Sam was enjoying the meal in the dining hall; it wasn’t anything special as far as he could tell. It was basically an underwater version of a basic meals. As they spent more time as merfolk one of the things which fascinated him was that while all the food fell into 5 basic types, fish, crustaceans, sea algae, seaweed and corals everything tasted different. There was bread made from seaweed which tasted a lot like wheat bread, there was a type of fish which tasted like chicken and aged sea algae which tasted like cheese. That came to mind now as he ate a grilled fish and cheese sandwich however the fish tasted like chicken.
Sitting across from him eating a seaweed salad with a good helping of his sea weed fries which while both came from what on the surface he would pass off as sea weed tasted very different from each other now was the love of his life Taylor.
“So, what is our plans?” inquired Sam as Taylor looked up from her meal.
“UH?”
“What is our plans?” inquired Sam
“I guess it is basically the same as it was on the surface, you will start working at a law firm or given that Nate is the crown prince possibly the government, my teacher says I am talented and catching on quickly so with luck I should be able to get a job in my field easy enough.” said Taylor as she noticed the look in Sam’s now red eyes, she was still getting used to the red eyes but they where growing on her. “You weren’t talking about us where you?”
“No.” answered Sam with the shake of his head.
“My mom.” stated Taylor, as she thought about it. Karen was nearing 50 years old; she had built a life on land and now she had left it all to join her at sea. She and Taylor’s late father had started a flower shop when she was only in her early 20s. True started out to make extra money while her father worked in her grandfather’s heating and cooling business. That business was always going to go to her uncle, her fathers’ eldest brother but her father wanted to show his folks that he could run a business. In the end, the flower shop never did reach the equal of the heating and cooling business, but it got very close and it didn’t have almost 3 generations of history on it’s side. That was gone, she was sure someone would take over the business maybe one of her mom’s cousins or someone on her father’s side but now the issue was what would Karen do under the sea.
“My mom is a strong woman I am sure she will be….” Started Taylor.
“I am not worried about her not making it here, she is a strong woman just like you, I am worried about 2 things.” Said Sam as he began to count points on his fingers. “First While we are blessed to have Nate or should I say Cain on our side we should be able to stand…well float on our own. I don’t want to overuse that. I know how it is like when people overuse friendships to get stuff and I don’t want to do that to our friend.”
Taylor had to nod in agreement, Sam was from an extraordinarily rich and a very powerful family on the surface and was used to people becoming his friend just to get that connection. The reason he got along with Nate was because Nate was not afraid to call him a spoiled rich kid and that earned respect from Sam.
“Secondly do you your mother is ready to deal with the public pressure?” inquired Sam as Taylor raised an eyebrow. “Even you said that Rose is basically a sister to you, and you thought of Rose’s mom as your second mom and Rose felt the same about your mom. Because her mother is not here, for the lack of a better term your mother is basically going to be put in the role of mother to a future Queen. That is a lot to deal with.”
Taylor had to admit he had a point, she recalled when she first started dating Sam her photo showed up on the front page of a newspaper as she stood talking to the State’s governor while they were at Sam’s folks party. The paper hadn’t focused on her of course, she was just there but she did get a lot of questions about it from her friends. It would be worse for her mother and truth be told herself as well, she was best friend to a future Queen and her mother may fall into the role of mother of the Queen.
“We will just have to handle it the best we can.” answered Taylor her blonde hair floating a bit before she grinned. “And here I thought you were going to ask me hard questions like where you want to move to and when do you want to get married?”
“Well as for moving that depends on where each of us gets a job and as for marriage sorry your wedding ring you had picked out without me knowing is back at our apartment on land.” said Sam as Taylor’s eyes widened, he was not supposed to know that she had picked out her own ring. She and Rose had run into each other at the jewelry store, Rose was helping Sam pick a ring for her and she was helping Nate/Cain pick a ring out for Rose. Both men where hopeless when it came to jewelry so had entrusted their girlfriend’s best friend to aid them, they had not expected to run into each other, but it worked out in the end. “Nate told me what happened, Rose admitted it to him.”
“Damn her, I will have to talk to her about that.” said Taylor as Sam grinned a bit but looked up and waved his hand. Taylor was confused until she turned her head and saw her mother coming toward her with the help of that Doctor. She had to smile as she noticed how close her mother was hanging on to the Doctor’s arm, they did make a good-looking couple. Her mother had been in a funk after losing her husband 5 years ago but in the past year or so she had started dating again but while some of the guys seamed nice none lasted more than 3 dates. Then she noticed her mother let go of the doctor’s arm and she went a little wild on swimming. She wasn’t used to swimming with only a single limb. Still she made it over to them, she looked younger and had a few bronze, gold and brass color scales while her eyes had shifted to a golden color.
“Well, you aren’t going to end up with a yellow tail.” joked Taylor as her mom sat beside her, her mom looked younger as well. In the back of her mind, she thought bronze and silver went very well together as the Doctor helped her sit down.
“I must admit I am happy about that.” Said Karen as she looked up at the Doctor. “Thank you very much.”
“You are welcomed, I would join you for a meal, but I must get back to my rounds.” Said the Doctor as he nodded his head and swam away.
Taylor couldn’t help but smile, but the reason she was smiling was because of the smile on her mother’s face. She hadn’t seen her smile like that since her father passed away.
Elsewhere in the same building Kat looked at herself in the mirror with some hatred and disappointment. It was that she was mermaid now, she was happy about that Merfolk society was far more accepting of lesbians then any surface and most of all Amanda her love was now a mermaid as well. A very active mermaid more so than she was a human with improvements to her figure, smaller waste a slightly bigger bust which was already very large and other small refinements. At first when Amanda told her about her improvements, she was slight offended it seamed a little sexiest but then she learned the same thing happened to merman, stronger frames more muscle definition and so on. She changed her mind to think of mermaids not as a type of half human half fish but more in line with half fish half fey/elves from her days playing D&D behind her religious parents backs. That caused her to look on it more naturally.
No the thing that was making her angry was her scales where coming in and to her horror, the bulk of them where pink the color she hated the most. She was a goth girl, she had a black dragon tattooed on her forearm with a rainbow flag going down to her ring finger. She had a laughing skull inside a pentagram on the back of her left shoulder blade and she was becoming a pink mermaid.
“This sucks.” moaned Kat
“You’re the one who put out that you didn’t want to become a pink mermaid into the world.” noted Amanda with a chuckle as she sat looking at Kat looking at herself in the mirror. “Besides a few of the scales are black and a few are charcoal.”
That was true but the majority of the scales including a the scales around her new gills where pink. From what Amanda had told her and from what she had noticed the scales around a mermaid/merman gills was the main color of their tail. She tried to imagine herself with a pink tail and found she didn’t like it all that much. The only thing she did like was that her brown hair wasn’t turning blonde, like a blonde hair pink tailed mermaid instead her hair was turning darker a few strands where now a deep charcoal color like some scales on her tail.
“I wanted something like black or silver, but I got Pink.” Complained Kat “And Hot Pink on top of it.”
“You can’t always get what you want.” Stated Amanda as Kat turned around and with a gentle flick of her tail moved up to Amanda.
“Can’t I?” inquired Kat in a low voice as she bent down and kissed Amanda’s neck before moving up and giving a play bite on her ear lobe. Amanda curled her tail just like she did with her toes when she was a human.
“No…” said Amanda in a breathless moan which took Kat aback as she pulled away, she thought her love was dead and wanted to celebrate their new mermaid hood in passion, did Amanda not care for her anymore. However the answer was in Amanda’s eyes that wasn’t the case. “I don’t want your roommate swimming in on us.”
Kat nodded in understand, Amanda was always the shyer/reserve one and she had to admit she wasn’t found of the idea of someone coming in on them either. So they would wait.