Catherina - Day 21

I had been sleeping in an underwater cave for a long time, so long that I found my tail wholly buried in sand and dirt when I was woken up by a shaft of sunlight. I dazed, for my eyes were so used to the darkness that I doubted if they were going to degenerate like those of my smaller neighbors. Eyeballs underneath my skin – ew, my taste did align with humans at this moment.

I sat up in the cave, my head almost touching the ceiling, and I blinked my eyes for a few times to contain the tears – although they would blend into the surrounding instantly, I could still feel them itching at the rim of my eyes. Then, I turned, in a nearly intuitive way, to my left, where my parent was still asleep, and the sands layered up to just below his chest. I observed his neck and felt reassured when I found slight water patterns around his gills. He was breathing steady and occasionally blowing a little bubble, snoring in a merman’s way.

After twisting my tails to awaken some stiff muscles, I looked to a small hole popped up near the ceiling, where the sunlight had come in. That brightness had caused me a second of panic after waking up, as I thought about drying up under the sun into a salt fish, the scariest story you could tell a larva. Now, as I was fully immersed in water and was breathing freely, I was curious to explore outside of the cave.

Had I told before that my tail had grown? I had probably slept through my adolescence, or at least most of it. You see, my parent and I had moved to this cave shortly after my other parent had gone, and we fell asleep shortly after the relocating. I had not been long out of the larva when we were moving. Since my tails and fins had now a darker shade of turquoise - hardly any lighter than my parents (as the color of our fins indicates the level of maturity) - I must have slept for a few decades. In other words, I had missed a few decades of life outside the cave.

But my other parent was killed by the outside world, and even though I was still a larva by then, I overheard some conversations about her collision with a human’s transportation vessel, a “Yachi” or something like that. That was when my parent became upset, and shortly after, we moved here far away from our community for a prolonged dream.

The light was fading, and I imagined it to be like a departing visitor who was too shy to stay long. I turned to take another look of my parent – I had a lingering notion that he would never wake up again – and poked at the wall with my fingernail that had grown a bit longer than what could be called “graceful.” A grain of dirt fell out and soon dispersed. Then, I made the hole a bit larger, and larger, and larger, until I could fit my shoulders through it. Outside was a peaceful bottom of a waterbody, where dots of light scattered across the surface, lighting up my surrounding water filled with watergrasses and little fishes the size of my palm. I deemed no danger creeping about.

Carefully and slowly to minimize the disturbance, I squeezed myself through that hole by tilting my body into a queer angle. When I was out of the cave completely, I tucked myself up into a ball, hands around the tailfin, and stayed still floating in midwater. I needed time to process such freedom filtering through my gills, which brought an unfamiliar taste of salty bitterness. Afterward, I recalled that scene as vivid as I was watching it happen nearby. The water was muddy and cloudy by human eyes, and in the center of the picture floated a young mermaid, who huddled herself tightly, and her hair, long and dark as watergrass, spread out around her. She shut her eyes in a relaxed manner and allowed herself to drift along with the current. Within the entire system, she was motionless as dead. But she was breathing, and every cell of her resurrecting. Thereupon she opened her eyes and swam straight up.

I could not remember the exact process of me getting out of the water, but I was undoubtedly transformed into another individual when stepping on the firm land. I, being the mermaid, remained spiritually intact and was not replaced. However, I had absorbed and internalized another set of memory and personality, which was surprisingly familiar as if I had been living her life forever. Even my attire was different. Now I wore a denim jacket, a T-shirt, and a short, two legs instead of one tail, and my hair was cut short into a bob. Cool. I commented.

Standing on a dock, I had a vast sapphire lake on one side (under where I had been sleeping, most likely) and a light rail station on the other. People were passing by, and among them, a lady stood out to me. She was wearing a purple dress and had dark, wavy hair. Why was she special? I did not know, and the lady was walking towards me with a firm face, which reminded me of a sedate headmistress of a girl’s boarding school. She scared me, and thus I rushed into the light rail station – I had a public transit card in my pocket.

I arrived at a large construction, something like a university library. Although I did not its exact name, I understood its educational purpose - I came to this place to take a class. Looking around me, I could see the interior of this building was primarily wooden, and the ceiling was two-stories high. I was standing in a long hallway, and beside me were blocks of classrooms in an asymmetric distribution, and in total, they looked like a sliced-open magic cube.

I stood still for a moment to admire the state-of-the-art interior design. Then, I walked towards one classroom, the door of which shut tightly. Although I could hear nothing from the outside, I could see from a circular panel on the door that the classroom was full, and a man in a striped shirt stood in the front.

The class I intended to take was going on, a door away from me. Mysteriously, my courage of knocking on the door had diminished so soon that I had forgotten my possession of it. Therefore, I retreated and chose to take the stairs beside the room.

Four staircases upwards – avoid people who sat on the stair along the way – I came to an open balcony facing an immense stretch of water, a bay. I leaned on the handrail for an extended period, for that pure azure was soothing, healing even. Up above, the sun was mild like an over-cooked egg yolk surrounded by numerous interwinding marshmallows. Bay gulls howled, hovering low beside the red umbrellas of that open-air café beside me. My face felt the gentle touch of breeze that carried the fresh, sweet smell of salty water and dolphins far away. Dolphins, I could not see them but to sense their existence somewhere over the horizon.

I ought to feel at home by the sea, as I was born in water and would forever stay there. Nonetheless, my terrestrial soul rejected it and would love to stay away. As I was currently on land and not in my dark, sand-filled cave under a lake, I fulfilled its will. I went back down by the stairs and walked to the end of the hallway, where a glass gate led to an open platform – another light rail station.

I boarded the city-bound train, which had no driver’s cabin, just like the ones at the airport. In front of me, a large glass window allowed a full bird’s eye view of the city, or, in other words, the peninsula.

The city was a crowded one: buildings layered upon each other like matchboxes, or trees fighting for an extra glare while trying to suffocate the opponents. Too crowded that I could not distinguish any individual – all I could make out was a diverging railroad that formed a large, distorted “Y” shape cutting through the city, somehow resembling a pair of fallopian tubes.

Our cabin was ascending – not floating in midair in a surreal way – or rather, the entire dimension was ascending. We moved through clouds, and soon the city could no longer be seen.

photo credit: https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/11/68/ed/e4/rooftop-cafe-with-sea.jpg