Fish feel comfortable underwater; of course, they do. It’s where they live. But they wouldn’t be comfortable on land. They can’t live on land…not unless they are magic, land-living fish. Likewise, Pete was a human—not a water-living human—and he wasn’t sure how long he could hold his breath. He began to panic.

Though, the mermaid appeared friendly enough. If he could communicate that he couldn’t breathe, he hoped she would let him return to the surface. So as she waved hello, he put his hands around his neck, making the universal sign for choking. He wasn’t choking…not by definition…but choking and drowning end with the same oxygen-deprived death. It was a death he didn’t want to experience.

While he looked at her, using his eyes to beg her not to kill him, he examined her. Her bottom half had the shape of a dolphin. Green fish scales covered it. As she maneuvered her tail back and forth, some of the scales reflected light. If the light hit at different angles, the color the scale reflected would change. This led to a rainbow effect within the green.

Over her tail, she wore a teal skirt. Over where her right hip would be, she had a pocket. On the left, there was a logo made from palm trees. Teal highlights dyed her blonde hair.

The upper half of her body was human in all aspects. She wore a formfitting, black shirt… He wasn’t sure if to call it a shirt. It was more like a swimsuit top. Even while drowning, Pete’s curious mind never stopped. He wondered what fabric formed the shirt. It wasn’t spandex. In some ways, it resembled a wetsuit. Though—at times—it seemed to ripple like a t-shirt. The shirt had a blue chibi turtle at its center. The turtle smiled while holding one of its fins with a thumbs up. Pete wasn’t sure how it was giving a thumbs up because turtles don’t have thumbs, but somehow the chibi image managed.

As the mermaid smiled and waved, Pete noticed sparkling white teeth. Her lapis eyes had a unique cuteness to them…like the eyes of a family pet begging for treats…or like the adorable eyes on some stuffed animals. They had a surrealism. The mermaid’s skin was fair. Mermaids didn’t get as much sunlight underwater, so this made sense to Pete.

While Pete observed the smiling mermaid, he continued to make the sign that he was choking.

“Oh, right!” Though it had taken her a few seconds, the mermaid seemed to understand. “I forgot.” Still holding his ankle in her left hand, she reached into the pocket of her skirt with her right hand and removed a necklace, handing it to him.

He reached out and took the necklace. A prompt appeared:

You received a necklace of water breathing. While equipped, you will be able to breathe underwater.

Pete equipped the necklace. It caused a chain with a bright white shell to appear around his neck. However, he continued to hold his breath. It isn’t natural for humans to breathe water; it went against all Pete’s instincts. Though, he’d already been holding his breath for near a minute. He wasn’t sure he could do it much longer.

“Breathe,” she giggled, letting go of his ankle. “You’ll be fine. I promise.”

With her no longer holding his ankle, he considered swimming to the surface and escaping. Then he realized a swimming race with a mermaid was an exercise in futility. He’d never win. While considering this, he could hold his breath no longer, and he exhaled.

Giant bubbles escaped his mouth as the air left his lungs. Then by reflex, he inhaled…and…it worked. The water flowed into his lungs like air. Somehow, he absorbed the oxygen from it. He exhaled and inhaled a few more times, his body craving the oxygen he acquired from each breath. Once his respirations returned to normal, he turned to the girl. “Thanks for the necklace.”

“You’re welcome,” she let the smile fade from her face, allowing her forehead to wrinkle. “It is working, right? I wasn’t sure it was going to work.”

“Wait…” Pete allowed a look of concern to form on his own face. “You dragged me underwater, not knowing if I’d be able to breathe?”

“Yup,” she stated with a matter-of-fact tone. “Don’t worry, though. If it didn’t work, I would have dragged you back to the surface. It’s not like I would have let you die or anything. I’m not a monster.”

“I see…” He considered her words. “Why did you drag me down here in the first place?”

“The thing is,” She backed away from him. “I need your help. Rather, we need your help. The mermaids…that is…need your help.”

“Help with what?” Pete asked.

“It’s a long story.” She began. “Charybdis is a nearby dungeon boss. He keeps sending creatures from his dungeon to attack our town.”

“That wasn’t a long story,” Pete began to repeat here sentence in his head, counting each word. After counting, he said. “It was only eighteen words long. That’s not long. A long story is something like Clarissa Harlowe or The History of a Young Lady Volume I by Samuel Richardson.”

“What’s that?” The mermaid blinked twice with confusion.

“I…actually don’t know,” Pete confessed. “But one of my elementary school teachers told me it is the longest book. It’s almost one million words long. That is way more than eighteen.”

“That book has a long title, too.” The mermaid observed. “Samuel Richardson seems like a complicated man.”

“He does. Doesn’t he?” Pete chuckled. Then he realized that as the conversation had continued, he’d begun to sink. He could see the tops of kelp plants below him. For a few seconds, he tried to swim like the mermaid, maintaining a position at a fixed point in the water. At that point, two things happened. One, Pete realized he needed to work on his swimming skill. Two, Pete gained a new respect for synchronized swimmers.

The mermaid noticed Pete’s struggles, and she held his hands. From there, all he had to do was move his legs back and forth with little kicks, and he’d maintain his position. “Thanks,” he said.

Stolen novel; please report.

“You’re welcome.” She answered. “By the way, my name is Aqua.”

“My name is Pete,” he told her. “Pete the pizzaman.”

“What’s a pizzaman?” She asked.

“Someone that makes pizza,” He said.

“What’s pizza?”

“You know…” He paused for dramatic effect. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to answering that question.”

“What’s pizza?” She repeated.

“Pizza is,” he told her, “flatbread coated in a sauce made from crushed tomatoes. You take the flatbread and cover that with grated cheese. Then you bake the bread, melting the cheese in the process. You can also put meat, vegetables, or other ingredients on the pizza.”

“Like fish?” She offered an enthusiastic grin.

“I suppose.” He said.

“And shrimp?”

“I dunno about…”

“And clams, and seaweed?” Her eyes widened, causing them to gleam with a child’s innocence. “And rock moss?”

“I guess…” Pete answered, deciding he’d rather change the topic than think about a slimy rock moss pizza. “So why do you think a pizza man can help you protect your town from dungeon monsters?”

Her enthusiastic expression became pensive as she wrinkled her brow, pursing her lips to the side. She pursed them to the left, “mmmm…” Then she pursed them to the right. “mmmm…” Then she sucked them in, causing her mouth to appear like a lipless slit. “mmm…” Then she answered. “Because I saw you slap that other girl’s shield. You slap harder than a rock golem playing slapjack. You must be strong.”

“The have slapjack on Round?” Pete mused, “interesting.”

“Of course, we have slapjack on Round.” Aqua sighed. “Why wouldn’t we have slapjack? What do you mean ‘on Round?’ You are kind of weird.”

“Did you know that the etymology of the word ‘weird’ teaches us that ‘weird’ used to mean someone that had the power to change their fate?” Pete asked. “In that case, I’m weird for days.”

“Ety-what?” She cocked her head to the side, confused.

“Etymology,” he repeated. “It means the study of word origins…or something like that. And entomology means the study of bugs. So the etymology of entomology means the study of the origin of the word that means the study of bugs.”

“Yeah…” She hung her shoulders. “you are weird.”

“That’s a little hurtful.” He said.

“So was your explanation about bug word history.”

“That’s fair.” He agreed. “I do slap hard, but I’m afraid I can’t help you with dungeon monsters. I don’t have an adventurer’s pass. Unless I can use those monsters as pizza toppings, I’d be violating a law of the moderators by fighting them.”

“About that,” she explained. “We had a dungeon appear at the bottom of the lake about three months back. Along with the dungeon, our king received a single dungeon pass. We will use it to send someone into the dungeon to face Charybdis. Though, the king wants to make sure they are strong enough to defeat Charybdis before he sends them in.”

“That makes sense,” he said. “If he sends someone in, and they die, it’s a waste of the pass. After, they wouldn’t be able to send someone else. They need to make sure.”

“You are going to be that person.” She squeezed his hands and spoke with confidence. “You will be the hero that saves Greenlake.”

“Last time,” Pete said. “A talking cat asked me to save the whole of Round. Greenlake is less than that…baby steps, you know.”

“Steps? I’m a mermaid. We don’t take steps. Our babies don’t take steps. I don’t understand what you are talking about.”

Pete nodded his understanding. Of course, mermaids didn’t take steps. He needed to pick a better metaphor. “What I mean to say is that I can help you.” A prompt popped up:

You’ve accepted the quest Saving the Merfolk. You’ve always been great at looking out for others, but the most challenging part of this quest will be looking out for yourself. Good luck with not dying!

“Good,” She puffed out her chest, a hint of proudness to her movement. “Let’s go meet my dad then.” With that, she released one of his hands, spun to face the opposite direction, and began to swim.

Pete held on to her other hand for dear life, using both of his hands to grip her as she sped through the water.

While they moved more toward the center of the lake, she also descended. Pete remembered something about nitrogen… Was it nitrogen? Or was it oxygen? Whichever gas it was, the gas caused bubbles in scuba divers’ blood. This happened when someone went down too fast. Or was it when they came back up too fast. Pete wished he could remember. If the mermaid dove too fast, would his heart explode? He hoped not.

The pair sped over a kelp forest. While they did, Pete made out plankton, fish, fat blue crabs, and small crocodile things. He tried to focus on one thing or the other, but he was a fish out of water. Instead, a human out of land… Does that make sense? he wondered, a human out of land? He decided it would have to make sense. The sensation of the water around him, the speed at which the mermaid traveled, the unfamiliar environment…it disoriented him. He began to feel nauseous.

Before he knew it, they had passed over the forest, and he noticed a dim light ahead, one with an emerald sheen. It illuminated the far end of the woods. “That’s my home.” He heard Aqua explain, but he couldn’t think enough to respond. All he could do was try not to vomit.

With each flap of her tail, the intensity of the light increased. So did the size of it. The light became a building, a tall round cylindrical structure. One structure became two, two became three. When they entered the town, Aqua began to slow.

With the slow pace, Pete’s dizziness waned. When he felt confident that he wouldn’t throw up, he took in his surroundings. The buildings—he realized—were houses. Each pillar appeared to belong to a different family. The diameter of the pillars varied, but none seemed to have more than one room per floor. Some of the pillars were only three stories tall. Others rose over ten levels.

Mermaids swam around the pillars. They weren’t dressed how Pete imagined mermaids would dress, no seashells for tops. Rather, the kids wore t-shirts made from a similar material to Aquas… cotton that looked like the material from a wet suit. And the adults wore what adults wore. That is to say, some businessmen…errr…business-mermen wore white shirts and ties. Though, even the dress shirts had a bit of a wetsuit look to them.

All the merpeople wore pants designed to fit over a merperson fin, skirts, or dresses to cover their bottom halves. They were the most modest mermaids Pete had ever come across.

Aqua pulled Pete through town, and people stared at them all the while. They passed something called The Siren’s Call’isuem; it reminded Pete of the Roman Colosseum. Near its entrance, Pete saw some mermen wearing armor. The armor would have fit in with the Roman Legionnaires. It was a handsome bronze with red accents. It included crimson seaweed which poked up from the helmets.

Then they went past a glass building called Club Shake-a-Fin. Since it was the middle of the day, the club looked empty. Pete saw a dormant disco ball hovering at the center of the club. He hoped he’d see what the night club looked like at night.

Later, Pete saw more guards like those from the Colosseum. They stood outside a castle that looked like it was pure jade. Even the wall around it was Jade. “That’s the king’s palace,” Aqua said as they swam by it.

Opposite the castle, they came to another neighborhood with house pillars. Aqua pulled Pete toward the hatch at the top of one of the pillars. When they reached the hatch, she released Pete’s hands and entered a code into the number pad by the hatch. As she punched it in, Pete held to the edge of the pillar like a child holding to the edge of a pool. When she finished inputting the last number, the hatch hissed, and she spun a doorknob. It resembled a steering wheel. Then she pulled the hatch open. “Go on in,” she said.

Pete did his best to acquiesce, but being underwater, he proved more clumsy than usual. The mere chore of swinging his legs up lacked any amount of precision. It made him feel embarrassed. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine,” she told him. “I’m sure you’re doing better than I would on land.”

When she said that, he felt better, and he finished swinging his legs into the hatch. Once he was in, he let himself drop. He should have looked before he dropped because Aqua’s father was below him.

He landed atop her father, and they both tumbled to the floor of the family’s living room.