Page 6 of Chasing Tail
I was sleek and fast under the water. I was pretty quick on the surface too. I didn’t regret having Taron with me in the slightest. Having a friend from home while I did this meant I wouldn’t lose myself on land. He was easy on the eyes if I ignored those legs. Still, trying to pull him to land when he wasn’t used to swimming like this was tiring.
Taron had always been brilliant. He was a fast learner and adaptable. I wasn’t shocked if anyone had managed to escape those nets, it was going to be him. He started kicking those horrible legs and made this a lot easier for me.
Neither of us managed well when we got to shore. I needed to be out of the water and dry before I had legs. Taron had legs but didn’t know how they worked. He was trying to carry me to where it was dry, but we both kept falling into the sand.
Anyone could have seen or heard us, especially since we couldn’t stop laughing. Taron found the same thing funny I did. I would be managing my legs just as well as he was. We had these grand plans to kill the druid king. I had a magic dagger, and Taron could now shift his body, but this wasn’t going as well as we initially thought.
Legs were utterly ridiculous.
Taron finally managed to get to his feet, though he was a bit unsteady. He picked me up and managed to carry me off the beach and into the trees where we wouldn’t be seen. He didn’t totally drop me when he set me down.
“This is weird, Kishi. It smells funny out here.”
I breathed in. I could smell the salt from the ocean, but it was far away. There were so many other unfamiliar smells bombarding us. They weren’t wholly unpleasant, but it was a bit much. It was also much warmer here than the ocean.
“It’s not completely ugly, though. Some of those flowers are pretty.”
“How do you make your legs come out?”
“Well, I’ve never done it before, but I think if my tail dries, it just happens. You have them. How do they work?”
“It doesn’t require a lot of thinking. It’s like swimming. It’s instinct. This is just unfamiliar, so I had to get used to it. My balance is off without fins. Do you require anything to get dry?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never done it before. I think it just happens after a while when you are out of the water. If what Talora said is true, they deliberately left a lot of information out in case we wanted to run away. If that massacre didn’t get them here, I don’t know what will.”
“Well, we can just sit here and get used to land while you dry. If you would also like to admire me and picture me with a tail, you can do that too.”
I shoved his arm. Taron was as hard as a rock. He’d always been a flirt, even as a shark. He flirted with everyone, even if they weren’t sharks. A whale once knocked him clear across the ocean because he said something inappropriate about her blowhole. Taron had been a good-looking shark, and he knew that. I probably just made things worse by telling him he was pretty as a land dweller.
“Please don’t get a fat head because you happen to be pretty. Let’s focus on something else. First, you need to learn to speak.”
“I am speaking.”
“Like the land dwellers,” I said out loud. “They can’t hear you when you talk like we are doing.”
Taron jumped and looked startled. I’d never seen him jumpy like that before. He seemed to be okay enough with having legs he was showing off and flirting, but I guess speaking was where he drew the line. It was kind of adorable. Taron was here with zero fear, and I knew he would kill anyone who tried to hurt me or stop us from completing what we came here to do. He didn’t even pause when he got to the surface. He immediately asked what he looked like. Speaking is what got him?
“It’s okay, Taron. We can’t do this underwater because no one would hear us. Mermaids, sirens, and sea witches are taught how to do this when we are out of the water, but most of us don’t go out of the water often. It was how they communicated the treaty with the land dwellers. It’s still taught just in case it’s needed.”
Taron produced a sound, but it was more of a grunt. He was definitely pouting over this.
“Try this. Sayhello, my name is Taron.”
Taron figured out swimming and his legs fast enough, but what came out of his mouth wasn’t even remotely speech. Instead, it was kind of a grunting wail.
That was when it hit me. Taron didn’t need to talk, and I only needed to when it suited me. Taron and I could communicate just fine without anyone knowing. We could use that. It was just the two of us. We weren’t getting anywhere near the druid king by force. We’d have to be smart about it.
I grabbed Taron and planted a kiss on his mouth.
“Taron, you’re a genius! We can talk without them knowing. If these people think we are mute and can’t spill their secrets, they will reveal all kinds of things around us. Like how we get close to the druid king and stick him with this knife.”
“What was that?”
Something between Taron’s legs was now growing. I had a feeling I knew what it was and what it was for. It went a little different under the sea. I still had my tail and couldn’t even remotely move away from him, so I just awkwardly pointed at it.
“That was a kiss, and you’d better get that under control, buddy.”
“How? It feels like I need to mate, but there are no female sharks around that are fertile. It’s wrong. Why do land-dwellers only have one? I much prefer having two when I’m a shark.”
Talora so didn’t prepare us for this. I thought land dwellers were horrifically deformed since they had legs instead of tails, but I was still drawn to Taron like this. I wanted to touch him, even if I wasn’t sure we’d even be compatible once I was dry and had legs too.
“This is awkward,”I said, looking away.
“I have weird, unnatural instincts like this. I’m going to go behind that strange plant while you dry. I want to see something.”
Taron ambled off while I was left in the sand to see if what I was taught about getting dry was true. We should definitely forget this ever happened if I got legs.
