Dangerous Waters Unexpected Love

Not Going to take it Anymore

Chapter 6

Calissa’s POV

According to my uncle, my father has never loved Doris and still hasn’t to this day. But he did care for his children, every single one of them, not just the ones he had with Doris. He rebelled against Doris, and her forcing him into marriage by going out and sleeping with other women. Some of the women were chosen because he had feelings for them. Some were chosen because he could sense that they were strong enough to carry his child. The children that he cared for the most were given special powers. Either at the time of conception or when he came to meet them as newborns.

I felt a little guilty that I was not going to miss my mother, or my grandmother at all. I was kind of hoping that this mermaid thing would work out to be better for me than my human life was currently going. I couldn’t see how it would be any worse, but I was reserving judgment on that. I know not to say the magic words of “What else could go wrong?” because I know that it can, and pretty quickly. That first night's swim was great. I was freed of everything that had been holding me down for the first time in my life. I took off swimming quickly. Well, as soon as I figured out how to work my tail properly.

I am embarrassed to say that it took me over ten minutes to learn how to swim properly that first night. I had a dorsal fin that ran down from the start of my tail just over my butt and ran down to around where my calves were. My mermaid tail was very strong, and it helped to propel me through the water very quickly. I had not been timed yet, but that is one of the things that my Uncle is planning on doing very soon.

I just had to work on keeping my focus on where it needed to be, up in front of me. At the start, I was looking down as I swam. It was much easier to look down and swim. Swimming while keeping your head up is tough. You have to constantly be on the lookout for predators. It is much harder than it sounds. I had to learn to look forward and keep my head on the swivel, as I pushed forward. I also had to learn to occasionally look behind me to make sure that something wasn’t coming after me. There was a lot to learn, and I am trying to apply everything I do know. I never realized that being a mermaid was such a serious business. I planned on excelling in it as best I could, no matter what was thrown at me.

I had learned to use my arms as rudders. My uncle was quick to correct me by telling me that my arms acted as pectoral fins, as I was not a boat. He seems to love cracking jokes during training. It helps to lighten the mood, and I hope he never stops doing that. He pointed out how they helped me to be able to steer around and make my turns. To help me go left or right, and it worked very well. My uncle taught me how to drop my shoulder down on the side that I wanted to turn toward. So if I wanted to turn right, my right shoulder needed to drop down, and my left shoulder needed to come forward.

A lot of things that I was taught in this training session struck me as being common sense things. I picked it up quickly, and it made me happy every time my uncle gave me the slightest praise. My dorsal fin helped to keep me from rolling over. It helped me to make sudden turns, using the water itself to assist me in the turn. Uncle Ronan told me that when I finally got to go to Atlantis, or at least some much colder water. I would have the same scales that were currently on my tail to continue up and completely cover my body. He also mentioned that I would have a second dorsal fin to assist in that deeper dive.

I was told that it would be a much smaller dorsal fin, one that would start at the top of my neck and go down to around the middle of my back. He said that having the two dorsal fins would help me to navigate in the deeper water better. Our dorsal fins were also made to help protect us from predators. He mentioned that spiny spears can come out to protect us when we are in distress. They will help to pierce the predator that is trying to attack us when we are in danger.

The day I had my first swim in the daytime as a mermaid was the same day that I got to meet my cousins. Varon and Asherah were Ronan's children who were the most interested in getting to come to meet and help train me. That was the day that Asherah took the picture of me. My tail is gorgeous. It has three different colors of blue, and two different greens, with some purples and gray mixed into it. From cerulean, cornflower, and ocean blue with emerald and teal green mixed into it. My tail also had a scattering of purple and gray scales thrown into it. The colors on my scales were mixed all around and a few of them, the green ones, had a special shimmer to them.

I was in love with both the color of my tail and the color of my hair. I have never before had a reason to be proud of my appearance before, but I do now. No longer was I the ugly duckling. Previously, I had large glasses, was over forty lbs. overweight, with acne on my face. My hair was untamed. Neither straight, nor curly, and always looked like I hadn't brushed it when I always tried to tame it. I had changed completely in the blink of an eye upon my eighteenth birthday.

I was never going to think badly about myself again. I now know that I was worthy of being loved. I have family members that cared about me and wanted to be around me. I had previously always stepped back and kept myself hidden away at school to avoid any problems as best as I could. I would just keep my head down and hurry to my next class. I knew that my teachers would help protect me from getting bullied.

I hate to say that I had to accept the bullying that came from my peers at school. I didn’t want to, as I never deserved any of it. But nothing happened when I reported it to the office or the teachers in the cafeteria. It was my word against theirs. They would always have someone claim that they saw the interaction and that I wasn’t telling the truth about it. After a while, you just accept that there is nothing that is going to happen to the bullies for their actions. You have to figure out another way to try to exist peacefully at school. It didn't help that my main bully's mother was on the school board. I am sure that her mother helped to cover up all of Camila's actions.

That is all over and done with now. Along with my becoming a mermaid, I have a newfound confidence that I didn’t have before. I am both physically and mentally stronger now. I won’t be putting up with bullying anymore. I was honestly disappointed with the fact that my hair went back to being almost black again, once I was back in my human form. Once my gorgeous tail was gone, so was my beautiful hair. I was angry about it at first. I had finally felt special for the first time in my life. I quickly realized that I wouldn’t be able to have my hair in that many colors at school anyway. Plus, I looked a lot like my uncle and cousins when I was in my human form, so that was nice too.

I have felt more love and acceptance in the last few weeks than I have felt in my whole life. My grandfather had loved me, he had doted on me. But my mom and grandmother were always there to let me know that he was the only one who felt that way. In the almost five years since his death, the only kindness I have received has come from my teachers. I missed him every day. I loved him so much, but he has been gone for a while now.

I am glad to have met my uncle and my cousins. I already know that I am not going to be fully accepted into the kingdom because I am a crossbreed. Let alone one who had managed to receive special powers, despite me being half-human. They will find me unworthy because of my human side. Even my being blessed with having special powers will not be able to overcome that bridge. It will almost certainly cause even more problems for me, as even some of my cousins and half-siblings haven't been blessed with special powers.

I am not going to focus on that. I was happy that, along with my training, I was losing some of my extra weight. A nice twist was that I no longer needed my glasses to see anymore. Everything was even clearer and sharper than it was before, even with my glasses. The best part, my face was now flawless. The acne and glasses kept people from being able to see the real me before. They never noticed my emerald green eyes, my long lashes, or my full lips. They only saw what they wanted to see. A girl with no friends who didn’t fit in.

I had a crush on one of the hottest guys in school, Adian Woods. He wasn’t the hottest guy in school when my crush started at thirteen. He was just a boy who told me how sorry he was for me when my grandfather passed away. He was the only one who did. We weren’t friends at the time. We had just been friends in elementary school. Right up until the group he was currently in, his friends had pointed out that he shouldn’t be friends with a nerd like me. I had high hopes of actually being noticed this year in a positive way. I planned on giving back the same treatment to them, as they had done to me for the last several years.