Lecanora wrapped me in her Olympian’s embrace. It felt like coming home and I found myself collapsing into her. You know, at home I’m happy to wrap my arms around victims of all kinds of horrible stuff, squeeze them and lend some human warmth. I don’t judge them as sobs wrack their bodies through every kind of hell. But I never, ever let myself go.
I can’t. Not when people need me to be strong.
Sometimes it’s hard being different, and I never had anyone to share the burden with. Except beautiful, quirky Lecanora, who I figured always felt a little like me.
An outsider, even on the inside.
“Where did you go, Rania, you’ve been gone hours?” Concern dug lines into her face.
Oh no, I couldn’t talk about him. Not yet.
Lecanora looked far away, and sadder than I’d ever seen her. I knew by the change in her face she wasn’t thinking about my escapade with the beautiful merman any longer. “And why have you stayed away from Aegira so long? All these years?”
“Oh Norsha,” I sighed into her hair, using my childhood name for her. “It’s so good to see you.” This is what I really wanted to talk about right now. I wanted to make things right between us. “It’s been so long.” I wanted to break my promise to myself and tell her, even though I’d never told anybody about the prediction. “I had to… I had to stay away.”
What could I say? “I wanted to come back. Lots of times. But… but I just couldn’t. And now everything’s gone mad.” I looked at her and felt the old hurt. I was a teenager again. “I don’t know what happened. What did I do wrong to make you go cold on me?”
Lecanora covered her mouth at my words, and lowered her face. “Oh Ransha, Ransha,” she started, stroking my hair in a universal gesture of comfort. Apart from Mom, she’s the only one who ever calls me that. “It wasn’t you. You didn’t do anything.”
I remembered it so well. Things had started to get a little cool between me and my BFF when some of the other, younger mermaids started referring to me as dirt-dweller. They weren’t trying to be cruel, they were just stating fact. Sometimes they wouldn’t even say it. I would just see it lying there in their mind, a label without value. Like they’d say food, music, fish. I was always strong, even for a mermaid, and at twelve or thirteen I hadn’t quite learned to control my hot Sicilian temper. And it hurt, the things they said. So I kinda kicked some mermaid ass. Which, in retrospect, was unfair. After all, we can’t help what we think. And let’s face it, if land people could read my thoughts I’d never be out of the hospital.
As I came back to myself, I saw that Lecanora was crying. It’s the most beautiful thing. Did I mention it? Mermaids cry silver tears. I always figured it was so you could see them underwater. Glistening. “It was so hard here. I was trying to do the right things. And Kraken...”
That asshole. I shoulda known he’d have something to do with how distant Lecanora had been with me in the few years before I’d taken off. The guy’s been yanking her chain her whole life. Pull an orphaned girl out of the sea and make her a Princess and you think you own her.
I put my finger over her lips. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to tell me what he said. What he did.” I turned her face to mine and looked at her seriously, right in the eyes. “We’re good now, though. Right?”
She nodded, silver tears still streaming down her face. We rested like that a few moments, before she spoke again, and when she did, it was just like she was channeling my thoughts. “We’re different, Rania, you and I. I mean, different from them. You, of course. But me too. I know it inside. There’s something different about me too.”
I nodded. She’s right, I knew it. Always have.
“We must always stick together. From now on. We must always be… in the same pod.”
I laughed at the term, but felt sad inside that ‘always’ might only be a few weeks. “Well,” I smiled at her. “Let’s not get ideas above our station now…”
She laughed too. “I have no idea what that means. But I did see you talking to