Life Under the Sea Ch. 02

"They were, but something has come up that's been troubling me and you're the only one I can talk to." says Jesse.

"And?"

"My question is... What do merpeople think of humans?"

"Hmmm... I think merpeople don't care unless they come in direct contact. I hear that merpeople who live near places where oil is being drilled tend to be livid."

"And what would they think of me if I told them that I was a human until recently?"

"Good question. I suppose that if they don't hate you from the first moment you tell them that, then the worst thing would be to just shun you from the rest of their society."

"Okay. I understand."

"I know why you didn't tell them that you were human." says Nikos suddenly.

"What? Yo- you do?" asks Jesse, surprised.

"Of course. You wanted to start over as a mermaid. A new life, a new world, a new identity... You just didn't want to say you were once human to them because you didn't want to admit that you had run away or given up on your old life. It wasn't about you and them. It's just you and you alone. You were a coward as a human. So what do you want to be as a mermaid?"

"I- I- I want to be brave."

"Good."

"How did you know all that?" asks Jesse. "It's almost as if you can-"

"-read minds? Of course I can. Remember what I told you? I'm a son of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. I share a bit of my mother's power."

"Can you tell me what-"

"-Riley's thinking? No. I can only tell the secrets of the mind to the person whose mind I'm looking into. Besides, that would be rude, evil, and sneaky."

Jesse remains silent. She just realized Nikos could just look through her mind and see her darkest secrets.

"Get out of my head. Now." says Jesse, red flowing from her face. "Some things should stay inside my head."

"It's not a power I have control over. I'd have to leave your presence to have your thoughts and memories flowing into my head. Besides, you have my word that I will not speak of what I've seen."

Jesse looks at Nikos with a fierce stare. His eyes meet hers. They stare at each other for several moments before Jesse sighs and drops all anger and embarrassment from her face.

"I guess I can trust you with that..." says Jesse, before pausing. "I was wondering about something... Just before I left here yesterday, I asked you why merpeople look the way they do... So perfect and alluring in every single way I can think of... You just told me that they were born that way, but you didn't explain further than that. Can you tell me now?"

"It's a thrilling tale." begins Nikos. "You won't find any stories about it in any compilations of myths. The story died thousands of years ago in the sea, this sea, in fact."

Nikos pauses and sees that Jesse is looking at him with rapt attention. He is almost reminded of a child listening to her favorite bedtime story. Jesse nudges his side to make him start the tale. Nikos remains silent with a calculating look in his eyes.

"You know what? I really don't feel like telling you." says Nikos.

"What?! What's so wrong about a harmless story?" shouts Jesse, her fists beating on his chest.

"Ow! Stop that!" says Nikos.

"Well?" replies Jesse, her hands returning to her sides.

"The only thing more fun than telling you a thrilling tale is showing you one. I'll need your permission of course."

"What do you mean?" asks Jesse, half-expecting Nikos to pull a projector from out of nowhere. "And what kind of permission would you need to show me something? I'm not a child, I think I can endure the story without having nightmares."

"This isn't a question of your maturity, Jesse. I want to show you a memory, but for that to happen we have to join our minds together as though they are one."

"Fine. I'll allow it I guess. So how do we 'join our minds together'?"

"Just take my hand." replies Nikos.

Jesse looks at him questioningly before taking his hand in her own.

"Are you ready?" asks Nikos.

"As ready as I could possibly be..." says Jesse.

"All right then... Three... Two... One...."

The exact instant after the word, 'One', came out of Nikos' mouth. a sharp tingling sensation flows into the hand holding Nikos'. It is almost as if he were shocking her with lightning. The tingling sensation gives her absolutely no time to react or think, it travels up her arm and into her head. And then all was black.

Suddenly, all that darkness becomes light with everything around Jesse becoming white. Jesse finds herself floating in this unfamiliar world that contains neither air nor water though she has no trouble with breathing. It is a weird feeling to see white everywhere you look and to be floating at the same time. Lack of gravity prevents Jesse from telling up from down. While she is befuddled by the whole scene, Nikos pops into view without warning.

"Hiya!"

"Don't do that!" screams Jesse at the top of her lungs.

"Sorry." replies Nikos wincing.

"So when am I going to see this tale?" asks Jesse.

"Now."

Again, Nikos' words act like a spell and the pure white scene around them fades away instantly. Jesse is suddenly in the middle of a busy marketplace. Humans are all around her trying to go about their day. She tries to avoid them by moving her tail. She swims though the air as if it were water, but there is no point to it all. Every human that comes close to touching her body just goes through her as if she were an opaque ghost. Jesse looks over to Nikos who just looks back at her, clearly amused. Jesse swims through a crowd of men to reach Nikos' side.

"This is a memory?" asks Jesse.

"Yeah, it is. All of the people around you can't see, smell, hear, feel, or taste you. I brought us here a little early, so take some time to take in it all."

"Before that, if this is a memory from thousands of years ago, who did it belong to?"

Nikos quickly turns away from her. Jesse, feeling insulted at him ignoring her question, swims around him to face him ready to scold. However, he sees that he isn't avoiding her gaze; he is actually staring over her shoulder apparently looking for something. Then he raises his arm to point at something. Jesse turns around immediately.

"This is the memory of that kid over there." says Nikos.

Jesse sees a boy slightly obscured by the passing people. He appears to be at least eighteen years old. Jesse swims over in curiosity knowing no one but Nikos can detect any hint of her presence. Up close, she can see he has messy brown hair that looks like it has been tangled for years. His eyes are brown as well and just stare blankly at the ground. His face is youthful and handsome but something about that face gives her an uncertain feeling. Jesse continues looking at him curiously, trying to figure out about him troubles her. His upper body is bare, allowing anyone to see his athletic build. He is wearing an ornately designed midnight blue skirt that goes down to his ankles. Seeing the skirt, which strikes her as out-of-place, but looking around, she sees that this is a somewhat common fashion for the men in this memory. Still comparing the young man in front of her to the other men, it seems to Jesse that dark hair, dark eyes, and tanned skin are the norm here.

"Is this you, Nikos?"

"Yeah. That's me from about six thousand years ago."

"So you're immortal?" asks Jesse surprised.

"Yeah. What did you expect from the son of a goddess? Anyway, let's start with the tale..."

Nikos points up over the buildings around them towards a magnificent palace that rises like a mountain in this city. The building is so large and richly decorated, it even rivals the sun in it's dominance of the sky.

"That is the Paragon Azure Pavilion. It is the palace and capital of the island of Atlantis, which is where we are right now." continues Nikos.

"Capital? Isn't this the capital?"

"No. There is a separate city inside the palace. So, inside the palace also resides the royal family as well as all the aristocrats of the entire country. That is part of the reason for the destruction of Atlantis which, as it happens, happened the day after today."

"So it did meet a quick, violent end?"

"Yeah. It did." says Nikos solemnly. "You see, the royal family and those aristocrats were seeking a way to become gods, a highly treacherous act considering divine powers were what gave life to this island. Most people didn't even have a clue as to what was happening. The gods had already made their decision about the fate of the entire island."

"So what does this have to do with merpeople?" asks Jesse.

"You'll see."

When Jesse nods, both she and the older Nikos float closer to the other Nikos. Seeing the two Nikos' at the same time reminds Jesse of the dream she had when there were two of her. Strangely enough, a Jesse appears from the crowd. Almost every detail about this woman reminds the mermaid of herself, yet every part of her brain tells her that this isn't her. She appears to be roughly the younger Nikos' age.

"The resemblance is amazing but she's not you, nor are you a reincarnation of her." says Nikos suddenly. "Her name's Alethea."

Jesse turns to Nikos before turning back to the woman called Alethea. She and the younger Nikos converse intensely for several minutes. Apparently, Nikos wants to show her something. The two of them run towards the Paragon Azure Pavilion with the older Nikos and Jesse floating close behind. The younger Nikos and Alethea sneak past the guards of the palace and enter a gold balcony overlooking a great meeting hall. They crouch down and look at the people talking below them. Jesse and the older Nikos float down to where the people are meeting since no one can see nor hear them.

They find themselves beside a group of old men sitting around the circle and talking in a strange language. Nikos tells Jesse that they are speaking Atlantean. The subject is the path to godhood and the overthrowing of Zeus and the Pantheon. The scene before them fades and becomes a bare room. Jesse looks at the Nikos beside her and sees a sad smile on his face. Nikos and Alethea are sleeping on the floor when a loud thunder awakes both of them. They quickly get up and run outside.

The sky is over-littered with storm clouds. Lightning crowds in the atmosphere keeping up a constant, flickering light. In the distance all four of them see tidal waves rushing towards the island, all hundreds of feet tall. More loud noises tell them that even the land beneath them is being ripped open. The older Nikos explains that the punishment upon Atlantis has handed down by Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Soon after he finishes explaining, the tidal wave crashes down upon the younger Nikos and Alethea. Jesse's eyes widen seeing that all of the people engulfed by the wave turn into merpeople, all except Nikos.

"As you can see, the gods sunk Atlantis into the sea. Almost all trace of a human civilization was wiped away." says the older Nikos.

"So why were all the people turned into merpeople?" asks Jesse.

"They were innocent of the crimes of the aristocrats so they were all transformed into merpeople to suit life in the water, as their home was now underwater."

"That doesn't explain why merpeople look so beautiful, which was the whole point of my question earlier."

"The reason lies in a flaw that the gods have: they favored physical beauty over intellectual beauty. Atlantis, just before its fall, was in decline. However, it had dominated the world with its research into magic as well as technology. It was a center for all the world's learning. It was not until five and a half millennia later did humans recover most of the lost knowledge from this city. They were envied by all who lived away from its shores. On the eve of its destruction, the gods had decided to give them unearthly beauty to make up for their losses. Yes, they were still envied, but for less admirable reasons." says Nikos bitterly.

"Why didn't you become a merman?" asks Jesse.

"My mother intervened on my behalf. She did not want her son to favor the physical over the intellectual, so I was protected from the transformation. I am grateful that she did, but I quickly became envious and full of regret anyway."

"Why?"

"Keep on watching."

Jesse watches as the water sweeps all around them without affecting her or the older Nikos. Even the tallest buildings in the distance were completely submerged. She then sees the younger Nikos and Alethea swept in the current, their arms tightly around one another. Alethea was already a mermaid and her clothes were all lost from the wave and transformation. The scene suddenly disappears and Jesse and the older Nikos find themselves back in his hut on the beach. Jesse releases his hand from her grip.

"What happened to her?"

"She was tied to the sea, being a mermaid. I built this hut soon after the destruction of Atlantis. She lived on this very beach and we saw each other every day..." says Nikos with a solemn tone in his voice.

Jesse opens her mouth to say something but Nikos answers her immediately.

"I did love her. We lived as orphans in Atlantis for almost all our lives. Anyway, let me bring you back into the water. You wouldn't want them to worry."

"I know. Thanks." says Jesse.

Nikos slowly gets up and cradles Jesse into his arms. When they get outside, Jesse sees that the sun is almost in the same place in the sky as when she dragged herself across the sand towards the hut.

"It looks like no time has passed. I thought it took a long time to show me that." says Jesse.

"Ah. The amazing thing about the mind is that you can go back in time six thousand years, watch several hours worth of history, and come back in the span of a couple seconds."

Nikos brings Jesse into the water until he is waist-deep before releasing her. Jesse swims around for a bit, enjoying the sensual feel of the water flowing against her body. She surfaces in front of Nikos who is still standing in place looking at her.

"Thanks for showing me that memory." says Jesse.

Nikos bows down and kisses the mermaid on the forehead.

"No problem. It was my pleasure." replies Nikos with a smile.

With a wave of her hand and flick of her tail, Jesse departs from the beach and heads back to the village of Okeanos. Riley is still on her mind and he still unwittingly drives her to swim faster. Her mind is also occupied by the memory that Nikos had just shown her. It raises far more questions than it answered. Still, Jesse reminds herself that she can always come back to get the rest of the story.

Meanwhile many thousands of miles away, a young man wakes with a start. His cell's ringtone fills the room with the sounds of his favorite song. He waits a few seconds before picking up. He looks at his watch; a few hours ago, he had just been entertaining a gorgeous blonde at a club. Right now, that blonde is sleeping soundly at his side, naked as the day she was born. The man reaches over and picks up his cell phone off of the bedside table and presses the send key before holding the phone lazily against his head.

He hears weeping on the other end. The familiar voice says something but he does not understand the first so he asks the person to repeat what had just been said. He then hears it. He swore that he heard wrong but dares not ask for the voice to say it a third time. It is horrible news and it shakes him so. Tears well up in his eyes. The man can't help but ask himself if it's true.

"Jesse? Missing?"