Nighttime out at sea couldn’t be any more peaceful, as per usual. With the star-filled sky above and the pleasant sounds of the waves crashing against each other on the water’s surface, if anyone from the seaside city located quite a bit away from the scene could see this now, they’d feel like they were watching a visual presentation of something straight out of a beautifully written poem. But of course, nobody could possibly see anything this far away unless they just happened to have a telescope pointed in this very direction. Therefore not a single soul left awake in the city at this hour was able to notice a mysterious ball of light descending from the sky towards the water. About as big as a meteorite but not as fast as one, the light kept coming down and down. Even as it entered the water, the light’s descent speed didn’t seem to change. For a while the spot in which the light sank into glowed a brilliant white like a strange water reflection of the moon, then the glow was gone as the light went in too deep to illuminate the surface.
And then the scene was once again peaceful as if nothing out of the ordinary ever happened. However, what awaited the city situated many miles from the spot of this particular phenomenon – as well as every other place in the world – was to be anything but ordinary.
* * *
Next day in the streets of the aforementioned seaside city, a 22 year-old girl with long red hair and clear green eyes walked out of a shop holding a can of fish food in one hand while the other hand pocketed her wallet in her skirt. She then proceeded to walk down the street for a while until she was stopped by a level crossing blinking its red lights.
The girl took a moment to glance to her right at a car being self-fueled by its driver at a gas station across the street from where she was standing. This suddenly reminded her of something and she pulled out her phone to text her mother regarding what she was heading home from right now.
“Finally passed that driving test, will be picking up my license next week :)”
As she waited for the text to be read by the other side, she looked at the train slowing down a bit to come around the corner from her left before speeding through the crossing. When the train had gone and the level crossing’s bars were lifted up for people to pass, the girl looked back at her phone screen to see a reply accompanied with several happy-looking emotes.
“Good for you Noel! You must be feeling so proud of yourself! We’ll talk more about it when I’m back from work!”
Noel texted back “Thanks.” And pocketed her phone. She was indeed feeling rather proud of herself for this particular achievement. In fact, this was the first time she had felt any kind of pride from any kind of achievement in four years since she graduated high school. So as embarrassing as it was, she couldn’t help it as her walking turned to happy skipping while she neared the apartment where she lived. She didn’t feel like doing it out on the streets with several people around.
But as she was about to go through the apartment doors, she caught something out of the corner of her eye and stopped to get a proper look at it. Whatever it was, Noel saw it was hidden behind some of the shrubbery in the front lawn of the apartment, and it was also an unusual silvery color.
Not being able to hold back her curiosity, Noel stepped over the shrubs and into the lawn. Once there, she could see the full view of what had drawn her attention – something that was so out of the blue and unexpected that at first she had a hard time believing her own eyes.
The thing Noel was looking at was in the form of a sea turtle about as big as her hand. Everything from its head to its shell and tail was colored silver, rather unnatural for an animal of this sort. Noel would have even thought this was supposed to be a toy some kid dropped out of the window if it weren’t for the extremely lifelike way it moved about. But what would a live sea turtle be doing all the way out here in a populated area instead of somewhere it would typically be in like in the sea, or at the very least the seaside?
A lot of things were not making sense with this, but the one thing Noel could make sense of was that whatever this sea turtle was, it wasn’t going to survive for long outside of water, especially on a warm sunny day like today. And from the looks of it this one was not hydrated for quite a while.
Not keen on just letting a heavily hurt animal left for dead on the ground, and considering it would take even more time to go all the way over to the seaside, Noel could only think of one thing to do. With an unsure mutter of, “Oh well, here goes nothing…” she picked up the turtle from the grass and gently held it in her hands, then hurried to the elevator.
Once home, Noel quickly and cautiously made her way to the corner of the living room where a barrel-sized fish tank was situated. This tank was brought into the house during Noel’s final year at middle school in which she greatly enjoyed keeping a number of various fish as pets. As of now only two fish remained in the tank, a couple of the latest additions Noel had bought home from the local pet store, which was during her last year at high school.
As she approached the big tank, Noel thought to herself what a relief it was that she and her parents kept bringing home fish as late as four years ago and continued to take very good care of them so they would live this long. Or else there would have been no reason to keep the tank around and thus no method of keeping the silver turtle in her hands alive until she figured out what to do with it. And while Noel was no expert on marine biology, she still had enough basic understanding on the subject to know that sea turtles could indeed survive in freshwater, just not for extended periods of time, so she figured her fish tank would be the best option to temporarily keep the turtle until it could be returned to the sea.
“Though I should also probably tell the right authorities about this too, for all I know the silver color could possibly be the result of some weird mutation we’ve never seen before…” Noel thought to herself as she lowered the turtle into the water, where it slowly sunk to the bottom of the tank and remained there. But on the other hand, she had no idea who or where exactly to tell about this, so for now she thought she’d have to wait for her parents to come back home and then ask them what course of action should be taken.
The two fish paid the turtle no attention and just kept swimming, but Noel crouched down by the tank’s side to keep her eye on the creature. She was hoping to god that she made the right decision and the turtle wouldn’t just drop dead right before her eyes.
She didn’t know for how long she spent time staring at the turtle through the tank’s glass because she was so distracted by it that she didn’t even bother to look at a clock. But despite Noel’s initial concerns, the turtle seemed to be alive and well in the water, albeit worn out, from the way it moved around in the tank while remaining only at the bottom.
“I guess that’s a good sign…” Noel muttered to herself. She finally stood up from where she had been sitting and took out the can of fish food from her skirt pocket to open it and dump a little of it into the tank for the fish to eat. As expected, the two fish swam up to the surface and nibbled away at the small floating speckles. What wasn’t expected though, was for the silver turtle to also swim up with them and eat up the fish food, then sink back down to the bottom of the tank as if this was casual behavior.
“What the…” Noel didn’t know what to make of this. As far as her knowledge on marine life went, she was certain that fish food from a pet store was definitely not one of the things sea turtles were supposed to eat. Then again, there wasn’t anything in the house that was anywhere close to what sea turtles actually ate in their natural watery habitat.
“I guess this’ll have to suffice for now, I don’t have a choice…” Noel muttered and tried shaking a bit more fish food into the tank. The fish came for it once more, but this time the turtle was a little faster than before and ate up most of the stuff floating in the water before the fish could, leaving them to just clean up what was left behind.
“Huh… Hungry, aren’t you?” Noel asked the turtle, which seemed to look back at her at these words from the sand-filled tank floor. She shrugged, “What the hell…” and shook in a third helping of fish food, prompting the turtle to swim right up and eat most of it before the fish could make a move.
Noel still had no idea what she was doing right now or if she was doing the right thing for this strange stranded animal, but similar to when she first found it out on the apartment lawn, she wasn’t keen on just letting it be when it was visibly in dire need of some help. All she could do for now was shake in a good three more doses of fish food for the turtle until it looked relaxed/satisfied enough (or at least relaxed/satisfied enough in her eyes, because when she did it one more time it finally didn’t come up to the surface).
Thinking the creature should be good for now, Noel put down the can of fish food and headed to her bedroom. Once there, out of boredom she sat down on the bed and began scrolling through her Youtube recommendations on her phone. At first not a lot of things particularly drew her attention enough to pause scrolling other than a couple of videos in which people were filming what looked like UFOs in the form of balls of light in the sky around either rivers or seas before vanishing without a trace. Then rather randomly she stumbled across an old clip from Top Gear and that reminded her again of the driving test she passed earlier today. This thought prompted her to turn her head to the wall on her right where several photos of herself with some of her old friends were hung up for the sake of good memories.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Damn I’m a late bloomer, if you guys could see me now…” Noel muttered to herself again. She remembered how most of the friends she made in middle or high school started taking up driving lessons left and right as soon as they graduated the latter or just before entering college. Meanwhile she was too distracted with trying to figure out what to do with herself after finding out she failed to get accepted into every college she applied for to follow suit. Not only that, she was also scared of getting behind the wheel for quite a while until just recently. Her mother had convinced Noel to get over that fear - as she did when she was around her age, in her words - by telling her that learning how to drive might raise her chances at getting a job around here, as being able to do something would be better than being able to do nothing in some people’s views (again, the way she put it in her words).
“The least you could do for your future is find a source of income for your own one way or another – you wouldn’t want to aimlessly lounge around the house forever like a, what was the word again, NEET, would you?” She had once said to Noel, and of course she agreed to it, having no intention to be a NEET indeed.
“Well, hope that ol’ fear of mine never comes back to interfere with my driving in future now that I’ve finally got the hang of it after all this time…” Noel thought. She got that train of thoughts out of her head and resumed scrolling through her recommendations until she saw something else that caught her eye. She tapped on it to see it was a community post from a user by the username of “CalebXRhodes9K” saying something about streaming a gameplay later this evening.
Noel smirked to herself. “CalebXRhodes9K” was what one of her high school friends – as well as the only one in her modest group of friends who also failed to go to college like her – called himself on Youtube. They used to hang out easily and frequently during high school because they just so happened to live on different floors of the same apartment, and they continued this well after high school graduation while all their other friends went away for college. Caleb Rhodes had been something of an online let’s play Youtuber since middle school, and he always talked about how someday he hoped to turn what started as a hobby into a full career. That said, the revenue he got from the videos and streams he made and did was never more than modest enough to consider what he did as something beyond a hobby, but even to this day that didn’t make him feel like giving up in the slightest. And Noel, even though she didn’t think Caleb could ever make any sort of living out of something like that, still admired his passion.
“’Hope to see you then’? You’ll sure see me then.” Noel said to herself, thinking of watching the stream later if she didn’t have anything else to do that evening.
* * *
Evening did eventually come, and by that time Noel’s parents were back home from work to join their daughter for dinner – or rather, they tended to most of said dinner while Noel just assisted them. As Noel, despite her age, still had a very long way to go before she was able to cook anything for anyone including herself without looking like she might summon the wrath of Gordon Ramsay.
Once they finished setting the table and began eating, dinner conversation topics got thrown about from what happened at work today to things regarding politics that Noel could only understand less than a handful of, before Noel’s mother eventually brought up the subject of her daughter’s successful driving test results.
“Once you officially get your license, how do you feel about practicing driving with the family car?” Noel’s father asked. “You may got the hang of it, but you’ve yet to perfect those skills on the road.”
“Oh, I’m definitely up for that.” Noel replied with enthusiasm. “Only after my skills are perfected will I be able to drive a car of my own someday… if I ever get one.”
Noel’s father chuckled a bit at that. “Just asking, do you have any particular car models you’d like to drive for yourself in future?” He added. “No need to state names, but like, big or small, seat for two or more, and all that…”
Noel laughed along with him, saying, “Baby steps first dad, I might wanna actually get good at driving at all before I can choose what kind of car would be best for me.”
“Oh well, anyway, we’re both just proud to hear you finally did it.” Said Noel’s mother. “Not only that, who knows if your driving skills could come into use for things besides just you going to places more conveniently? I always say, there’s nothing you learn that can’t be useful later in life.”
Noel was about to say something of gratitude in response when her mother suddenly added, “Oh, and that reminds me, have you heard anything from that job you applied for last week?”
Noel paused in her seat with her spoon held in midair on its way to her mouth. She had applied for a waitress job someplace downtown and they had told her she’ll be informed whether or not she would start work there via email. Perhaps it was the low expectations she had from not being able to apply for work many other times before this one, but for whatever reason Noel had almost forgotten about it up until now.
Seeing the look on the girl’s face even though it was facing the table, Noel’s mother immediately caught on to what was going through her daughter’s mind and asked her flatly, “You forgot about it again, didn’t you?”
Noel didn’t reply to that, and instead she just pulled out her phone to check her emails. She didn’t have to scroll down far to find the email she was looking for, and upon reading it she realized it was sent to her a couple of days ago, stating that she was hired and would begin work three days after the email was sent; AKA the next day as of today.
Noel felt as if the anxiety that had clenched around her heart like a strong fist as she was checking her emails had released itself from her all at once. Relieved, she showed the email to her parents, who both had the same reaction. They did express congratulations to Noel for her employment, but also felt the need to mildly scold her for not being responsible with herself, especially regarding matters as important as this.
“Think about what would have happened if your mother didn’t bring that up, you would’ve messed up big time on your first day of work. Sometimes first impressions are last impressions, Noel.”
“I hate to sound like we’re lecturing you because that’s not what we’re trying to do here, but please remember you’re not a kid anymore, so you can’t expect us to do your own things for you forever.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, I should have known better.” Noel muttered apologetically. “I’m trying to do better, I really am.”
Noel’s mother sighed deeply through her nose, paused for a bit, then spoke up again, “We’re also sorry for saying that just now, please know that we are indeed happy for you about getting that job… and most of all, good luck tomorrow.” To which Noel’s father nodded in agreement.
Noel nodded back in appreciation, and they resumed dinner without bringing up that subject again.
When they finished eating, Noel did the dishes for her parents while they rested in the living room – as she usually did when they were worn out from work – and just as she was washing the last dish she heard her father call, “Noel, did you bring a new pet from the pet store earlier today?”
Knowing what he meant by that, Noel called back, “No, I just found it mysteriously lying out on the apartment lawn so I thought I’d bring it inside to keep it from drying out in the sun.”
“No way this thing could have crawled over here all the way from the seaside, could it be someone’s ditched pet or something?” Noel’s mother wondered aloud. “And why is it so white?”
“No idea, but aside from that it seems to be fine as of now.” Noel replied. She placed the last dish on the dishrack to dry and came over to the living room where her parents were staring curiously into the fish tank at the silver turtle. “I probably would release it into the sea where it ought to belong as soon as I can, but its unnaturally weird appearance makes me think we should tell the right authorities about it or something… I have no idea, you know I’m not a marine biology master.”
“We’ll think of something sooner or later…” Noel’s father replied reassuringly. “Guess we really do have no other option than to just let it stay here in the tank until any solutions pop up.”
Noel’s mother nodded in agreement to that, then turned to Noel to say, “In the meantime, don’t you think you ought to get yourself ready for work tomorrow? I’m pretty sure you’d have to get up much earlier than you usually do if you don’t want to be late.”
“Well, maybe I should.” Noel replied. She then took a moment to walk over to the tank next to her parents and feed its occupants one last time that day.
As if trying to lighten the mood, Noel’s mother jokingly said at the sight of this, “At least you still take good care of your pets after all these years, maybe that means you won’t have to worry about whether you’ll be a good mother yourself in future.” This cracked up all three of them for a good few seconds before they parted to tend to their own business again.
Watching the two fish and the turtle gobble up the fish food, Noel’s train of thoughts returned once again, this time with memories of when she first got the tank many years ago. Her parents had got it for her as a way for her to, in their words, “learn how to do things for herself”. While initially they helped Noel with some things as they made themselves familiar with having pet fish at home, gradually Noel learned to care for the fish on her own, as her responsibility to do so. On the other hand though, that was the only thing she grew up learning how to do for herself. And it wasn’t like she didn’t try or didn’t want to be better than that, it was just that things were always easier said than done.
“Doesn’t mean I’ll give up…” Noel thought to herself once she saw for the last time today that the turtle was alright, then headed to her bedroom to prepare herself for what could only be expected to be a rather busy day.
She set an alarm on her phone for early next morning, then she was randomly reminded of Caleb and the stream he said he would be doing this evening. Looking at the clock, Noel thought it would be better for her if she just watched the archived stream rather than watch it live and continued preparing herself for work tomorrow. However she did take the time to text Caleb the following; “Can you please tell me whether you’ll be available tomorrow evening? There’s just something I’d like to show you and it would be better if you could see for yourself. That’s all.”
* * *
While that was going on, out on the seaside of the city, a group of high school students could be seen playing with silent fireworks in the dimness of the evening. The gray rods held in their hands emitted bright sparks from the ends that were a joy to look at, and whenever they spun the rods around they would see a bright circle that would leave a clear afterimage for a good few seconds in their eyes. With this pretty light show happening before their eyes, the kids saw themselves no reason to pay attention to the water behind them while they played, even as something the size of a dolphin started to slowly creep towards shore, right in their direction.
Nobody else was there to witness whatever happened next, and the teenagers had absolutely no idea what hit them either. All they could make out was that one minute they were all falling down onto the sand with their fireworks dropping out of their hands. The next thing they knew, they found that they were unable to get back onto their feet again no matter how hard they tried, for their feet didn’t exist anymore… or their legs, for that matter. What they saw in the place of their legs and feet instead, as illogical as it was, were long scaly fish tailfins.