Making A Splash

Chapter 2

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With a satisfied groan, I let my head hit the counter.

“That was soooo good,” I sighed contentedly and licked my lips.

“Well, I'm glad you liked it,” Felda said cheerfully. “For a moment there, it sounded like you didn't like fish.”

Oh, had she caught my little slip before? Lifting my head off the bar, I cleared my throat.

“Oh, ah, no, of course not,” I said with a casual chuckle. “That would be ridiculous, of course I do. But, ah, I've never had fish that tasted that good before!”

Although I still knew next to nothing about this place, I had enough sense to figure that if there were other cat people like me around, they'd probably all be equally as big fans of fish as I apparently was now.

“Oh, you flatterer, you,” Felda giggled, reaching down and taking the empty basket that, until a scant few minutes ago, had contained the most delicious meal I could ever remember tasting. “It was only a little fried cod, I'm sure you're used to much more exotic dishes.”

“Uh, sure, but, sometimes simple can be better,” I said, eager to cover up the fact that I had no idea why she'd assume I was some kind of seafood gourmand. Was that just the reputation cat people had? I hadn't had many chances to enjoy high-end dining back on Earth, but I did have plenty of experience with comfort foods, especially of the cheap, greasy, salty varieties. Thinking about that brought a notion to the front of my mind.

“Oh, you know what would go great with those,” I said, sitting up in my stool. “Some chips.”

“Chips?” Felda asked, tilting her head.

Oh, I guess that meant no potatoes in this world. I cried a little inside at that, but still held out hope that Felda might know a similar enough alternative, if I described them well enough.

“Yeah, it’s called fish and chips. Or, I guess fish n’ chips if you wanna be accurate. They’re thick wedges of this vegetable called a potato, they get fried in the oil too, and then covered in salt and vinegar, it's amazing.”

“A potato, huh?” Bart asked, his tone dry.

“Yeah, they're great, they're like a big thick root, they're brown on the outside and kinda… yellow-ish on the inside, unless they're sweet potatoes, those are orange,” I explained, holding up a hand and starting to count off all the dishes I could recall being made from potatoes. “You can make so much stuff with them, like, hash browns, latkes, or french fries, scalloped potatoes, potatoes au gratin, potato soup, potato salad. Or, you can just bake them whole and have them like that, you can boil them, mash them, stick them in a…”

Damn, I was making myself hungry again. I looked up to find Felda smiling at me and slightly covering her mouth with her fingers.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry dear, I don't mean to laugh at you, it's just… we do have potatoes down here too,” she said, and I felt my cheeks grow hot. “I’ve never heard them called chips though, and I don’t recognize a few of those dishes, you’ll have to tell me about them sometime.”

“R-right,” I said, ducking my head slightly. Well, I’d made an ass out of myself again, but at least potatoes existed in this world.

“I didn’t think you’d want to wait while I prepped some, but I’ll tell you what, when I open up tonight I’ll be sure to set aside a basket for you,” Felda said, and I felt my spirits lift again.

“Felda,” Bart spoke at my right, but Felda soundly ignored him.

“Are you still hungry now? The oil is still hot and I have some giant mussels I bet you’d love,” Felda offered, smiling at me.

“Felda…” Again Bart tried to grab her attention, but her gaze never wavered from me, in a way that was starting to make me feel a little nervous.

“Uuuh… sure?” I said, hesitantly. I didn’t dare look at Bart to see what his reaction was, but it must not have been pleased, because a few moments after Felda turned and disappeared into the kitchen again, he slid from his stool with a sigh and followed after her.

Well, if that isn’t an obvious signal...

As I sat, and wondered what Bart’s problem was, a hushed voice drifted into my ears.

“Felda, what are you doing?”

It was Bart’s voice, but way more crisp and clear than it should have been considering the distance between us. I could tell he was whispering but he still sounded like he was sitting only two or three chairs away. And as I leaned over the bar slightly, the voices grew even louder.

“I’m prepping these mussels, Bart,” Felda answered, and it was true, I could hear a mechanically rhythmic “thok thok thok” sound as she worked.

“You know what I mean Felda, the girl—”

“The girl’s name is Samantha, Bart, and she’s skin and bones. She was dropped from the sky, woke up in a strange bed, and has clearly been through something horrible, so I’m making her some more to eat,” Felda cut Bart off, punctuating her speech with more forceful “thwack”s of the knife. I heard a slight scraping of metal across wood, and then the chopping started up again. In the silence, Bart let out a sigh.

“If you keep feeding her like this, she’ll never leave…” he said, sounding more tired than anything.

“And who’s to say I want her to leave?” Felda asked, not skipping a beat between her perfectly timed chops. “Gods above Bart, do you expect me to push her out the door the moment she’s got her feet back under her?”

“You can’t keep her,” Bart said, in what felt like the verbal equivalent of jumping several spots in the queue.

“I don’t recall saying I planned to ‘keep’ anybody, Bart, just help a young girl in need,” Felda said, her tone growing more testy by the second. If I were Bart, I would not want to be standing very close to her, especially while she was holding what sounded like a very big knife.

“She’s a catkin, Felda,” Bart said, as though that trumped whatever she’d said.

“Oh, you know I don’t believe any of that Empire hogwash, and you especially ought not to, Bart,” Felda said, warningly. Uh oh, I already didn’t think I was going to like the direction this conversation was going, but throwing in an “Empire” with a capital E definitely set my hair — and my fur — on end.

“You know me better than that,” Bart said, and Felda made a noise that I thought might have been apologetic. “It ain’t like that, all that stuff they preach about the beastkin being ruled by their instincts, being inferior, we both know that’s swill.”

Woah woah woah, hit the brakes there. This “Empire” already seemed like a bad deal but finding out they were… animal people racists made me dead certain I never wanted to end up anywhere near that place, wherever it was.

“But,” Bart continued, in a way that set off warning bells in my head. “I’ve been up there, Felda. I’ve seen them. The catkin, the… the ones that are left. They’re…”

I couldn’t help but notice the slight tremor in his voice, that he tried to cover with a cough.

“Harmless?” Felda offered.

“Useless,” Bart corrected, and I almost stood up on my stool and jumped the countertop. Only my fingertips, tightly clamped onto the edge, kept me in my seat. “Every one I ever met, they were always the same. Too… aloof, too flighty, too easily distracted to support themselves, to live on their own. That’s why the upper crusters keep them around, they’re a status symbol. Another way to say ‘look how much money I have to burn’.”

Oh.

Wow.

That was a lot to take in. Other cat people out there were like… trophies for rich people? On my brand new, rapidly-growing list of people never to run into, I added “Rich Person,” right under “Anyone from The Empire.”

While I was thinking, Felda had stopped her chopping, and was apparently mulling over her words too, from the hesitation in her voice the next time she spoke.

“I… don’t know what you saw, Bart. I don’t think you’d lie to me unless you had good reason to, so I believe you may have seen… some things… that were as you say,” Felda said, sounding so resigned by the end. But I heard her pick up the knife again, and resume chopping, much slower this time. “But if that is the truth, then that’s all the more reason for me to help her.”

Hell yeah, go Felda! Officially my favorite person in this world so far. Bart didn’t seem to have a quick answer to that, and in the ensuing silence I heard Felda moving about the kitchen, a chorus of dense thumps as the sliced mussels were poured into a bowl.

“People around town will notice,” Bart finally said. “They’ll wonder how you can afford to put someone up who contributes nothing and eats more than a growing child.”

Yeesh. Some of that was hitting way too close to home. I mentally moved Bart down to the number three slot on my list, and wondered if I could go out to the street and meet some horse turds I liked more than him to fill the second slot.

“You let me worry about that,” Felda said, and suddenly my ears were full of hissing and sizzling as the first of the mussels hit the hot oil. That made it harder to make out what was being said, and Bart seemed to have lowered his voice even more.

“... can’t start spending… …guild will notice… …found out, and then what…”

Ah, hmm. Well, I had probably eavesdropped enough for one day. I sat back in my chair and sighed. It sounded like being turned into a catgirl meant I was going to have a lot of people, literally and figuratively, looking down at me, even the well meaning ones. That also helped to squash my last remaining spark of hope that this was some sort of overly vivid dream, because there was no way if this was my dream that I would have made myself into something so pathetic people couldn’t help but look down on me. I also wouldn’t have made myself a girl!

On the other hand, it sounded like Felda was adamant about letting me stay with her indefinitely and keeping me fed, and I was all too happy to let her…

My train of thought was jolted by footsteps, not from the kitchen, but from the stairs at the far end of the tavern. That flight didn't lead up to Felda’s bedroom, instead it led to the second floor of the tavern where I assumed the guest rooms were located. I turned in my stool, in time to see the figure descending the stairs step off onto the landing with a heavy thud.

“Well, hello there, you!” the squat, broad-shouldered man with skin the color and texture of rain-wet cement called in a chipper, clipped voice, and I felt my jaw fall open involuntarily. “Finally up and about are ya?”

“Uuuuh…” I said, before wrenching my gaping mouth shut and swallowing, hoping the man had somehow missed me obviously gawking at him. Quite the opposite, as he grinned easily at me, revealing a mouth full of huge, flat tombstone teeth.

“Ah, first time meetin’ a dwarf, is it?” he asked as he approached the bar, and I got a better look at him. He was wearing thick, heavy trousers of a very rough-looking cloth, and a sleeveless white undershirt. His skin really did look coarse up close, and I also saw what I thought were freckles on his cheeks and shoulders, until a beam from one of the windows caught them and I saw they glinted and glittered in the sunlight. Both his hair, and his thick mass of a beard, were dark red and incredibly curly, resembling a mass of copper shavings more than anything. His eyes twinkled— literally, his pupils looked like two deep set rubies —behind two very round cheeks, pushed up by his smile. As he climbed up onto the stool beside me, I saw that once seated, we were of the same height, and that capping off each of his thick, powerful-looking fingers were black nails that shimmered like obsidian.

This was what a dwarf was here? I couldn’t wait to see what elves were like then…

“Y-yeah,” I said dumbly, remembering he’d asked me a question.

“Well, ain’t that a trick, ‘tis my first time meetin’ a catfolk, dontcha know,” the cheerful man said, sticking out his slab-like hand towards me. “The name’s Nils, lass. Nils Dahlgren, don’t ya go forgettin’ it, y’hear?”

The way this guy talked was making my head ache a little again; something about his accent or his very quick cadence made me almost miss the words he was actually saying. I stuck my hand into his palm and it was swallowed up by rough, leathery, calloused fingers.

“S-samantha, er, but, call me Sam,” I said, and Nils nodded, giving my hand four quick pumps up and down.

“Can do, Sam!” he said, and for some reason it felt like an immense pressure had been lifted from my brain. “And I’m glad ta see yee’ve landed back on yer feet, eh?”

“What?” I asked, blinking at him. I got it was a cat joke, but did he know about me already? Then, I recalled some of the hazy conversation I’d listened in on while I was still waking up earlier. Bart had mentioned Nils’ name…

“Oh,” I said, because this was another stranger that had seen me naked even before I had. At the very least, he seemed like a nice enough guy. Maybe even too nice.

“Aye,” Nils said, closing his eyes and nodding, managing to sound somber. “Gave Bart and I such a startle, ye did. Fortunate, ye were, that we were right there, or ye’d be—”

“Feeding the fishes, yeah,” I said, shivering a little. “Bart told me.”

So, that really was how I’d come into this world? Falling out of the sky like I was some kind of fairy tale mythical child? Or Superman?

“Ach, ‘course, forget I even brought it up, lass,” Nils said, shaking his head. “As ye can see, me mouth tends ta steal a march on me brain sometimes, ye just let me know when I step over the line, aye?”

“Sure,” I said, after taking a moment to process what he’d even said. A little less off-balance, I sat up in my stool again. “Don’t worry about it too much.”

“I shan’t worry about it any more than I already intended, then,” Nils said, in what I thought was supposed to be a joke. “So, is there anything ye’d like to know about the earthen folk?”

I assumed he meant dwarves, and considered the question for a moment. There were lots of things I wanted to know, but I wasn’t sure which ones crossed the line from “harmless questions anyone might ask” into “so obvious no one from this world would ever ask that”. I really wanted to know why he looked like if he stopped moving he could pass for a statue, but that seemed too direct for my first question.

“Where… do you come from?” I asked. That was reasonable, right?

“Aah, yee’ve never heard of the dwarven motherland?” Nils beamed, and when I shook my head he clapped his hands— twice, for some reason —and sat forward in his stool.

“Well, tis a beautiful place. Up in the north, she is, deep in the Boiling Seas. Surrounded by four mighty volcanoes is where ye’ll find her, Eurig, slowly roamin’ the sea floor, gobblin’ up the minerals and metals down thar and passin’ ‘em on to us, her children.” As he spoke, his ruby eyes drifted towards the ceiling and took on a far-away look. “Oh, it would set yer soul afire to see it, the capital city of Jarnhelm, glitterin’ in the sunlight, spires thrust into the sky like a great crown upon her back. To hear the drummin’ of a hundred thousand hammers at work in the forges, to hear the songs echo up from the tunnels as all me brothers an’ sisters work the mines, ach.”

Nils paused, and ran a finger under one of his eyes, even though I was pretty sure he hadn’t actually started crying.

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“Ah, sorry lass, here I go, gettin’ all choked up about me home when ye must be feelin’ a terrible homesick yerself,” he said, and I bit my lip.

I hadn’t actually sat down and sorted out exactly how I felt in that regard, and was hoping to put it off as long as I could.

“That’s okay,” I assured Nils. “My home wasn’t… that amazing.”

Nils looked at me strangely while I thought about what he’d told me. For all he’d said, I wasn’t sure I understood a lot of it. It sounded like the place he came from… moved around? And ate minerals? At least the bits about forges and mines sounded familiar, but it sounded like the dwarves didn’t exclusively live in mountains and underground, like I’d expected. Maybe the dwarven homeland was a huge, mechanical castle that moved? That would explain the bits that didn’t seem to make sense.

“Anyway, uh, it sounds neat. Maybe I’ll visit it someday,” I said, and Nils let out a cheerful bark of laughter.

“Aye? Well, I hope ye get the chance! Ye’d need some proper protection though, tis so hot there a little thing like ye would crisp up like a fallen autumn leaf driftin’ into a campfire.”

Oh, right, he said there were volcanoes there… wait, did that mean…

“So, dwarves are heat resistant then?”

“Aye, that we are! Tis said, the only thing what can burn a dwarf are the hottest flames at the heart of a volcano,” Nils explained, and I felt my jaw drop again.

“Woah…” I whispered.

“Aye,” Nils agreed, nodding his head. “But, I think I’ve talked yer ears off e‘nuff this mornin’, how about yerself? How’re ye finding Rower’s Rest so far?”

Oh, right, that’s what this place was called.

“Well, I haven’t gotten to experience much of it yet, but…” I thought back to the, admittedly, very small pool of experiences I’d had so far for anything significant I could draw from. “But, it smells nice, and the seafood is fantastic.”

Speak of the devilfish, the kitchen door opened, and Felda stepped out, this time with a much taller basket, filled to the brim with a towering pile of browned, crispy-looking oblong orbs a little smaller than a golfball. I took the quickest whiff I could, and the smell that hit me was like if you took the ocean and covered it in butter, crisp and clean and salty.

“Oh, Nils, good morning,” Felda said, spotting the dwarf.

“Soliel bless ye as well, Felda,” Nils replied, his eyes landing on the basket of fried mussels and twinkling a little. “My, someone’s hungry.”

“That someone,” Felda began, setting the basket before me but keeping her eyes on Nils, “is this young lady, and she doesn’t have to share unless she wants to, y’hear?”

Nils laughed, putting his hands up. “I wouldnae think of askin’!”

“Uh, no, go ahead,” I said, taking a closer look at the tower of mouth-watering lumps of fried batter and shellfish. “I… probably couldn’t eat this whole thing by myself.”

I could probably try, though, but I still wanted to make up for my earlier rudeness. Behind the bar, Felda exhaled a laugh and crossed her arms.

Mindful again of the heat, I picked up one of the lumpy orbs with my thumb and forefinger, finding it lighter than it looked. I raised it up, giving it another little sniff just for the sake of it, then popped the whole thing into my mouth and bit down.

Just like last time, it was like getting struck by lightning directly in the mouth, my entire tongue lighting up at once. The batter was a little different, with a slightly hotter blend of spices, and some larger chunks of something that added to the amount of crunch that resulted from biting into it. As for the giant mussels themselves, once my teeth pierced the soft, slightly chewy flesh, sweet, briny juice gushed out. The texture was just what I’d expected, that strange mixture between the yielding softness of a mushroom and the sinewy snap of meat that was so unique to mussels.

I once again felt myself melt in my chair, my eyes closed and my head tilted back, an unstoppable “Mmmmmm!” rumbling up my throat like a thunderclap.

“Moons be praised, Felda, ye’ve keeled her!” Nils’ voice was an anchor that helped me return to my corporeal form, and finish chewing and swallowing that first mouthful.

Blinking my eyes open, I once again had to wipe a little extra moisture out of them with the back of my hand, looking sheepishly from Felda to Nils.

“S-sorry, I just… I really like seafood,” I said, licking my lips and already reaching for another mussel.

“Nonsense, it warms my heart seein’ you enjoy my cookin’ so,” Felda said, reaching down to pluck one of the crispy snacks for herself. “And you can look forward to plenty more where these came from.”

Her tone was a little pointed, but not in my direction. Bart, who had returned to his seat on my other side at some point while I was in shellfish nirvana, hmphed into his empty glass.

Yeah, I could get used to this.

It was halfway through the top half of the basket before I remembered the drink Felda had poured me, and reached out to use some of it to wash down the mouthful of mussels I was chewing. I’d noticed it had a powerful citrus scent when she’d poured it, and when I raised the glass and took several sips, it was so sour that I felt my lips and cheeks tingle.

“Wow,” I said, between coughs. “That’s some strong lemonade!”

“Oh, I’m sorry dear,” Felda said, reaching over the bar to pat my back. “I forgot, folks around here tend to like it tart like that, I can get you something else.”

“No, no, it’s good,” I hastily clarified. “But, it could use a little more sugar.”

“Hmm, sugar?” Felda said, retrieving her hand and bringing it to her chin. Bart shifted in his stool and Felda, already predicting his protest, pointed a finger at him. “I can spare some sugar, I have plenty. Which kind do you prefer?”

“Uuuhh…” Shit, quick, deflect with another question. “What kinds do you have?”

“I have amber sugar, coral sugar, and elf sugar,” Felda listed off, and I felt my head spin a little. None of those sounded like just regular, plain old white sugar, and probably had their own specific flavor profiles. Was there one that would go best with the tart lemonade? I couldn’t ask without revealing I didn’t know what any of those were, and that information sounded like the most common of common knowledge.

“Coral sugar,” I said, just picking one at random.

Felda’s eyebrows did raise a little at that, but not enough to suggest that I’d picked the worst possible choice, just an interesting one.

“Hmm, alright then, I’ll be right back,” she said, picking up the pitcher and returning to the kitchen. I sighed, internally, and helped myself to another mussel.

Felda returned quickly, and the pitcher of lemonade had been transformed. Whatever coral sugar was, adding it to the pale yellow mixture had given it a distinctly red-orange hue, like the flesh of a blood orange. Felda poured the new concoction into my glass, and I raised it to give it another try.

The sweetness definitely helped wrestle the sourness back into line, but there were other new notes to the flavor, a fruity tang and just the slightest hint of salt in the aftertaste. It was an interesting combination indeed, but not a bad one.

“Hmm, coral sugar in the lemonade,” Felda mused aloud while I continued to eat and drink. “Maybe I’ll see if my customers like it too.”

Eventually, between me, Felda, Nils, and even Bart a few times, the basket and the pitcher were emptied, and I once again relaxed against the countertop, fully and completely satisfied.

“Ahhh…” I sighed.

“I agree,” Nils said, slipping out of his stool. “Thank ye fer the snack, but I think tis about time I head ta work. You take it easy now, Sam. Stop by me forge and see me sometime, when yer back on yer feet.”

“Oh, I will!” I called after him, half turning in my seat to wave while he made his way to the door. So, he was a blacksmith then? I guess when you’re a people who can live next door to volcanoes, that was the perfect job.

The perfect job, huh?

A short while after Nils left, and after Felda had taken away the empty basket and glasses, my meandering train of thought was derailed yet again, by perhaps my most pressing question yet.

“Uuuh…” I broke the comfortable silence that had fallen. Felda looked up from what she’d been doing, which looked like counting and measuring the mounts of each type of liquor she had behind the bar.

“Hmm?” she asked wordlessly, but I hesitated. Bart was still seated at the bar a few stools away from me, and had pulled out a book with a wrinkled, weather worn cover, but he’d definitely still be able to hear me.

“Where’s your, uh… bathroom?” I asked, still lowering my voice a little.

“Oh, you want to take a bath?” Felda asked, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I probably should have guessed that one was coming. “Well, I don’t have a tub of my own, but there’s a few bathhouses in town, I could take you—”

“No no, not that,” I quickly cut her off before she could take that idea any further. So, baths, at least in this village, were public, huh. That… might prove to be a problem, for Future Sam. But Current Sam needed something else.

“I mean, where can I go to… ‘go’?” I asked again, emphasizing the last word in a way I prayed she understood.

“Ooooh,” Felda said in realization, then at full volume, clarified. “The toilets.”

I sighed.

“Well, I’d love to have some put in, for the customers, but they said my building is too close to the water,” Felda continued, oblivious to my discomfort. “So, I’m afraid the closest ones are also the public toilets up the road. Bart, why don’t you show her the way?”

I turned, and found Bart, obviously looking up from his book, his eyes moving from me to Felda, and back again. It looked like he was less thrilled by that prospect than even I was, but in the end he let out a weary sigh of his own and closed the book.

“Alright then. Come along,” Bart said, rising to his feet and already starting towards the door.

“W-wait for me!” I called after him. I hadn’t nearly mentally prepared myself enough to just… what, step out onto the streets of a completely unfamiliar town, looking like I did now? It was mid day, or just about, there would definitely be loads of people out there, argh!

Bart, thankfully, did pause at the door, turning back to look at me. I looked down at myself, at my spindly limbs, my tiny hands and slender, claw-tipped fingers. I felt my ears flick a few times, and moved my tail out from behind me, holding it in my palms and idly playing with it while I tried to steel myself.

“Okay…” I breathed quietly, hopping down onto my bare feet and plodding across the wooden floor. “Just… act like nothing’s wrong. This is normal. Everything is totally normal for you.”

I found Bart, staring down at me, his hands in his pockets. He had picked up a huge, dark blue overcoat from a rack beside the door, and threw it over his shoulders once I stood beside him.

“Stay close to me,” Bart cautioned, and I resolved to do just that.

The door opened, letting in a pleasantly cool, salt scented breeze. I could smell so many things on that wind. Food, animals, fires burning away in hearths and ovens, people working hard to support themselves and their families, all of it mixing together into one combined scent.

It smelled like… adventure.

Well, no, it smelled like fish.

With one more deep breath, I stepped out the door after Bart, and started to follow him to the street.

■ ■

????-????

??????

Across the ocean, and one night previous, in an area of the southern central seas known as the Sea of Blades, another body hit the water, miles away from any other living souls. Two shooting stars, one red and one purple, continued on their journey.

Huh… smells like fish…

Morgan opened her eyes.

The first, and most pressing concern that presented itself to her suddenly conscious brain was that she was underwater!

Kicking her legs and flailing her arms, she tried to orient herself and find out which way was up. It was so dark and murky, there was no doubt it was still nighttime on the surface.

What the fuck! she screamed inside her head. I knew someone was going to fall off that stupid boat, but did it have to be me?

Pressing her lips as tightly together as she could, she pointed herself in the direction that she was pretty certain was up, and kicked. She was amazed at how far down she had gotten after, what, passing out and slipping off the deck? Somehow, she didn’t feel a single ounce of strain in her lungs, and she definitely wasn’t drowning. The faster she swam towards the surface, the more invigorated she felt, and the panic that had gripped her heart gave way to exhilaration.

How am I swimming so fast? she asked herself. She was an outstanding swimmer, if her coach could be believed, but she was pretty sure she was rising towards the surface at speeds faster than even her best lap. So fast, in fact, that the surface rushed in to meet her before she had time to slow herself down, and she found herself breaching the water like a dolphin.

Not a dolphin… she mentally gasped as she hung there, suspended in the air for a single heartbeat before gravity reasserted itself. A shark.

In the light of the moon, she had gotten a glimpse of her flailing arms and legs, the skin of which were now a mottled gray, with the tops of her arms being darker than the undersides, with even darker bands running perpendicular along her limbs. Her splayed fingers had an extra membrane of flesh stretched between them, and her feet were the same. Interestingly enough, she appeared to have claws too.

The last thing she saw before she hit the water again was that she was apparently entirely alone in the middle of the ocean.

Once back in the water, she gave herself a more thorough checking over, discovering a large protrusion from her back and, to her complete shock, a thick tail that sloped down from the base of her spine. The shape of it conclusively confirmed her assessment of herself as a shark, as the large fins at the end were vertical rather than horizontal.

I'm dreaming, she concluded. As she sank back into the water, she exhaled, and noticed that she felt no compulsion to return to the surface and fill her lungs with air. She seemed perfectly capable of “breathing” the seawater, feeling it move over and through what she had found to be a set of gills on the sides of her neck and torso.

This has to be a dream, she repeated, as she took off swimming in a random direction. She'd had swimming dreams before, but never like this. She was experiencing everything so clearly, from the distant chill of the water and the feeling of the currents washing over her body, to the gorgeous underwater vistas she glimpsed as she sped by, from slowly-swaying kelp forests, to eerily skeleton-like coral reefs, and even groves of faintly-luminous anemones. Even though she was underwater, she could see with crystal clarity, so sharply she could pick out individual details anywhere she looked, like picking out the tiny, silvery scales on the bodies of fish that scattered in her wake.

Morgan spent a good while just swimming, seeing how fast she could accelerate, how quickly she could turn in the water, and of course, breaching the surface several more times, before pausing to rest and catch her… breath?

While puzzling over that particular lexical riddle, another mystery presented itself to her. As she “breathed” in the water around her, she began to pick up sensations, a curious, indescribable mixture of taste and smell combined, that carried so many fascinating flavors. As she floated in place, trying to “sniff out” the tastes of some of the various schools of fish and other sea life she saw darting about, she wondered idly if she was fast enough to catch one of them.

Of course I am! What kind of apex predator would I be if I wasn't?

She chuckled to herself, and flipped “upright” in the water again, singling out the closest cluster of fish and taking off. They scattered, and she gave chase, pumping her legs even harder. The fish were small and nimble, but she had the advantage in raw speed, and it didn't take her long to learn how to predict the way they'd move, and account for it. In no time at all, she was bearing down on a particularly lustrous fish that had been separated from the pack, her eyes fixed on its frantically thrashing tail.

Huh, kind of looks like a koi fish, she mused, chalking it up to dream logic, as the species of carp people thought of as koi didn’t develop that distinctive color pattern in the wild, and also weren’t saltwater fish.

The fish, for its credit, held its own for much longer than she thought it would. It led her on a merry chase, trying to dive deeper in search of a crevice to slip into, but always pulling back up when Morgan began to get too close. Twice she almost lost it between a coral forest, and then a narrow underwater canyon, weaving in between the towering rocks that jutted up from below and continued up beyond the water’s surface.

Unfortunately for the clever little fish, it was much smaller than Morgan, and didn’t have the stamina to continue outrunning her forever. It made one last desperate sprint towards the surface, and she followed, feeling herself grin as the distance between them shrunk with each kick. The fish was close now, so close she could have reached out and grabbed it, so close, she could just open her mouth and…

And then, she came to a sharp and sudden stop as she felt herself collide with, and then become tangled in, something she hadn’t seen floating in the water until it was too late. It was a rough, woven net, and the more she tried to backpedal and push away from it, the more twisted up in it she became.

Well shit, she mentally sighed as she hung there, suspended in place. The fish, rather than frantically continuing to flee, stopped and swam back around, rising up to hover at her eye level. It stared at her, with its large black eyes full of reflected starlight, and she stared back, until the fish darted in and whapped its tail against her nose before darting away.

Did… did that fish just sass me? Morgan thought in disbelief, watching the fish disappear into the distance, leaving her behind in the net. Before she could really get her bearings and attempt to more calmly and rationally extricate herself from her predicament, she felt the entire net lurch upwards.

Twisting her neck, she looked towards the surface of the water and, for the first time, noticed the dark oblong shape that must have been the boat this net was attached to. The net grew tighter as she was drawn further and further up, until she finally broke the surface and was hauled into the air, the net constricting her and leaving her dangling in an awkward position.

And there, on the deck of the medium-sized fishing vessel, were its crew. The net she was trapped in was attached to a pair of pulleys, and two of the crew had been operating a crank attached to them, before they caught sight of her. Behind them, several more crew members had gathered, as if in anticipation of seeing what kind of outstanding catch they'd landed.

Normally, when people have a dream about being naked in front of a crowd, it's something normal like a classroom or a meeting, Morgan mused. It doesn't usually come with being half shark and getting caught by fishermen. I can't wait to tell Dr. Adams about this one.

She knew her therapist had told her not to put too much stake in analyzing her dreams, but she was willing to bet he'd at least have something to say about this one.

Speaking of having something to say, it appeared the fishermen didn't, at least not to her. A few of them were muttering to one another, but none of them had addressed her yet.

Well, it would be rude to expect them to introduce themselves first.

“G-greetings, land dwellers,” Morgan said, waving one of her arms that stuck out at an odd angle halfway through one of the nets openings. That sounded sufficiently like something a shark person would say, right?

“Is that all ye’ve got to say for ye'self?” one of the men immediately replied, in an accent so predictably thick Morgan would have called it clichéd. “Messin’ about in our nets and wastin’ our time and all ye've got to say is ‘greetings?”

“Uhh… s-sorry?” Morgan stammered, completely thrown off her script. She'd been prepared for these guys to react like they'd just fished up a mermaid or something, but they were treating her like an annoyance at best.

“Probably scared away all the fish too,” someone muttered while the crank operators used a pair of hooks on long poles to grab the net and drag it back over the deck of the ship.

A latch was released, and she hit the deck like a sack of wet socks.

“Ow!” she yelped. “That hurt!”

Then, more confused than pained, she repeated, "That… hurt?”

It had hurt. She'd landed hard on her side and there was now a dull ache in her right hip that throbbed slightly with her heartbeat, which was increasing rapidly.

You're… you’re not supposed to be able to get hurt in dreams…

That was the common line of thinking, anyway, and she'd known it to be true her entire life. Cold realization started to roll over her scaled skin while several of the fishermen moved to start untangling her from the net.

“Oh, come now, yer a big gal,” a voice said, coming from the closest fisherman as he knelt. Morgan looked up at him, and her breath caught in her throat. The man was older, and his face showed signs of serious weather wear, but he was very clearly not a human. His ears were pointed, for a start, and in the surprisingly bright light of the full moon, she could see his skin was a bright orange color, dappled here and there with patches of green and red, like a… like a mango! It might have just been Morgan’s imagination mixed with her growing panic, but she thought he even smelled faintly of mangos.

“B‘sides, a few lumps is the least ya deserve for the trouble ye’ve caused us,” another fisherman concurred, and Morgan felt even more like curling in on herself.

“This isn't a dream…” she whispered, afraid that acknowledging it too loudly would only make it more true.

“What's she mutterin’ about?” another voice asked.

“Where d'you think her clothes got to?” A third, or maybe fourth voice, that one coming from the cluster of sailors who hadn’t knelt down to help her out of the net.

“Oy!” snapped the man in the cap, making the whole crowd jump to attention. “If ye ain’t gona help then get back to work, this ain’t a show!”

His orders sent the milling onlookers scattering like roaches. Turning back to the net, he gave Morgan what she figured was his best apologetic look.

That was the last straw. She was still coming to terms with the astronomical number of questions she had about her situation, but the revelation that the nudity she’d chalked up to dream logic earlier was, in fact, not normal even for being some kind of half fish person, was enough to cause the last of her composure to collapse out from under her.

“I am s-s-so s-sorry,” she blubbered. She knew sharks couldn’t cry — not being mammals, they lacked the lacrimal glands to produce tears — but she sure felt like crying. “I-I don’t know w-where I am, and I thought I was dreaming, and—”

“Woah now, take it easy, lass!” the older man shouted, pulling his fingers out of the tangle of ropes and putting his palms out. Morgan winced, but began taking deep, shaky breaths in an attempt to calm herself. “There you go, now don’t start thrashin’ about, we don’t want you shreddin’ up our net.”

“R-right,” Morgan muttered.”The s-skin of a shark is covered in a layer of sharp, interlocking placoid s-scales that make them more hydrodynamic a-and reduce turbulence while s-swimming…”

The fishermen, thankfully, ignored her while she quietly rambled off every tidbit and fact she could remember about various kinds of sharks, to ground herself while they worked her arms and legs free of the net. She got one arm loose and, lacking anything better to do with it, wrapped it around her chest and held herself. The rest of her limbs followed, and when she sat up and hugged her knees to her chest, the pointy-eared fisherman turned and snapped his fingers at one of the bystanders.

“Dale, yer coat,” he said. The man, Dale, opened his mouth to protest, but the older man’s tone had brooked no argument, so he unslung the heavy overcoat he wore and passed it off. Morgan felt the heavy cloth settle over her shoulders and took another deep breath.

“T-thank—”

But that was as far as she got, before the voice of one of the other men the kindly older man had dismissed called out in alarm from the other side of the ship.

“C-captain! Ship!”

“What?!” the older man shouted back, springing to his feet and sprinting to the left — “port,” Morgan reminded herself — side of the ship, slamming into the railing and peering out into the distance.

Morgan looked up and held her breath.

“Captain, should we get the—”

“Stow yer tongue, boy!” the man, the captain, hissed. “We’ll get through this just fine.”

From her vantage point, seated on the deck of the ship, she could only see the other ship once it had fully listed up beside the fishing vessel. It was smaller than the fishing vessel, obviously built for speed, and had two towering masts, the sails of which were currently bound up tight.

How did they sneak up on this ship, then? They’d have heard if they were using oars, wouldn’t they?

Morgan sighed. Even in the midst of being trapped on a boat about to be boarded by, she assumed, pirates, she couldn’t stop asking questions.

Figures lined the railing of the far ship, but the fishermen had all moved to that side and were blocking her from getting a clear view, and she didn’t particularly feel like standing up to see better.

Not that that would help much, she groused. As much as she’d tried to improve on it, her short stature remained a sore spot for her.

“Ahoy there!” a crisp voice rang out, clear as a bell, from somewhere Morgan couldn’t see. The man in the hat looked down, over the railing. “Prepare to be boarded!”

Morgan saw the man’s shoulders rise, then fall, like he was sighing, and he stepped back from the railing. The other sailors followed his lead, and cleared the area in front of the railing, just in time for several figures to clamber up from the ladder Morgan knew was there, just from what she understood of old sailing ships.

The figures were, for the most part, what she’d expected. Rough-looking men (and women, to Morgan’s only mild surprise) in mismatched clothes, armed with swords and axes and knives, many of them scarred, all of them looking like they could eat her for breakfast, some of whom also showed the same range of vibrant, unnatural skin colors the old captain had. They spread out to fill the edges of the space the fishermen had cleared, but their stances were casual, relaxed. Either they weren’t expecting violence, or were confident that even if it did break out, they were in absolutely no danger.

It made sense, Morgan knew. Most pirate boardings were unresisted, despite what the movies might show you. Pirates, or fishermen, both parties were more keen on staying alive than risking their lives for whatever goods were at stake.

Finally, the last two figures to board the ship crested the ladder, and Morgan felt her breath leave her.

The first figure was dressed very differently from the rest, their body tightly bound in what looked like hundreds of feet of off-white cloth strips, like a haphazard mummy costume on the verge of coming apart. The parts of their skin that Morgan could see were black as ink, and caught the moon light in a curious way. Their head was covered by a hood, only the lower half of a surprisingly-round face poking out from under it, with long strands of stringy black hair hanging down on either side. As they stepped aside and turned to help the final figure, Morgan saw they, too, had a tail, a long, black, cloth-wrapped appendage that ended in a blunt tip.

The final figure that climbed into the ship was even more startling and breathtaking. A woman, tall and lean, with a flowing red coat lined with coral-colored lace fringes draped across her shoulders, on top of a tight, high-necked black top that hugged her torso, and wide-legged black trousers that were tucked into knee-high red boots. Two swords clattered at her hips, both on the right side, and she had some kind of large red fruit clutched in one hand, while the cloth-wrapped person held the other to help her finish stepping down onto the deck.

More startling than her clothes was the rest of her appearance, as like the older captain of the fishing vessel, her skin was an unnatural shade of pink-ish red, her hair that bounced in loose curls was a vibrant magenta, and her lips were black as the night’s sky. She grinned, showing off a mouthful of sharp, ivory-white, pointed teeth, and took a bite of the fruit in her off hand, sending dark red juices dribbling down her chin.

“Well well well, what do we have here then?”