Strange Encounters
Charly closed the heavy wooden door behind her and stood in total darkness. She stood at the top of steps that had been cut into the hard rock, and what led to a secret place beneath the lighthouse. It was this place, the existence of it, and the history of why it came to be that would never allow for the sale of Lighthouse #1. The world could never know that mermaids, indeed, existed.
The sound of dripping water and the smell of the sea flooded the darkness all around her. She closed her eyes and drew in a long, deep breath. She felt home. When she opened her eyes, her pupils had changed. Her transformation had begun.
Her eyes had dilated in order to adjust to the black darkness of the underground grotto. She could now catch the faintest bit of light which was all she needed in order to see. Her vision adjusted until she slowly saw shadows and then more; everything appearing in various shades of blue. She could clearly see the stone-carved steps that led down onto a giant concrete platform with in its center an opening of water. It was a sizable underground pond that was connected to the ocean. It was freezing cold down there, but it didn't seem to bother her.
On dainty bare feet, she took the damp and slippery steps down until she stepped onto the hard rock floor. There she quietly unbuttoned her jeans, pulled these down along with her undies, and she callously tossed these aside.
She took the hem of her oversized blue and black flannel shirt and pulled it over her head, ignoring the buttons, dropping this clothing item, too, on the growing heap of clothes by her feet. She wore no bra. Her breasts were free and large, plump, and proud, but they were firm enough to not require her to wear something to support them. Her nipples were small and dark pink. Her body was slender but firm, standing tall and proudly. She was taller than most women, but she was one hundred percent
sexy
woman. For now.
When she finished stripping down, she lowered her naked body onto a small and narrow piece of rock that was used as a sort of pier. The top had been sanded down for an easier seat. Once she was sitting on her usual spot, she pulled her long legs forward and stretched them out in front of her before she brought her feet together and leaned back on her hands.
Then she closed her eyes and her lips moved...and she began to sing a sad melody.
From the depths of the black pond water, tiny sparkles of yellow, blue, red, and green lights rose. They began with just enough light to be seen, but as they came closer to the surface, they lit the grotto in a spectacular array of colors.
Light bounced off the dripping walls of rock and the thick creosote-treated wood pilings that gave the walls and ceiling support. Those thousands of tiny lights all moved as if they were living breathing things, soon sweeping around her legs; beginning at her slender toes and circling upward around her feet, her ankles, her legs; rising higher around her thighs but stopping at an invisible barrier around her hips. As the lights climbed around her lower extremities, another supernatural phenomenon happened. Her bob began to miraculously grow! Her thick raven curls spiraled as they grew longer until the tips touched the wet rock beneath the palms of her hands.
Her eyes opened and revealed large dilated pupils as black as her hair with only the thinnest circle of turquoise. She blinked when the lights swirling lights from her toes up to her hips exploded brightly...and then vanished.
She lowered her long eyelashes and looked down the length of her legs, but she no longer had legs. In their place was the shimmering streamlined soft-scale skin of a large fish, ending in a rather large point where her toes had been. The outline of her human legs beneath the layer of scaly skin slowly vanished when her mermaid's skin pressed down and smoothed out.
Her thick long curls slipped down as she bent forward before she stretched out her arms and allowed her fingertips to dip into the water. She briefly spread her fingers, showing the thin but strong membrane connecting her long fingers, and what helped her propel through water.
She cupped water into her hands and began gently splashing it over her seemingly lifeless lower aquatic part, and she continued to hum that strange but melancholy tune as she worked.
Then another miraculous thing happened.
As she continued to hum and splash the briny cold water over her lower part, the tip began to swell and then move. Soon, lines could be seen before her shimmering mermaid skin began to break around where her ankles should be, and two dark ocher-colored points on either side unfolded and separated from the rest before they grew and unrolled into a large pointy tail fin before it ended with soft slaps in the water.
Then the magnificent brown-yellow tail fin moved as she cocked her head and watched how it scooped up water and let it spill freely back into the pond. The entire tail fin moved languidly, to and fro, while its brown-yellow coloring began to change, growing darker until the shimmering rainbow hues from the rest of her tail bled down into the veins of her tail fins until there was no difference in color between it and the rest of her mermaid body.
Her transformation, not as a sea siren but as the legendary mermaid, was now complete.
She rocked herself once and she rolled off the rock before she dived head first into the black, icy cold water. The last part of her that was seen were her large beautiful tail fins that seemed to slice the water as it silently slipped into and vanished within the black water's depths.
Once in the water, she used both her powerful tail as well as her webbed hands to propel at neck-breaking speed through the icy sea. She didn't have gills like fish or like her mother, but she could hold her breath for up to two hours at a time. She, not the sperm whale, was the superior mammal on Earth that could hold her breath the longest and dive to the deepest depths of the vast oceans. The myoglobin protein bound oxygen in her blood, and as long as she remained in cold waters, she wouldn't need to frequently surface for gulps of fresh oxygen.
Underwater, she sped off into the deep; she barely used her powerful tail unless she lost momentum. Her powerful arms and webbed hands were more than enough. And as she sped down deep into the blackness of the sea, to places where a human couldn't see their own hand in front of their eyes, she twirled and spun and seemed to play along the swaying sea weed and reefs teeming with life.
The fish that found their way to her, swam close to her. Although they were well aware that they risked becoming her next meal if she was hungry, they were also guaranteed protection by the ocean's most powerful and intelligent creature that could win a fight with any shark and any other predatory creature infesting within and above the vast waters—even man.
She usually chased and played with these harmless fish, but she wasn't in a playful mood at that moment. She was on a mission, and as she torpedoed through the water, swimming further and further away from the lighthouse, she seemed to know where to go.
There was plenty of sunken treasure still undiscovered in those waters, and she was out to find something to entice Gems to hand over the Mermaid's Pearl. She believed that that Pearl belonged to her mother, and that, maybe, should she have the Pearl in her possession, and if her mother was still alive out there somewhere, she could use it to call her back.
She swam around the deep sea coral reefs of Nova Scotia, looking for something of value and interest to Gems. She ignored the threatening stances by the lobsters and other sea creatures that skedaddled out of her way as she scoured the corals. Strangely enough, she could smell through her mermaid part and she soon picked up a strange scent that wasn't part of the sea.
She pushed from the rough corals and with a single hard swipe of her tail, shot to the furthest side of the reef before she swam down to the lowest part of it. She paused with upper body upright and frowned for a moment or two as her long hair floated weightlessly around her face and head. Then she snapped around and in an elegant swerve, turned a corner and swam around the foot of the reef until she came to the spot where she picked up that strange scent.
