When Anna had passed the bag of magic objects to Austin and he'd carried them away, the enchanted starfish had mercifully stopped tormenting her, though they remained fix to her person. Anna sighed with contentment that the teasing had ceased; but damn it all if those stupid echinoderms hadn't gone and made her horny as hell.
Even though it couldn't go anywhere, she was just going to have to spend all this waiting time making out with her Eric in the shallows.
* * * * *
"All right, let's do this." Austin tracked his way back through the park and found the spot where he'd met Anna before, and he waited. After a while, her head peeked up out of the water. Her merman was nowhere to be seen, but Austin didn't mind that one bit. Something about the guy just rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was just his own brotherly instinct to not like the guy banging his sister. Assuming the fish-man was even capable of banging, but Austin had to assume so, or else why would Anna even want to stay with him?
"Anna!" he called out when he spotted her. "I've got the stuff you asked for!"
"Great!" said Anna with a toothy grin as she pulled herself back onto the sand. "I'll put the dress on once I've dried off a bit." She took the crutches and examined them. They looked sturdy enough. "You still have the rock and the Aztec coin I gave you?"
Austin nodded. He pulled out the bag and withdrew the two objects, along with a roll of duck tape. "Best I could think of," he admitted.
"It should work," said Anna. Austin watched in fascination as his sister used the tape to affix the gold coin to one crutch handle (winding the tape roll around it several times to keep it both in place and hidden from sight), and then about twice as much tape to do the same with the rock and the other crutch. Then Anna held onto the crutches, closed her eyes, and focused — and with a 'woosh' of air, suddenly she was upright and balancing on her tail. She experimented with using the crutches to push and pull herself forward — her tailfin dragged a bit on the sand behind her, but nothing scraped her scales or did any damage — and pretty soon Anna was laughing and giggling as she "walked" about on the beach in this very awkward mode of locomotion.
"All right, lemme try the dress now," she said, and Austin gratefully helped her to cover up. Sure enough, the long skirt hung way down over her tail, though if she wasn't careful the fin could still peek out from under the back. "That's no good," said Anna, looking glumly over her shoulder. "I'm either gonna have to wear a wedding dress with a train, or stay out of sight as long as I'm still on land."
"What do you mean 'as long as'?" asked Austin. "Are you really planning on going back to the sea?"
"Austin, I'm a mermaid now. It's not like I can just go back to school and back to my old life! What if I got found out?"
Austin nodded. "Okay, yeah, I get that. But, don't you want to be human again? Isn't there some way?"
Anna sighed. How could she make him understand. "Maybe. There might be more magic that can change me back. But… I don't think I want to come back. After all, how many girls get to be mermaids?"
Austin rolled his eyes. Of course; Anna was living a fantasy. Well, maybe Mom and Dad and the rest of the family could talk some sense into her. "Come on," he said. "Our parents have been worried sick about you."