The Call Of Thalassa

“Once the ocean

has touched her soul

life on land

will never be the same.”

...He was a merman...

The thought continued to repeat itself in her mind like a broken record, playing the exact same old song over and over again. No -what she was seeing couldn’t be possibly real. Her eyes were playing tricks on her -maybe the shock of her almost dying in the dark waters of the ocean gave her imaginary visions.

She rubbed her emerald eyes, wanting to clean up the blur that had affected them. When she would open them once again, she would see a simple ordinary man sitting across from her. He would probably stare at her like she was completely out of her mind. I mean, mermaids may have been a part of the local myths for years now, but they couldn’t really exist..., right?

“...Every myth has an ounce of truth in it...they had to come from somewhere...”

She closed her tired eyes as she thought of her own words -she had uttered them only a few days prior.

“...Just because it is out of the ordinary, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it could be true only in our fantasies...”

She felt her weak knees buckle beneath her as the reality suddenly settled in. She fell into the shallow cold waters with a loud splash as her whole body began to tremble at the horrific realization.

“...There was a time long ago that the oceans had turned red from the mermaids’ brutality and lethal ways...”

“...They almost were extinct and the oceans were almost completely destroyed...”

She touched her painfully throbbing forehead as all her thoughts swirled around her mind quickly, creating a terrible headache. She couldn’t believe it –she didn’t want to accept the truth. But no matter how much she tried to deny it, the signs of the brutal reality were always there.

“...They appeared out of nowhere and surrounded our ship from all sides...”

“...I opened my eyes underwater to see her fascinating form only to discover that she was not quite the same...”

“...In the place of her legs there was a long wide green tale like the one that fishes have, but more dangerous and lethal-looking...”

Desperate tears gathered in her eyes as everything began to connect perfectly with each other. They all added up so rationally, even though all logic had flown out of the window long ago.

How could a mythical creature such as a mermaid be actually part of reality? How could it be real? It was so...strange to even try to picture it –it made no sense. Yet, Aileen had come face to face with a merman and he was standing right in front of her at this very moment.

His humongous figure was emerged into the dark waters of the ocean, deep enough so he could move his body around. His glowing blue orbs followed her every move with worry and concern, but he didn’t make a move to approach her.

He knew that this was probably the biggest shock of her life –the least he could do was let her calm down and understand what was really happening. Although he wanted nothing more than to take her small form in his embrace and never let her go, he gave her the space she so much needed.

“Are you okay?“, he asked in a hoarse voice.

He couldn’t bear to see her like this for much longer. She seemed so...lost, like everything she once believed in was completely changed. He couldn’t blame her though –the way she would look at the whole world has changed completely and he was mostly the cause for this.

“Meum Arcanum?”

When she didn’t acknowledge him for the second time, he decided he couldn’t just let her be like this.

He began to approach her kneeling form in slow cautious movements, not wanting to scare her even further. His large long tail was making it difficult for him to swim since the waters were too shallow for him. He had to drag it behind him –the sand forcing his movements to be even slower.

“Aileen?”

The sound of her name falling from his lips was the best thing she had heard in a while. She momentarily closed her eyes and enjoyed the sound of it, coming from his velvety melodious voice. And then, her eyes snapped back open –the fact that he was a merman clouding all of her thoughts once again.

She let a loud scream escape her as she looked at his dark figure, approaching her slowly but surely. Her emerald eyes widened at the predator in front of her and her heart began to race at an abnormal rate.

“Stay away from me!”

Her words were loud and echoed through the isolated beach in the darkness of the night. For Havelock, they felt like a knife that had found its way to his troubled heart and lodged itself as deep in it as possible. They pained him terribly –made him feel like he had failed her.

Mates were such a precious and sacred thing for his people that they had become their top priority. Their happiness and wellbeing was the most important responsibility that a merman had.

Yet, he seemed to have failed her in everything, even though they had barely known each other. She had almost died before he could be able to find out even her name and she obviously wasn’t happy with the whole situation she had found herself into.

She was scared of him.

The simple thought almost drove him into insanity. He had waited so many years to find his other half, waiting patiently for her to make her appearance. He had so much faith in her -even when his sanity was hanging by a mere thread, he still hoped for her to rescue him from this cruel nightmare and finally have their happily ever after. Yet, she was scared of...him.

He knew that he shouldn’t take it so seriously since she had just discovered the existence of merpeople. She had found out that something she believed was a fiction -a fairytale was part of her reality. It was logical to be scared of something completely different than what you are.

She wasn’t scared of him –the real him and the person he was. She was scared of what he was –of his kind and what they were all capable of.

But it still hurt like hell.

Watching her beautiful eyes filled with fear and panic was enough to make him lose his breath in despair. Hearing her heart beating wildly, made him want to hiss and cry at the same time. When she began to drag her fallen form backward as quick as she could –as far away from him as possible, he couldn’t bear to see her in fear any longer.

“Wait!! Please, wait!!!”

He tried to move as fast as he could to reach her, but his tail wasn’t made for shallow waters such as these. He dragged the large scaly part of him, using his forearms to move forwards. However, his tail seemed to bury itself in the wet sand, making it even more difficult to drag it as it began to weight more and more.

Aileen stood on her trembling feet as soon as she managed to get herself out of the water. Not wanting to stay around for even a minute longer and blinded by her fear and panic, she ignored the pleas of the magnificent creature in front of her and strayed away from the ocean. Turning around, she was ready to run away from the familiar beach and climb the secret stairway towards Seaworth, when a strangled hiss of pain reached her ears.

“Please, don’t go!”

The desperation of his words touched her very soul, making her stop her escape route. She couldn’t just leave him like this –he had saved her from certain death after all. She owned him that much.

“You are turning completely mad, Aileen. He is a merman! A merman!! Merfolk is dangerous and deceiving. You should run now that you have the chance!“, she thought to herself.

Yet, she couldn’t help but feel like she would do a grave mistake if she just left him like this. Her heart was telling her to stay and hear him out, but her mind was screaming to her to run away from him as quickly as possible. She was in an unexpected dilemma –one she didn’t know how to figure out.

Turning around, she watched his form trying to reach out to her. His unique sparkling eyes begged her to stay. She gasped as she saw his body being stuck in the shallow waters, where the waves crashed and moved back inside the salty waters of the sea. His large tail was buried mostly in the wet sand, not letting him move neither outside of the water either inside and back to the ocean.

“You are stuck”, she announced to him in a trembling voice, pointing out to his unmoving tail.

He didn’t answer back, he just kept looking at her with his majestic eyes that were so full of emotions. They managed to make her heart constrict in agonizing pain. Deciding that she was safe as long as she stayed on dry land, she made no move to run away.

“Why did you follow me?“, she asked him curiously.

“I want you to stay.”

He shrugged his shoulders, not really caring of his current position neither for how the hell he would find his way back home.

“You can’t expect that out of me! You are a-a...a...“, she stabled upon her words, not able to utter the word she wanted.

He gave her a sad smile.

“Say it.”

She shook her head in denial.

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because saying it out loud...will make everything real”, she murmured as she sat down on the sand, hanging her legs with her arms.

Havelock took in her tired movements and relaxed slightly, knowing that at least she wasn’t running away.

“You know, this is reality. Not uttering the word doesn’t make it disappear, it just makes it even harder for you to accept it”, he tried to reason with her.

She took a deep breath of fresh air, trying to calm herself.

“What if I don’t want to accept it?”

He felt a shiver of fear going down his spine as the panic of his mate’s rejection began to register.

No.

Things weren’t supposed to go like this.

She wouldn’t possibly reject him, would she? He didn’t know what he would do if she rejected him after all these years of yearning and waiting for her. The thought made his whole being want to scream, hiss, growl, cry, and beg her to stay. Yet, he did none of them.

“Why?“, he asked, hiding his true feelings behind an emotionless mask.

She let out a humorless laugh.

“Because merpeople are dangerous. I’ve read stories of your kind...of what they do to humans. They are born predators and we are their prey. How could you possibly expect me not to be scared of you?”

He gazed at her small form and the protective stance she was sitting in. As if curling into a ball would protect her from this world’s harm.

“Have I done anything to you all this time?“, he silently asked her.

She just looked at him with those emerald eyes of hers that had his heart race speeding.

“I did have the chance to do all these things you’ve read in your stories. I could have let you drown or perhaps I could have killed you while you were still unconscious. Or even better, I could have tortured you to death the moment you had opened those beautiful eyes of yours, just to enjoy your screams of pain. Did I do any of these?“, he asked her, pinning her with his pleading blue orbs.

“No”, she mumbled as he reasoned with her.

“Then I guess you have your answers”, he pointed out.

She bit her lower lip as she got lost in her thoughts. He was being honest and his words made out sense, but...should she truly trust him? She wanted to, but the merman fact still kept her from doing so.

“Look...I have a compromising idea.”

She turned her attention back to him and waited for him to continue.

“Why don’t you stay until I can explain everything to you? And if you are still reluctant afterward...you can leave me here and return back home.”

The last part pained him greatly, but he knew it had to be done. He wasn’t going to keep his scared mate with him when he was the source of her fear. No matter how much he needed her, he wouldn’t pressure her into anything. She was a person of her own, so she could make her own choices.

She just nodded in agreement since she was way too curious to leave just yet, but way too afraid to trust him.

Then she remembered something from his previous words and asked him a question neither of the two of them had expected.

“Did you say my eyes are beautiful?′

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

End of chapter 13!!

Latin Translations:

“Meum Arcanum”: My Treasure

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Until next time!!