How do you describe stepping into mother ocean’s embrace after a lifetime of drought? I knew how to use my gills, as a child I’d been sent to testing rooms with pools. Didn’t have to do the bromine tests after throwing a doctor through a plate glass window, which was good, but the incident ended my trips out of my cell.

The ocean was nothing like the stale pools of the facility. Even the saltwater pools were nothing like it. Such a vast expanse of life that was alien to me, the sounds and thoughts softened yet amplified by the ocean itself.

Whoever named it Pacific, meaning peaceful, had no friggin’ clue what he was naming though.

Everywhere was life, the struggle to feed, breed, bear young, survive in an environment with no forgiveness. It was savagely beautiful and as I ventured deeper into the night-dark waters somewhere off the PCH with Zothie, I knew how Gwen could love it so much.

“This is amazing,” I thought-said (I’m just going to write like we’re talking but its mind-to-mind) to Zothie.

“Yeah, I missed it,” he murmured back with a sigh before releasing his form to take his native one. Gone was the tall man that bore resemblance to me. In its place was Zoth Ommog as he was born, though in a smaller scale. His body bore head of a reptilian carnivore, with a snake-like outline overall accented with four starfish-like limbs and a barrage of tendrils along his dorsal spines. For a mortal, I can see why his true form would be nightmare fuel. But I found him darkly beautiful in his true form as he stretched in the water next to me. He chuckled and said, “Glad you aren’t driven mad by my true form. I’m keeping it small, so we don’t trigger human radar.”

“That would be a pain,” I agreed, darting down to look at a Morey eel. It opened a sleepy eye and studied me; its jaw held loose but ready. I sent soothing thoughts to it and moved on, struck by the rocky beauty. Different types of sand, boulders and outcrops littered the seabed as we moved deeper to the drop off. I followed Zoth Ommog as we plunged into the darkness, and it was peaceful, quiet, cool, encompassing.

I flared my tendrils and rocketed past him, easily threading my way between rocks, around the few animals that were moving in the zone and had to stop suddenly when a basking shark three times my length passed in front of me, his ancient eyes depthless as the sea itself.

I tried to talk to him, but the plankton eater ignored me or didn’t hear me. I gave a growl of irritation and turned to Zoth Ommog. “Why didn’t he answer me like Gwen’s sharks do?”

“Different skill sets,” he answered me, stroking the shark with a tendril before it went off on its way. “Also, Gwen needed help from her sharks, so her abilities kicked on in that direction. You, my dear, are in no danger with me here. So, desperation does not drive you. Plus, plankton eaters can be snotty. He probably just didn’t want to talk. Basking sharks are quite solitary, you know.”

“No, I did not know,” I groused. “Not like I’m banging a pair of marine biologists.”

“Yeah, that does give Gwen a tendril up,” he agreed. “Do you want to?”

“Bang them? Eww, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Fuck no. I just… I don’t like not knowing things. It pisses me off.”

“A good drink might settle you down,” Zoth Ommog snickered, dodging a badly thrown rock. “I more meant do you want that kind of romantic attachment?”

“Not really,” I admitted as I took note of deep belling voice further out. I must have looked puzzled.

“Grey whales,” he told me. “Race you?”

We shot through the water, in and among the cetaceans, who were much more social than the snotty shark. Their minds were full of thoughts of calves, both born and to be born, mating and the joys of journeying. Surrounded by them, I could see why Gwen had gone by sea on her journey south. But I liked human food too much, I decided after absently snatching a sea bass and eating it.

“Yuck, cross sushi off my desired list of stuff to try,” I hissed, spitting out the bass. Laughter bubbled in my mind.

“Hunger get the better of you?”

“Yes,” I admitted as my stomach howled. “I guess still hungry after the Gazing. How long does recovery usually take?”

“I don’t know, never tried it while in a mortal shell,” Zoth Ommog told me while wrapping a tendril about my waist. He settled me behind his massive head, an eye rolling back to make sure I was secure. He gave a snort of bubbles and took off. Soaring through the water at speeds I would never achieve on my own, we rocketed back toward the shore, occasionally breeching in the water.

Tendrils flaring, both Zoth Ommog and I were laughing with each breech. He would shoot out of the water and slam back down into it, sensation and water streaming around us.

“This is amazing,” I sighed as we climbed up the rocky beach. “How did you survive without it?”

“I slept, a lot, and played in the minds of those who dreamed of the sea,” Zothie told me, taking his human form once more. He was perfectly dry, of course.

My braids were a sopping mess as I trudged to one of the showers by the parking lot. Rinsing the salt from them, I looked back out at the sea while pulling my rash guard down to make sure my tendrils stayed covered. “If the food was better, I’d never want to leave, I don’t think.”

“Let’s hit the road, we can get amazing Asian food in and outside San Francisco,” Zothie said, smacking me with a towel. I growled at him and he laughed. “Plus things from everywhere else in the world. And we’ll stop by the Ghirardelli Chocolate Outlet store on our way out of town. It’s worth the detour.”

“Chocolate, haven’t tried that yet,” I mused as I crawled into the back of the Jeep. A few moments of barrel rolls and I was dressed in cargo pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a puffy vest with the stuffing mostly removed, thick socks and hiking boots. I set to work pulling my braids out with my tendrils in the dark of the car. “I wonder if I can handle having humans touch my hair. It would be nice to get it done professionally.”

“You could look up some videos,” he said, tossing me his phone. “And you have to try chocolate and Ghirardelli is choice.”

“On hair care?” I tuned him out as I started flying through the phone’s apps and finding a video one. I plugged in “natural hair care” into the search window and clicked on the first woman with skin and hair like mine. A video from Naptural85 came up and I loved it. I had always been forced to keep my hair short and in tight braids, so it broke a lot in my childhood.

Grabbing a jug of water and the remaining cookies, I buckled in and started learning. By the time we hit San Francisco, we’d added a hair care store to our electronics and chocolate store plans. And food, more food.

I also learned why I got some of the looks I had since we got out. I spoke like a high-end scientist but looked like a young woman of color barely of age to vote. It broke people’s paradigms and I’d keep doing so. It was good for them, I decided with a smirk. My tendrils had finished unbraiding my hair and it was quickly drying into a shoulder length mass of semi-curled frizz. I sighed as I looked into the rear-view mirror.

“Want to find a salon first,” Zothie asked, having read my concern. “You can use the Yowl app for that, should be able to find a nice one. We can grab breakfast in Richmond after we cross over San Pablo Bay, then find a haircare place in Oakland.”

I opened the application and began digging through the results. “There’s a place at 11th and MLK that looks good. I want to try a twist out, I think that’s what Naptural called it. Hers was really pretty.”

“You sound excited,” he told me.

“Well, it’s get excited about this or bitch about the migrane from being so close to so many other people,” I said honestly. “It’s already starting to hurt.”

With a sigh, he pulled us over into a parking lot. The building it belonged to was as dark as the skies around us. The clock in the car claimed it was around 6am as he started talking. “I have to ask, have you never learned how to block out other minds? Are you just receiving everything 24/7?”

“Basically,” I said with a ‘no-duh’ tone. “Even in my dreams, I hear others. Sometimes daddy-darkest talks to me in my dreams.”

“Ok, first lesson of God Lessons, how to block out the mortal jabbering,” he said putting a hand on my head. “Remember how this feels.”

I focused on his hand, the sensation of him in my mind, ignoring the low-grade burble of humans waking up in the suburb around us. I hissed as he hit some kind of trigger and gave a sigh of relief at the blessed silence that surrounded us. Just the sound of the engine rumbling, him breathing and no people. I closed my eyes to focus on the twist of mental chords he hit and as he released them, I “pressed” the same chord again, bringing the silence back.

“It’ll get easier with practice,” he told me. “And painless as well. You just need to exercise the mental muscles that stop you from hearing everything. I honestly don’t know why you haven’t sank further into madness than any of your other sisters.”

“I’m stubborn and I still sank into moments of psychic hell, just screaming what I heard,” I whispered, looking away from him and the minds outside the car returned to their former volume. I sighed and leaned my head back on the headrest. “I think I’ve spent a third of my life sedated for fuck’s sake and that more to keep my screams from hurting others. The head scientist in particular didn’t like the sound of me. Wretched bitch.”

“They sound like a piece of work,” he murmured, looking through my memories. At my growl, he pulled back. “Sorry, sorry, forgot you don’t like to share like that.”

“I have had to share everything my entire life, let me have my mind to myself for a bit, okay?”

“You got it,” he agreed as my stomach gave a roar. “I’ll take you to breakfast at some café. You find a good one?”

I hit the mental chord to silence the world around me and returned to my map app. “Let’s try the Dipsea Café- looks interesting and has cakes. There’s one off the PCH in Mill Valley before we hit San Francisco proper. We going to go over the Golden Gate Bridge? I heard the guards talk about it before.”

“I wish to see both bridges in the City of Two Bridges,” Zothie said with a nod. “We’ll be stuck in nasty traffic but as we have no where to be anytime soon, it’s all good.”

“I do want to get down to Mexico but that’s not on a firm timeline,” I agreed. It took us about forty-five minutes to get to the café and it was worth the wait. It was cute, vivid blues and wood paneling. Because it was a quiet Wednesday morning, we were the only ones to take a table when we walked in, everyone else grabbing food to go.

Our server matched the décor, blue eyes, curly blonde hair and a sweet voice. “Hi, I’m Sandy, what can I get you two to drink?”

“What’s good,” I asked, face buried in the menu. “To drink I mean.”

“The Coco Berry smoothie is my personal fav and our hazelnut cappuccino is a great sweet wake up,” she told me, pen poised.

“I’ll take both of those,” I said, running a finger down the breakfast menu. “I’ll also take the Dispea Special, scrambled with bacon, French Toast with bananas, and I don’t know what Gravlax is but the scramble with it sounds good.”

She looked me up and down. “All that for just you?”

Zothie laughed. “Yes, just for her. I’ll take the Chef’s Omelette with a side of chicken-apple sausage and an Espresso with a side of water.”

It took her a moment to write everything down and I could hear her thinking I was just ordering that much to waste my “friend’s” money. I smiled sweetly as I handed her the menu and said, “If the food’s good, I plan to eat all of it.”

“You eat all of that and I’ll buy your breakfast,” she said with a snort, disbelief overcoming her customer service face for a moment. She blushed hotly and revised, “I’m sorry, but that’s a lot of food and I’ll be happy to wrap whatever you don’t eat to go.”

She scurried off to the kitchen as Zothie snickered, dark eyes dancing. “Scare the poor girl, why don’t you.”

“I don’t like being doubted,” I said, chin lifting. “And the food here smells good, I have high hopes.”

The food was as good as it smelled and I practiced turning off the mental voices of the café’s customers throughout breakfast as I plowed through everything I ordered, an order of Baklava and I got a chocolate layer cake to take with us. The server tried to pay for our meal but Zothie would have none of it, tipping her for having the audacity to backtalk a godling.

We were buckling back into the Jeep when Zothie’s phone rang. He spoke in a language I hadn’t heard before but knew anyway.

“Yes, I know my father is awake… yes… no… you are not to help the asshole… yes there are other god’s children… I’ll ask.”

He looked up at me with a wicked grin. “You wanna go spring your sisters out of hock or let them rot for their ineffectiveness?”

“If they’re destined to get out, it will be without my aide,” I said honestly. “There is no force on Earth aside from Gwen that could get me back in that hell-hole.”

“She says no,” he said into his phone. He gave them the location of the facility, what I’d told him of the guards and prisoners and warned them to be careful. Not all of my sisters were sane or would welcome rescue. “Yes, I’ll let her know if you say any of them want to talk but you are not to tell them I sent you. Be careful, you mean more to me than any godling, my dearest priestess.”

He blathered for a bit longer before hanging up and handing me the phone. “Next stop, hair shop- set the course, co-pilot!”

I rolled my eyes and programed in the hair salon I’d picked out. Hopefully, things would work out well and I’d have a new do. Or whatever the colloquial lexicon was. Fuck.