“Go…Go…Go!!!” yelled the teammates as they watched the practice race between the members of the swim team take place. Their coach waited at the far end of the pool with a stop watch in her hands. The moment the first one reached the pad the electronic timer stopped but their coach was old school and still used a stop watch as a back up.
“Very good, Thomas, almost a university record.” Stated the coach as she wrote it down on her clip board before looking down at the six young men in the pool. “The rest of you did extremely well as well, keep this up and a few new trophies will be in our case outside. Ladies your up next!”
The members of the 1st team of the ladies’ swim team moved toward the starting blocks and prepared to take part in their race. All of them tensed as the starting gun went off and they dove into the water and took off at high speed.
Once again standing at the end of the pool their coach was waiting with a stopwatch. When the 1st one reached it, she clicked it off.
“Good, very good. We may break our records for the most trophies at the next meet.” Stated the coach “Next group.”
After everyone had gone, the coach walked up.
“Everyone hit the showers and meet in the video room, we need to go over the videos of this race and then we will call it a night.” ordered the coach as the dozen or so university students ranging from 20 to almost 25 nodded their heads before heading toward the showers.
After around 20 minutes everyone, most of them still wet where gathered in the video room attached to their practice area.
“Alright before we start, we were donated this by some higher up and we will be putting it in here for the moment.” Stated the coach as she pointed toward a painting of a mermaid and merman side by side under the water. They were surrounded by coral and tropical fish, the merman was very handsome while the mermaid was breathtakingly beautiful. More shapes where behind them, more mermaids and merman, these where different styles, like shark type, octopus and the like but it was hard to make out all the details about them.
“I know we put merfolk on our swim shirts to wear around campus but I think we would have rather had new equipment then a piece of artwork.” Stated Jenny the captain of the women’s team.
“Same here, but I don’t decide what the doners decide to give us.” Stated the coach as the lights dimmed. “Now let’s start the review of this last race.”
Little did any of them know that piece of art was more then just art. It was a ticking time bomb that would bring anyone in range into a world of tropical islands, coral reefs and the like. A world perfect for mermaids and merman and any who were transported inside would become mermaids and merman. It was a ticking time bomb and it was about to go off.