Shattered by the Sea Lord - Starla Night Page 0,64
least these guys aren’t annoying. Itime said they’re little creatures, like plankton, and just like everything else, they’re attracted to me. On the shore…well, you saw how it usually is.”
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t shield you.”
Meg waved her apology away. “We’re all struggling with these powers. And it didn’t use to be so bad. I cruised the coral every day. One day? Attack of the squids.”
“And there was no warning?”
“None.”
“Hmm. How did you get the plankton to drop away just now?”
“I do this little mantra.” Meg closed her eyes and touched her temples. “I think, ‘Thanks for coming by, little guys, now scoot’ and then poof.”
The Life Tree glowed.
She opened her eyes and smiled again. “Away they float.”
“If you said that to the squid, then you could go in the ocean again.”
Her face fell. Little bits of glitter stuck to her again, winking. “That’s why I wish pushing stuff was my power. I’d shout at the squids, ‘Go on, get out of here! Get off my lawn!’ But, no.”
The tinkling of the Life Tree sounded sadder and more discouraged.
“At least you know your power.” Angie lifted her fingers and teased them through the water. “How do I know?”
Dannika refocused. “At the risk of being annoying, I’d like to point out, Meg, that you shooed away the plankton without pushing them. So you don’t have to go against your preference. If anything, I think you should lean into your true desires, which in this case sounds like gratitude. You thanked the plankton for coming by to say hi. Can you do that to the squids?”
Meg bit her lip.
Yeah, Dannika knew what it sounded like. Just stand in front of the squid hurricane and say, “Hey, thanks for coming by, off you go now.” It warranted the skepticism.
But she continued, “And Angie, don’t hate me for saying this, but I think if something makes you feel powerful, it’s your power.”
Angie cocked her brow. “If something makes me feel powerful, it’s my power? Have you considered writing motivational speeches or greeting cards?”
She laughed. “I know. I know.”
Angie shook her head.
“Dannika’s right,” Bex said.
“My power is whatever makes me feel powerful?” Angie asked with a wry vibration.
“It’s in your mind. I have a certainty when I’m doing this.” Bex flexed, and her feet snapped out to fins, then snapped back to human feet. “You have to feel it.”
Angie put her hands on her hips again.
Bex tapped her forehead. “It’s mental. Like babies.”
“Like babies?” Dannika repeated.
Bex and Angie both looked at Meg.
“Okay, so, it’s just a hypothesis. But.” Meg held out her hands in a pause gesture. “We each had an ‘I want to have this man’s babies’ moment and then got pregnant. Like, the next day. And not just once, but with every kid.”
Bex nodded.
Angie lifted her brows and her chin in “a lady never tells” expression, but that basically admitted that she agreed.
“Tulu is closer to Hadali’s age than Nuno or Lukiyo. Why? Because a year after theirs,” Meg indicated Bex and Angie, “I was like, ‘We’re doing it all the time. What’s the holdup?’ But subconsciously, I expected to get off the island and go back to grad school, and I always planned to have kids after grad school. One day I was watching baby Nuno play with baby Luk, and I thought, ‘Yeah, okay. Maybe we’ll never get off this island, maybe I’ll never go to grad school. Do I want to be a mom? I guess I’m ready to be a mom.’ But I really felt it, you know? A day later, I had morning sickness.”
They only got pregnant when they wanted to…
It made sense. The mind-body connection of mer, their Life Tree, and healing was so much stronger.
Meg summed it up. “I wanted a kid, I had a kid. I wanted another kid, I had another kid. Etcetera.”
“The first set of twins exhausted me,” Angie said. “And I was ready to stop. But then Meg had another cutie, and I thought, maybe one more…”
“And that was the same for me,” Meg said. “Each time mine passed the baby stage. And now my youngest is four, and after what happened to Luk, I…” She glanced at Bex and quickly away, picking at the sparkles sticking to her fingers. “Well, we’re going to leave the island pretty soon. I don’t want to move while I’m pregnant, anyway.”