Cobalt: A Prequel Novella (Pretty Little Mermaids) by A.L. Knorr

Author:A.L. Knorr [Knorr, A.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Intellectually Promiscuous Press
Published: 2023-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Seth

A trickling sensation in my lungs nudges me to the edge of consciousness. It feels as though every passageway in my chest, even the minuscule webs of my alveoli, is filled with tiny feathers. Like I inhaled a feather duster somehow and it is slowly being withdrawn, brushing its edges against everything it passes. I try to cough but only spasm, my back arching. That’s when I feel the hands holding me steady as I float in a cold, salty womb: one braces the middle of my back, the other is on my torso. Soft lips are fastened over mine, warm and pliant, making a perfect seal. Bubbles… very small bubbles, that’s what is tickling the passages of my lungs. The sensation is clear now, water is being pulled out of my body with a gentle vacuum.

I open my eyes and the salt of the Atlantic stings, but I ignore the pain, trying to focus on the blurry scene before me. A woman’s face, half-open eyes so close to my own, dark hair swirling around her, around both of us. My head throbs. The water is cloudy and I recognize it as blood. Is it mine? Yet I don’t panic, I feel overcome by a blanket of calm, even as I struggle to process what I am seeing.

As the last of the tiny bubbles trickle up my throat and saltwater slides along my tongue and into her mouth, there is a moment of utter stillness between us. The seal our mouths make does not break. My chest is burning now, and I spasm again with the need to cough. Somehow, she stays with me, her lips fastened over mine with an unbreakable bond.

Then it comes into me, little at first: oxygen. It comes slowly, then her cheeks puff out and it whooshes into my chest: a savior filling my body, life-giving air. Sucking greedily at her mouth, my lungs inflate to their fullest capacity, stretching to the point of pain, before I exhale and she takes the breath back. In the red glow of emergency lights, I watch as bubbles spurt from somewhere behind her ears then float upward. There is a moment of stillness, but I know what is coming now and I am desperate for it.

My arms sweep through the water in an effort to swim, but I am afraid to break the seal, so I move slowly. Something bumps against my leg, then my foot, as it floats around us.

The rush of oxygen comes into my chest again, clearing my consciousness further. The back of my head throbs, my chest is on fire. Beyond the creature giving me life-support, something elegant and pale swishes in the water—behind her, appearing on first the right side of her head, then on the left, then again on the right. A tail. My mind wants to stagger, to fight what my senses are telling me. I am being saved by a mermaid.

A mermaid named Gina… if that is her real name.

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