just before
that, there was this," he said, as he brought up another photograph,
"large group of men and a few women. I don't know why this island
hasn't been flagged before."
The two of them looked closely at the photograph, a large group of 20
or more were spread out on the beach while two large yachts were
anchored in the lagoon.
"They all look human," Sally said.
"But two months later," Eric said, bringing up another photograph.
On the same beach, a similar number of figures were visible, however,
their lower halves were brightly colored, sparkling in the sunlight,
and vaguely fish-shaped.
"Those cannot be real," she said.
"Yes," he said. "They are real. There are too many sightings over too
long a time to be faked. And that's why the computer didn't trigger a
flag, it might not recognize "fish" on the beach as human activity."
"Not fish ... mermaids," she said, barely believing what she was
seeing.
"Yes," he whispered, his heart pounding, as he brought up the most
recent picture. "Real mermaids."
"Real mermaids," she repeated, her chest rising and falling with her
excitement.
"A real merman too," he said, indicating the larger, darker form next
to the bright green, blue, and yellow forms.
"When were these last two pictures taken?" she asked.
"Four days ago," he answered.
"Have you entered any protocols yet?" she asked.
"No," he said.
"Seaman Edwards," Sally said softly. "I order you to forget what you
are seeing."
"Yes, Sir," Eric answered, surprised.
"I want you to file all images, flags, documents, and references you
have assembled pertaining to these records, protocol Blackgate," she
continued, her soft voice trembling.
"That will erase all ..." Eric said, confused.
"That's an order, Seaman," she said tersely.
"Yes, Sir," Eric said reluctantly as his fingers began to fly over the
keyboard, following the complex set of instructions for the Blackgate
protocol. "I need the officer over-ride code."
"Turn away," Sally said, and she typed in a complex password. "You can
finish now."
Eric entered his own password, and then his finger hovered over the
return key. "I have only two more weeks," he said softly.
"Trust me," she whispered.
He turned to see her eyes twinkling, the smallest smile pulling at her
otherwise blank and professional face. Holding her gaze, he depressed
the return key. All pictures and records were erased, and the
algorithms would now ignore any changes to this island. It was now a
classified location; only a human intervention would pull up data on
this island.
*****
Petra and Galina watched Michelle play in the tidal pool while Xing and
Gabriel frolicked further out in the lagoon. Galina rested her head on
Petra's lavender lap, feeling Petra's fin pressed into her own dorsal
ridge. Michelle was climbing over Galina's flukes as they trailed in
the pool, while Petra enjoyed the warm sun that fell across her body.
She savored feeling dry for the first time in months. It had been
nearly two months since she had been fully out of the water for any
significant period. Now, three weeks after her birth, Michelle was
growing like a weed, putting on weight and length at an astounding
rate, happily babbling and cooing nonsense noises.
Michelle had been able to swim and feed right from the start. On land,
however, her fins were a different story. Michelle looked and crawled
with as much grace as any human baby. However, she rarely ventured
further than a few feet from her mother, though she would stay with
Xing or Galina without complaint while Petra took a break from feeding
Michelle to gather food on her own, or to spend some "quality time"
with Gabriel. Michelle wouldn’t drink from anyone else than her own
pod-mothers, but she favored Petra, not surprisingly. Sometimes she
fussed when Xing fed her, but Galina was particularly good at feeding
Michelle while Petra and Gabriel made love or took some time to swim
alone together, perhaps because Galina’s breasts were so similar to
Petra’s. Everyone speculated on how quickly mermaids would mature
because Michelle seemed to be developing at twice or even three times
the rate of human babies. Everyone had also been surprised by how
quickly Petra's libido had returned, most especially Gabriel, though he
wasn’t complaining. Xing, Galina, and Gabriel had fallen into an
effortless routine of feeding both Petra and Michelle, and the other
pods had helped, as they were able.
"Do you think you’ll want a baby?" Petra asked as she stroked Galina’s
soft, strawberry red hair.
"Someday, yes." Galina answered after a moment, surprising herself.
"After Xing delivers."
When she had first been faced with her transition, she had hesitated,
and even secretly hoped that she would replace Gabriel someday. Now,
nearly nine months later, she shuddered at the thought. She dearly
prayed that no harm would ever come to Gabriel, and that she could
remain a sister-wife to Petra and Xing forever.
As she lay with her head resting on Petra's "lap," she savored the
wonderful feelings that her new body provided. She loved having Petra
play with her hair, and she could feel Petra's strong and smooth tail
move beneath her head and neck. She glanced up and was rewarded with
the impressive sight of Petra's enormous breasts arching out into the
air above her head. There had to be at least six or seven inches of
breast, narrowing towards a very prominent and up-thrust nipple, now
darkened by motherhood.
She glanced down, looking at her own equally impressive breasts,
sloping down from her shoulders, the weight of her breasts pulling each
nipple towards her sides. She hugged herself underneath her breasts,
feeling her small waist, and forced her breasts together, each mounding
up from her body, her own nipples were smaller and pinker than Petra's
but were equally prominent and stiff. She couldn't see her own arms
past the beautiful bulk of her breasts, and with her right hand she
scratched her nails across the underside of her breast, watching the
flesh move but unable to see her hand.
Galina could also feel Michelle as she scrambled over her flukes,
playing with her trailing fringes, running her tiny fingers along the
bony ridges that gave each fluke their shape and support. Michelle's
warm little body felt good on her flukes, and she gently curled up the
outer edges, cradling the infant mermaid in the center of her own wide
and strong flukes. She raised her head up to look past her breasts and
admired how beautiful Michelle was, her lush lavender and black tail
nicely complimenting her own maroon and deep blue coloring. The
bouncing movements of Galina's flukes kept Michelle's attention as she
splashed and played in the water.
Galina hugged herself tighter, feeling her strong stomach muscles tense
as she bounced Michellein her flukes. She stroked her tummy and the
line where her torso and tail were joined, enjoying the softness of her
own skin and scales. She began to trace her nails up from her belly
button to the center of her breasts, and then began to lift up her arm
towards the peak of her nipple, but before she could reach her own
nipple, Petra's hand moved from her hair and gave Galina a gentle
tweak, tugging on the large, pink nipple.
"I hope Xing and Gabriel finish soon," Petra said. "Then they can
watch Michelle and we can have our turn."
"Yes," Galina sighed, feeling her abdomen quiver in anticipation as her
nipple stiffened even further in Petra's grasp. "Our turn," she
whispered, reaching up to pull Petra’s other hand to her other breast.
*****
"These boxes can go over there," Pat directed Phoebe, Emma, and Alexis
to put the long box they were wrestling into one of the new "lab
caves."
"There are two more boxes," Alexis warned, pushing her end of the box
out of the water up towards Emma, who together with Phoebe salamandered
across the cave floor as directed.
"Why didn’t you imagine mermaids who could have legs when they got
dry?" asked Emma as she struggled with the heavy box.
"If you tell me how to imagine the cell dynamics that it would take for
such magic to work," Phoebe said.
"If you had imagined magic, that might have helped," Emma whined.
"Magic would still require some sort of energy to work," Phoebe
prodded, "Sort of like you lifting your half of the box."
"Which I could do if I had legs," Emma complained.
"It would take less energy for you to lift this box than it would for
you to transform your tissue and bone every time you got wet or dry,"
Phoebe countered.
"You’re a nerd," Emma teased.
"You’re still not lifting," Phoebe shot back. "I'm pregnant, and I'm
lifting."
"There’s no more room," Emma complained.
"You sound just like your sister Cleo," Phoebe teased. "Are you sure
you're not playing a practical joke on us by pretending to be Emma?"
"Now that's a low blow," Emma shot back.
"We wouldn't confuse you with your sister if you stopped complaining
and lifted your end of the box," Pat said, stifling a giggle. She
turned to Alexis. "Let’s go grab the next one," she urged, and turned
back towards the opening below that lead back to the Moon Pool.
Alexis followed, watching Pat’s shimmering green tail flutter in the
dim light of tunnel before her. The new network of seaweed lights were
growing slowly, shimmering strands of bioluminescent sea grasses that
Galina and Alexis had fashioned using mermaid’s milk as a catalyst for
transgenic transformations. Thanks to the relative ease with which
plant life was adapted by their new technique, namely using mermaid’s
milk as primordial soup mix in which organisms were altered and joined
until the desired trait appeared in a second generation. The large
network of caves was now completely illuminated by bioluminescence.
For the past several months the five scientifically inclined mermaids
had made great strides in adapting and using their secret weapon,
mermaid milk, for a variety of new purposes. Their discoveries and
inventions were greatly aided by the new equipment that the pods had
slowly, but steadily transported from the Russian sub back to Mermaid
Island. They now had fuel cells that powered their scientific
equipment, which ran much more efficiently once Galina had used their
mermaid milk to improve the efficiency of the proton exchange membrane
inside each fuel cell. They had debated extracting the still intact
nuclear reactor from the sub, but decided that they didn’t need
electricity in large enough amounts to justify the effort and they
didn’t want the increased danger of having the reactor on or near the
island. Besides, it was too big to move with just mers pulling things
along underwater.
Phoebe and Emma were in awe of all the equipment on which they could
learn and experiment. John and Patrick had brought some biological
sciences equipment, scanners, microscope, etc., but the sub's equipment
was well beyond the scope and power of what Greenpeace could provide.
Once everyone had learned basic Cyrillic, the equipment was not too
complicated to use.
Some of it had to be altered for mer use, however, like the larger
microscopes that were a bit too tall for a salamandering mermaid to
reach easily. John had built ramps that could allow the mermaids to
reach the viewing lens without having to rise up on their flukes alone,
which all of the mers could do for very brief moments, but their bodies
were too heavy to be supported by only the bottom of their tails for
very long. The younger mermaids spent hours gazing into the
microscopes and bio-scanners, memorizing cells, molecules, and DNA
strands. In fact, if anyone was puzzled as to where Phoebe or Emma
might be, the lab was a good first guess.
Pat and Alexis pushed the last box through the water, back into the lab
cave, holding it steady as they waited for Phoebe and Emma to finish
stowing the second box at the back of the cave. The white-blue light
from the LEDs they had strung together for this lab glowed brightly
above them, while the pale green light from the altered sea grasses
glowed dimly below. Only the lab cave had electrical lights, all of
the mers preferred either their own enhanced sight, hearing, and mer-
senses or the bioluminescent lights the Russians had created in their
own sleeping or home caves. The lab cave needed the bright clear light
so that they could perform experiments and assess their data, and
unlike the Moon Pool Cave, there was no sunlight or moonlight in this
cave.
The new equipment that they were unloading was all fabrication
machinery from the sub’s machine shop. When they had unpacked
everything and set up the equipment, they would be able to weld, create
bolts and other fasteners, and even cut steel. The first thing they
were going to build was a variable buoyancy underwater sled. It had
been hard work lugging back equipment from the sub, and some of the
larger pieces had been dangerous to move, requiring two full pods, each
working in perfect harmony, to get the large heavy pieces back to the
caves. With the new sled, they could carry large, heavy loads over
long distances with only one pod required to guide the sled.
"Now we can start working on a new sled," Phoebe gushed as she took her
end of the box from Pat.
"The next time we find a wreck that we can salvage," Emma groaned as
she took her end from Alexis, "it will only take a few days rather than
a few months to transport stuff back to our island."
The piece of equipment they most wanted to move first was the forward
gun on the Russian sub. Despite Pat's objections, Gabriel would have
his weapon for protection, one that could rain havoc on anyone who was
unwelcome to their island.
*****
Looking out from his office window on the 78th floor of the Petronas
Towers, Malaki Dimaunahan felt both pride and frustration. He was
proud of his far-flung business empire, which appeared to the
authorities in Kuala Lumpur to be a legitimate import/export business.
The vast majority of his wealth, however, did not come from the
trinkets he shipped back and forth between several Asian countries and
Australia, New Zealand, and South America, but rather came from his
smuggling, prostitution, and drug businesses- for which his legitimate
businesses was a cover.
"Miss Chin," he barked into the intercom on his shiny, black desk.
"Yes, Mr. Dimaunahan," an Asian accented voice replied in English.
"Send for Tumibay," he said softly.
"Yes, sir, right away," the voice answered.
It had been a year since he ordered Alberto to lay low for a few
months. After six months he got a bit worried and started looking for
his cash to show up in strange places. After nine months, he had sent
out discreet inquiries as to Alberto's whereabouts. Now, the time for
subtlety had passed. He needed to find Alberto and his money. If he
didn't, news of Alberto's defection could inspire others to break free
from Malaki's control.
Malaki walked over to the window and gazed down at the city below.
Millions of people, from all over the South Pacific and Asia, seethed
in the streets below. Tumibay would fly in from Fiji tomorrow or the
next day, Malaki thought, fly back out to find Alberto two days after
that, take a week or so to assemble and train a crew, and then another
week or two to find Alberto's hide-a-way, get Malaki's money, and leave
no loose ends. One-month tops, and Alberto would be history, and then
news of his demise could be carefully distributed to keep others in
line.
He was tired of Alberto's recklessness, always in trouble with the
authorities because he lacked finesse. Brutality had to be done
delicately, carefully, so as not to arouse the suspicions of
authorities whom you did not yet control. Malaki would miss Alberto's
special talent as a recruiter of prostitutes, who unfortunately did not
last long in Malaki's brothels. His clientele tended towards brutality
as well, it seemed. He was confident, however, that someone else would
rise to take Alberto's place.
Malaki turned to a wall safe, and opened the small, heavy door. He
reached inside and took out a small radio-tracking device. He had
waited until now to use the device to find Alberto because he risked
tipping his hand to the rest of the thugs who worked for him. If word
got out that there were bugs on each of his operatives' boats, then
that advantage would be lost. It had cost hundreds of thousands of
dollars to secretly install bugs on all those boats without detection.
Now, with millions of dollars at stake, it looked like a good business
decision to risk some exposure.
Tumibay would find Alberto and have Malaki's money returned to him in a
month. After that, Alberto and his ruthless gang would no longer be a
liability.
*****
Eric looked out across the plaza where he was drinking coffee, the "LA
Times" paper opened to the classified ads. Young mothers with children
in strollers chatted and played along the plaza where it dipped down
into Lake Anne, business men and women bent over tables discussing
charts, graphs, and papers, and an young girl played guitar on a park
bench. Eric wanted to be depressed, but it was such a beautiful
morning that he couldn't be sad.
He had been depressed for several weeks—ever since that afternoon when
he deleted the mermaid files, and Sally had stopped talking to him.
She broke her dinner date with him that night, and the next day at
work, she was busy in another part of the building. She remained
unavailable the next day, and the day after that. Her only response to
an email he sent her was one line: "Trust me." He wanted to, but it
was difficult. On his last day in the Navy, she came to his desk at
the end of the day and offered him a handshake. She only shook her
head softly to his raised eyebrow and left his cubicle quickly. Now,
after two weeks waiting for his plane trip to become a reality, he was
finally beginning to feel somewhat himself. For the last two mornings,
he had come down to this coffee shop to by the out-of-town paper and
scanned it for possible jobs.
The morning sun warmed his dark brown hair, and he returned to looking
at the classified ads. As he scanned jobs that he really didn't want,
he wondered why Sally hadn't returned his phone calls after she
resigned. A mutual friend told him that she did, in fact, resign her
commission. Eric hoped that she would make some time for him before
she moved to her new job. If she was still sticking to her original
plans, today was the day she was to start her training, and so he would
never see her again. He had hoped or thought that they had shared
something more, something that would require a goodbye at the very
least.
He shook his head, and readjusting his glasses, he returned his focus
to the newspaper. After a few moments of silent concentration, an
envelope dropped from above his head onto his paper. Relying on his
military training, he didn't flinch. He pushed the envelope off the ad
he had been reading, while noticing that return address on the envelope
was for Qantas Airlines.
"I thought you told me to forget everything—" he said calmly without
turning around.
"What was the latitude and longitude of that island?" asked a soft
voice behind him.
"I forget," he answered with a slight smile.
"I order you to remember," the voice said.
"Upon what authority do you so order," Eric asked.
"Upon this authority," Sally said as sat in his lap and kissed him
passionately for several minutes. Several times Eric tried to speak,
but Sally pressed her mouth to his, twisting her tongue into his,
nibbling on his lips, and holding his face to hers.
"3 degrees, 23 minutes, and 51 seconds south, and 174 degrees, 40
minutes and 52 seconds west," said Eric breathlessly when she finally
let him go.
"The plane leaves tomorrow morning," she said, recovering from the
passion of the kiss herself. "What do you need to travel to Fiji?"
"You," he answered, reaching back for another kiss.
"Seriously, we're going," she said standing up and straightening her
skirt.
"Seriously, you're all I need," he said, picking up his coffee and
waving her to sit down. "My passport is current, I travel light
anyways, and I've got all my discharge pay and my savings. I can throw
a few things in a suitcase, and buy a surfboard when we get to Fiji."
"How can you be so easy about all this?" she asked. "I'm not
complaining, but it seems so incredible to me. I treated you like shit
for the past four weeks. Aren't you going to ask me why?"
"No. You'll tell me if I need to know," he said.
"How do you feel about me?" she asked tentatively.
"Then or now?" he asked.
"Both," she answered.
"We have something really special, like a perfect wave," Eric answered
slowly, thinking. "I guess I'm still something of a beach bum, just
taking it as it comes, hoping for a good day on the water. I was upset
for the past week or so that you wouldn't even say goodbye, but that
doesn't matter now; you're here. Besides, you did ask me to trust
you."
"You are something special, the very last person I ever expected to
meet in the Navy," she giggled, leaning across the table to kiss him
again.
"Ditto," he said.
"How much money do you have?" she asked.
"Now, that's a personal question coming from a girlfriend who hasn't
spoken to me in over a month," he teased.
"We couldn't risk being discovered," she said earnestly, leaning
towards him, her blouse opening to reveal the swell of her shapely
breasts.
"Discovered doing what?" Eric asked, trying not to look at her
cleavage.
"My father already blames you for everything, you know, resigning my
commission, changing to a civilian job," she said with a sigh.
"I know all that," Eric said. "Is that way you didn't speak to me for
the last month?"
"Partly," she said. "I needed to make sure that the last thing my
father might suspect was that you were connected to what we are about
to do."
"We?" he asked.
"Oh, Eric," she said, caressing his face. "I am asking you to help me
run away from everything my family wants for me, and to help me to
become a mermaid," she answered.
"What?" Eric asked, his eyes flashing back to Sally's. "You think you
can become a mermaid."
"If they're real, they had to become mermaids some how," she argued.
"Oh, they're real," Eric reassured her. "Those photographs showed
mermaids on that beach at least fifty times over several months at all
hours of the day, and a few at night. No one stays in a mermaid
costume that long."
"Then, Neptune or whatever or whomever can cast the same spell on me,"
she said, with a far away look in her eyes.
"On us," Eric said softly, taking one of her hands in his. "That was a
childhood fantasy for both of us."
"Yes," she said, remembering. "We discovered that secret the first
time we made love. You wanted to make love in the water, but the pool
was too cold."
"But it wouldn't be too cold if we were mermaids and mermen," Eric
said, laughing. "But I am not ready to believe in Neptune or magic."
"Well, then how are there mermaids on that island?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said lightly, picking up the envelope and standing
up. "Let's go and find out."
"Wonderful," she said, springing up into his embrace.
"Fifty thousand dollars," he whispered as they hugged fiercely.
"Seventy-five thousand," she whispered back.
"That will buy us some really good surf boards and scuba equipment," he
said.
"Hopefully, we won't need it," she said.
*****
Galina and Petra floated in the sand bowl that lay in the middle of the
south lagoon, the "mermaid’s lagoon" as the pods all called Pat and
John’s original landing spot. The bright sunlight sparkled along their
dark rich tails, still bright in the clear water of the lagoon, ten
meters below the surface.
Galina admired Petra’s flowing hair, her shapely shoulders from which
hung two incredible mounds of feminine flesh, their large and dark
nipples rising another two centimeters from her areola. Galina looked
down at her own set of matching breasts. Her nipples were slightly
smaller and pinker, because she had not yet become pregnant. But
Petra’s breasts had not fallen or sagged in pregnancy, another benefit
of being a mermaid, she supposed. Using her pelvic and mid-tail fins,
Galina pushed herself towards her sister-wife, each fin swirling back
and forth, like a Chinese fan dance, moving as slowly and as
seductively as possible.
"No," Petra urged. "Today it is my turn."
"No," Galina said firmly. "You always give. Today, I will give to
you."
"But," Petra protested.
"You know I am right," Galina whispered as she began to slowly rub her
body along Petra’s lush contours. "Now be quiet."
"Ha," Petra giggled as she felt Galina’s breasts brush against her
tummy.
"You know what I mean," Galina admonished her. "You are allowed to
moan only," she said pushing her breasts into Petra’s small waist,
using her tail to circle around Petra’s long and beautiful body. She
felt Petra's hand begin to stroke her tail as it slid past her fingers.
"No touching," she warned, as she felt Petra's fin swing back to brush
against her. "Fins too!"
"You're no fun," Petra whined.
"I'll show you fun," Galina whispered as she swung her own pelvic fin
along Petra's waist, rippling her fin against Petra's hip like fingers
drumming on a tabletop.
"Oh, don’t make me wait," Petra complained, "No one but Michelle has
kissed me since last night. You and Xing are each up to three orgasms
since then."
"I said quiet," Galina teased as completed her first circuit around
Petra's quivering body. She lifted her face up and nibbled the
underside of Petra’s overhanging breast as she curled herself around
her lover.
"Ohhhhh," Petra moaned, feeling the tensions in her body begin to build
as Galina expertly swirled around her body, brushing her with tail,
fins, fingers, tongue, and breasts. Petra could feel her flukes begin
to quiver, as her passion built within.
Galina ran her fingers along Petra’s waist as she circled around her
lover, tracing the changing contours of the shimmering line that joined
her waist to her tail. Her fingers rose up slightly as the line arched
up around the edge of her hip into Petra's small waist, and she could
feel Petra's pelvic fins fluttering in the water as she passed by. Her
fingers then traced the line back down slightly as it crested around
Petra's muscles that used to be her rear-end, and then sharply rising
all the way up her back like a widow’s peak as it followed her dorsal
ridge nearly three-fourths of the way up her spine towards her neck.
There, just between her shoulder blades, an especially sensitive patch
of forest green fringe marked the top of Petra's dorsal ridge.
Petra arched backwards, hoping to force Galina's fingers to brush her
sensitive fringes, but Galina held her course. She continued tracing
her fingers along the line of scales and skin, following the other side
of the dorsal ridge back down to Petra's prominently curving backside.
She was tempted to deviate slightly towards one of the two dimples that
sat the base of Petra's gills, above her tail, punctuating the small of
her back. Instead, she followed the line up over the other hip, above
her other pelvic fin, until it returned to the concave swell of Petra’s
belly. Galina admired how quickly it had returned to its previous
shapeliness after Michelle’s birth, and the way it was now jumping at
her feather light touches.
Petra was a bundle of nerves, all seeking release, her body consumed
with need, at the same time she savored the slow, gentle seduction her
pod-mate was forcing her to endure. Galina let her fingers fall down
to Petra’s fins, and traced the dark green fringes along the trailing
edges, watching as Petra’s movements became more frantic, seeking
release from her slowly building seduction. She put her now slender
hand along side Petra’s swollen vagina, her clitoral hood pulled back,
the nub of her large clit exposed to her view. She could feel Petra’s
heart beating, the blood flowing through her tail, and as she lay her
head centimeters from Petra’s vent, she could see each heartbeat in the
nearly imperceptible movement of her labia. Galina put her other arm
around Petra, holding her tail gently to her body, her own breasts
pressed around Petra’s tail.
"Ohhhhhhhh," Petra moaned as Galina’s hand pushed over the top of her
mons, causing her to arch her body towards Galina’s gentle pressure.
"Uh, uh, uh," she urged, "More ... more ... more," she pleaded as
Galina began making small circles with her palm pressed to her vent.
Petra reached up with her own hands and began stroking her own breasts,
pushing them together, remembering the days when she was a young boy,
dreaming of a bra, stuffing his mother’s nylons in a discarded bra,
wishing he had been born a girl. Petra ran her hands out from under
her magnificent breasts to her nipples where Michelle fed every few
hours, day and night, feeling her large nipples now dark and thick,
poking into the water. She pulled on her nipples, rolling each in her
fingers as Galina slipped two fingers into her vagina.
"Oh, my god YES," Petra urged, pulling fiercely on her own breasts,
moving her massive endowments back and forth in her grasp, feeling the
water caress each breast as she moved them back and forth in the
bright, tropical water.
Galina savored the heat that surrounded her fingers, added two more to
the mix, and moved her face to the top of Petra’s vent so she could
begin to caress her clit with her tongue. She kept her other hand
wrapped around Petra’s wide hips for leverage, and bore down on her
clit, her tongue flicking and sucking her throbbing nub.
"Oh, mmyyyyyyyy goooooooooood," Petra wailed, as an orgasm crashed
through her body, her breasts now spilling milk into the sea. As soon
as the waves of passion seemed to slow down, she felt Galina shove her
entire hand into her, filling her up nearly as completely as Gabriel’s
penis. Galina’s tongue returned to her clit, and Petra felt an even
larger orgasm rise up from her depths and overtake her body.
"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Gaaaaaaliiiiiiiinnnnnnna" she screamed, as
waves of pleasure surged through her body, twisting and turning up and
down her torso, pulsing around Galina’s hand, now trapped within her
spasming vagina.
Galina held on for dear life, feeling Petra’s cunt walls ripple over
her hand, knowing and savoring the pleasure she was giving to her pod-
mate. After many minutes of shaking and quaking, Petra finally calmed
down. It was at that precise moment that Galina began to twist her
hand back and forth, deep within Petra’s steamy depths, brushing the
thick knob of nerves that was her G-spot with her knuckles and thumb.
Petra lost consciousness after a few minutes, a smile frozen on her
face.
*****
Hank stretched towards the morning sky, pushing his toes into the cool
sand not yet warmed by the sun. As he slowly went through his yoga
routine, a sun salutation, he calculated how much time they had left.
It would take them about three weeks to make the crossing from 463 to
399, and assuming it took another week to comb through that island, and
assuming that they didn't find any evidence of John or Patrick, that
would give them two more weeks to make it back to civilization. The
Sea Dancer was still at 332, as it was a much larger island and took
time to comb through dense jungle that could cover all trace of human
activity in a very short time. They could meet Bill and the others in
Australia or even back in San Francisco.
"Can I join you?" his son, Robbie, asked.
"Sure," he answered.
For several minutes the two men stretched, bent, squatted, stretched,
and arched their way through the sun salutation together. From her
vantage point further up the beach, Janice noted the way Hank made the
exercise seem manly, while Robbie made it seem beautiful. Everything
her son did, he made it into a work of art. Janice pushed aside the
thought, which she did not think often, that Robbie's gracefulness and
beauty seemed at odds with his gender, which as far as anyone knew, was
a straight male. Robbie had dated, but never very seriously. She had
once confronted him in high school, hoping to support him if he was
gay. He had only smiled at her, and thanked her for her love, but
reported that he wasn't gay. She walked slowly towards the two men in
her life.
"Do we ship off to 399 or do we head back to Australia?" she asked.
"339," said Hank in between stretches. "We should be able to be there
for a few days, and then call in a seaplane for the girl's flights."
"The girl's flights?" asked Robbie.
"I've decided that if we don't find them on 399," Hank said relaxing
for a minute on the sand, "I think the four of us should continue
search for another month."
"Oh, Hank," Janice gushed. "That would mean so much to me."
"Robbie?" Hank asked.
"I'm a graduate, and currently unemployed," Robbie answered. "I'm at
your disposal."
"Let's get everyone together, and get going," Hank said, rising to
embrace his wife.
*****
The morning sun glinted across the sea, spilling across the eastern
horizon, the impossible blue of the sky melting into the shimmering
white-caped blue of the endless waves and water. The chug-a-chug-a-
chug of the old engine throbbed in the vastness of the ocean, as the
one-meter swells slapped against the old metal hull of the ancient
fishing boat. One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars might
purchase a heck of a surfboard, but it didn't go far with ocean going
vessels, thought Eric ruefully as he trained his binoculars across the
horizon.
"Morning lover," Sally said brightly as she emerged from the galley
below, two mugs of coffee in her hands.
"Morning sunshine," Eric said, gratefully reaching for the steaming cup
of joe. They had traded watches for the past two days, heading
steadily but slowly for the small island in the vastness of the South
Pacific Ocean.
"That crazy old man was wrong," Sally observed as she watched the sun
rise over the water.
"What do you mean?" asked Eric, slipping his arm around her slender
waist, marveling again at the beauty and strength this smart and driven
woman possessed.
"The hunk of metal and bolts didn't sink, and we're not lost," she
said, checking the compass and her notes on the navigational map on
which she had charted their progress.
"Yea, but I did lose my glasses," he noted ruefully.
"I’ll tell you if there is anything interesting to look at," she
giggled.
"Do you still think we got a deal on this hunk of junk?" he asked.
"Ask me tomorrow," she answered.
"Why tomorrow?" he asked.
"Because we will be there," she answered.
"I hope those mermaids are nice?" he observed.
"I'll bet you do," she teased, elbowing him in the stomach. "Are you
sure you don’t mean pretty?"
"I’ve lost my glasses, remember? Besides, you're the only mermaid I
want," he protested. "More to the point, we only have ten thousand
dollars left, and a short wave radio that might not work. If the
mermaids don't welcome us, we could be in deep trouble. Marooned on an
island, with no hope of rescue, because no one in the world knows where
we have gone."
"In two days, my father will have us tracked to Fiji where we bought
the boat, and someone will tell him that we were headed north from
there with a weeks worth of food and some camping equipment," she
answered. "If he gets really upset, it will only take about a month to
have the entire South Pacific scoured for our bodies."
"Your dad will be upset," Eric said. "You know that he will come
looking for you."
"I know," she sighed. "But that just means that the mers will have
been warned, and we will have joined them."
"I still don't think we can just be changed into mermaids," Eric
worried.
"Our satellites have been taking pictures of the earth for forty years,
and really good pictures for the last twenty," she argued. "If those
mermaids had existed before a year ago, someone else would have spotted
that pattern. We wouldn't have been the first."
"Perhaps," Eric agreed. "What will it be like, do you think, to be a
mermaid?"
Sally thought for a long moment, finishing her coffee, watching the sea
as it slowly slid by their old, slow boat.
"It will be like diving, I hope, only better. We will float in a world
of beauty without worrying about air, feeling the water caress our
bodies like a lover," she said. "It would mean that I could simply be,
be ... simple, in a way, instead of always feeling like I had to do
things to please my father."
"What kind of mermaid do you want to be?" he asked, stroking her waist.
"A pretty one that you like," she said, leaning back into him.
"What does a pretty mermaid look like?" he prodded.
"She would have brown hair and brown eyes, slim shoulders, breasts
slightly larger than my own ..."
"Yours are perfect," he said, lifting one hand to gently cup her B cup
breast.
"Keep doing that," she murmured.
"But what would your mermaid part look like?" he reminded her.
"My tail would be long and strong, with wide flukes, colored like a
neon damsel, you know, the small tropical fish?" she asked.
"No, what's a neon damsel look like?" he asked, still stroking her
breast, feeling her nipple harden under his fingers through her tee
shirt.
"Their tails are a deep royal blue, but not dark, shimmering with
lighter blues and highlighted with silver edges," she answered, her
breath quickening as she imagined herself as a mermaid. "And it would
be graceful and beautiful to see flashing in the sea or curled around
yours."
"What will my tail be like?" he asked, feeling himself become aroused
by Sally's obvious passion and the erotic possibilities of becoming
something else, a creature of myth and magic.
"Oh," she squealed as she felt Eric's rising penis brush her hip. "Let
me look at you and see what it ought to look like." She turned in his
grasp, her back to the gunwale, the rising sun glowing through her
hair. She pulled her tee shirt off with a single motion, setting her
small but shapely breasts free in the morning air, their dark brown
nipples crinkling up and jutting forward.
"Take off your pants," she urged as she tugged open her own shorts and
pushed them off.
Eric quickly freed himself of his clothes and gathered Sally into his
arms. His now stiff cock pressing against her belly, her breasts
pressing into his ribs as her head rested on his chest.
"Your tail," she said, pushing her body into his, rubbing her breasts
on his body, and pressing her belly along the length of his cock.
"Your tail should be the same, don't you think?"
"Why the same?" he asked as he stroked her rounded ass, feeling her
soft skin beneath his fingers.
"Uugh, that feels good," she hissed as his strong and broad hands
kneaded her butt. "Because we will be mates," she said as she reached
between them to guide his stiff penis towards her crotch.
"Mates," Eric said, savoring the sound. "Not husband and wife?"
"No: mates," she answered as she rubbed the tip of his cock along the
length of her wet slit. "Remember, we are running away from all that
middle class crap? Now, lie back on the deck," she ordered. "I want
to make love like a mermaid."
Eric sank to the deck, lying on his back, feeling the warm deck on his
back. Sally followed him down and laid her body on his, her hand
guiding his cock between her legs. She trapped him between her thighs,
her juices lubricating him as she ground her legs against his, her toes
reaching to his ankles.
"Don't move your legs," she whispered. "Pretend you already have a
tail."
She moved forward so that Eric's natural angle was working to her
advantage, and then slowly twirled her hips until the tip of his cock
had lodged itself between her swollen pussy lips.
"Imagine our bright, colorful tails entwined with each other, floating
in the warm tropical water, and then ..." she said as she sank herself
onto his cock, her legs sliding along his as she pushed herself down on
his cock.
"Ahhhhh," he groaned as she lowered her upper body down to his, her
breasts flattening out against him. He brought his hands up to her
hips and helped her slowly move up and down along his cock, keeping her
breasts pressed to his chest and her feet pressed to his ankles. He
held his legs tight, straight, and stiff, feeling the slippery, warm,
wet junction where their bodies were joined. He could feel her
internal muscles begin to twitch as her orgasm quickly built up steam.
"Your tail is quivering with need," he whispered, pressing her hips
into his own. "Your flukes are spreading out like a peacock's tail,
full of blue’s and greens, flecked with silver."
"Ohhhhhh, God," she moaned as her orgasm crashed through her body, her
vagina clutching at Eric's penis as her thighs quivered stiffly along
Eric's outstretched legs. "So, goooooood ... sooo good," she
whimpered, her breasts pressed into his chest, her mouth buried in his
neck.
"Ahhhhh," groaned Eric as his orgasm ripped up from his crotch,
splashing hotly in Sally's depths, their legs both quivering with the
restraint of pretending to be tails.
As they lay there recovering, the engine began to sputter.
"Damn, we have to switch gas tanks," Eric muttered.
"Yes, we must," Sally lamented, reluctantly pulling herself off her
lover. "Is this the last one?"
"Yes, we should have just enough gas to reach the island," he answered,
not bothering to put his swimsuit back on as he headed for the stern.
"If those mermaids don't like us, we'll be stuck because we will be out
of gas."
*****
"A boat?" asked Pat.
"Yes," answered Agba, "and headed this way. Angara thought she sensed
something new in the water, and it was the boat. We caught up to it
early this morning, and it is headed directly for this island."
Agba's pod had been out for the past two days searching to the
southwest for new shipwrecks and continuing the careful mapping the
surrounding sea floor. The four of them had rushed back once they had
triangulated the boat's movements and determined that it was headed
straight for the island.
"What kind of a boat?" Pat asked.
"A old fishing boat," Liga answered. "The Maria, out of Suva, Fiji."
"Only two on board, we think," Agba continued. "We didn't want to get
too close and be spotted. They looked like a young couple, Caucasian,
not native fishermen at all."
"Maybe they are honeymooners who got lost?" Alexis offered.
"No honeymooner would leave Fiji in an old fishing boat by themselves,"
Phoebe stated.
"No honeymooner puts a boat that old on a dead reckon for this island,"
Pat said thinking. "They know where they are headed, just like John
and I did."
"I think you're right," John offered. "We need to plan a welcome for
our guests."
"We need to hurry," Agba said. "They will be here by mid-day."
*****
The lagoon was beautiful, the white sand stretching out like lovers
arms, enfolding the clear, sparkling blue water. The small volcano
looked inactive, and the jungle seemed lush and fruitful. The small
beach huts at the edge of the jungle looked sound, and recently fixed.
"If we're stuck, we could do a lot worse," Sally observed sat down next
to the hut with a sigh.
"We are definitely not the first ones here," Eric observed, looking out
over the lagoon. "Look, there's a radio mast over there, about one
hundred yards out," he said, pointing.
"Should we get back to the boat and check it out?" Sally asked.
"We are here for the mermaids, not the boat," Eric said.
"Do you see any mermaids?" Sally asked.
"Only one," he said.
"Where?!" she asked excitedly, scanning the lagoon.
"Right there," he said, pointing at her.
"Will you stop," she pouted. "We've been here all afternoon, searched
over half the island, and we haven't seen a single mermaid."
"I know," he said, sitting down next to her. "Maybe we just have to
wait."
"I'm just getting frustrated," she complained.
"I know, but we don't even know if the mermaids speak English," he
said.
Sally seemed to sense something, and lifted her head, trying to orient
her hearing.
"What is it?" Eric asked.
"I don't know," she said, as she rose to her feet, and walked down the
beach to the water. Eric followed her. She stood at the edge of the
water, her hands on her hips, her brown hair fluttering in the late
afternoon breeze. Their boat was anchored only a few yards off the
beach, and they had swum ashore because they lacked a dinghy.
"Hey listen you mermaids and mermen," she shouted into the air. "I
just want to become a mermaid too!"
"Well, why didn't you just say so sooner," Pat said brightly, poking
her head around the edge of the boat, causing both Sally and Eric to
jump back in surprise.
The two humans watched with awe as a small group of mers emerged from
behind their boat and began to swim gracefully towards the shore. As
they salamandered up the beach, Sally and Eric slowly backed away,
giving them room to arrange themselves in a semi-circle before the two
of them. They noticed that the mermaids seemed particularly ungainly
on land, but the merman seemed very agile.
"I'm Pat," the one with the green tail began, "and this is my pod,
John, Danni, and Phoebe," she continued, indicating each.
"Pod?" asked Eric.
"It's a long story," John said, offering his hand to Eric, who took it
gingerly. "Why don't you tell us about yourselves, and then we can
talk about us."
*****
"So, you erased all records of us from the system?" Pat asked, as she
watched the stars begin to twinkle in the evening sky.
"Yes," Sally answered, beginning to lose her voice after hours of
answering and asking questions. "I knew that if we made an official
report, we would never have this opportunity."
"But we don't know how long this window will be open," Eric said. "It
will only be a matter of time before someone else spots the unusual
features of this island."
"Because her father will see to that," Pat said.
"I'm sorry to put you all in danger like that," Sally said. "It's just
that I've always wanted to be a mermaid, ever since I was a little
girl."
"And you're with her on this one?" asked John.
"Yes," Eric answered, taking Sally's hand in his own.
"Well, we knew that someone would eventually discover us, and we've
tried to become better prepared," Pat said. "Maybe having a member of
the family, so to speak, well placed in the American Navy would be to
our advantage."
"Yes," Sally offered. "I'm sure my father would do what he could to
insure that we could be undisturbed."
"I'm not," John said.
"Neither am I," said Danni. "But I don't think that should be the
reason we say no to Sally and Eric."
"What reason is there?" asked John.
"No reason," Danni said. "I think the more mers we have, from more
places, the less likely it will be that anyone of us will be targets
for circus or exploitation or extermination."
"She has a point," Sally added. "The more mers there are, the less
likely that we can be wiped out."
"You both realize that we don't fully understand the transformation
ourselves," Pat warned. "That there may be consequences that we don't
yet know about?"
"Yes," Sally answered. "But the chance to achieve a life-long dream is
worth that risk."
"Well, then wait here," Pat said. "We will be back in the morning
after we talk to the others."
"Others?" asked Sally. "How many others are there?"
"We will see you in the morning," John said firmly, as the four mers
waddled back into the water.
Sally and Eric watched as the mers slipped into the sea, the moonlight
sparkling along their shimmering tails. A few yards out, the golden
blond mermaid surfaced and gave them a big thumbs up. "Keep cool," she
said. "It will work out in the morning," as she disappeared back
beneath the waves with a flick of her tail.
*****
Tumibay stood firmly on the bridge of his sleek and powerful yacht, the
wind rushing over his shiny, bald, head. His crew of six, hand picked
men from his own family scurried around the boat as it roared through
the water. In the morning, if the data from the tracking device was
accurate, they would find Alberto. Tumibay didn't like technological
gadgets much, but the South Pacific was too big a place to simply go
searching for a misplaced pearl. Not that Alberto was a pearl, but the
five million American dollars was a worthy pearl. Perhaps Malaki would
let him keep some as a reward for so neatly tying up all these loose
ends.
It would have never occurred to him to think that Malaki wouldn't value
his work, or that he, himself, might someday become a "loose end." No,
Tumibay was a good and loyal employee, and he enjoyed his work. That
was the feature that most scared people who knew him; Tumibay really,
really loved his work. He loved thinking about killing, planning how
to kill, and planning on how not to get caught killing.
He lovingly reviewed his plans for the next killing as he stood on the
dark deck, the ocean spray misting in his face. When they got within a
few hours of the signal, they send word of their position back to
Malaki, use the sea anchor and wait until nightfall, slip into their
scuba suits, and sneak up to the island under the cover of darkness.
He fingered the knife he always wore hidden on his thigh. Strength,
stealth, and steel—that's what Tumibay understood. Silent steel, sharp
steel, cold steel—it could solve problems that a loud, hot bullet could
not. Mostly, it could kill.
*****
The decision had been quicker than Pat thought. The pods all agreed
that they should add Sally and Eric, the sooner the better. The
question was how and when.
"If they were still human, they could help set up the gun," Gabriel
said.
"If we need them to set it up, how are we going to operate it once it
is set up?" asked John.
"The gun is automated," Alexis explained. "We would operate it from
the lab via computer."
"But we need to run wires, power, and a targeting device," said
Gabriel. "They would be useful during that stage."
"They are people, with dreams and hopes and desires, who are soon to be
mers, if we ever get our act together," Pat reminded everyone testily.
"Not useful tools to help us set up a gun."
"Sorry," said Gabriel sheepishly. "I didn't mean it that way. We can
do it ourselves, but it will take John and I three times as long to run
cables as it would for Eric to do it by himself."
"Shouldn't we be back at the beach, talking to Eric and Sally about all
this?" asked Danni. "They don't even know about all of you yet."
"She's right," Petra said, putting a calming hand on her pod-mate's
shoulder. "We won't have the gun here for many weeks, and I think they
should be able to decide if they want to remain human while we build
the sled and salvage the gun."
*****
Tumibay trained his telescope on the island in the far distance, a blue
haze hovering around the volcano in the early morning light. He knew
that if he could see the island, then Alberto might be able to see him.
He would wait. In the meantime, there was equipment to be checked,
reports to be radioed back, plans to be made, and knives to be
sharpened.
*****
The mers had all introduced themselves over breakfast, which consisted
of a mix of the supplies Sally and Eric had brought and fresh fish and
seaweed from the sea.
"I thought I would miss this stuff," Danni mused as she crunched on a
piece of chocolate. "But it’s not that good."
"Oh, yes it is! I do miss this stuff," Rikki complained as she looked
longingly at the last pieces of chocolate disappear into her sisters'
mouths. "Don't you have any more?"
"I'm sorry, Cleo," Sally said. "That's all we brought."
"I'm Cleo," Cleo said. "She's Rikki, and thanks for the chocolate.
It's been ages."
"Don't worry, Sally" Emma said. "When you become a mermaid, we're easy
to tell apart."
"Thanks, um, Emma, right?" asked Sally.
"Right," Emma said. "Thanks from me too," she said licking her
fingers, "for the chocolate."
"Have you made a decision?" asked Pat. "About when you would like to
transition?"
Eric and Sally looked briefly at each other before turning to Pat.
"Can we have the day to think about it?" she asked.
"Take as long as you like," Danni urged. "After all, there's no going
back."
"That we are aware of," Phoebe observed quietly.
"What do you mean?" asked Danni.
"We've never tried," said Phoebe. "We don't know if we can go the
other way."
"I'm not going to try," said Danni, stroking her pelvic fins. "I am
staying exactly as I am."
The other mers joined in a similar chorus.
"I'm not saying that you should," said Phoebe. "I'm only saying we
don't know what's possible."
"As interesting as such speculations might be," Pat interrupted. "Some
of us are pregnant and uncomfortable on this beach. Besides, there's
work to be done while we wait for Eric and Sally to make up their
minds."
"Work?" Cleo complained.
"We need to harvest their boat for useful equipment, the remaining
gasoline, and then tow it out into the ocean and sink it," Pat
explained.
"Gabriel, Galina, why don't you join Pat and I on the boat," John
suggested. "We can salvage the equipment while MuSu and the rest of
the girls shuttle it back to the beach. Agba, why don't you take your
pod out to the reef and keep watch?"
"I think you two boys can handle the boat, while Pat and I collect food
for dinner," Galina said as she watched Pat waddle down to the water.
"I think Pat will be more comfortable in the water."
*****
Eric and Sally walked back down the jungle path towards the beach huts
where the mers were now gathered. They had spent the rest of the day
moving their radio, parts of the engine and boat that might be useful,
and the remaining gallons of gasoline up to the chimney near the old
hot tub and lowering them down to the mers below. The sky was now
dark, and the stars were beginning to come out. They could see the
shimmering tails of the mers on the beach. It was a beautiful sight,
but it was also plainly visible, especially to a seaplane that might be
searching for an Admiral's daughter.
"It will be only a matter of time before we are spotted," Sally mused.
"You said we," Eric noted.
"Yea, I guess I did," Sally said with a smile. "I'm going to be a
mermaid."
"When?" asked Eric. "We need to tell them."
"Well, part of me says now," she said with a sigh. "But I know that we
can help prepare this island for unwelcome visitors if we wait."
"So, we wait?" asked Eric.
"We become a team player," Sally concluded.
"I love you," Eric said, planting a kiss on her lips. "Besides, if we
wait, we get to be alone for a while longer."
"What's so special about that?" teased Sally.
"I'll show you after the mers go back to their caves," Eric promised,
wiggling his eyebrows.
*****
"So, we will do what ever is best for everyone," Sally finished.
"We are not certain that waiting is best," Pat offered. "But it would
be useful," she finished with a wry glance at Gabriel.
"We really appreciate your help," Gabriel added. "Your experience in
the Navy will be an asset as to where we should set up things, and
stuff like that."
"We weren't trained in artillery," Eric offered. "We were computer
geeks, or at least I was."
"All officers have some training in basic Navy tactics," Sally said.
"I'll do what I can to help."
"A Navy officer as a mermaid, who would have dreamed of such a thing,"
Danni exclaimed, rubbing her belly. "Oh, Petra, I am beginning to
understand why you stopped coming out of the water in your last month."
"How close are you?" asked Sally.
"We're nine months, nineteen days, and two hours pregnant," stated
Phoebe. "But we think gestation is eleven months."
"How can you be so sure, right down to the hour, but not know how long
gestation is?" asked Sally.
"It's a long story," Pat said, "that we can share with you later. For
now, we all ought to get some rest, and we need to take over from
Agba's pod."
"We can do it," Emma offered, as Cleo groaned. "None of us are
pregnant," she said as she shot a look at her sister, "and we're not
that tired."
"Speak for yourself," Cleo complained.
"Thanks, Emma," Pat said. "I'll remember this one, I promise. Tell
Agba to bring his pod back to the beach. We can spend the night here
with our new guests."
Suddenly all the mers stiffened.
"What?" asked Eric, rising to his feet.
"Agba called," Pat said tersely as all the rest of the mers launched
themselves towards the water. "Hide in the jungle, don't come out
until you see us," she ordered as she turned to the water.
Sally and Eric were rooted in place, watching the mers race to the
water. Now that she knew why some of the mermaids seemed so graceless
on the land, she marveled at how graceful they looked now, even the
pregnant ones, when urgency motivated their movements. When the last
of them disappeared into the water, they turned for the jungle,
grabbing one of their small tents for shelter.
*****
There were four of them, coming swiftly, using some sort of powered
under water sled. Agba sent out the call, and then ordered the girls
to hide among the rocks and reef. One of the four scuba divers on the
sled raised his head, as though he had heard the high-pitched squeal
that Agba emitted. The diver looked around, and saw a few dolphins in
the dim sea beyond him. The sled slowed, and turned towards the
opening in the reef that would allow them entry into the lagoon.
Tumibay signaled a halt, waiting for the sled to stop, trying to feel
the presence of anyone in the water. He took a small periscope from
the sled and floated towards the surface. He raised the scope to his
eyes and extended the pole upwards into the air. He scanned the
distant beach. He tried to steady the scope in the waves, zooming in
on the apparently deserted sand. An old fishing boat that couldn't
have been Alberto's was floating in the lagoon. That tracking device
must be malfunctioning, he cursed silently.
No, the signal was strong, and that boat belonged to someone, but
Alberto's boat was nowhere to be seen, but it was here somewhere.
Perhaps he had deliberately sunk the boat to avoid detection, Tumibay
thought. That would explain the ancient fishing boat, which no drug
lord would be caught dead sailing. Where was Alberto, he wondered?
There were no sentries or lookouts, and all seemed quiet. Too quiet!
He signaled everyone one to freeze. That instinct had saved his life
many times in the past, and so he was content to float a few meters
above his crew, alternating from the periscope to the water around him
and back to the scope. Waiting.
Suddenly, he saw a flash of silver and white, glowing in the dim water,
just past the reef. It looked like a girl. Alberto's sister, he
thought to himself. What was she doing hiding underwater? He signaled
to his crew to go around the other side of the reef while Tumibay
slowly dropped towards the reef from above.
Agba watched as the four strangers spotted Angara, and struggled over
what to do. He could sense the approaching mers behind him, but they
were still a minute or two away. The strangers would spot Angara
before they arrived. As the sled neared Angara's blind side, he sprang
into action.
He sped towards the leader, still floating above, giving another shrill
squeal that surprised the strangers. They all hesitated as they tried
to assimilate the noise a dolphin might make with the vision of the
young Filipino male rushing towards them, either being pushed by a very
large fish, or being half fish himself. Tumibay dropped the scope and
pulled his knife from its sheath, the long blade flashing in the dim
sea. Agba veered away, trying to spear him with his barb, but he
caught the air tank instead. The loud clank mirrored the sharp pain
that ran up his tail as his barb bent against the metal tank.
Tumibay had turned his body, putting his tank between him and the
strange creature as it sped by. He saw flashes of black and pink stir
beyond the now visible white-tailed creature, but he dove down to what
was clearly a mermaid, who was trying to hide among the coral. He
grabbed the white hair and pulled the creature up to his chest, his
knife resting on her throat. The young male fish/man turned and faced
him, his young and handsome face twisted in horror. The other two
creatures emerged from hiding as Tumibay's own men struggled to
overcome their awe.
For a long moment, Agba hung in the water, his beloved Angara frozen in
the stranger's grasp, her eyes full of fear. The tension was broken
when a spear pierced his tail, a shot >from the men below. Despite his
pain, and what seemed to be poison on the barb, Agba shot forward and
pulled the stranger's hand from Angara's throat.
"Flee," he urged her, feeling his own strength begin to wan as the
burning pain from the wound spread up from his tail.
Angara twisted from the stranger's grasp, and struck with her barb,
catching him on the leg. Tumibay felt the barb enter his thigh, but he
used the adrenaline that surged through him to yank his arm free from
the merman's grasp, and plunged his knife into the sea creature's
chest.
"Nooooooo!" Angara screamed as she stabbed the stranger a second time,
her barb sinking into Tumibay's other leg. She saw blood starting to
leak from Agba's chest and swam towards him. "Ahhhhhh," she screamed
again, as another spear pierced her side, entering her chest between
her ribs, just below her breast. She could feel the sharp pain of
poison as it spread into her body.
Liga and Alexis both launched themselves at the men in the sled, but
even as they moved towards them, Gabriel, John, and MuSu swam past them
at blinding speeds and each speared one of the men with their barbs.
Angara pulled the knife from Agba's chest, and tried to staunch the
wound, but it was too great, and the poison was working on both of
them.
"I'm sorry, my love," Agba struggled. "I couldn't protect ..."
"We are poisoned," Angara said softly, even as Liga and Alexis rose to
their side, ignoring the paralyzed stranger floating next to them.
"Don't touch," she warned Alexis as her sister-wife reached for the end
of the spear protruding from her ribs. "It's poisoned, and you
...might ..."
"Let's get them back to the caves," Liga urged.
"No," Agba said sadly, reaching for his three pod-mates. "Encima ... "
he whispered and then went limp in the water.
"Mi amor," Angara said softly, and she too stopped moving.
The rest of the mermaids arrived, too late to help.
*****
"NO!" Alexis argued. "It will not help anything."
"But they did it," Liga argued, pointing at Petra, Gabriel, and Xing
barely visible in the darkness. The sky had darkened as a storm
approached. There was no longer any starlight or moonlight to
illuminate the mers as they gathered on the beach with their dead and
their prisoners in the middle of their circle. "They got to bury
Michael and kill Alberto," she cried.
"Burying Michael did not help," Petra said softly, cradling the fitful
and squirming Michelle in her arms.
"Killing Alberto helped," Gabriel said. "But giving Michael’s body to
the sea now seems merely selfish."
"Then let me at least kill him," Liga breathed, moving towards the now
comatose Tumibay.
"Liga, my flower of joy," Alexis said, her breath catching. "Don’t ...
don’t kill ... I need you to be my flower."
"Your flower that does nothing but smell pretty," Liga fumed. "What
good is that?"
"Beauty and love need no justification," Pat said firmly, quelling
Liga’s growing anger. "Would you go back to being Lakan?"
Liga blanched at Pat’s suggestion. "No, never ... please never go back
to that," she said, suddenly afraid.
"We will create a just punishment for our intruders, but we need
information from them," Pat continued carefully. "Information that we
cannot get if they are dead."
"And we need information from our dear Agba and Angara," Alexis said,
softly stroking Liga’s dark black hair. "Information we cannot get if
they are drifting in the sea or buried beneath a pile of rocks 200
meters down."
"I just ... just ..." Liga broke down into heaving sobs, and buried her
face in Alexis’ shoulder.
"I know, my joyful flower," Alexis said softly. "I know. I am
pregnant too."
Liga pulled back, "What?"
"You cannot see?" Alexis asked.
"When?" Liga asked.
"You cannot tell?" Alexis asked, stroking Liga’s cheeks in the
moonlight.
"Um ... none of us knew," said Phoebe.
"Not until now," Danni said.
"Last night," Alexis explained. "I had a sudden premonition, but I did
not know why. Now, sadly, I know why."
"Oh sister-wife," Liga wailed anew. "Who will be the father to our
children?"
There was a long silence as the two mermaids sobbed in each other's
arms.
"I will," Eric said. "If you’ll have me."
All the mers turned to Sally and Eric where they sat on the beach.
Sally took Eric’s hand in hers, and gave it a squeeze.
"This is why I know that I love you," she said.
"I won’t force myself on you," Eric explained. "And I’m supposed to
wait until after we get done with the gun."
"No!" Petra exclaimed. "No ... they will need you sooner than that."
"In a few days, their need will be overpowering," Xing continued. "Liga
and Alexis must have a mate, and with both pregnant, neither can become
the father without killing the fetus. They might go mad."
Pat rubbed her own belly thoughtfully and looked across the sand at
John. "I think Petra and Xing are right," she said. "I can feel my
own needs changing with my pregnancy." She turned to the two humans.
"You did say that you would do what ever was best for everyone," she
reminded them. "Will you hold true?"
"You only ask because you do not know me," Eric said evenly. "I will
be true."
"We will," Sally added.
"What do you think Alexis, Liga?" Pat asked.
Liga lifted her head from Alexis’ neck and looked at Eric, as though
for the first time. Then she turned to Alexis and raised her eyebrow.
"We do get some input, after all, on how he turns out," Alexis said in
a whisper only Liga could hear.
"We would be honored to have Eric become our pod-mate," Liga said
softly between sobs.
"And ..." Alexis urged.
"And Sally, too," she said, sniffling.
"And ..." Alexis said gently.
"And ... and ... we will allow Galina and Pat to perform an ... autopsy
... on Agba and ... and ... Angara," Liga finished, sobbing again into
Alexis’ shoulder.
"And Angara’s child," Phoebe said.
"That’s right," Alexis said. "She was nine months pregnant."
"She was nine months, nineteen days, and twelve hours pregnant," said
Liga, struggling to regain control. "Ten minutes more pregnant than
me."
"The same as the others?" asked Sally.
"No, it’s now the next day," explained Xing. "Angara, Liga, and I were
a day behind Pat, Phoebe, and Danni. They are now nine months, twenty
days, and who cares how many hours pregnant."
"Fourteen," Phoebe said. "But who’s counting."
"You are," Emma said lightly. "You nerd."
"What do we do?" asked Sally.
"First, you will need to feed from Alexis and Liga, and that will get
the process started," Pat instructed. "The four of you can stay here
with the other prisoners tomorrow when we take Tumibay back to the lab
for some special treatments."
*****
Tumibay struggled to move. He had been dreaming, he was sure. As his
eyes focused on the fire that danced before him, and in the fire's
light, he caught glimpses of the creatures of his nightmare. Half
human, half fish, with terrible jewel-like eyes that seemed to bore
through to his soul.
"He is moving," Phoebe announced.
The mers crowded around Tumibay, whose name they now knew thanks to the
three men who accompanied him. The prisoners all had only one dose of
mermaid venom, and proved all too eager to talk to these creatures of
mythology, especially when two of them seemed to speak perfect
Filipino. Tumibay, thanks to his double dose, had come back to
consciousness hours after his crew.
"Hello, Tumibay," Pat said in Filipino. "I’m Pat, and I’m a mermaid."
She continued as she watched the poor man struggle to both regain
control of his body and assimilate the news she was telling him. "We
know lots about you, and your boat is now at the bottom of the sea."
"What happened to my boat?" Tumibay said, without meaning to say
anything.
"Good," Pat continued evenly. "You speak and understand English. That
will make things so much easier."
"Fuck you," Tumibay spat.
"Not likely," Pat said. "Though I’m sure you’d like to," she said as
she pushed her impressive breasts into his face. "You see, the problem
is that I’m pregnant, and I can’t really fuck you the way that you
deserve."
"That would be my job," John said with a menace that no one could
mistake. "But I’m pretty sure that you don’t want me to fuck you,
right?"
Tumibay turned his attention to the merman who spoke and calculated the
damage the tall, long, and broad shouldered mer could do to him.
"No," he said.
"Good to hear," John said with a smile that wasn’t friendly. "Because
I’m not very good at being nice to strangers that I’m fucking."
"So, we have a few questions," Pat said lightly. "Care to answer some
of them?"
"What questions?" Tumibay asked, seeing for the first time his men
trussed up along the beach, each squirming in the dim light of the
fire.
"Oh, don’t worry about them," Pat reassured him. "They are all still
alive and healthy, but they couldn't answer all our questions."
"What questions?" Tumibay asked again, trying to regain some ground.
"Who do you work for? Why are you here? What do you want?" asked Pat.
Tumibay looked at Pat, trying to gage her resolve. He looked again at
his men.
"What happened to my boat?" he repeated.
"Your men were kind enough to let us know where it was," Pat answered.
"And when we tried to contact them, they fired guns at us."
"Silly men," Phoebe added. "Bullets don’t penetrate water."
Tumibay turned to look at the pretty, blue-tailed mermaid. "But
mermaid nails can rip through some surprisingly dense materials," she
said brandishing her beautiful but sharp nails.
"A fiberglass hull?" Tumibay said, betraying his disbelief.
"Nothing to it," Phoebe said, licking her fingers.
"Long story short," Pat interrupted, holding up a small electronic
device. "You’re stuck, no tracking devices left (your men told us
about those), and you have two choices; talk or die."
"I will die," Tumibay said without emotion.
"That’s fine," Pat said. "It may take a few days. I hope you’re not
in any hurry to die."
"What do you mean?" he asked with the slightest tension in his voice.
"Hi," Galina said as she leaned over him from above his head. "I don’t
think we’ve been introduced. I’m Galina, a former Russian scientist
with experience in bio-psychological response systems."
"Huh?" Tumibay said growing more worried.
"Torture," Galina said, laying on a thick Russian accent she no longer
actually had. "You do know what I mean?"
"Fuck you," Tumibay repeated.
"Have it your way," Pat said with a smile.
*****
Eric was nervous at first, approaching Alexis who was clearly a
beautiful woman, with her blond hair, blue eyes, bright smile, and
inviting breasts. He kept glancing over to Sally, hoping for some
signal that everything would be alright. He was moving swiftly from
being just Sally's mate to becoming a pod-mate to three mermaids. The
shift in his head was tectonic, and he was struggling with his
emotions.
Sally, on the other hand, eagerly shed her clothes and curled herself
up into Liga's petite lap, gazing up into her rich dark eyes, slightly
Asian, and her thick but straight black hair. She happily began
drinking from her breast, noting that it looked much larger that it
actually was as she wrapped her hand around the round, full breast. It
must be Liga's petite frame, she thought as she pulled on the stiff
nipple, feeling the sweet warmth of mermaid milk slide down her throat.
She herself was only a little taller than the small Filipino mermaid
must have been when she was a woman, er, man. Sally hoped that she
looked as spectacular when she became a mermaid. Maybe her breasts
would grow so that they looked similarly large on her own slightly
larger, though still petite frame.
"Eric?" Alexis asked.
Eric shifted his gaze from Alexis who held her arms out to him back to
Sally, who was eagerly drinking from Liga's breast. He blushed.
"Eric," Alexis said, "it's alright. You'll see. Sally, will you tell
him it's alright?"
Sally lifted her head from Liga's breast so she could talk, but she
didn't turn her lips away. "Seaman First Class Edwards, I order you to
suck on Alexis' breasts. In fact, I order you to enjoy doing so."
"See," Alexis said gently, with a touch of sadness. "It will all be
alright. She will be in charge!"
"Men are never in charge," Liga said thoughtfully as she stroked
Sally's hair, enjoying her first time as a feeder, feeling the amazing
sensations of love and sensuality sweep through her body. "I think
Sally will make an excellent pod-mate, but I will miss Angara."
"We both will," Alexis agreed. "But we can make a new family with
Eric, if he will let us be in charge."
"Edwards!" Sally ordered, dropping her mouth immediately back onto
Liga's nipple.
"I give up," Eric said, dropping his own pants and sinking onto the
sand next to the beautiful blond mermaid.
"It's usually best if that happens early in the relationship," Alexis
said. "It saves a lot of trouble later. Now drink like a good boy,
and if you're really good, you'll get an extra special reward later."
*****
Tumibay blinked in the harsh light of the LED’s the burned into his
eyes from above. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew he was in a
cave. He had vague recollections of being stung by the mermaids again,
and then dragged through the water, and finally arriving in this
harshly lit cave.
"Our patient is awake," Galina said.
"Good morning," Pat said. "How are you feeling?"
"Fuck you," Tumibay said again.
"My, my, such a large vocabulary," Pat said. "Let’s try again, shall
we? Who do you work for? Why are you here? What do you want?"
"Fuck you," he repeated.
"Galina, he’s all yours," Pat said with resignation.
"My pleasure," she said as she salamandered over to the gurney on which
he was bound. He noticed for the first time that Plexiglas walls
surrounded him as he lay on the gurney. "Let’s see if we have this
particular formula right," she said as she injected him with a clear
fluid. "It should only take a few minutes."
The mers stood over Tumibay, watching him with interest. Nothing
seemed to be happening.
"Perhaps we didn't include enough of the change agent in the new
formula," Phoebe mused as she looked up from her computer screen, where
data from numerous electrodes ran back from Tumibay's body.
"It needs some time to build up to reactive power, and we're not
sending any electrical signals to him," Galina observed. "Our tests
showed that our influence on the change is only present in water, when
there is conductive material between us and the transformee. This
change will be entirely on his own."
"And this formula is actually more viral than our own milk," Pat
reminded Phoebe. "In fact, it might be too viral."
"Once a critical mass is reached," Galina said, "the change could
happen in minutes."
"I hope it doesn't kill him," Phoebe said.
Tumibay turned his head sharply at that comment. He wondered what they
were talking about, but he could feel a tingling sensation crawl up his
arm from where the mermaid had injected him with the drug. As the
minutes passed, the tingling spread and became a burning sensation.
Pain was nothing new, nothing he couldn’t deal with. The tingling
changed, however, and became a burning sensation that wasn’t pain so
much as it was a feeling of shifting cells, of skin melting, of bones
liquefying.
"What ... are ... you ... doing ... to ... me?" he asked through
gritted teeth.
"Nothing," Galina said. "What happens next is up to you. Your own
brain will shape your body into the form that exists in your
imagination. If you answer our questions, I might stop the process. If
you don’t, the change will be up to your own imagination."
"Try not to think of anything strange," Pat said. "Like us."
"Or of other mythic creatures," Galina continued, glancing over at
Phoebe as she manned the instruments that were monitoring their
prisoner. "It would probably be a good idea not to think of anything."
Tumibay groaned. His mind was swirling with horrific images from his
childhood and imagination. Vampires, sea monsters, beasts of mixed
origination, all jumped and swirled in his mind.
"Stop ... make it stop," he pleaded.
"Who do you work for? Why are you here? What do you want?" Pat asked.
"Malaki," he said, his chest heaving as the visions multiplied in his
head.
"Who is Malaki?" asked Pat.
"Business man, Alberto's boss," Tumibay answered, feeling his body
begin to constrict.
"Your boss too?" Pat asked.
"Yes," he answered, breathing quickly. "Make it stop!"
"You're not done answering questions," Pat continued brightly. "Why
are you here?"
"Kill Alberto, get Malaki's money," Tumibay said as he felt his body
begin to twitch and shift.
"The five million dollars?" Pat asked.
"How do you—?" he asked.
"I ask the questions," Pat reminded him.
"What questions?" Tumibay asked, his body beginning to slough off skin
and fat and water.
"This is a very important question," Pat warned him. "Are you
listening?"
"Yeeeeesch, daaaaamnit," he hissed, losing control of his body.
"What do you want?" Pat asked. "What does your heart want?"
"Blooooooooooood," Tumibay said, his body beginning to visibly shrink
and shift.
The mermaids watched with detached interest as Tumibay’s body continued
to shrink over the next several minutes, bio-mass falling away from his
quickly morphing body. Within minutes he was no longer recognizable as
a human, and only a few minutes after that, there was a large lamprey
thrashing around in the gurney.
"That new serum is powerful," Phoebe said with awe.
"Maybe too powerful," Pat said. "That only took a few minutes, and
look how much bio-mass he left all over the gurney."
"At least he's not dead," Phoebe said.
"Not yet," Pat observed.
"What were the bio-metric readings?" asked Galina, looking at Phoebe.
"Zero bio-electrical input from us," she said, reading a computer
screen. "100% from his own brain."
"Justice," Pat concluded. "Are there any special properties to the eel
on the table?" she asked, indicating the former man now thrashing on
the gurney, his bloodsucking mouth gaping in the air.
"It’s a normal lamprey, as far as I can tell," Phoebe said, looking at
two other computer screens.
"Then, let’s not kill it," Pat said. "Is the tunnel clear?"
Galina sent out a high-pitched squeal, and a few seconds later, Emma
popped up from the pool at the edge of their lab.
"What did he turn into?" she asked with eagerness.
"A lamprey," Pat answered.
"Cool," Emma said. "Anything special?"
"We don't think so," Phoebe said. "But let's not take any chances.
Clear the tunnel and close off the alternate passages. We're gonna
release him, er, it."
"Really?" Emma asked.
"Really," Galina said as she clipped a radio tag to the lamprey's
dorsal fin. "Signal when you're ready."
"Can we follow it?" Emma asked.
"Only if MuSu is in charge," Pat said.
"I promise," Emma said earnestly, while Galina, Phoebe, and Pat all
shared a glance.
"Well, then, get to it," Pat urged.
Emma dipped back under the surface, and a few minutes later, they heard
the signal from MuSu. Emma was smart; she knew that only MuSu's
agreement would trigger the release.
Pat and Galina tipped the table towards the water, and the eel and
several kilos of bio-mass fell into the water. After a moment of
shock, the lamprey oriented itself and headed towards the sea.
"Do lamprey’s actually serve some purpose in the ocean's ecosystem, or
are they more like mosquitoes?" Phoebe asked.
"They are mostly freshwater animals," Pat observed. "And, yes, they
are true parasites—like mosquitoes. But, I don’t think Tumibay will
last long in the ocean. He looks like a shark meal to me."
"Justice," Galina concluded.
An hour later, MuSu and the girls returned to the lab and reported that
justice was indeed served thanks to a hammerhead shark.
*****
Alexis and Liga stared resolutely into Pat’s unwavering gaze as the
later afternoon sun glinted off the water.
"We are not sorry," Alexis said carefully.
"You don’t understand," Liga explained.
"They couldn’t help it," Gabriel said. "I couldn’t have stopped
myself. Maybe it’s part of the bonding process."
"They shouldn’t have killed those prisoners," Pat exclaimed. "Those
men didn’t deserve to die."
"Hired guns, paid assassins?" exclaimed Galina. "They had been hired
by Tumibay to be his army. They would have killed you before you had a
chance to say hello."
"What about Liga?" Pat said pointedly. "She was once one of those
men."
"Once," Liga said slowly. "But I could not have become me without you.
Those men were not yet me. They killed my pod-mates."
"We could have saved them," Pat argued.
"Yes, we could have," John said as he hugged his pod-mate to his side.
"But we didn’t. We can’t save everyone. We couldn't save Agba and
Angara."
"We do not blame you," Liga said quickly. "We only fulfilled our duty
to our pod-mate."
"Nevertheless," John said. "We still ..."
"No," Alexis said. "You did not kill them. You did not let them be
killed. Those men killed our mates. We killed them. It is enough."
There was a tension on the beach as everyone processed the moment. The
three prisoners had been torn limb from limb, their bodies scattered
along the beach. Earlier that morning, after the mers had taken
Tumibay and Agba and Angara's bodies back to the caves, Eric and Sally
were grateful that the two mermaids offered to take over guard duties
after their morning feeding so that they could go up to the hot tub
before their transition. Eric had wanted to spend some more time alone
with Sally before he became responsible for two more mermaids, both of
whom were pregnant with another merman's child. When they had returned
to the beach several hours later, there was blood everywhere.
"MuSu?" Pat asked. "Can you and the girls take care of the bodies? I
hate to make you do all this work, but beach time is becoming more and
more difficult for most of us."
"No problem," he answered, as he and his girls turned towards the
carnage the two widows had created.
"No, wait," Petra urged. "Look," she said as she pointed at Alexis and
Liga, who were huddled together, shaking and moaning with pain.
"Eric and Sally?" Petra asked. "Are you ready? They need you now,"
she finished, nodding towards the two mermaids who were now twitching
uncontrollably with need, holding each other in a death-like-embrace.
"The time for death is past," Eric said, rising, taking Sally's hand in
his. He and Sally walked over to the two shaking mermaids, and helped
them to the water. "It is time for new life."
"We can clean up later," MuSu said.
"Or the birds might do our work for us," Emma noted, watching the
gathering of sea birds over the western arm of the lagoon.
*****
"Neon blue damsel," Sally explained. "Royal blue with silver and light
blue highlights."
The mers all bobbed in the Moon Pool, while Sally explained what they
both hoped for. "My first salt water fish as a child was a Neon
Damsel."
"I know the species," Pat said, concentrating on sharing that vision
with her pod-mates and fellow mers. "Turn around, I want to see if
your gills are coming in. Eric, you too."
Sally turned and lifted her tee shirt over her head. "We won’t be
needing clothes much longer anyway," she said to Eric as she threw the
garment onto the floor of the cave. He took off his tee shirt as well.
"Your first feedings have worked," Pat observed. "Your gills have
developed from this morning. Sally, you’re first, so that you can be
Eric's last."
Sally gave Eric a quick kiss. "See you in a few minutes," she said
lightly, hiding her own anxiety with bravado. She dove into the pool.
She found herself surrounded by mers in the middle of the pool, the
fading evening light cascading down from the chimney high above. Sally
swam towards Liga.
"Will you be my sister wife and give me my tail?" she said with some
difficulty, trying to remember the ritual Pat had explained to her.
"Give me my tail," she whispered as she reached for Liga’s breast and
sucked.
Liga felt the now familiar stirrings of warmth, and fullness spread to
her breasts. Sally was forcefully pulling milk from her breast, but
she had never felt this level of emotion or sensation, even when making
love to her pod-mates. This feeding was more intense than the first
feedings on the beach. Liga felt her powerful milk pour from her chest
into Sally's eager mouth. After a few minutes, Sally no longer felt
the burning need for air in her lungs, and she switched to Liga’s other
breast. When that one was empty, she moved to Pat.
"You are the mother to us all," she said. "Will you give me my tail?"
Pat smiled and collected the soon-to-be-mer into her arms. After Sally
had finished with her, she moved onto Danni, and then Phoebe. Sally
could feel the power of the mermaid milk building in her body, and she
focused on the mermaid she had wished to become for so long. When she
took John’s incredible cock into her mouth, she felt yet another leap
in power, as forces throbbed through her body, roiling up and down
through her legs and torso. Her brain became a whirlpool of emotions
and images, and she struggled to maintain her focus.
"Sally," Petra said, lifting her breasts in the water. "You can do
this, focus."
Sally smiled and felt suddenly buoyed by Petra’s presence. "First
Mother Mermaid, give me my tail," she said as she fell onto one of
Petra's enormous breasts. Petra drew a sharp breath, savoring again
the special feelings generated by feeding, thrilling to the power of
pumping her milk into Sally that would transform the young woman
forever.
Liga and Pat shared a quick look and floated down below the circle,
under Sally’s thin, graceful legs, and began rubbing them lengthwise.
Sally moaned into Petra's breasts as the other girls stimulated her
skin, helping her focus her building energies onto her lower body. She
fixed in her mind, the beautiful and strong mermaid, stronger than any
Navy Seal, able to withstand deep ocean pressures and cold
temperatures, and who had a dangerous barb in her tail. As she
finished with Petra, Sally could feel other changes that were happening
to her body. Her own breasts were beginning to tighten, and her
already small waist seemed to draw into self a bit more. Her hair was
flowing down her back, and the power of the mermaid milk built within
her body.
Sally continued onto Galina, Xing, and then Gabriel, each time the
power building within her, and each time she would struggle to regain
focus, to control the powerful forces that seemed to sweep and surge
through her body. She could also feel the combined mental focus of the
mers as they surrounded her, supporting her, urging her to transform.
She welcomed that transformation, giving her body over to the pressures
and powers that both swirled within and around her body. She could
feel her legs beginning to stiffen, pressing together as the power of
the mer fluids built in her body. The mers had begun to hum, and the
sound filled her with passion and power.
Sally moved on to MuSu’s pod, taking milk and sperm from them, feeling
her entire body quivering with passion and the effort to control the
powerful forces that now surged within her. Her legs were now stiff,
her toes fused together, pointing to the bottom of the pool. She could
feel Pat and Liga rubbing them lightly, up and down, up and down. She
turned to Alexis, her last. "Come my sister-wife, be my last and give
me my tail," she gasped.
Alexis floated towards her new sister-wife slowly, feeling the entire
pool filled with energy and vibrations. When Sally attached herself to
her breast, Alexis quivered in a sudden orgasm, her breasts and vagina
swelled and pulsed milk and cum into the water. After many long
moments, Alexis stopped shaking, and Sally pulled back, her own moaning
merging with the humming of the other mers. Her arms pulled out
horizontally while her now merged feet were stiffly pointed towards the
bottom, suspended in the middle of the circle. Pat and Liga swam back
up to their places in the circle and waited.
Sally was slowly turning in the water, and her skin was rippling with
the power of the mer-fluids she had consumed. Under the surface of her
skin, she could feel great tremors of movement and muscles, energy and
electricity running throughout her body. She suddenly felt a great
urge to push, and she stopped humming as she bore down with her stomach
muscles. Sally felt her womb spasm as her legs knit themselves together
and lengthened towards the bottom of the pool. She could feel her
nerves, blood vessels, bones, and muscles pulling apart and pushing
together, as waves and waves of energy pulsed through her legs and
lower torso. She could feel the power of the mers pressing against
her, her skin tingling as their electrical signals guided her changes.
She could feel her womb lengthening and sinking as other internal parts
also moved forward and down. She could feel her gills tingling, her
breasts were growing, swelling into the water, and her hair brushing
the top of her ass. But it was not an ass for much longer.
In minutes her tail formed, bones, muscles, and nerves pushing
themselves into new arrangements, flukes, fins, and dorsal ridges
thrusting out from her new appendage, new energies radiating throughout
her quickly changing body. Her face, her hair, and her skin were all
changing, transforming—becoming a mermaid. A final pulse raced through
her body, and Sally shook in a great release of ecstasy, her newly
formed tail arching above her head. The beautiful blue and silver tail
shimmered in the fading sunlight that dappled the Moon Pool. Suddenly,
she relaxed in the water. It had taken less than an hour. She was
finished, complete; she was a mermaid.
It was better than any orgasm she had ever had.
*****
Eric looked at Sally yet again, not quite believing that it was real.
His own, newly formed tail fluttered back and forth below him, and his
new, long, thick and powerful cock was twitching deep within his tail.
"You’re more beautiful than I thought possible," Sally said as she swam
towards her new mate. "What do you think?" she asked Alexis and Liga.
The three mermaids drank in the sight of their new pod-mate. Eric’s
body had lengthened as he transformed, and his hair had darkened from
his original dark brown to a rich black. His eyes had also darkened.
His royal blue tail was fringed with silver, and silver and blue
highlights sparkled throughout his tail, fins, and flukes. He was now
nearly three meters long, his shoulders were broad and strong, and a
dorsal fin rose from his back.
Eric remembered John’s warning as his three mermaid-wives closed in on
him, and pulled his new vent muscle to allow his now much larger cock
the freedom it needed. Twelve inches pushed out into the water, and he
could feel the stiffness throbbing halfway down his new tail.
"Oh my god," Sally breathed. "That’s amazing."
"It gets better," Alexis said, pushing her new sister wife towards
their pod-mate. "We have the flanks; you have the front."
"I can't," Sally protested weakly, her own passion rising within her
transformed body with unexpected force. "I've made love to him many
times, and you are ..."
"Pregnant," Liga said. "Besides, he will last many times tonight. We
will all get our turn."
"Many times?" Sally said, her chest rising and falling with passion,
her newly enlarged breasts swaying in the water as she was pushed
towards Eric's long, stiff cock.
"Yes," Alexis said. "Trust me, you'll need it many times. Just
remember, do not imagine the color of your child's eyes if you do not
yet want to join us in motherhood."
"Yes, don't," Eric urged. "I don't want to deal with your father to
have him discover that you're no longer human and you're pregnant."
"You're not in charge, remember?" teased Alexis. "Sally?" she urged as
she stroked Sally's dorsal ridge, pushing her towards Eric. "The
sooner you go first, the sooner we get our turn."
"Yes," Sally said as she reached down to guide Eric's throbbing cock
towards her own pulsing vagina. She tried pushing his cock into her
newly formed mermaid vagina, but it was too big, and his head stretched
her lips to their maximum.
"Wrap your tail around his," Alexis advised. "You get better
leverage."
Sally quickly twirled her tail around his, feeling his strong muscles
quiver beneath her flukes, marveling at how they felt like her toes,
each bony ridge a toe that could be wiggled in coordination with the
others, or alone. She brought her now free hand up to Eric's neck, and
pulled herself onto Eric's cock. The thick head pushed past her outer
lips and slipped quickly in, up to the first six inches. She could
feel a ridge of tissue and the tightness of her own vagina obstructing
further entry.
"I'm not a virgin again?" she gasped, as her passion and her
frustration warred with one another.
"No," Liga advised. "You don't get that back. It's the way mermaids
are. Those are some new muscles that you'll use if you decide to
become pregnant."
"It's also your newly enlarged G-spot," Alexis said, her own eyes
lidded with passion as she pressed herself into Eric's quivering pelvic
fin. "Push ... it will be fine."
Sally looked up into Eric's eyes, and noticed how filled with love and
warmth they were. Other than the darker color, those same easygoing
eyes had shyly smiled back at her over coffee at the PX so many months
ago. Now, they were the eyes of her mate, her pod-mate, her own
merman. She pushed herself onto him and slowly sank herself all the
way onto Eric's cock. She felt so full, so wonderful, so complete.
"Oh ... oh ... oh," moaned Liga as she squirmed on Eric's other pelvic
fin, her slightly swollen belly obscuring their view of her vagina.
"Oooooommmmmmm," Eric breathed, feeling Sally squeeze the length of his
long cock with her new muscles, his tail quivering with passion. He
could feel Alexis' and Liga's hot vents pressed into the ends of his
pleasantly stiff pelvic fins, each sensation added to the sensuousness
of Sally's long strokes as she began to pump herself along the length
of his shaft. The soft caresses of each of their tails as they
entwined themselves around his stiff, strong, tail sent shivers running
up and down his back.
"This is much better than that time on the boat," he whispered to his
new mermaid-mate. "I don’t have to pretend to have a tail anymore."
Alexis suddenly stiffened and clutched at Eric, pressing her entire
body along his arms, hips, and tail. Her breasts began spurting milk
into the water as her face twisted into a mask of pleasure. Liga
joined her, while Sally and Eric were now slamming their pelvic bones
into one another's, their bodies shaking, Sally making mewling noises
that she couldn't control. As Alexis and Liga recovered from their
orgasms, they winked at one another, and each ran their hands up along
their new pod-mate's gills.
Bright, blazing colors burned behind both of their closed eyes, their
backs arched away from one another as their tails were pressed
together, each vibrating and shaking as Sally's newly enlarged breasts
began to spurt milk into the water, matching Eric's own pulses that she
felt surging deep within her body. The orgasms that ran through both
their bodies would be one that each would remember for a long time.
Nothing had ever felt like that before, and as Sally slowly opened her
eyes and took in the beautiful sight of three mers all entwined
together, a white mist surrounding them in the water, she felt true
happiness for the first time in her life. She barely noticed the three
other clouds of white that marked the other pods in the far corners of
the Moon Pool.
After several minutes of kissing and stroking, talking and sharing,
Sally told Alexis that it was her turn. Four hours later, Eric finally
fell a sleep, three beautiful mermaids draped on his strong frame.
----
To be continued?