It was late at night. Charlotte was laying on the bed with Marina and Ismael sitting on each side of it. Marina was holding Charlotte's left hand while Ismael looked at them both. Even though Charlotte's wounds were not as bad as the ones she had the first time they met, they were still bad enough to keep her unconscious for a long time. Ismael did his best to heal her, so the only thing he and Marina could do was waiting to see if their friend wakes up.
Finally, after a long wait, Charlotte stirred up from her sleep and her eyes started to flutter… or at least what she had left for eyes fluttered.
"Marina? Ismael?" Charlotte said looking at her friends confused.
"Charlotte! Thanks to the seas that you are okay!" Marina exclaimed while hugging Charlotte. The human winced in pain at the contact, but did not say anything and hugged her friend back.
"It is good to see you awake, Charlotte," Ismael said out of the blue, getting the girls' attention. Charlotte looked intensely at Ismael as if he were a total stranger to her, but he kept his stance. They stayed like that for a few minutes until the human girl broke the silence. "You have saved my life two times already, and I will not be able to pay you for that debt ever in my life. But I think you owe us something as well."
Ismael stood up from his seat keeping his eyes on Charlotte and said "I know I have too much to explain, but I think we must talk about you first." In the last part, Ismael pointed to Charlotte's face and she immediately started touching it. She felt something soft covering her left eye, and suddenly realization hit her.
"Once I left Marina at the shore I went back to the ship to help you. When I arrived I found the ship already destroyed, and bodies were floating around in the water. I looked for you and once I found you I brought you back here. I tended your wounds and luckily there were just some cuts that were not too deep. I tried to heal your eye as well, but it was too damaged… I am sorry… but you lost your left eye."
As she was hearing these words, Charlotte started to feel devastated. Throughout her years as a pirate, she had suffered different types of wounds and injuries during the raids she had been part of, but they had always healed after a while and never stopped her from doing her job. But now, this was not just an injury, it was a part of her. A part of her that she would never get back, and she would need time to make herself to this idea and keep going with her life.
But now it was not the time to feel self-pity.
"I will eventually get accustomed to seeing only with one eye. But for now, I want answers about you," Charlotte said seriously looking intensely at Ismael. He kept his neutral body language and facial expression and said "I guess it is time for some answers, and I will give them to you accompanied by a drink. I think we all need it."
Ismael left the room, leaving the girls alone. Marina tried to help Charlotte to stand up from the bed and after some efforts, Charlotte could stand up by placing her arm around Marina's shoulders for support. Both girls left the room and took a seat at the table in the dining room area. Ismael came out from the kitchen with two glasses of water which he put at the table in front of the girls. "I am afraid this is the best we have got right now after the raid earlier today," Ismael said while taking a seat across the table in front of the girls. They took the glasses and drank the water, grateful for the refreshment. After they had their drink, Ismael started talking. "I think I must clarify who I truly am first. As you could tell from what happened on the ship, I am not a human. I am actually a merman."
Charlotte was not surprised by that confession, but Marina was and also felt confused. If Ismael was a merman, how did he not have any difficulties moving or live on land as she did? But before she could ask any of these questions, Ismael kept talking. "Now, I must clarify that I am not a regular merman. I was trained to live as a human for long periods, and all with only one purpose: to keep safe every creature of the ocean from the humans." Now both girls were truly confused after this statement.
"It is something that has taken place since many years ago, from the times humans started to move above the water and sailed through the oceans. The sirens and mermen have existed way before humans started to live on earth, and when they started to create ways to go through the seas, we looked at them with fear and fascination: beings that looked similar to us but were so different to anything that we had seen in our world… We were so marvelled by them that we looked for ways to get in touch and create bonds with those beings."
"At first, we did small things like shaking the water or creating stuff with the things we could find to catch their attention, but they were ignored. Then, we tried to show ourselves to them, first by giving them small glances of our tails or heads, and gradually we showed ourselves completely. The very first humans who knew about our existence were fascinated by us in the same way we were marvelled by them. Those humans treated us as if we were divine beings, and respected us very much."
"As ages went by, humans kept their interests in us, always looking for ways to talk with us to learn more about our world, and in the same way, we would try to learn from the world of land. Humans knew they did not have a chance to explore our world, and sirens were conscious they did not have the chance to explore land, either, so those conversations were the best thing we had to get to know each other better."
"In time, these stories and talks would inspire sirens to find ways to visit the wonderful world they have ever heard of, and then plans would be made about how to find land, how to move on it, and even the stuff that could be taken from under the sea to be given as gifts to the humans so they could know our world…"
"But then, something happened."
"After a long time planning our visit, sirens and mermen were ready to do it, and the only thing that was needed was a ship to guide them to land. One day it came one, and all the sirens and mermen who would be part of the trip came to the water surface and started to do stuff to get the attention of the passengers of that ship. The thing no one expected was that those passengers, for some reason, got scared by the sight of our people, and immediately tried to attack them using harpoons. Sirens and mermen got back under the water, escaping from those humans feeling scared and confused, not understanding why they had been attacked if in previous times they have had a good relationship."
"Few days after that incident, some sirens and mermen decided to go back to the surface to see the humans once again, right on time to see a ship that was going through their territory. It was a small group as some of us were still scared, but still, the plan was on. Once again, once humans and sirens got crossed, we were attacked, but instead of escaping, we made an effort to dodge the attacks and try to have a word with the humans. But in the middle of the attack, we could hear how they were calling us abominations, demons, hideous creatures that were not supposed to exist."
"Those comments made us all confused. How could it be possible that one day we were worshipped as gods and the next one we were hated as if we had done something wrong? We wanted some answers, and we knew we would only get them on land, so when another ship came by, we followed it so we could find land and get our answers."
"We made it to a shore filled with ships and humans, There were so many of them both that it was hard to get close without anyone spotting us. We hid under a dock and observed the people going through their activities. Once the night came and people left the docks, we dragged ourselves out of the water and did an effort to drag our bodies through land. There were some houses close to the shore, so we moved toward them and tried to look through the windows to see its residents, but we could not see anything."
"Just going to a couple of the houses in the shore took us most of the night, so the sun started rising before we noticed and we knew we could not get back to the water without taking the risk of being caught, so we had to hide in some bushes near our locations and wait for the night to fall again. Without nothing to do but wait, we were bored to death, and after some hours of desperate waiting, we ended up falling asleep in the middle of the bushes until the very next day."
"Spending a whole day out of the water had made us discover something new about us, as when the first rays of sunlight we woke up to find out we did not have our tails, but a couple of legs like the ones the humans had. The fear and confusion we felt with this discovery made us stay hidden for another day, and once night came by, we did an effort to get back to the water. Some of us could use the legs to walk, but just like a baby, we could barely do it and took various attempts to at least stand without stumbling over. We helped each other to get back in the water, and once in it, it only took a few minutes for our tails to come back."
"During the following nights, we experimented with our legs to get accustomed to them: once the docks were empty, we would go out of the water but keep close to it, and stayed on land until our tails turned into human legs; then, we would practice our walking until the first rays of sunlight came so we could get back into the water without being caught. After so many nights practising we mastered walking, and we learned that the more times we went from water to land, the less time our tails needed to turn into legs."
"With these new skills, we took turns to go around the docks and observe the humans. We learned their customs, their way of dressing and grooming themselves, their lifestyles, their homes, and etcetera. All this allowed us to start creating our places to live among them and act as if we were any other human doing its stuff, and we kept learning from them. After a few months living among them, we concluded that humans were not evil. They lived their lives just as any other living being. They did not show any reason they could have to hate sirens, so we thought all our efforts were in vain."
"But then something happened."
"The day we decided to leave the town we had been living on, a man arrived at it with only a chest and a book with himself. Everybody quickly assisted that man and guided him to the town's reunion hall. We were confused by all the emotion the people showed for this man's arrival, so we followed them to the hall to find out what was going on. Once the man was settled, he said that he was sent to the town to read "The word of our Lord" and guide us to "eternal salvation", and he would start to do it the very next day. After hearing this, some sirens decided to stay a little longer to find out what was all this about, and some others got back to the ocean."
"The next day, the whole town including us got reunited in the hall to hear this "word of our Lord," and the humans' emotion was quite palpable. We were expecting something beautiful to be said in that reading, but when that new man started with his reading, we were horrified by what he said. According to that so-called "word", everything in this world was created by a superior being to accomplish a purpose in their life. Everything except sirens and mermen and so many other creatures that, according to that man, were abominations; deviations created by an evil creature who wanted to go against "The Lord's Whim", as he would never do something so horrible as mixing up a human with a fish, and that sole reason was enough to put in doubt our existence and purpose in this world. Every person who attended the reading believed in that man, and some of them even asked how they could protect themselves in case they got crossed with hideous creatures like us."
"All that happened at that moment devastated us. We had not done anything bad and now someone was saying we were abominations when the only thing we had done was trying to become their friends. When we got back to the ocean we told all of this to the other sirens, and they were as confused and destroyed as us. No one knew what to do with all this situation. But after some time of confusion and fear, one of us had an idea to deal with this problem."
"We were around the ocean to tell our story to other sirens, and we also shared the idea our mate had had: send sirens to land so they could disguise as humans and live among them, so if anything that put our world at risk happened, we could take action and prevent losses."
"Of course, in the beginning, everything was harsh between teaching to sirens and mermen how to be a human and not to be caught during their first attempts to live among them. But in time we all learned how to live on land and act like a human so we could keep an eye on them to prevent more incidents."
"With the pass of time, those horrible things that were told about sirens and mermen lost strength, but our existence ended up being reduced to mere rumours and stories. Still, we never stopped keeping our eyes open, so if anything that represented a danger for our people happened again, we could stop it before it was too late."
Marina and Charlotte were mesmerized by Ismael's story. Mankind has tried to capture sirens many years before the girls were born, and now all the stuff they had gone through was a result of that past: a human obsessed with sirens captured one, so other sirens sent a creature to attack the humans and rescue their sister, and that rescued siren ends up on land with a man who is a disguised merman assigned to live in a specific place to make sure other creatures like him were safe from humans who tried to hurt them.
All this new information was too much to be processed at once, and it made Marina feel confused and at a loss. Charlotte could take the information with slightly more easiness, so she tried to change the topic so the conversation could keep going. "What happened after you picked me up? What happened with Captain Anna?"
Ismael grimaced when Charlotte mentioned the pirate's name and just said "The only thing I can tell you is… Captain Anna will no longer be a problem for us."
Hearing those words, Marina felt relief going through her body, but Charlotte did not feel so calm, as she understood by Ismael's grimacing that something truly bad happened to Anna if she would no longer represent a threat to their lives.
Ismael stood up from his seat and said "Listen, girls. It has been a long day today, and you have had to take a lot of information, so why don't we go to bed and once we are all rested we continue talking about this in the morning. You can share the bedroom and I will sleep in mine so you can have some space and privacy."
Ismael got inside his bedroom and left the girls alone at the table. It was true that both of them felt overwhelmed by all the events they had to go through in a single day and all the amount of new information they had to process, but they still wanted to hear Ismael's story: the experiences he has lived, the people he has met, his perspective about living on land and in the ocean… But he was right. They all needed to rest so their wounds could heal, and if they were rested, any other information they received would be easier to process.
Charlotte stood up from her chair with Marina's help, and together they went to their bedroom. They got to bed and inside the blankets to make themselves comfortable. Marina fell asleep fast, but Charlotte stayed awake a little longer, thinking in all the stuff she was told. She had questions she would like to do to Ismael, but she would have to do them in the morning, as gradually slept took over her and made her close her eyes.