Emma shook her head. “You’re right, we can’t. Luckily I don’t think we have to…” she said, as the two mermaids adjusted to their new bodies, the same happened to their minds. New instincts and knowledge took root in their minds. Techniques for propelling their tails through open water overwrote the knowledge of how to use their legs, becoming just as rote and natural as walking. More pressingly, with the change came an understanding of magic, real, tangible magic that they could use. There was a grotto nearby, easily accessible to the cove Emma had her fateful meeting with a mermaid in. It was a haven, one of many like it, a place to find refuge in, so long as there was water to follow.
“Ready to start the rest of our lives babe?” Jessica asked while stroking Emma’s white hair. She laid her amber fin over her partner’s silvery one, twining their tails together as they lay together.
“What are we waiting for?” Emma asked, kissing her sweetly on the lips, feeling her own heartbeat quicken with an adoring affection she’d never felt for someone before. With that, both mermaids waved their tails over the shower drain, and at once they both began to morph like liquid, from the fins up, they dissolved into living seawater, and poured down the drain, circling round in revolution before, with a start, they both snapped back to solidity.
Both women opened their eyes, vision adjusting to different lighting from where they’d been a moment before. The glow in this room was a soft bluish white, emitting from inside large growths of stunning crystals growing out of cavern walls. Sea air, pleasantly salty to the taste filled their nostrils and taste buds. Their tails now drifted in waist deep water which was the clearest, freshest, and most invigorating they’d ever been in. Below the surface they could see a cave passage that led down, and probably out of this grotto.
That wasn’t what had their attention though. Instead it was the third mermaid basking in the the water with them. Emma immediately recognized her with her long golden hair and glittering tail of precious metal. The beautiful mermaid, combed through her locks and otherwise seemed to be attending to her appearance in leisurely fashion. Her violet eyes then promptly turned on her newfound company.
“Already here? Oh my god! Welcome, come on in the water’s lovely- and I see you even brought a friend too!” The mermaid seemed to size of Emma approvingly. “I knew I made the right choice!”
“I thought we’d find you here!” Emma then turned to Jessica, “babe, this is the one we have to thank for our tails. Unfortunately I never got her name…” she said, looking to the mermaid expectantly.
“Ah, right! I’m Clara, so glad to finally have some company here.”
“Emma.”
“And Jessica.” The new mermaids answered in turn.
“I like your name, it’s pretty human-y though. Did you end up like us?”
“Something like it. I didn’t have my mermaid waiting for me though. She kissed me and then disappeared, I think back to the parallel world mermaids come from. That’s how our condition spreads by the way, it’s skin to skin contact between a human woman and a mermaid. When you helped me back into the water, that’s how it passed to you, Emma.” Clara sighed. “I knew once you touched me what would happen, so I decided to wait for you here.”
“And when I hugged Emma after she started to change…” Jessica began.
“Your fate was sealed as well.” Confirmed Clara.
“So, what were you out on the rocks doing anyway? It’d be bad for our kind if we ever got caught… it could out us to the whole world.”
“That’s the thing… the cove is supposed to be unknown to humans, it has a mind of its own though… and if it thinks someone passing might make a good mermaid, it brings them in. I laid myself out there to see what you’d do if you found a mermaid in peril. Clearly the cave was right, because you not only helped me, you got here in record time. Most mermaids take a few days to change.”
“Well… mermaids were always a big interest for me! Maybe I was just really receptive to it.” Thought Emma aloud.
“That’s wonderful to hear! You certainly emerged in your new forms as something beautiful, you both did.”
“Thanks, you’re pretty fucking stunning yourself.” Jessica spoke with hunger.
Clara swam in closer. “Now then, there’s a welcoming tradition, and it sounds like you’re only too eager to partake.”
Emma and Jessica closed the distance.