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Summer Present
The impact of the boy's full weight caused me to go sprawling on my back. Pebbles and small shells dug into my exposed soft skin, but I didn't have time to worry about the pain because I was already being hauled to the surface by two powerful arms.

I came up fighting. I clawed and scratched blindly at my mysterious attacker. My hair, which clung to my face and eyes, made it impossible for me to see anything, but I felt flesh under my nails on more than one occasion. But instead of discouraging my attacker, it only seemed to encourage him to wrap his arms around me tighter.

After what seemed like hours of struggling, although it couldn't have been more than a couple of measly minutes, I was finally released, and my butt hit hot, dry sand. I scrambled to my feet and whipped the hair out of my face in one swift motion.

"Calm down," the boy said in a soft voice and held his hands out to me. I saw that he had longish blonde hair, which stuck out in all directions from under his floppy hat. He was tall, a lot taller me, and his arms and legs were lean and muscular. I highly doubted that I would be able to fight him off physically.

"What are you doing!?" I yelled in anger and fear.

"I just saved your life."

"Saved my life!? You just attacked me!" I yelled and tried to run up the beach past him, but he blocked me with his body. I backed away from him.

"No listen, I was saving you," he told me like I was supposed to believe him.

"Saving me from what!? A foot of water!?" I cried, and I realized my net was no longer in my hands. That meant I would have to spend hours weaving a new one, that is if I escaped this crazy person and survived.

I raised my eyes and met his, which were a deep blue. "Step aside and let me pass and we can forget this ever happened," I said, and let my magic flow out strongly with each word.

The boy looked unfazed, much to my shock and dismay. It was only then I noticed the thing glistening in the center of his chest on a black rope chain. It was green, but it glittered red and blue in the sunlight. I felt my blood go cold. It was unmistakable. It was a mermaid's scale.

"Listen to me; you must stay away from the water. For at least a couple of days," he said calmly.

"Okay, I won't go anywhere near the water, promise," I said absently, I was no longer paying attention to his words anymore, I was more focused on his body, how it was positioned, and how I was going to move around it.

I quickly tried to move past him again, but once again I was blocked. He grabbed my wrists and pulled my face close to his, so I turned my head, so I didn't have to look straight at him.

"That woman in the water you were talking to, she wasn't human, she's a creature of the sea. She might not look like it, but she isn't a character from a kid's movie, she's something dangerous if you'll aren't careful she'll hurt you," he said and let go of me.

I tried not to show any reaction to his words on my face, but inside I was screaming. This situation was getting worse and worse. He had seen Delphinia, had a good guess to what she was, and most importantly. My eyes lingered on his pendant; he was immune to her.

"Tim stop flirting and come up and help me! I got something big!" a child's voice floated down from the pier above us. A second later a little girl, who couldn't have been more than nine years old, with the same colored blonde hair as the boy  appeared above us.   She held a fishing rod in her hand, which was being bent by something tugging at its other end.

The boy looked away from me and used his hand to block the sun, while he looked up at her, "I'll be back up in a second Sarah. Just reel it in nice and steady, like I showed you!"

With him looking in the opposite direction, I took the opportunity to inch past him slowly, careful not to make any sound to alert him. Once I was past him, I broke out into a full sprint and ran towards the short wooden fence which was the border between the boardwalk and the beach. I heard him shout something behind me, but I was already clumsily hoisting my body over the small barrier by that point.

I ran barefoot along the boardwalk. My flip flops were somewhere on the sandy shore down by that boy. By the time I arrived back at the house my feet were raw and bleeding from the splintery wooden planks and the unforgiving hot pavement of the road and sidewalk. I dragged myself up the stairs and to the bathroom, letting the door close behind me.

I walked over to the tub, sat on its edge, and turned on the faucet and allowed the cold water to cascade over my feet. I sighed in relief at the soothing feeling it created on my torn up soles. I hummed the healing song, and the water wrapped its self around my foot, and pulled out all my splitters and sealed my cuts. I winced when the water began to heal a particularly big wound. Freshwater wasn't a gentle healer.

I heard the front door squeak open from downstairs. I raised my head and looked behind me, "Hello?" I called out. I listened to the sound of heavy footsteps climbing the stairs.

There was a soft knock on the other side of the door, "Are you decent Miss Ocean?" Mr. Walter asked through the thin piece of wood.

"One minute," I answered, and turned the water off. I grabbed a nearby blue towel and patted my wet legs and feet quickly before swinging them onto the blue tile floor and walked over and opened the matching blue door, with one turn of its glass knob.

He stood in the door frame, his tall, skinny, skeleton-like body effectively trapping me in the small bathroom. His brown hair was slicked back, which only emphasized how boney and hollow his face was. He turned his body sideways and allowed me to join him in the hallway, all the while he did not take those calculating blue eyes off me.

"What's that for?" I asked and pointed to the suit dangling by its iron hanger from his spidery right hand.

"This is what I'm wearing tonight," he said, "What you're wearing tonight, is downstairs hanging on the banister. We're having people tonight at 7. I'm hosting an important dinner for my investors. People in this town have been taking about my crazy niece that they had to pull from the water in the middle of the night. I want them to see that she is perfectly sane, and the whole incident was a big misunderstanding.  And if  you don't come, then the shipment of new fish may take some time to arrive."

I eyed him suspiciously. Was this some kind of trap? Was this a way for him to push me to accidentally do what my father wanted from me?

He shook his head at me and smiled, "It's not a trap Marina," he told me like he had read my mind, and sometimes I swore he did. "I don't want any of these people to disappear suddenly or mysteriously. This is dinner; nothing more."

"What am I going to eat?" I asked if he was going to force me to come to this dinner party. I wanted to know exactly what he expected me to eat in front of all those people. I couldn't exactly eat what they were all eating tonight, speaking of eating habits.

"What happened to the fish in the tank?"

Mr. Walter reached out with his free hand and patted my head, and I jerked away from his revolting touch.

"I killed them, so you would need to return to the ocean, and don't worry about the food at dinner, I got it all handled, like usual," he said and moved past me and down the hall to where his bedroom was. "I suggest you don't ignore your sister next time," he called down the hall before he disappeared into his bedroom which was, unfortunately, right beside the door that led up to my room. This laying placement was not by coincidence, but more by design.

I stared after him in disgust before descending the stairs. It was only when I reached the bottom that I realized that I had forgotten to tell him about what had just happened on the beach this morning.

I started to turn around to go back up when it struck me that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to relay that story to him. If Mr. Walter found out about that boy, that boy would most likely be dead within the week. He had committed no crime besides mistakenly trying to protect me from my own sister. I didn't think that deserved a death sentence, at least not yet, at least till I made sure he wasn't a significant threat. My sister wasn't exactly a harmless creature after all, so if I were human-like he believed I was, he would've been doing me a favor.

I found a dress hanging from the banister, just where he said my outfit for tonight would be. It was a long hot pink dress with a giant sparkly bow wrapped around its middle. I guess really he didn't want any of his investors to disappear myseriously tonight...

I grabbed it by the hook and went back to the blue bathroom again. I closed the blue door, hung the pink dress on the door, and turned on the shower and took off my pink bikini and the shorts I had had on. I let them fall to the floor.

Come to think of it, Mr. Walter had picked this bikini out too, most of the stuff he had picked out was pink. It was one of the many articles of clothes he had pre-bought in anticipation of my arrival, which had been around three weeks ago if you were counting time like humans did. Most of the things the man had bought me were pink. Most of the non-pink things were from a shopping trip he had taken me on, soon after I had arrived.

I wonder how long he had known I was coming, how far ahead my sisters and my father had been planning it. How stupid was I to think I could defy something like my father and get away with it without consequences!? No, I had always known there would be consequences coming, but I couldn't have guessed how severe they would be.

I stepped under the warm jets of water and let the warm jets of water wash away the sand from my body. It had gotten in some interesting places in this human shape body, thanks to my earlier encounter today on the beach.

I walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a fluffy blue towel and made my way to the attic door and up its steps with the dress in my hand. The stain glass image of the mermaid with the golden hair greeted me once again. Her eternal longing for the sea was similar to my own.

I retrieved some undergarments from the dresser and slipped them on. I sat down on my bed which rolled under my weight. I had found it difficult to sleep on a regular bed, so Mr. Walter had purchased me a water bed, which helped a little, but then nothing could ever replace the rocking of the ocean's current.

I flopped backward onto my back and let the water mattress move my body up and down, up and down, side to side. I laid there and stared up at the circular ceiling, lost in my own thoughts until I began to hear the hum of faint conversation coming from far below me. My eyes landed on the clock and my dresser it told me, in big glowing red numbers, that it was 15 minutes past the seventh hour.

Knowing that I must make an appearance sooner rather than later, or Mr. Walter would hold it against me, I reluctantly put on the hideous pink dress. I made my way out of my tower to the top of the stairs that lead down to the first floor. I stopped at its top of the spiraling staircase and surveyed what was going on below me

Mr. Walter's guests had just begun to filter in and were milling around the downstairs room. The men were dressed in black suits while the women wore elegant gowns or two-piece suits.

Mr. Walter stood at the bottom of the stairs and shook hands with everyone that walked in through the front door. He wore a phony smile that stretched all the way across his face and pulled his skin painfully tight across his bony cheeks.

He looked behind him suddenly, like he had suddenly sensed my eyes on him. He motioned for me to come down to him and I nodded and begun to descend the spiraling staircase but froze halfway. Somebody new was standing in the doorway of the front door.

I watched while the last person I wanted to see in the world walked up to Mr. Walters and shook hands with him before they made eye contact with me.