Loving Atlantis

C H A P T E R 1 — Anoa.

It would have been a full blown lie if I told you that I knew how much time had passed since I had left. We had been able to tell time in Atlantis, through many practices, but here, on the Mainlands, I had absolutely no way of doing so. Of course, they had methods just as we had, but they weren’t practical. 

The best that I had been able to do, was to keep track of the seasons as they passed. I had arrived here in the middle of winter, and two had passed since then. So, I found it safe to believe that it had been quite some time since I had left. And in all this time, there hadn’t even been so much as a search party that had come across me—which meant that they probably didn’t even send a search party after me in the first place. 

And surprisingly, when I had left Atlantis thinking that my life had come to an end, I hadn’t known that I would actually just be beginning my life, that I had actually only stepped over the threshold of everything that I would come to experience in my life. And as many of them as there had been, there had been a few experiences and decisions that had stood out much more than the others, which was due to the fact that they had had much longer lasting consequences than the others did. 

I had come to the Mainlands with the hopes of escaping, with the hopes of being able to remain in hiding without ever having to go back to Atlantis. But things had turned out to be a lot simpler and complicated than that. 

Thinking that I would be spending the remainder of my life alone, I hadn’t thought too much of it when I had been accepted into a tribe, despite the fact that they knew that I wasn’t a human like them, despite the fact that they knew that I was a visual representation of a bad omen. 

But as it turned out, I was a bad omen that they welcomed. They had been suffering at the hands of a drought for what must have been decades, their people, their peers, all starved to the brink of death. But what was the one perk of having a mermaid in their midsts? It was simple. The water went where the mermaid went, which meant that the rain came. 

The rain came, and the people survived. 

They lived. 

And then Soren came along… 

Sweet, sweet Soren. 

There was so much that I could tell you, so much that I would be able to share with you so that you experience those moments with me—but what would be the point? What would be the point of allowing you to fall in love with a dead person? 

My heart ached at the memory, at the reminder of the fact that I had been trying to forget so desperately, but I had been failing just as miserably, for obvious reasons. I reached upwards and wiped at the betraying tear that had slipped out of my eye with the back of my hand. 

     “Anoa, please wait before you do this. This can’t be what you want… Have you thought this through?” 

I closed my eyes out of instinct when I heard the words break through the sound of the seagulls and the waves, my heart constricting even more when I turned around and opened my eyes to see no one other than Silem, staring at me with her pale face and big eyes. The clouds that had been looming above us the entire morning seemed to reflect in the greyness of her eyes and guilt instantly flooded through me. I was standing on the edge of the cliff, and she was here. 

She was here, because of me. And she was about to see what I was going to do. What kind of a friend was I if I allowed that? What kind of sister-in-law was I if I would allow something like that? She knew that I had decided to this a while ago, knew that I had decided to leave her here and go grieve and mourn on my own. 

She needed me just as much as I needed my solitude. 

     “Silem… I know what this looks like, but just trust me, alright? This is the last thing that I want to do, but I don’t have much of a choice. I have no idea what’s going to happen if I go down there, but that doesn’t change the fact that it needs to be done. It’s the only way that we’ll be able to find out who it was that killed him and avenge his death.” 

 As if I wasn’t already feeling bad enough about the matter—not bad enough to stay—her eyes started to well with tears, and all that I could do to stop myself from going to her and comforting her, was to push my hands deep into my jacket pockets and to clench my jaw. I came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t be able to make me feel so guilty if I wasn’t looking at her, and immediately turned back to the cliff. 

The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks managed to find its way through my subconscious again and that was one of the first times that I dated to acknowledge the way that my heart was beating, the fanatic putter-pattering in my chest. I knew that it was the apprehension, the worry, the anticipation that was causing it, but knowing what was causing it didn’t mean that I would be able to change it. 

     “Anoa, please just listen to me. You don’t have to do this—you know that you don’t. Just let him rest in peace! What is done, is done. There’s nothing that you and I can do to change it.” 

I started to shake my head, slowly, deliberately, knowing that I would have to do it for a while since the wind was whipping my hair around wildly, blowing it from side to side. The ocean was just as restless, waves crashing against the shore and each one being bigger than the previous one. I turned away from the ocean again, from the cliff, and focused on her. She looked devastated. It was the only way that I believed I could explain what I was seeing. And I couldn’t even blame her for looking that way. 

I was the only person who she had left. 

And I was leaving. 

     “Silem… Please try to understand. I have no choice—I have to do this. How am I supposed to live with the knowledge that one of my people killed the person who you and I loved, and that the chances that they have paid for their actions is literally nothing? He didn’t deserve to die like that, Silem. No one does. But after everything that he’s done to protect you, me, the village—everything that he did to protect everyone, regardless of their species—he deserves to be avenged. I’m going to go back and find out—“ 

     “Anoa, do you think that he would have wanted you to do this?” 

I closed my eyes, squeezing them shut, uncaring about the fact that she had so rudely cut me off, that she was able to see my face and the way that her question was affecting me. She had sounded so casual when she asked that question, so emotionally detached and empty and it only make it so much worse. The suddenness of that question affected me to badly that I sunk onto my knees, my vision blurred by tears when I opened my eyes again. 

     “No… No, he would have wanted me to stay here, and to take care of you and our people. He would have wanted me to move past all of this and be happy. But how can you expect me to be happy without the only person who made me happy? How can anyone expect that? Even he would understand and he would tell you that it’s impossible. Something like this can’t just be forgotten overnight. You don’t just forget the person who you’re in love with overnight.” 

Just as I had been expecting her to do, she kept quiet, not saying anything. The silence stretch d out for so long that I had to look up to make sure that she was still there. I was instantly able to notice the wet tear tracks that were visits me down her cheeks, as well as that look in her eyes, a look that I had gotten well-acquainted with during the last few weeks. Heartache. I had not only been seeing it on her face, but in the mirror when I looked at myself too. 

     “You’re going to come back when you’re done… Right?” 

As if I wasn’t already feeling bad enough, she felt the need to ask me that question, putting me in a position that I had been hoping to avoid. How was I supposed to explain to her that the chances of my people allowing me to leave, were literally a hundred to none? There was practically no chance of ever coming back. And I needed to tell her that. 

But knowing that didn’t make me do it. No. No matter how many deep breaths I took so that I would be prepared to tell her what she needed to hear, I couldn’t. Instead, I walked closer to the edge of the cliff as I spoke, responding in as monotone of a voice as I possibly could. 

     “You should make your way back to the village. Everyone is bound to start worrying about you if you stay gone too long.” 

As a way of showing just how little this conversation meant to me—even though that was not truly the case—I started to shed my clothes, started to focus on something other than the topic of conversation that we were currently having. The first thing to go, was the heavy sheepskin jacket that I had been wearing. As soon as it was removed, as soon as my arms were exposed to the open air, goosebumps broke out across the expanse of my skin, caused by the bite to the air. 

I closed my eyes for a moment, using that very moment to adjust to the temperature change, knowing that the more clothes I removed, the worse this was going to get. A thunderous boom echoed through the air, voicing the morbid energy that the air was charged with, warning us against the rain that was about to fall down on us. 

But it didn’t act as much of a warning, for the thunder had barely been silenced when the rain started to fall. But it was no surprise to me. I didn’t react to it, staying quiet as I listened to the sounds around me. I picked up in the faint crunch of stones through the putter-pattering and I didn’t need to turn around to know that she had finally left. 

But even though it had been what I had wanted, even though it had been exactly what I had been begging her to do, I couldn’t help but feel like I had been wrong for wanting her to do that. The voice in the back of my head, the voice that had become so familiar to me, was telling me not to leave, telling me not to do something that I would be bound to regret. But had I ever really listened to that voice? Had anyone ever listened to that voice?

My motivation for ignoring the voice came from a very dark place, a place that was so isolated that I barely ever dared to think in such a manner. What did I have to lose by leaving? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Adam was already gone and staying for Ana wouldn’t have made much difference either. She needed to step into her role as Chief and become who her people needed her to be. And she wouldn’t have been able to do that if she was constantly in a position where she needed to worry about me. 

She had more than enough to worry about, more than enough responsibility for a child. I had absolutely no plans of burdening her to even more, on top of everything else. 

My pants followed the path of the jacket soon after that. They had been used so much, been relied on some much, that they had started to rip at the knees, that they had lost a lot of their colour, turning this ghostly grey color. My skin wasn’t fairing any better. As a result of the rain that was now falling, that was dropping onto me, it was slowly but surely loosing the dark tan that it had whenever the sun was shining—I knew that it would be much worse by the time that I was in the water. 

Before I could think much further about it, I took the last remaining steps to the edge of the cliff. But I didn’t jump. Not yet. Instead, I sat down and undid the straps on my shoes, because they would make the transition a lot more difficult than it needed to be. I took note of the way that my fingers were shaking, and I couldn’t help but carelessly toss the shoes to the side, in the direction of where the rest of my clothes had been discarded. 

Whoever came across them first, would be bound to take them and make use of them—especially if the person happened to be a human. Perhaps Ana would even come back here to fetch it. 

I pushed myself off of the ground, taking the time to dust the dirt that had decided to stick to my wet body off. Perhaps I was doing it in an attempt to postpone the inevitable, or perhaps it actually needed to be done. But either way, it didn’t make a difference. 

One minute, I was standing on the cliff, staring down at the water below, and in the next, my hair was being whipped away from my face as gravity took its toll. The tightening in my chest got worse with every second that passed, with every inch that I dropped, and I knew that it was because of the fear that was clutching at my heart. 

When the cold water wrapped around me, curling me up in the same way that a blanket would have, I couldn’t help but in hall sharply. Of all the things that I had been preparing myself for, I definitely hadn’t prepared for the cold. 

I somehow managed to keep my mouth closed after that first initial gasp, my hands reaching upwards desperately to pull myself out of the water, but the current was simply too strong, fighting to keep me under, to drag me deeper and deeper into the depths of the place that I had once called my home… 

And it was a fight that I was losing…