11 #2
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Noel shook his head, balling his hands into fists and tucking them at his sides. “For the sake of transparency, I want your friend to know about me as well. If they already know about you, and it’s been safe so far, then I think—I think I would be okay with that.”
He hazarded a glance at Blake.“I know I’ve had problems with you in the past, Blake, but I know you’re a good person and I want to do everything I can to help save Marin.”
“Thank you,” Blake and Marin said in unison.
“Your trust is appreciated,” Marin continued, squeezing Noel’s shoulder before turning his attention towards the pool. “You’re really kind, Noel.”
As Noel mumbled his thanks, the three settled on the lip of the pool, their feet grazing the surface of the water. Both Noel and Marin’s calves were peppered with small, twinkling scales—Noel’s a blush pink, Marin’s lavender and blue.
“Whether or not you’ll start to transform is going to depend on the humidity and how much you’re submerged,” Noel was explaining as he shucked off his Ghost band tee.
“Something like washing your hands isn’t going to change you without your willing it, but if you dunk your hands or feet in water, the wet skin will get scales, like this—so you’ll have to intentionally prevent yourself from transforming. ”
“What humidity should he watch out for?” Blake asked.
“It’ll start getting iffy around eighty percent, but once it hits ninety, you’re going to have to make a concerted effort not to sprout scales,” Noel said. “Be sure to keep an eye on the wet bulb temperature, too.”
“Should we be writing this down?” Marin chuckled.
“Oh! I uh, I’ll make a folder on Google Drive with all this info in it that I can send you later,” Noel told him, rubbing over the scars on his forearms.
“Google… Drive…?” Marin repeated, mystified.
“Yeah, it’s like… it’s not a big deal, I’ll explain later.
Here, let’s get in,” Noel uttered, scrabbling out of his shorts and hurling himself into the water in a quick, smooth movement.
Beneath the panels of the water’s surface, his legs blurred together, flushing to a baby pink before taking on a pearlescent sheen.
A pair of diaphanous fins unfurled from the tip, spreading out in the water.
Noel surfaced a moment later, and the spray of freckles on his nose had become a Technicolor splatter of fuchsia and violet, his ears transformed to small fins laden down with his gauges.
“So,” he began, head bobbing in the current his tail produced. “Even when you’re underwater, you should be able to switch between your fin and legs—I saw that you were able to switch back after getting out of the kiddie pool.”
“Yeah,” Marin confirmed, tugging off his shorts. At that particular moment, Blake found it very important that he take out his cellphone and scrutinize his background picture.
Once he heard Marin enter the water, Blake allowed himself to glance back down at him.
Marin’s scales glittered beneath the water; the light reflecting off of his and Noel’s tails cast prisms over the bright blue bottom of the pool.
They circled one another as they conversed, moving with a fluidity that Blake had never before seen in humans—it would have been a little eerie if it weren’t for the otherworldly beauty of their aquatic forms.
Sublime . The word popped into his mind. Nature as beautiful as it was frightening.
Blake recalled a painting that he’d seen during one of the many trips that he’d taken to the museum of art with his foster father Isko: a cluster of dark debris afloat in the foreground, the rest of the painting devoted to the aureate slash of sunset reflected in the sharp waves of a roiling, jade sea.
“Okay, now I want you to feel along the sides of your tail, right here,” Noel was saying to Marin somewhere outside of Blake’s reverie. Noel ran his hands along the outsides of his own hips in demonstration. “You’re gonna feel a slit there.”
Marin mimicked him, squinting ahead as he focused on the sensation. After a moment, he nodded in understanding. “Okay.”
“So in there are the pouches where you store your tentacles.”
Blake almost fell into the pool.
“ Sorry?!” he choked.
“Do you have a problem?” Noel frowned up at him, looking more than a little offended. “They’re used for self-defense, like a squid’s tentacular clubs.”
To demonstrate, one of the slits at his side opened up, a dark pink arm unfurling into the water—it was slender and tipped with a thick paw-like tentacle spotted with fat suckers. An identical limb emerged from the other side, jutting out into the water with spear-like speed.
Beside him, Marin was extending his own tentacles, watching in delighted fascination as he lifted them above the surface of the water, coiling them into themselves. Blake tried not to gape when Marin twisted one around his forearm, humming in curiosity.
“Not that you’ll have anything to worry about in a pool, but they’re pretty useful for grabbing stuff on the other side of the room when you’re in the tub,” Noel added to Marin, still glowering at Blake.
“Can you please stop staring? I can tell you’re weirded out.
I already feel enough like a freak as it is. ”
“Sorry!” Blake tore his eyes away from Marin, wincing in apology. “I promise I’m not weirded out. I was—I had no idea you could do that, it caught me off guard.”
“It’s fine,” Noel said, looking away. “Sorry. I can get kinda defensive…”
There was a lull in the conversation as Marin experimented with his new limbs before Noel added: “It’s important to make use of those if you feel threatened. If you’re in enough danger and you don’t act fast enough, you might involuntarily transform your fin.”
“Transform?” Marin and Blake asked in unison, looking to Noel.
“Earlier, I said that some merpeople can learn how to transform their fin into other sea life,” Noel explained. “But on rare occasions, it can happen automatically, even if those tentacles are out. Like when you’re feeling really scared or uh…”
He trailed off, staring away from them at the wall of the pool and adding in a quick mutter: “Or… if you’re in a situation where your heart is going particularly fast. Let’s leave it at that.”
Even though they weren’t in the dark, his florescent freckles pulsed with light.
For a split second, Blake caught an expression on Marin’s face that looked like he wanted to pry—if only to tease Noel a little.
However, he apparently thought better of it and occupied himself with continuing to test the reach of his new limbs.
It was clear to Blake that everyone there understood what Noel was hinting at—and while Blake could take the brunt of Marin’s teasing, Noel was a little too fragile for it.
Blake had sincere concerns that poking fun at Noel too much would cause him to combust.
“Anyway! Singing!” Noel said in almost a shout, looking desperate to change the subject. “We should talk about the singing.”
He folded his arms over the lip of the pool next to Blake, Marin joining him. “It’s not something you can turn off. It’ll happen every time you sing. But ear plugs can help make it less effective—it’ll make people drowsy and day-dreamy instead.”
“What if you record it?” Blake asked,
“You know, I haven’t actually tried,” Noel admitted, looking pensive.
“Do you think you could manage to put yourself to sleep with a recording?” Marin laughed. Noel grinned, but shook his head no.
“It works on all other living creatures except for merpeople,” Noel paused, looking a little sheepish. “I may or may not sing to my bunnies on occasion, and they fall right asleep.”
Blake perked up, a thought occurring to him. “So wait, if only merpeople are immune—do you think it would work on Marin?”
Noel cocked his head. “Why would it?”
Marin’s eyes widened in realization. “That makes sense—if I’m only in the form of a merman because of the rules of the pygmalion, then I wouldn’t technically count as one, right?”
Noel frowned. “But it seems like you have all the abilities—like transforming in water and putting people to sleep with your song.”
“Maybe…” Blake squinted down at the water and then over at Marin. “Maybe he was already a merman before he was a pygmalion?”
Marin blinked at Blake, looking taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the rules of the pygmalion say that you only take on the form of the being you’re carved as, not the abilities ,” Blake pointed out.
“Which means, if you have the abilities, maybe those were a pre-existing condition? You said it yourself, right? Things like changing your legs back in the kiddie pool and knowing that your singing would put people to sleep came naturally to you, right?”
“That… that tracks,” Noel surmised, glancing over at Marin.
“I guess the last thing to test would be to see if I’m immune to the song.” Marin shrugged, gesturing to Noel. “Would you do the honors?”
“M-me?” Noel squeaked, blushing again. “I mean I’m not—I’m not really that good of a singer.”
“If you want to keep the audience small, I can go ahead and go outside,” Blake offered, gesturing towards the doors.
“N-no, that’s not necessary, I…” Noel bit his lip, glancing down at the surface of the pool, which he slapped at with a gentle palm. “Plug your ears so you don’t pass out, Blake. You’ll probably want to get away from the water, just in case. I’ll grab Marin if he slumps over.”
“Seems reasonable.” Blake pulled his legs out of the water, clambering to his feet and heading over towards one of the nearby beach loungers.
Noel shot him a nervous look before Blake pressed his fingertips into his ears, cringing as they were flooded with a cold and damp sensation.
Blake watched as Noel exhaled and then drew in a deep breath through his nose, beginning to sing.