Salighayan; A Taboo Love Story

Chapter 28

~ Princess Mylie’s PoV

I was lost in deep thought at the café just a few blocks away from the office, Mike had left not so long ago and I needed air and space to think.

The name of this café was on the coffee paper cup I got from the unknown guy, so I decided to check it out.

It was a medium level busy place, but it was cool and calm, they served doughnuts and fries and chips and cake as well, so I got a chocolate cake and chocolate milkshake.

I hadn’t started on it though, I felt the sweetness of it will make me lose my sense of reasoning, so I only left it on the table in front of me and the delicious aroma wafted into my nostrils.

It made me think, coming up to the surface is just like this cake, a sweet adventure, but like the cake which finishes and leaves one with a longing for more, so does the sweet experience of being here on the surface, and unlike the cake, it has too many sour parts.

I wonder if it would have been wise to had just been perceiving the aroma from the deep without tasting it, just like I’m doing with the cake now.

But I know myself, there was no way I would have been satisfied just looking at the surface world and not experience it.

Funny thing was that I didn’t miss being a mermaid one bit, it was as if I had been living an unsatisfactory life all along, and while this one I was living now wasn’t all there yet in terms of satisfaction, it was still more filling than life in the deep.

I thought about Mike, and the dreams I had about him, both the fantasy and the real dreams, my fantasy had been shattered long ago, although I have come to realize it had been a childish fantasy.

I mean how could I expect that things would just fall into place and we would proclaim our love for each other just like that.

But then what really worries me are the actual dreams, they’ve been consistent, always much of the same thing; Mike about to perish in one way or the other, me being there and just looking then a ghost coming to urge me on to save him, but then he still perishes before I could get to him.

I hated the dreams, they always left me sweating and frightened, there was hardly any dreaming done in the deep, so this frequent ones was getting me on edge and Mike himself wasn’t helping, he is really acting like someone on the verge of perishing.

My thoughts drove towards the deep then and my kingdom, I was sure Selena could more than handle affairs but then she couldn’t handle war.

Besides there was still the issue of my realized theory that I was yet to convey to them down there, I need to that as soon as possible too.

I pitied Mother, being a queen goddess was burden enough, having three kingdoms ruled by three daughters was another, and now one of the said kingdoms is under probable attack from yet to be determined forces, and the ruler, the said daughter in charge of that particular kingdom isn’t present.

I really wanted to feel guilty, but it’s just not me, not the ruling, not the war not even being a mermaid, I felt a hit of a pang of pain at that realization. ‘Where do I belong then?’ I asked myself in my thoughts.

If I didn’t belong to the deep, where do I belong? It sure wasn’t the surface or was it? I don’t feel fully accepted here yet, since no one knows what I am yet.

“I know” I heard a vaguely familiar voice say, I got stirred out of my thoughts and looked up to see the coffee guy from this morning, he had a plate and cup with him too.

“The coffee left the impression that this place was worth giving a try right?” the guy said in a sweet tenor voice, damn I missed singing.

I nodded to his question and smiled at him as I looked him over, he was dressed smartly for work in a denim jean pants and a checkered sweater over a plain s**t.

His curly dark hair reminded me of the way mermen hairs swiveled to the side because of the ocean waves and pressure, his skin was well toned as well, like someone who lived most of his life indoors, or underwater like me.

“I know right?” he repeated “Can I join you? Or is this seat taken?” he asked to which I shook my head and gestured for him to seat.

He sat opposite me and placed his plate and cup down, and I saw he also had a cake slice on it albeit a different flavor from its cream color unlike my own dark brown and he also had a milkshake, same cream color.

“Pardon my intrusion though, you looked like you needed a partner before you could eat, seeing as your food still remains untouched, I’m Marvin, I work as a tech guy at the firm and I know you’re Maya, the partner and P.A to the boss himself” he said although at the last sentence he looked guilty shy.

“Wow, well, nice to meet you, again I guess, thanks for the coffee in the morning” I answered and thanked him genuinely.

“It’s not a problem, I get two cups everyday, just in case someone else might need it and today that someone happened to be you is all, tell me how was It uhn?” he said and asked me with expectant eyes.

“Well it was really amazing you know, quite rejuvenating too” I said and only then did I notice the question had made it seem like it was my first time trying coffee and my answer as well had backed it up.

I saw him smiling and nodding as if that was the answer he expected “But then compared to the other ones I’ve had it just seems so good, that’s why I came to check this place out” I said in an attempt to save myself from the previous faulty answer.

But then he only kept nodding as if he really understood, “Well Marvin from tech, how did you discover this place? And how come you started working for the firm as you’ve called us?” I asked him, I knew directing him away from me as the topic was the best way out of this situation.

He told me about himself then even though that wasn’t really what I asked, so I got to know that he was from a small town in a place called Miami, he had grown up there as an orphan and but had always been good with tech so he got a scholarship to got study at MIT.

He put in for work here since when the company was still all one and it was Mike’s father Edward that oversaw it all, now this was news to me, so this company was a broken off part of a bigger one, just how prominent had Mike’s family gotten then?

I kept on asking him little things so he doesn’t get to turn the questioning to me, I wasn’t in the right state of mind to answer anything properly.

At the long run, I got to know where he lived, he had a bird pet, oh and that he was single and still healing from his last relationship.

The guy was happy to talk to and had we had more time then he would have told me even more, but he checked his watch and discovered we had used an hour there and he had to go back to finish up work for the day.

So we bid each other goodbye and he promised to always try to save a cup of coffee for me every morning, I appreciated him for that and watched him leave.

I became aware of my surroundings once again, I noticed I had almost finished my cake and the milkshake was all but gone.

Talking to Marvin had a kind of allure to it, like being under hypnosis, I had experienced hypnosis once one day when I wandered far from my kingdom and got caught up by a hypnotizing octopus, it hadn’t been a fun experience, the octopus had wanted to marry me.

I shook myself off the memory and got up, I needed to go send the message across to Selena as the chance had arose now, they needed to investigate the otherfollk too not just the merfolk.

I went to the counter to pay but I was told that Marvin had paid my bills, really? This guy was such a sweet guy uhn? But there was still something mysterious about him even though he had told me s lot about him.

I took a cab to the beach, even though I wasn’t dressed for being there, I took my work heels off and trudged through the soft beach sand, it always brought back memories of my first time having feet and walking through the soft beach sand.

I searched around for a while till I found the perfect conch seashell, then I moved towards the mountain side and jumped from boulder to boulder till I was further in towards the ocean.

This was the first place I had seen Mike, the memory brought out mixed feelings in me now, but then I concentrated and casted the first spell on the shell, the spell to make it into a sort of recorder, the second spell was to make it search for Selena herself and the third spell made it invisible till it got to Selena.

I was using the pearls powers so of course I could cast multiple spells than I could usually do on my own, but then it still exerted me so I was tired by the time I finished relaying the message into the conch seashell for Selena.

I dropped it once I was done and it vanished even before touching the water, the gentle splash it made was the only evidence that it existed, and the it streamed off to the deep.

I got back and thought about heading home or going back to work, there was still time to get things done at work, but then, I didn’t want to do anything or go to anywhere that will make me think of Mike for a while.

So I brought out my phone and dialed Michelle, his sister, she had promised me a girl’s night one of these days so long as I was free, so I decided to take her up on the offer right now, that should be a good distraction from her brother.

I called and we fixed the time for the early evening, she informed me some of her friends would be there as well, so I went ahead and started to do research on anything at all that might occur, I even found a movie about a girl’s night out, I can’t be caught off guard and or ridiculed, and I also had to look good for Michelle’s sake.

This should be fun, I said to myself getting excited, after all I was about to go stay the whole night with vampire girls.