So the next time she woke up—really woke up—she was six and in her own bed in her parents house.
Mermaid beds were something of a cross between a soft coral and a giant anemone. Soft and squishy, they wouldn’t have held up out of water but in the shallow three inch deep 6 ft across bowl that was her bed frame, the creature that was her bed thrived off of cleaning her of any parasites and dead skin cells, debris, or other hangers-on that might have otherwise made her “dirty” throughout the day. It kind of looked like a squishy pink rug in the center of a carved out bowl in the bones of some long dead coral.
So the first thing she had to do upon waking was feed her bed some dried brine shrimp, to make sure it stayed healthy. It made her smile As she rolled over with a splash to shelf above the water with the ceramic jar and the little ladle she used every day to keep the shrimps in the jar dry—to think that instead of making her bed to keep the bed bugs out, now she had to add bed bugs in to keep her bed made.
Next she splashed into her room, which had about a good 3 ft of water in it and was ringed with golden sea gras and had three clear windows showing the rippling surface of the water not two feet above. The sun was up and shining through and it looked to be a lovely day. There were fish in her room, as always, but it looked like just some of the usual visitors that hid in the seagrass, not anything nasty like a poisonous snail or urchin. She swam over to her closet, which was the one room where she had to pull herself all the way out of the water to access it. Clothes couldn’t be left overnight in the water or something would begin to eat them.
She selected a simple sleeveless tunic of sun-bleached sea silk. She wanted to wear the seahag silk but she was only allowed to wear that for the temple, at least until she stopped growing. It wasn’t that the sea silk wasn’t super nice and all, it was, it just wasn’t as nice as the pearlescent whiteness of the seahag silk. She was dying to know what it was made of, but no one had told her, yet.
She wasn’t quite able to stand straight up to get her clothes, her legs were still to lanky and frog like. Her parents promised her that they would fill out and grow in strength and dexterity, but until then it was more like she could squat and hop up to get her shirt to then pull it down with a quick yank.
Then she combed her hair, which was much easier to do while floating in the water. Probably gentler on the hair too, rather than sit out of the water with wet hair and comb it like she was supposed to but that was ok. She floated on her back and sang while combing her hair. No forks had turned up for hair combing duty, yet, but when one did, she had a special song prepared.
Then before she left, she took a moment to look at herself in the mirror, a hardened bubble of air encased in water that had been squashed flat into a disc form.
Brooke had had been renamed Dyahku by her parents, though they had eventually shortened that to Dyaku and Brooke had, as a precocious 4 year old, insisted on being called Dya. It was either that or “Ku” which her parents outright refused. As she had outgrown the tadpole stage she had gained the bright juvenile colors associated with mer children.
Leaning in Dya poked at her skin which was a soft range of bright golden orange speckled liberally with lurid blue spots. Not just blue but this seemingly glowing, almost unnatural seeming blue. They were more clustered on her arms and back but were still all over her body, even her face. They weren’t tiny like freckles either. The were were dime sized at the smallest and quarter sized at the largest. They looked almost like second eyes, as the lurid blue was also the color of her irises, and she suspected that was kinda the point. She smushed the spots under her eyes around a little.
She very much looked like a six year old, with a body begining the long transition from toddler to the gangly preteen body but with the even longer and more gangly legs and fins of a frog. Good news: She could do squats and jumps all day. Burpees were her bitch. Bad news: frog legs.
Her hair had grown straight and shiny in the soft orange with a few blue streaks and now reached to just below her shoulder blades, if it drifted down in submission to gravity in the water. Her namcha (mother) wouldn’t let her keep it any longer.
In all, it was a very strange thing to look at, a face that was hers and not hers, familiar as her own skin and yet seen for the first time. The sensation washed over her and she spent a fair amount of time “admiring” herself in the mirror just to experience the paradox of emotions.
“Dya?” She heard her namcha call from the kitchen, which her room shared air with. “Are you going to sleep all day?”
“I’m awake, Nam!” she called, and straightened her tunic, and slipped down into the hallway.
Mer houses came in different shapes, but typically they would have rooms with trapped bubbles of air connected by submerged hallways, often but not always in a circular layout. Case in point, Dya’s room was a thin coral plaster bubble frame added to the side of a central kitchen and living room level, opposite of a bubble that had been grown coral for her parents’ room. Of course Dya’s bubble had coral growing on it and filling in structure by now, but clearly the parent’s room had been built with the place, not as a "happy addition."
In the kitchen her mother stood at a raised counter that was out of the water, making a sort of crispy seaweed dumpling for breakfast, filled with juicy umi and krill seasoned with spices traded from the glavwiesh of the dry town on the land. Dya tried to snag one without coming out of the water, but her nam was onto her tricks and slapped her hands away before she could get close.
“Sit and eat like a civilized fish, or don’t eat at all, Dyaku.” She warned.
“Yes, Namcha.” Dya said sulkily, but really, she didn’t care as she pulled herself onto the coral stool and started popping the tangy, spicey breakfast into her mouth. She was so glad that the system had mixed up the possible tastes of things, since this didn’t taste like salty fishy umami, but rather like spiced fruit and maybe a bit of a very mild fish sausage in a crispy shell. It was delicious.
Her Nam was an excellent cook. The best if she was to judge, and since she was the only one asking, she was! Her core jobs were Gather, Tradesmer:Cook, and Hunter. She had long black hair in three tight braids Her skin was white in the front with silvery grey in the back and covered in bright orange freckles, with the same orange on her eyelids and a sudden green eyeliner around vibrant orange irises. Her fins, when she wasn’t half-human morphed to stand in the kitchen, were long and resembled those of a sand shark.
“What are you doing today?” Nam asked as she folded another dumpling and placed it in the oil. Today was the first day of a week long vacation, and the first day that Nam and Da were letting her wander the reef on her own. Well, a limited area of the reef, but she was six in their minds so Brooke mentally patted their heads and played along.
“I’m going to see if I can find any clues about Ziggy.” She said, carelessly pulling Promise out of her inventory and clumsily, but successfully, rolling it across her fingers.
Her nami looked up with concern. “That quest is likely meant for you to take up when you’re older, you know.”
Dya shrugged and popped another wonton in her mouth, thinking that a fried chicken egg would go amazing with these. “Maybe. But I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find something.”
“Well, just don’t go outside the ziebzhâ.” Nam instructed, naming the area they had outlined as safe to roam, causing Dya to roll her eyes and disappear Promise back into her inventory.
“Yes, Nam.” She replied, with the long suffering tones of every child ever.
…
It wasn’t too much longer before Dya was breaking the surface on the new day and exploring the reef on her own for the first time. Parts of the reef were familiar, and parts seemed brand new, having only seen them from a distance or even had them blocked off from view. There were so many fish, there were always so many fish but they were so colorful and varied that Dya was not yet tired of checking them out. And the corals were plentiful and varied. There were so many nooks and crannies and crevices and caves to explore.
Dya was so glad that she could now hold her breath for 10 minutes. She really had to strain to make the full 10 minutes but damnit she could do it and she was going to claw every second she could under the water.
At six years old, 10 minutes was a good time, but the adult average was 40 minutes. Dya couldn’t wait to be able to stay under for so long, it would seem like an eternity, like she really did live under the water, and not just in it. Though, her father was always worrying about her pushing her dives for too long seeing as she was going by lung-feel and not a timer like the adults had.
Apparently, the system started to kick in once you learned to read. Next week, when classes started up again, they were going to start to learn how to read and write Jayn and soon after that they were expected to start seeing the system’s messages. Brooke wondered if she would see the system in Jayn or English though, she had to admit she was intimidated by the thought of having to learn to read a whole different language and script well enough to parse system messages.
She considered stopping by the temple of Gary to offer a prayer for English system messages, and, poking at a sea cucumber to get it to tense up, decided that was a great idea. She could also ask about Ziggy while she was there.
She swam around first, looking for and finding a couple of nice, small, discarded shells with nice interiors and bright red exteriors, and then swam over to the temples that were right on the edge of the ziebzhâ, and on the edge of the reef nearest to the shore, accessible to the glavweish should any land child need the great Player’s aid. To her surprise, she wasn’t the only kid to show up at the temple of Gary, and when the priest saw her, his invitation to join them at their games made clear to her why they were all there.
Seemed embarrassingly obvious in retrospect.
“Um, is there anyone named Ziggy there?” Dya asked the priest, who was watching the play in the shallow temple yard with a sharp eye and a joyful smile.
“No.” The priest looked at her strangely, “What does this Ziggy look like?”
“They’ve got screwed up eyes and a screwed down hairdo, like some catshark from Japan.” Dya said with a strait face.
“I, don’t understand? Where’s Japan?” The priest’s confusion only made Dya sad, amd miss Ziggy more.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“They have eyes that each have a different color, and red hair and pale skin.” Dya said, instead of answering.
“Well, no, we don’t have anyone like that here.” The priest said firmly, glad to be back on familiar ground.
“Then no, I just need to go pray and leave a offering.”
The priest considered her for a moment, shook his head, and then lead her to the altar. She kept down in the shallow water where it was easier to move as the priest waded through the waste deep to him water of the open temple to the altar. The altar was a large table that could sit twelve, though the traditional amount was six, with one of the six being an empty space for Gary. Dya sat down at the middle and looked across the polished coral table.
Drawing on the weird false memories of her mother showing her the gestures for praying to Gary, which honestly looked like a slowed down and ritualized tossing of dice, Dya prayed. Shake-a shake-a on the left, shake-a shake-a on the right, open your hands to the middle and pray.
And with the priest nearby, she prayed quietly.
“Gary, god of players, so I guess you’re an AI for me, I’m looking for Ziggy, once called Teen Sataseen or something like that…I’m sorry, that name didn’t stick very well. They were once one of the Gardener’s Themi but the Gardener gave them to you. I have something to deliver to them from the Gardener and I need help finding them. Can you help?”
After which she put the two shells on the alter. To her surprise writing appeared. And it was in English.
Do you wish to offer [two sea shells] to the God Gary?
“I … They supposed to be game tokens of Ziggy. See, they’re red and silverish, like him.” Dya said, flipping one of the shells over to show the mother of pearl. The writing went awar for a moment and there was a pause that felt like a consideration, before the writing re-appeared.
Do you wish to offer [two game tokens] to the God Gary?
“Yes, please.” Dya said.
And the two shells dissolved.
The priest gave her a moment after the god accepted her offering before patting her on the shoulder and saying with a wink to her, “You may stay here as long as you want, but it is rare that the great Player answers a prayer directly.”
Right on cue a crystalline three sided pyramid shimmered into existence in front of Dya, an inch high, clear as a moon jelly with shimmering internal colors and on each tip a one, a two, a three, or a four.
The priest tried to drown a smirk in a smile and Dya giggled, Gary was a drama queen! Might as well keep it up.
“Oh, wow.” She gasped, “What is it?”
Now genuinely grinning, the priest sat down next to her, his gold and red fins preening with flourish. “Well, Gary has decided to help you with your request. That’s what the holy deor means. The deor can be used to determine small quantities, directions, or to pick from four options.
“The bad news is that Gary is only going to offer you help that comes in small packages, though they may have great effects in the end, they won't be the immediate fixes that you might hope for, for that you'd need a natenty on a detenty. The good news is that unlike the detenty, there are no critails, which would mean that the god would not only not help you, but hinder you in some way. The deor is much safer.”
“So… I just do the prayer with it?” Dya guessed.
“Precisely.” The priest beamed.
So, shaka shaka left, shaka shaka right, and the deor rolled out on the middle with a pleasing clatter to show 3.
The deor lifted up and vanished with a sharp ping, and they sat in silence for half a minute before Dya started fidgeting.
“um… what does that mean.” Dya whispered.
“Give him a second.” The priest whispered back.
Then three slips of honest to gods paper appeared in front of Dya. On it were written the words…
They were in Jayn. Dya couldn't read Jayn. She could see the wink emoji on the first one though, so Gary knew exactly what he was doing. The punk.
“Can you help me?” She said, handing the slips to the priest, who took them with a patronizing smile.
“Let see. This first one tells you, ‘This is good for help from Gary, user must be older than 21’ Oh, the roll must have been for number of times helped, so you get helped three times, this one will be later in your life." He nodded and handed the paper back to Dya, who sighed and slipped the slip into her inventory. "This one says, ‘Gary will nudge your quarry in your direction.’ Well that’s useful. And--Oh… oh dear, this one says, ‘Go West Young Fish, now.’ I think you’d better-”
Dya snatched the paper from the priest and shoved them into her inventory, “ThankyouI’mgoingnowBye!” and she swam to a window, scrambled through and into the open water.
…
West was away from shore. So she ducked under the surface and curled around the coral while swimming into deeper water. It did not take her very long at all to come across what Gary was sending her after.
“Why no you just use your fins, you dumb?” the words carried to her in clicksqueal through the water, distant and clear.
If Brook had learned anything over the past couple of days, weeks, years? It was that sound really carried underwater, and right now she did not like what she was hearing.
“Salt licker! She CRYING. Like a little baby!”
Brooke did her best to locate the source of the sewage seeping through the water, kicking her fins and gasping for air in not so graceful swoops to the surface as she burned through her air fast due to her jerky, excited motions. The problem with water transmitting sound so well was that it made it hard for human ears to locate sources. Her mer ears were much better but, regardless of all the weird false memories she had, this was the first time of practical use she had and it was… wobbly at best. It wasn’t until one of the kids creating the sewage came to the surface themselves that she was able to find the bullies and their victim.
There were three boys, all her “age” swimming around and poking at another merling her age, this one a girl. She had long blue and orange hair, strong arms, and thin legs and fins. She looked like she had been skipping leg day at the gym, and the boys had her pinned in a curl of coral reef, one that breached the surface and caused white little waves over it.
Coral could be very very sharp, so there was no escape over for the girl when she tried to break for the surface for air. For her parth, however, Dya found an undercut that she was able to wiggle through and settled into the sand below to observe the rats floating on the surface.
It was now that Dya’s amazingly bright colors showed their usefulness, she blended into the orange coral around her, and if those boys looked down, all they would see was another lump of coral. If they were to look down, but they weren’t even trying. The brats had moved from just yelling to slapping water at her, and the larger one was poking the girl with a toy spear.
Angry, Dya responded to the situation on an instinctual level, casting around, calculating angles with her eyes and muscles and then she was off.
The fools on the surface were too involved with being dickwads that they didn’t see her wriggle out from under the coral, then brace herself like she was going to do a frog hop on the land. The certainly didn’t see the sand cloud her froggy feet kicked up as she launched up at the kids, 15 ft or so away, nor did they see her even as she flashed by in front of them at an angle. But the big boy felt it as she grabbed the spear in passing and they all heard it when she managed to break free of the surface of the water, only to slap back down a couple of body lengths further.
Dya blinked away the notice before it even finished loading, at that moment she didn’t care that she had received her first notice, she’d forgotten it before she had swum three lengths of a parrot fish. She just needed to see where she was going.
She heard the boys shouting and diving after her, and then their loud angry squeals calling her a thief. She didn’t stop to respond, she didn’t know how fast they were and she didn’t really know how fast she was especially in comparison to them. Her plan was to keep swimming until she was able to loose them and hide in the coral again.
As she flitted around a shelf coral she looked behind herself and saw them far too close for comfort. They were rapidly frog kicking, and their legs were powerful enough that they were gaining on her. Leaning into her human memories, Dyaku brought her froggy feet together porpoise kicked like she had seen adults do, and was able to gain some speed.
She had those false memories that scattered through early childhood and by this point had no idea how much she was really remembering, and how much she was forgetting. She remembered her human life, as much as any old as farts adult did, and right now, right now she was able to use her human memories to help her pull off some maneuvering that wouldn’t even occur to a real 6 year old.
Down! Down, down, twist, down, launch off the ground and back towards the boys swimming at her, past them before they could realize what was going on and make a serious grab for her. Blast the air out of her lungs right before she launched herself out of the water, gasping in a lung full as she arched ( barely), over a sharp crest of reef that the boys were going to have to go around. Then, while they swam furiously around the bank of coral she ducked down down down and under the same reef to get behind them. She spotted and tucked herself under a shelf on a massive coral bank in deep blue water.
She heard the furious clicks and squeals of the boys as they tried to figure out where she went, but she couldn’t tell how far away they were, only that they weren’t right next to her.
They were surprisingly persistent, unfortunately, making a game of searching the reef. This was unfortunate because at the best of times the longest she could hold her breath was 10 minutes and this was not the best of times. A blinking light appeared in her vision and she glanced up and to the right to see an air timer. At her current rate of use, she had three minutes of air left.
Well, that was new. Was this from going to the temple where the words with Gary appeared? Or the oh, hey, yeah. She had notification pop up when she was trying to swim away. She was now using the system! What crappy timing!
The boys, however, weren’t holding their breath as they searched nearly as long as she had, and as the timer wound down past the 1:00 mark, she could hear the splash of the boys going up for air, and then coming immediately back under.
“She has to breath.” One of them told the others in clicksqueal, “Keep an eye on the barrier [between sea and sky].”
Shit! Brooke choked down a groan and gently bonked her head back on the reef behind her with her eyes squeezed shut in frustration. She was going to have to make a run for it.
Then she opened her eyes.
She was looking up at the underside of the shelf, or at least that was what she thought she’d see, but instead, she found herself looking up in to a dark, creamy hole with faint light shining down through a faintly glimmering barrier surface.
Wut?
Her pursuers momentarily, well, not forgotten but certainly set aside, Brooke unfolded and stretched up, gently propelling herself the 10 ft up to the pocket of air. She gagged when she took that first breath though, stale salt and rotting seaweed filled her senses and it was immediately apparent as to why. The pocket of air was a faintly lit tunnel that had a mat of rotting kelp on the bottom. Still, the air was less stale than what she had held in her lungs and she felt certain that no one would find her here.
If the tunnel continued, it was hard to tell, the matt of rotting kelp was 3-4 feet thick, and filled most of the tunnel with what light there was coming out the top. The mat of rot glistened softly the entire way but after brief consideration, Dya decided that gross was better than bullies.
She wriggled her way up onto the matt and winced all full range of disgusted faces as the slimy algae compressed under her, oozing out from under her and green goop and gel clinging to her and staining her once white tunic.
Holding her breath in the foul air, she started crawling forward on her knees, her fins resting on the slimy matt. The slope up was gentile enough that she only found herself backsliding once, and that was because as the closer she got to that sliver of light at the end, the tighter the tunnel became. About 20 meters in she was belly crawling through the slick, foul mess. To get through to the end, she had to push the fibrous slime out behind her and pull herself through the opening.
Now covered in rotting slime, Dya found herself in a dark chamber lit only by a thin, bright line of white that hung, stretched from matt of rot to ceiling. The walls of the chamber glistened with moisture and mildew, the matt of rotting seaweed continued on so thick she couldn’t find the water, but that thin line of light told her everything she needed to know. This was a temple, well, chapel dedicated to Salt, the goddess of the oceans.