"You scared her!"
Alek heard someone talking in the distance and, she groaned. In a second, someone came near her and shook her shoulders slightly. "Alek?"
She tried to open her eyes just to be blinded by a bright light.
"Alek, Alek wake up." That, someone, told her and shook her shoulders again. She groaned and opened her eyes slowly and carefully.
She saw her mother's face up close. 'Mum?' Before she could say that out loud, she puked out water. Panacea quickly lifted her daughter to make it easy for her.
"Mum?" Alek could finally speak and called her mother. She thought her mother had drowned and, in the river... "Are you alright?" She then hugged her mother.
"Yes, I am. Are YOU alright?" Panacea asked her daughter back.
"I'm alright." Alek pulled away. "I thought you drowned! You scared me!"
"I told you I'm not the only one that scared her." Astraea, who was watching her sister and her niece, chatted into the conversation.
"You are a big part of it." Panacea raised her voice slightly and turned her attention back to her daughter. "Alek, I'm so sorry."
"Why are you apologising?" Alek asked her mother and remembered what had happened before she was dragged into the river hole. "Bia! Mum, have you seen Bia? And, and Jin? And everyone else?!"
"They are safe." Panacea told her daughter calmly. "They are here with us. We have waited for you to wake up."
"Where?" Alek looked at her surroundings but, a large part of her sight was covered by her mother. "Where are we?"
"We are at our destination." Panacea told her and moved out of the way. Alek then fully saw where she was at.
She was stunned. In where it's supposed to be a sky, she saw a water body flowing one way. The water was far away from the ground and, she thought she was looking up to twenty stories high building. There was somehow light from the certain part of the river she didn't how. When she squirmed her eyes in the water above, she saw fishes swimming. Alek's jaw dropped as a huge fish her size was swimming in the water above her.
When she looked down from the sky, she realised she was sitting on the sand. Nearby, there were pretty shells. Alek looked straight forward and saw there were houses after the sand turned into grass. The houses looked like it was built mainly of trees and it was tropical styled. Behind the first line of trees, there were hills with so many houses like the ones here.
Panacea smiled at her daughter seeing the river flow on top of them.
"How is the water up there?" Astraea voiced out what Alek was thinking. "Funny story. You should ask them." Alek shifted her eyes toward her aunt, who moved out of the way.
Alek, then again, dropped her mouth.
She saw a fish standing with two human legs. It had arms also and was weirdly facing Alek. That creature literally was half-fish, half-human. His upper boy was completely fish, while his lower body was human. That creature wore tropical shorts that had watermelon prints on. His upper body was not facing straight at her. Instead, it faced sideways and, from Alek's point of view, she could only see the left half of his body while his legs were facing her fine.
"Hello." The fish talked and waved its hands at Alek.
"Arghhhhh!!!" Alek screamed in fear. What in the world is that?
"Arghhhhh!!!" The fish man reciprocated her scream, which got her to scream again.
"Mum! Mum! Fish! Human!" Alek quickly stood up and held her mother's arms. "Talk. It talk..."
"I know." The half fish, human dude, casually walked closer to Alek mother.
"Uh?! Uh! Ah!" Alek screamed with each step it got closer to her and her mother.
"Relax, young girl. I am not here to hurt anyone." The fish spoke right in front of her. "In fact, I am the head of Negatsuki. Nice to meet you, Alek."
Alek could just watch the fish, no human, no both, talking in fluent English.
"You are scaring her." Panacea said the same thing she had said before. "Alek, he is our friend."
"Al... Al..." Alek tried to say her name but, it didn't come out.
"You want me to call you Al? I've got no problem with that." The fish put his hands on his hips. "I am Junto. You can call me Jun." Then he laughed in a very human way.
"Just shift back, please Jun. You don't always stay like this." Panacea looked at her frightened but curious daughter.
"Fine. Since when did you become so not-fun." Junto rolled his eyes before shifting in a flash.
"Huh?" Alek couldn't see the fish-man anymore. Instead, there was a good looking guy in front of her. He was smiling and wearing the same patterned shorts as the fish-human creature. "Oh my."
"Yes, oh my." The guy smiled with his perfect white teeth.
"Holy moly." Alek whispered. But before they could continue with their conversation, a voice interrupted them.
"In coming!" Something shouted from up above and came straight down to where the four of them were standing. Alek shut her eyes for something to happen but, nothing happened. Only the sound of a soft thud close to her.
"That's dangerous, my angel. Don't do that again. You can hurt yourself and, I don't want that." Junto caught whatever that dropped from the water.
Alek then opened her eyes to see Jun with a girl in his arms. Then she saw the girl hugging him tightly.
"Who is this?" The girl found Alek looking at her and asked Jun. He was currently facing his back on Alek that Alek couldn't see the girl's body.
"She is Pan's kid. Her name is Al." He told her as he faced the group.
Alek gasped, seeing the girl in his arms entirely. She was a mermaid! Unlike Junto, her upper body was human and, her lower body was fish. The spine of her fish part was dark blue, and as it came to the front, it faded in colour and turned silver.
'You've never met someone like us." The girl stopped hugging Jun and shifted back into human form. She was wearing a short skirt yellow skirt that showed her thin legs.
Alek shook her head, hearing the question. It would be a lie if she said she didn't expect this.
"Okay. My name is Izumi and, I am Jun's wife." Izumi walked around Alek as if to judge her.
"Izumi..." Alek whispered her name. "I am Alektrona. You can call me Alek or Al. I don't know which one you prefer." Alek felt intimidated by the girl. She looked young but a little older than her and also very cute. Izumi had a baby face which made her look young and cute for her height and age.
"Hmph. I'll just call you Alektrona." She had done going around Alek in a circle. "I've missed you, my sugar pie!" She then jump-hugged her husband provokingly. She considered Alek as an enemy for her.
"I've missed you too." Jun held her thighs around his hips tight so that she wouldn't fall. 'Where were you this time?"
"I was with Kana." She looked at Alek to see her reaction and got annoyed when she found her staring at them with stars in her eyes. She thought Alek was going for her man. This is not true because she was just fascinated by the way Izumi's clothes were not wet despite falling from the large water body.
"I'm sure you had a great day! Are you tired? I can take you home?" Jun asked his wife.
"No." Izumi was still giving Alek a death stare which she didn't seem to notice.
"How is the water up there not falling here?" Alek asked a question that she had been craving the answer to since she saw it.
"It's magic." Izumi answered before her husband could even breathe about it.
"Woah." Alek looked around herself and up. No wonder it's not falling. "How come you are not wet?" She then turned to Izumi.
"The river is unique. The water stays in its place, meaning it doesn't wet us when we come out from there. But this only works on this site. On the other side, in the forest, we come out of the river wet. Magic is not there. Did you get it?" Jun asked Alek. He wasn't good with explaining.
"I think I do." Alek nodded. She understood what he wanted to say and smiled, thanking him for the explanation.
The fact that her husband answered Alek made Izumi's bad mood worse. She didn't like her husband answering a chick from don't know where trying to seduce him. The chick was giving her man the eyes. It didn't matter if that chick is Pan's child. The chick is going to go down if she continued doing that.
"Sugar pie, I want to go home." Izumi pouted her lips and urged.
"Okay, okay." Junto nodded and turned to his friends. "Sorry, I gotta take my wife home. I'll come back when I drop her." He then walked off.
"How many years have they been married?" Alek asked, seeing the couple walking lovey-dovey.
"About six years. They married young." Panacea sighed. Izumi was possessive and, she knew that because she was one of the kids she helped to grow. And she also had seen how Izumi was giving a deadly stare at Alek.
"How old are they? Izumi looks like she's a little older than me but, Jun looks like in his mid-twenties." Alek asked.
"Jun is twenty-five, and Izumi is twenty-four. I told you they married young. They married on Izumi's eighteenth birthday." Panacea told her shocked daughter.