Kelly and Carmen watched as a silhouette of a woman fall from the sky, shadowed against the sun as she hit the water with a splash. Moments later, they saw a head poke out of the water.
“Oh shit!” Kelly gasped. “Poor girl. Do you think she needs help? What if she can’t swim?”
“Looks like she’s doing alright.” Carmen said, she watched as the woman apparently got her bearings, and began swimming toward land. The sighting was apparently mutual, and the woman waved a hand in their direction. She shouted something to the two women.
“I don’t know what she’s saying, I don’t think she’s speaking English.” Kelly said.
“She’s not. That’s Portuguese I think, I *sorta* understood it.” Replied Carmen. “She said she’s coming.”
At this point, Jenn and Olivia also noticed something was happening, and the two mermaids slid down the beach on their tails to join their podmates.
The woman slowly trudged out of the surf toward the four mermaids. She was tall, with dark skin and black hair that went down to her mid back. Her chest was small, but her her breasts were pert and fit her swimsuit well, and she sported wide hips and a shapely, firm rear. She wore a bikini and a now soaked towel around her waist that she dragged behind her. She wore sunglasses as well, but one of their lenses seemed to have popped out of the frames. Following behind her, a straw hat washed up on the wet sands. Jenn and Olivia flashed a smile as they caught sight of her. She was beautiful already, and she was going to make an even hotter mermaid.
“Where am I? Is this some kind of private beach.” The woman asked.
Carmen opened her mouth to answer in the closest to Portuguese version of Spanish that she could, but the woman spoke again. “Wait, you’re tourists. I now a few English words. You speak English?” She asked. Slowly, she wiped the water out of her eyes.
“Not tourists, no. It’s complicated.” Kelly replied.
“We live on this beach, for now at least. We’re probably going to pack up and head for another island soon.” Jenn replied. “But that’s for later. You… are in for some surprises.”
“What’s your name?” Olivia asked.
“I’m Águeda. Not sure where there is to live out here, but if you say so.” The woman replied. She opened her eyes after shaking her head and taking off her glasses. “Woah! Fancy tails, doing a photo-op or something?” She knelt down to look closer at Olivia’s tailfin. “It looks so real.”
“Thanks, that’s because it is!” Olivia replied cheerfully.
“You best sit down Águeda, you’ve got a lot to catch up on.” Carmen said.
Águeda Looked up and down the beach and nodded, casting Olivia an incredulous glance. “I guess you’re right. So where am I? Do any of you have a phone I can borrow?”
She sat down, and quickly started scratching the skin on her thighs. “And what was in the water? My skin feels itchy.”
Jenn answered her. “You’re in the realm of mermaids. We don’t have phones, they don’t work here. And your skin is itchy because you’re soon going to transform into a mermaid, like us.” To emphasize, she twisted and curled her azure tailfin in ways no human could replicate, holding fin up in the air so that the scales caught the sun.
Águeda stares at her in disbelief. When she finally found what to say…