New World and New Faces
"I feel like I have a new life and I'm going to take full advantage of it." -William Green
The world's oceans are deep and mysterious. Mankind knows more about the stars than they do their own oceans. From these oceans numerous myths and stories have come to litter human history about what creatures may live in the depths of the seas. Some are creatures of terror like the Kraken or Jormungand, the World Serpent. There are gods and goddesses of the sea, beings of divine power. But there is one that has a special place in humanity's heart.
The Mermaid.
Creatures of beauty and mystic. Beings of dangerous magic and carnivorous appetites. They are women of power and freedom. Some believed they are simply witness accounts of sailors mistaking other mammals for the sea myths. Still, others believed them to be real and simply hidden from view. These people are not wrong.
Rikki Chadwick is a mermaid.
She is a woman with blemish free fair skin, wavy, platinum hair that goes a little past her shoulders, dark-lashed, sky blue eyes and rosy pink plump lips. She has had multiple men show their interest but none of them last for long. This is because her secret is an important part of her life. Rikki has been a mermaid since she was sixteen when she encountered the magic of a moon pool with two other girls.
The other girls, Cleo and Emma, were trapped with her during a night where the moon was full and the magic of Mako was cast upon them. Once they became mermaids, they also gained magical powers. Ten seconds after being touched by water, they turn into mermaids but as mermaids they can dive to depths humans cannot, hold their breath for more than fifteen minutes and swim at super speeds of 600 km/h or over 372 mph. Alongside these abilities they also had other powers. Cleo could manipulate water and Emma could freeze liquids.
Rikki, after a late start, gained her first power, hydro-thermokinesis, the ability to heat and boil water. It was an ability that helped the girls out of trouble, especially when the girls needed to a quick dry. After a number of lunar alignments with Mako Island and inside the moon pool she also gained other abilities: Pyrokinesis and Electrokinesis, control over fire and lightening.
It has been years since she graduated high school and she's made a living as a diver, traveling the world and finding other moon pools. It was at these other moon pools that she gained other powers, including the abilities of her friends. Yet, of all of them, she is the only one of her group to continue to grow. Even the new mermaid to join them, Bella, who loved swimming as much as Rikki, doesn't gain anymore abilities. They don't feel the same pull as she has ever since she first transformed. She loves her friends but...
She also resents them. Just a little.
Rikki remembers her first swim, the awe and magic. She is the first to embrace her new self and is the only one to make a living with it. Cleo pursued her science career with her husband, Lewis. Emma graduated with a business degree and helps her husband, Ash, with his horse school and cafe. Will, Bella's fiancé, still free dives and Rikki helps sponsor him. Bella still helps him train but is also expecting their first baby.
Zane has tried to get back into her good grace but she refuses to look back. He existed in the past as far as she was concerned, not her present or her future. And even though she is glad he isn't in her life despite his attempts that doesn't mean she's happy. It just made her more aware of how alone she really is.
For the first time in years, she was back in the Golden Coast since she graduated and her first stop is Mako Island. Her new tail is very different from when she first started but her golden bronze coloring is still the same, with the addition of crimson stripes. Although her new coloring is still the same, it is not the only sign of the changes she's gone through. Rikki spent a night in a moon pool hidden in a tiny island off of the California coast and found the magic gave her a more...mature change. No longer does she appear like a girl when she transforms. The bikini top she once had is replaced by a strapless scale top instead. Rikki knows she looks more like the mermaids of myth, those being of the sea that were enchanting and terrifying.
When she saw the change she was especially glad that Zane no longer was around. He would have been insufferable.
Her first few swims after felt a bit awkward since the familiar restriction around her neck is gone but she gets over it. She's a mermaid, what did she have to feel strange about? Rikki glides through the water currents with an ease born from constant and familiar swims. Her powerful tail propels her toward her destination without fear. When she gained the ability to turn invisible that fearlessness also grew to the point of near recklessness.
A oceanographer almost caught her on camera.
Its the reason she takes her break and goes back on the Golden Coast. For Mako Island. Rikki stops speed swimming just before the underwater entrance to the moon pool to run her hand over the cave wall. Magic tingles her fingertips. A smile spreads across her face. It feels like the magic is trying to pull her in, welcoming her home. She hurries inside and breaks the surface into the moon pool. The magic of the pool is more prominent than she remembers or maybe its just that she's more aware of the magic than when she was a teenager.
"Its been almost ten years..." she starts to the empty cave room, the walls sparkling with magic, blue and white. "...I was born here. I was made stronger and more...me."
Rikki closes her eyes and floats in the middle of the moon pool. She stays afloat and sinks into her bond with Mako. The bond the other girls didn't have or try to make. The one that slowly erodes over time as they spend more and more time on land. She reaches into that place inside her that she knows is Mako, its a big and all encompassing presence. She can't put her finger on what it is. Its abstract and solid at the same time. Its staring into the night sky on a clear night and feeling something looking back. Its floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and knowing its cradling you like a mother holds her baby.
"I feel like I'm sinking..." She pours her every fear and desire into her bond. "...like I'm all that left. But I don't want to be. I don't want the others to let go of their lives just to acknowledge me but..."
She just didn't want to be alone anymore. She wanted that companionship that the girls used to share. Rikki wanted the joy and trust that her friends had and that Zane robbed her of. She wanted a new adventure and a new chapter in her life to be worth the effort and struggle that comes with change. She wanted fire and passion equal to her own. She wanted a direction to barrel down with all the fearless intelligence and sarcastic wit she's had her entire life.
"I want...purpose."
Mako explodes across her senses. Supernovas die and twirl, curling around her soul. Her vision is blinded by stars birthing stars and black holes stretching across celestial bodies, eating the skeletons of dead worlds. A funneling of souls ebbs and flows like a stream. They scream and giggle, live and die. A helix of planets and worlds form like a braid or a rope of life, pulsing and living. It dies and crashes in a singularity of power, rising like a swell during a tsunami. Another takes its place and another and another, broken and alive. The cold drains the warmth away, consumes the stars and dark matter folds in on itself.
Creation unmade.
Life Renewed.
Rikki snaps her eyes open, gasping hard and struggling to regain her balance. She flips her tail and flails her arms before she re-stabilizes herself in the moon pool. She knows what she saw and she doesn't know how to put it into words. Rikki was given an answer by Mako. A chance and a choice that will only come with the next full moon. She's still gasping, her lungs aching with shock and effort, when she comes to a decision.
"I want it." She stares hard at the entire moon pool cavern. "I'll take it."
Mako showed her the door and when it will be open. All she has to do is make the plans to go through it and she intends to. She swims back with renewed purpose and excitement. Rikki spends the next week getting everything together. It would have been longer but she had already made plans before for a worst case scenario. She makes Will and Bella the recipients of her fortune, making them and their baby, her heirs. She even assigns her personal financial advisor and lawyer to them in her will.
There are also a few contingencies she puts in place to protect them. She also leaves them a letter, sealed and made to be opened only in absolute privacy for them to read. In a move out of character for the fierce and independent woman, she tells them what she's done and why. She tells them to live their lives to the absolute fullest, to be happy, healthy, and safe. Rikki knows they'll wonder if she safe and happy but she knows they'll do right by her.
She packs a bag of her most precious belongings into a waterproof bag. Trinkets from her friends and pictures of her parents, when her mother was still alive. Her favorite sunglasses, the necklace as proof of her bonds with her friends and even her favorite dress. As if part of a trance, the night of the full moon she puts on her Mako necklace, fixed with a chain instead of rope, and a white open back dress that she had never worn before, homage to a new beginning.
With her bag secure on her back she dives into the water, the transformation taking hold between one breath and the next and then she eagerly makes her way back to the island. During the full moon, Mako looks haunting and ethereal.
To Rikki, its home.
Its very anti-climatic.
Swimming through a doorway to a new world is not like something from a sci-fi film or anything painful. When the full moon hovers over the moon pool and the magic builds, she dives. The bottom of the moon pool is gone, replaced by a dark tunnel, and she super speeds straight into it. She follows the tunnel to the other side and even though it seems to go on forever, there is a light at the end. The light grows and she swims even faster but she finally emerges into another moon pool, breaking the surface to the moon pool of Mako.
In a different world.
Rikki can feel the difference. The air is heavy with magic, dancing and expectant. She laughs, high with joy and excitement. She runs her hands over her hair, feeling the magic weaving itself into her skin and her pores. Her tails lashes out, water and electricity prancing along her spine.
She spies the moon slowly leaving the moon pool above her and the magic simmering down with it. But her excitement doesn't abate. A new world is waiting to be explored and she can't wait to see what's in it.
Mako hums contently, magic still pulsing. Its magic creeps along its child's scales and intertwines her new purpose into her soul. She is young but her potential will only grow now that she is in a place where the magic is not hampered but the might of science.
A new life starts now.