Ocean's Triumph by Carlton Demelza

Author:Carlton, Demelza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Demelza Carlton
Published: 2014-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

I waited for William to return to the cave, determined to show myself. Kaito had seen me; surely he'd tell William and then William would come looking for me.

When the motorcycle chugged over the rise, headed down to Waterfall, I dived into the bushes and hid, but he didn't stop. I waited for perhaps ten minutes before a robber crab started prodding my foot to work out if it was edible. I rose and stamped my foot to drive it away. The sun shone in the clearing and I'd had enough of hiding. I stepped out into the sunlight, spied a mossy place to sit and placed my behind on it. Pulling my hair down over my breasts, I hugged my knees to my chest, trying to calm my racing heart.

The motorcycle was returning. He was coming to me.

The motor didn't change pitch, like I knew it should. He just kept going to Settlement, without coming to see me. I sagged with a mixture of relief and disappointment. If he didn't know I was here, he couldn't reject me again – I still had hope. But I hadn't seen him.

Every morning I waited and every morning he avoided me. Until one morning, when there was no sun in the clearing. The clouds had been massing on the horizon for days and the increasing swell told me we were in for a powerful storm, much like the one brewing inside of me. All that pent-up frustration and fury and desire and terror and love...I stared at my mossy rock and refused to wait today. The only thing that could calm me was a force more powerful than anything inside me. I needed to swim in the storm.

I slid down the ledge and into the shallow water. I stretched, keeping my heels together, and concentrated on my form. The skin over my legs stretched and fused from my thighs down to my toes, where my flukes extended in a delicate blue fan. I let the colour creep up my body until I could feel the coolness of the change at the back of my neck. I took a deep breath, rolled over and dived.

I knew the tunnels well, so I took them at speed, from the surface all the way down to the end of Dubhan's carved markers at the underwater entrance. I opened my gills to the swell and took my first big gulp of life-giving seawater. A powerful eddy tried to slam me against the cliff face, but I darted away, laughing, revelling in the sensation of the storm swell against my sea-skin. Mine. All this was mine – it was part of the ocean's gift, which no mere human could share. To swim with me now in the maelstrom would cost William his life.

I laughed for joy as the ocean overpowered me and took me in her arms, wherever she wished to go. All day I swam and into the night.

Yet all good things come to an end and so did my energy.

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