Chapter 3

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The City of Lights

Penni wakes up in the morning to find Daia uncomfortably close to her face. Her silver hair is bundled into a bun on the back of her head, with two thin red plants trailing out from it. Two tendrils of curly hair that were left out of the bun float around her oval-shaped face. Penni notices an odd stone bowl sitting on the floor in between them.

Daia points at the bowl. “Hurry, eat this. I figured you might be hungry. Once you’re done, we can go to the city.” She raises her eyebrows when Penni doesn’t move. “Come on, we have to leave before my dad wakes up!” she whispers fervently.

Penni peeks into the bowl. It’s actually more like a sphere than a bowl, and it has a wide opening on one side. The food inside has floated up to the sphere’s ceiling. Penni picks at the contents with her webbed fingers, digging out red and green pieces of seaweed. She nibbles on a small piece and is met with a faint, savory taste in her mouth. That’s good enough for her- she’s starving. She aggressively wolfs down the rest, which both transfixes and perturbs Daia.

Daia cautiously takes the bowl away from Penni once she’s finished eating. “Oookay… now that you’re done, let’s get going!”

They swim through the door of plants as quietly as they can and head toward the city.

Daia’s house is more visible in the daylit water, but Penni doesn’t get to see much of it. All she manages to catch a glimpse of is a vast bed of rocks behind the small home. The young mermaids are swimming too fast to see much. Well, Daia is swimming pretty fast and Penni is mostly getting dragged along by the hand as she tries to keep up.

After a while of this, Penni’s arm begin to ache. “Can we slow down yet?” she shouts up to Daia.

Daia shoots a quick glance behind her and begins slowing her pace.

Penni yanks her hand out of Daia’s. “Finally!” She stretches her arm out.

Daia rolls her eyes. “You’re welcome. Try to keep up, okay? We have to swim fast.” Her eyes dart around their surroundings nervously. “I don’t know what would’ve happened if my dad caught us. I’ve never snuck out like this before.” She glances at Penni with a forced impassiveness. “But it’ll be nice to go to the city with someone. I haven’t been in… a really long time.”

“We’re not going to hang out or anything, you know. I’m trying to get home. Just take me to the Kotalek and then go do whatever you want.” Penni scans her surroundings as she swims, still shaken up from the night before. Her expression softens when she sees Daia’s downcast eyes. “Um… thanks for helping me last night, by the way. My name’s Penni. I don’t think I got the chance to tell you.”

“I’m Daia. Lucky for you, the Kotalek is actually where I want to go, too.”

They take a left past a large rock that looks like it’s standing on four legs. “So, I guess I did go the wrong way…” Penni mumbles to herself. She whips around to face Daia. “Hey, what did you do to me last night, anyway? When I was all glowy and weird?”

Daia smiles. “Oh, that. That was just something I made up. I call it a spell of renderance. I was really glad it worked on you, though! I’ve only ever tried it on the fish that swim by my house.”

Penni’s eyes widen in anger and amazement. “And what would have happened if it went wrong?” She raises her eyebrows. “Have you made up a spell of revival, too?”

Daia rolls her eyes as she says, “Let’s just be glad we can understand each other now. You sounded like a cheap siren before I cast that spell.”

“Well, all your clicking was getting on my nerves, too!” Penni’s eyebrows fall into a furrow and she crosses her arms. “So there!”

Daia starts laughing, which melts Penni’s irritated demeanor away. Her mouth twists into a smirk as they swim toward the city. That smirk is quickly wiped off her face when high pitched noises that fall somewhere between a squeal and a scream begin rapidly approaching the two mermaids.

“Ew! What is that?” Penni grimaces as she turns around.

Daia swiftly grabs Penni’s arm and starts swimming as fast as she can. “Orcas!”