Marker; 9,155 reads and 746  votes

(Published 2-2-19)

AN; Sorry this is late, I got so busy. But I do plan on updating weekly!

Summer 1970

"Marina!" My sister swam towards me, her black hair swirled around her face. She was by my side in seconds. "Are you okay!?" she asked in our language, the only language one could understand clearly under the water.

Without waiting for my response, she began to sing her healing song. I felt soft touches against my skin, while her magic worked itself around the gash Elizabeth's knife carved. I was still in stunned disbelief that I had just witnessed the huntress get swallowed by a dragon. Sea dragons were becoming rarer and rarer these days and I've seen only a few, but I had never seen a sea dragon like that before. There were usually brightly colored, not black. Nor did they have that strange arrangement of horns on their heads.

"It's not working!?" my sister said loudly and I was jerked back to reality.

My eyes traveled down to my wound. Its jagged, angry lines had not closed in the least and there still was a steady stream of red pouring out from it.

I tried not to let the worry show on my own face and began to sing the healing song. Delphine joined in. This time, the touches where a bit firmer, but the cut still remained unchanged, if anything the pain coming from it was intensifying.

What had started as a warm pulsing throb, had progressed into a chilly stinging sensation. The likes of which I had never experienced before.

"What did the knife that she cut you with look like!?" 

"I'm not sure. I didn't really have a chance to take a good look at it in all the chaos."

The icy stinging was spreading upwards and outwards to other parts of my arm and hand.  These body parts were beginning to feel like they were not a part of me anymore, but my suffering seemed to be non ending.  The pain had now crept into my shoulder and chest.

I was beginning to sink, weighed down by my own body.  Delphine caught me and steadied me in the water. She looped her arm under my armpits.

"Sisters come, Marina is in trouble," Marina sang.

"Delphine, I don't feel so good," I groaned. But what I should of said was "I don't feel anything."

"I know...I know."

"WHAT'S GOING ON!?" another voice cried.

My face was instantly emerged in a sea of white blonde hair.

My tongue was burning with the icy sting.

"Isla, come around here, your hair is in her face!" Delphine barked.

"S-sorry!"

A second later, my eyesight was free of hair. And I was gazing into the face of Isla. She was the second youngest of the sister where Delphine was the oldest. Her normally pale skin had acquired a sunburn since the last time I saw her, and it colored her cheeks and the tips of her nose an angry red. Her pale green tail swished back and forth in the water

"Marina has been attacked by a hunter we have to get her to a healer! She's been stabbed with a knife that had some kind of poison. If I had to guess, it's of land witch origin."

"Isn't thay bad!? Oh no! What do we do!?" Isla groaned.

"Come to me my children." My father's voice rang in my ears suddenly. But his call sounded more distant than usual, but so did Islas and Delphine's voices. It sounded like I was listening to there conversation from many leagues below them.

Was I sinking? I could no longer feel Delphine's arm around me, so who was holding me up? Was I going to drift downwards until the current scattered my bones?

"Father! We should take her to father. He'll know what to do!" Isla said.

"Isla, what's he going to do, sentence the poison to death? He can't even sing the healing song properly!" Delphine retorted.

"No silly, he'll call the healers. You can't sentence poison to death!?" she giggled.

"I know that you idiot! The humans have a really great term for what I just did. They call it sarcasm."

"Ohhhhh," Isla said, her voice a muffled whisper in my ear. "Is it there form of healing magic? Is that what you are trying to used it right now?"

My body was so heavy...but at least it was not hurting anymore.

"Humans don't use magic, at least not magic of their own creation. You should.."

Her voice faded from my ears, while the blue-green water faded from my eyes. Everything was so dark and I was floating in it. Only I didn't know if I was floating. All my senses were gone. I didn't know if I even existed anymore. But did it really bother me all that much?

Pain like I never experienced ripped through my body as something was driven into my flesh. I couldn't pinpoint exactly what part of my body had just been assaulted, because I had forgotten I was something that was solid and existed. But now that I was aware I had a body, I could tell the second blow was directly to my side.

I opened my eyes, which had been closed. and saw nothing. I opened my mouth to scream, yet heard nothing at all. What was happening to me? I felt like I was burning from the inside out. Then in the darkness bloomed a light. It became brighter and brighter and from that light came a blurred face. Her nose was a little too big, her chin a little too pointy, and her brown eyes a little too small. Her brown hair hung in clumps around her face, where green light danced upon her cheeks. Beyond her head I could see the high vaulted stone ceilings of the cave. And I was aware of the rough rocks pressing into my back.

Had the poison taken more than just my body? Had it take my mind too? Hadn't I just seen Elizabeth get swallowed by a sea dragon, so why was she kneeling beside me. And even if she had managed to escape the dragon's jaws somehow, why on earth would she end up in this cave, with its glowing green ancient symbols? This was the place where father called the sisters to when he wanted to speak to us without the chance of being overheard.

The pain began to fade and her face grew even. clearer, but there was no expression on it while she gazed down at me. She raised a knife that was held tightly in her hand and drove it downwards into my stomach.

I gasped in pain, or at least I thought I did. I could feel the sound slide from my throat and escaped my lips, but my ears did not register it. My ears didn't register anything.

Elizabeth and I locked eyes. She grimaced ever so slightly and raised the knife again, and I saw that  it's shinny gray stone point, to its sea wood handle, stained in blood.

Then she paused and her eyes jerked to someone that was not in my line of sight. And suddenly Delphine came into view in her human form. She grabbed Elizabeth's knife and yanked it away from her.

I could see her mouth move in angry words. While Elizabeth looked on. Her expression remained calm. Elizabeth said something else and Delphine looked down at me and handed the knife back to her.

"Delphine!" I said desperately but again I could only feel vibrations in my throat.

Delphine's hands were cupping my face the next instant. Her lips moved again and this time, I was treated to the sound of her voice, which sounded like she was talking to me from the other side of a thick stone door. I could not understand her and I was content to hear anything at all.  Delphine's lips began to move again and her voice grew louder and stronger in my ears, until finally I could make out want she was saying.

"Marina can you hear me?" she asked in the language of our people.

"Yes," I answered  weakly in the language of our people. "I can."

"Told you she would be able to hear, now let's bring back my sense of smell." Elizabeth said from somewhere out of my sight. And suddenly Elizabeth was looming over me again. And in the next second she had jabbed her knife into me , this time into my tail.

I howled in pain again. "I thought I told you save her, not hurt her!" Delphine was on her feet in an instant and was reaching for Elizabeth's knife again, when Elizabeth spoke. "Taste and smell haven't come back to her yet. I have to stabbed her five times with the blade for all her senses to come back."

My heart sank at her words.  Not at the thought of possibly being stabbed two more times, but at the fact she had said that sentence in  Ociski, the language of our people.  The language that no human should be a be able to speak.

The cave was quiet except for the water lapping against the rocky islands that sat in the middle of the pool of water. There were several of them, including the one that we were perched on which was the largest of all the little pieces of land. Delphine and I exchange looks.

"Kill her now? What are you waiting for?" I tried to tell Delphine with my eyes, because I wasn't so sure I could communicate in our language safety anymore.

Delphine shook her head at me and slowly lowered her arms that had been reaching out for Elizabeth's knife, and instead grabbed Elizabeth's face and turned it towards her.

Delphine stared directly into her eyes, "How did you learn our language!?" Delphine demanded.

And before she could answer, a horrible smell filled my nose, and I gagged. It smelled like the inside of a whale carcass. I choked back the urge to throw up.

I quickly sat up and reverted to human form, so I would be able to move around a little easier. I stood and looked down at myself in the green light coming from the water. My skin was streaked with what had to be my own blood, yet I did not see any of the wounds that Elizabeth's knife should had caused. I didn't even see the original cut on my arm.

"And now she has her sense of smell, judging by her reaction," Elizabeth replied. "I'll have to change as soon as you let me. But to answer your question something happened to me while I was inside of the dragon's stomach. When it...you know...I just knew I would be able to speak and understand your language."

"So the dragon threw you up, somehow gave you the ability to speak the language of merfolks, and than my sister just brought you here?" I asked her in the language of my people, since apparently she could speak and understand it now.

"No I didn't," Delphine answered instead. "I brought you here and she was already here waiting. She tried to kill me when I first came up."

"And then you let her stab me with da knife!? Where is father? Where are the rest of our sisters?

"You don't understand, you were dying and she said she could save you. Father was not answering, nor is Celeste, Urchin, or Ray. Orca was just enough to close enough to hear our song of distress, and she is trying to help Isla find a healer."

"I'm trying to understand because, wasn't it you that told me how dangerous hunters were. So why would you trust one to save me?"

Delphine let out an exasperated sign, "Yes emphasis on was dangerous. Delphine walked over and put her arms around her neck. I thought I might of seen a look of disgust cross over Elizabeth's face at her touch but I could have imagined it, due to a feeling of jealousy that had been growing inside of me, while I watched my sister touch her like that. I didn't like this jealousy, I shouldn't be jealous that someone was touching the woman that had tried to kill me.

"The woman that had just saved your life," my inner voice reminded me.

"Yeah while supposedly under the influence of my sister's spell," I reminded her."

"It appears that our little huntress desires lie in the female body," Delphine continued, "so after I fended off her attacker..." she began to stroke her face.

Elizabeth closed her eyes, smiled, and leaned into her touch and from the first time in my life, I wished death upon one of my sisters, but only briefly.

"...able to put her under a spell and demanded her to show me how to cure you."

I blinked, I had been so focused on Delphine touching Elizabeth, I had missed a most of what she said, but I didn't dare ask her to repeat herself, because something alarming then occurred to me, "Come over here, sister," I commanded and motioned for Delphine to join me on the other side of the rock. I wanted her hurt, but did not want her dead. She obliged and crept over to me, and once she was standing besides me and away from Elizabeth, I pulled her closed to me.

"She was wearing a mermaid scale," I said in a hushed voice. "She's not under your spell, we can't trust her or anything she says."

"Use to be wearing one." Elizabeth said loudly, 'Can still here you from over here. It must of come off when that wave crashed over us, because I no longer have it.  A real shame for me, I hate being under your spell, unable to do anything to you, like slit your throat."

I raised my eyebrow at Delphine.

"I commanded her to be completely honest," Delphine quickly explained, "But that's beside the point, there is no way she has a mermaid scale on," Delphine scoffed, "I think would know when someone was being put under my spell or not. And there wasn't anything around her neck, after I disarmed her, that was the first place I checked to see if she was wearing one. It is not as rare as you think for a hunter to be wearing a scale.'

"Did you only check her neck? It could be on other part of her body," I pointed out.

Delphine looked over at Elizabeth , " True I didn't but there is one way to be sure, strip so we can search your clothes and body."

Elizabeth gave a shrugged, placed her knife down beside her, and kicked off the blue flats she had been wearing, before she pulled her yellow, and now stained, t-shirt over her head revealing her toned stomach and lacy white bra underneath. Next she wiggled out of her jeans, which revealed she also had on a pair of white lacy underwear.

Elizabeth did a slow turn for us, before facing us. "Happy?" she asked.

I swallowed hard, "Yes I replied," but I was happy for very different reasons.

"No," replied another voice from the water.