Chapter 1
They warned you not to dive deeper, but you did it anyway. Now you are deeper than you planned, and your oxygen tank is slowly getting lower. The water is also getting darker. Odd because it never did this before. You look up to find a shadow swimming above you. It’s a creature you only dreamed of. Its silhouette is spellbinding.
The top is a female human, but the middle and bottom are clearly fishy. It has a tail. This creature comes into view just before you feel your eyes begin to close. A set of arms pulls you to the surface, careful to rise gradually to not give you the bends. Your vision starts to get those tiny black dots all around. It helps you break the surface near the boat you dove from.
Before she leaves, she kisses you, giving you her oxygen, enough to allow you to wake a little more. A set of honey colored eyes stare into your brown. Her skin is peanut butter brown and she has freckles, her hair darker than a night with no moon, but you can see how it wants to curl in the warm salt air. Her lips are full and brown like a fresh hash brown.
“Please, live. I need you to live. Return to me in three weeks. I will find you again, my love.” A sweet voice sounds in my head. I turn to pull myself from the water, but my two partners beat me to it.
“Yo! What is your problem? Do you have a death wish? “asked my diver buddy Edward. He smacked me upside my head like a father with his teenage son. Edward and I have been diving together for years.
“Did you see her?” I asked him quietly.
Edward looked at me and then out at the ocean.
“I didn’t see or hear anyone. You must have been seeing things down there. Lack of oxygen will do that to you. People say these waters hold many things we can’t explain. I think its just islander talk. I’ve been diving for a long time and I’ve never seen anything or anyone.” Said Edward as he helped me sit up more.
“Don’t tell me you saw a woman down there. Think about it Bud. You were down almost 200 feet. No living human could be down that far without a tank, unless they are a hell of a free diver. I don’t know anyone crazy enough to do that, Jason. “said my friend as he slowly made his way to the front of the boat.
As we pulled off from the area, I could have sworn I saw a copper colored tail fin rise from the water. This only made me want to return and see her again.
Meanwhile under the waves, I was tired of my life in the sea. I had to hide from human divers all the time. I liked to watch them. My kind tend to stay far away from humans. There are some like me, who are curious about them. I just had to get out of here for a while. I was tired of my parents trying to marry me off, and make sure I had babies.
I barely liked myself sometimes and they really tried to marry me off. When I returned from my adventure with the diver, my parents were smiling in the living room. This could only mean one thing. The damn matchmaker was here.
This woman was a constant pain in my flippers. She was always matching me to a prince or someone high up on the ladder of lust as my sister and I called it. She had tried to match my older sister but it didn’t work. My sister ended up finding her own guy. They have been together for three years, and are now happily married with a baby on the way.
