(no subject)
This is yet another fic I am working on...I don't really have a title for it, I'll just call it my Kingdom Hearts Fantasy Fic.....
A/N: first, for some brief announcements, once of which is that I have never been on a plane before, or have I really ever been in an airport, save once, and that didn’t count. I have also never been out of the US of A, though that is one of my goals….to get out of here and go somewhere, some how. Sorry if some details are out of whack. Also, this arc is, I have been told, something like the Movie Splash, But I have never seen it so I don’t really know…..
Prologue
“You’re nuts. I always knew you were nuts, but this just takes the cake. How do you plan on doing all of this at once? I have told you you’re nuts, right?”
“Multiple times, dear, multiple times.”
“I mean, for one thing,” the first continues as if he hasn’t heard his companion, hovering behind her and peering over her shoulder, curious despite what he is saying, “how are you going to get them where they need to be? They’re all in the wrong places, and second of all- oh, and is second of all a doosy or what!- how will you choose the right people for them? If they don’t catch their attention right away, you’ll have a case of multiple homicide on your hands…..”
“Trial and error.”
“……”
“……”
“……”
“You know I was just kidding, right?”
“……”
“I was just kidding.”
“….I don’t put anything past you.”
“I love you too, dear.”
“I’m sure.”
They both go back to watching the water in the large golden bowel in front of her. He is still leaning over her shoulder, making negative comments every now and then to the faces that appear in it’s surface, until she comes upon one on which she stops.
“Him??”
“Him.”
Arc One: Tail of the Siren
Part one: First Meetings at the Beach
“Would you like something to drink, sir?”
I glanced up form my book for what seemed like the first time since the plane had taken off, my eyesight blurring slightly as I focused on the pretty young girl standing patently in front of me with a cart covered in various liquid ingestible…things. She was smiling gently, something that the last stewardess hadn’t done.
Well, the last one had smiled, but to tell the truth, it had looked quite painful.
I shook my head silently at the blond girl and her focus traveled to the guy sitting beside me, who ordered a coke. And some kind of alcohol. (Since I didn’t drink, I didn’t really know what kind it was).
Sighing softly, I went back to my book. I wanted to get it done before we reached our destination, and I had a hundred and fifty pages left to read in--I checked my watch--forty-five minuets. Ok, I wasn’t going to get finished. I was a fast reader, but I wasn’t superhuman.
As it turns out, I read another sixty pages before we hit ground again. Tucking my book safely and neatly back into my carry-on, I stood silently and waited for an opening to present it’s self in the line of people filing to the exit. Once one presented it’s self, I slipped out, closely followed by the guy beside me, who, as we stepped off the plane, began muttering to himself.
I ignored him.
Once I was outside in the bright sunlight (Cringe cringe) and warm summer heat of the Greek Isle known as Santorini, I scanned the air port for the group of people I had come with. It only took me a moment to pick them out; My teacher’s brightly colored dress stood out like a malfunctioning traffic light. Several of my classmates were already huddled around her, and were gazing around in aw.
I didn’t see why. It looked like any other airport runway.
Actually, It looked slightly barren, but that was just this part. It would probably be better once we got in the building.
That is, if everyone would just get there sorry asses over to us.
There were about fifteen of us on the trip. Not very many. It only took a minuet or two and we were all headed for the airport to get our luggage.
“Now.” Out professor, Mrs. Mulligan, began as we stopped by the luggage thingy. (the name for it escapes me at the moment…conveyer belt?) “We are all staying at a hotel in Fira. It’s only about twenty minuets form here. Also, we will have to get out money exchanged for Euros…”
And so on and so on. As it was, there was a place in the airport where we could exchange our American dollars for the common currency in Greece. On my way over, I had accidentally bumped into someone who was headed in the opposite direction of me. It was barely a knock on the shoulder, but I heard him drop his things on the floor behind me. Since I was in a hurry to keep my class and fast moving teacher in sight amongst the rather large crowd, I didn’t even bother looking back, much less stopping to help.
An hour and a half later, we were finally checking into the hotel that would be our home for the next three days until we headed out to the next island on our list. In the Lobby, the professor told us that she was giving us half an hour to unpack and get situated before she gave us our assignments for this island.
You see, we weren’t here on vacation or anything. The class I was with was my Ancient Mythology class. We had traveled to Greece to “Take in the atmosphere of the place that created some of the most famous legends in the world.”
Our professor was a very young woman, probably in her early thirties, with nicely cut and well kept blond hair sweeping about her shoulders, clear tan skin, and, I have to agree with the majority of the boys in my class on this one, a nice rack.
She also had a nice sense of humor, as was evident in her lesson plan for this two week excursion she had taken us on.
We were going to travel among some of the Greek Isles, and for each Isle she had a game made up for us. “kind of a mix between a Scavenger hunt and a Riddle game.” she had told us when explaining the trip.
Anything other than that, she wouldn’t explain until we actually reached our destination.
Sitting on the nicely made bed, I watched one of my classmates put his stuff away on the other side of the room. To cut down on costs, there were to be two of us to a room, which was fine with me as long as the other guy-- who’s name I couldn’t recall--didn’t try and start a conversation with me. He would just end up being ignored.
I’m not rude, honest, I just don’t like talking much. It seems like a wate of time since most of it would be pointless conversation anyway.
I sat staring out the window, waiting for him to get done so we could go down together. (it was one of the professor’s requests that we stay together so we wouldn’t get lost, but I was planning on ditching him as soon as we were out of her sight.) In the distance, I could see the cliffs that led out to the ocean.
Santorini was in the shape of a backwards C with four smaller islands --Therasia, Nea Kameni, Palea Kameni, and Aspronisi -- in the lagoon it forms. It was an island with steep cliffs surrounding the beaches, caused by long since silenced volcanic activity, and many ports for the boats going between islands.
In a word, it was beautiful. All of the rock formations were striped with red, white and grey layers of Volcanic sediment, creating gorgeous patterns.
Now if only it wasn’t so damn sunny.
Soon enough, the boy I was rooming with announced that he was ready to go, and we both headed downstairs, not another word exchanged between us.
We were the last ones down, much to my great annoyance. When we reached the lobby, I sat on one of the large, stuffed armchairs while the other’s took up seats on the one long couch in front of the television they had set up amongst some marble tables with vases filled with fake flower. The place was obviously supposed to look like a living room to make their guests feel more comfortable, but I figured that they would probably have an easier time of it if it didn’t look like something out of a Victorian house form the seventeen hundreds…all stiff and formal.
For God’s sake people, if you want ‘relaxing’ try using greens and blues…they’re the colors that scientists say relax you, not maroon and red….those colors make you hungry and giddy…
So unless you want a bunch of nervous people eating your couches, I would suggest you change your color scheme.
The sad thing is, I think they were going for ‘elegant’.
“Now class!” the Professor cried excitedly (a little too excitedly, I noted with a wince. Why did she always have to be so damn cheerful?!) “I’m going to give you your assignments now-- no, don’t groan, you don’t even know what they are yet-- and you have the next three days to get them done before we go on to the next island and your next assignment…” here she reached into a plastic Wal-mart and began to pull out those little white paper bags that you get donuts in. They were stapled together at the top and had each of our names written across them in black sharpie.
Funny, I expected her to use multi-colored Zebra gel pens.
“Now,” she continued. “Don’t open these until you are outside.” Everyone exchanged curious looks. She blinked at all of us. “Well, off you go! I have sight seeing to do, and you are all old enough to take care of yourselves. Don’t get kidnapped, don’t get killed, and for heavens sakes, don’t take candy from strangers. Now off with you!”
There was surprised and amused silence as she stood and strutted to the door of the hotel. She turned back around with her hand on the door knob. “Oh! And be back here at seven so we can all go out and eat dinner together, hmm?”
And then she was gone.
With one last confused, amused and exceedingly pleased look at each other, everyone had cleared the hotel in less than a minuet.
Everyone but me. I still sat on the chair, a small frown on my face, wondering how the hell I had ended up with a teacher who didn’t just give us a book and a test like all of the others.
Opening the bag slowly, I looked in, blinked, took the items out, just to be sure I hadn’t seen them wrong, and blinked again.
In my hand was two sheets of paper and a small, disposable Camera.
What….the hell?
Setting the green and white striped flashy thing of doom (I hated cameras as I had never really seen myself as photogenic) down on the glass coffee table, I opened the thicker sheet of paper. (One was a piece of regular notebook paper, the other was some heavier printer paper.) It read;
Dear Class, I have thought up some fun little riddles for all of you. Solve the riddle and go the place or thing designated by the answer. Have someone take a picture of you with the thing or place. When our little trip is over, I will collect the cameras and have the photos developed. If you have a photo of everything on the list I gave you (WITH YOU IN IT!) Then you will get a good grade. Anything less and you fail. They aren’t that hard! And you CAN ask for help!
Love,
your Adoring Teacher
Smoochies! <3
If I hadn’t been in Greece, I would have asked for a class transfer right then and there.
She signed with ‘Smoochies!’ and a heart.
Sighing I picked the other piece of paper up and tucked the camera away in my shoulder bag that I always carried with me. I stood and made my way outside to the busy streets, people walking past me on the sidewalk, tourists and natives alike. Pulling out my map of the island (I had bought it at the airport) I noted that the island was too big for her to expect us to go running around it and still get our pictures, so that meant that the things she wanted the pictures to be of had to be in the general area. I pulled out the notebook paper and scanned it. There were three riddles neatly printed on it. I frowned as I read over them, dancing out of the way of trampling feet as I did so. They read
1. I have caused several earthquakes
It’s theorized I have caused Tsunamis
I should be painfully obvious and right in your line of site.
What am I?
2. When I’m dried I make a tasty treat.
Here, you will see more of me as an aged liquid.
When growing, I am in the shape of a basket.
What am I?
3. I was once feared by the sailors of Greece,
But I was once defeated with beeswax.
Beware of me when sailing.
Who am I?
I arched an eyebrow. These were supposed to be riddles? They looked like they were written by a bored student with nothing to do but write stories about characters from a video game, or something. Snorting, I almost stuffed them back into my pocket. But, if I didn’t follow the instructions, then I would get a failing grade. Oh, what’s a boy to do?
Le sigh.
I skimmed the ‘clues’ again. I could probably solve them rather quickly, if I had wanted to really think about it. But honestly, I didn’t. Why put that much brain power into it? Besides, it would require studying the island and walking around, which is what I’m sure she was after, but still, I would much rather do it my own way and then study for a book test.
I stopped at the third ‘clue.’ It kept repeating the word sailors, so I was more than willing to bet that she was referring to the lagoon. (As if she could be any more or less obvious…) The part about fear and beeswax kept pulling at my mind, telling me it was familiar and I should really know what it meant (don’t you just hate that feeling, like you know you are forgetting something very important, but, since you are forgetting it, you haven’t got a clue as to what it is?)
Giving a mental sigh, I headed in the directions of the cliffs I had seen form my window. Might as well see if I could get down to the water and take a look anyway. Something I see, I figured, might jog my memory.
The cliffs were very high. On average, about two hundred meters from top to bottom, and while not impossible to scale or to descend, from where I was standing looking down, it looked very, very steep. I would have to be careful going down or I would end up a pile of broken bones at the bottom with several painful hours between my fall and potential rescue.
I worked my way carefully around a rather large rock that was protruding in my way. The going was a little rough considering the slope was covered in loose pieces of rock and the breeze was a bit stronger and constantly changing direction. At one point it even blew up, right at me.
If it hadn’t have been for that, my life might have continued normally.
As it was, however, the wind blew upward and hit me full in the face. And on the wind, besides loose pieces of sand, there was something else. As I was wiping the grit from my now stinging and watering eyes, I heard this…sound. At the time, I couldn’t tell you really what it was, since it was so faint, but it was there.
Now, I shouldn’t have found this odd because Santorini had many ports. However, I couldn’t see a boat anywhere, and I had quite the bird’s eye view. Even the small sliver of beach down at the base of the cliff was deserted from what I could see, though I will admit I was rather high up and could easily have missed a person if they had on the right clothes.
However, this sound didn’t sound much like any boat I had ever heard…no plane made a noise like that either…it was….well, I couldn’t really describe to you what it was, but whatever it was, nothing had ever made me more curious.
The wind changed direction, and the sound disappeared, carried away form me again. It had been faint, almost inaudible, anyway, and I still don’t know quite how I had heard it in the first place. Either way, I was now achingly curious. I had never quite heard a sound like that before, and as far as I could tell, there was nothing there to cause it.
Slipping my way a little further down the slope, I decided that this was defiantly a better past time than looking for things that grow in the shape of baskets. This was interesting. My ‘assignment’ ….well …wasn’t. So instead of turning back the first time I felt a sharp, warning pain form my ankle as it slid the wrong way out from under me like I normally might have, and deeming it a waste of time and trouble, I kept going.
The going got annoying somewhere between the sixth and seventh time I nearly twisted my ankle, but every time I considered just giving up and going back to the hotel or the city, the breeze would go my way again and I would catch a snatch of that sound, and my curiosity renewed, along with a feeling that, no matter if I died in the process, I just had to find to find the source of what, as I got lower, I identified as someone singing.
Soon, I was low enough to make out the fact that the song was in a language that I didn‘t know, though I knew several. The tune was melodious and slow.
And sad. Oh so very sad. Though I couldn’t understand the words, I knew that the story the song told did not have a happy ending. Just the way it was sung had my heart aching.
If this was odd, I didn’t really think about it at the time. The only thing I could really focus on was getting to the source of that lovely voice…’
It was probably a good thing that I was only a few feet from the beach by this point, because it was about then that I made a miscalculation in my footing and tripped, tumbling the last ten or so feet down the slope, loose rock tumbling down after me. I ended up in a heap in the soft, slightly rocky sand at the foot of the incline, covered in dirt, cuts and bruises, but, to my relief, otherwise unharmed.
I was also thinking clearer because the little cove I was in was eerily silent.
The singing had stopped.
Sitting up, I winced as I felt my neck pop slightly. “owwie….” I grumble, looking my self over, checking the lightly bleeding cuts that line my arms, and I’m sure I have a few on my face, if the stinging is anything to go by. I stand gingerly, sighing in relief as I find that I am able to put my weight on both of my legs without any pain.
It was then that I noticed the absence of singing. This wasn’t really surprising, since my impromptu trip had been rather noisy, and probably would have scared the living daylights out of anyone who thought they were alone.
I looked up form dusting myself gingerly off to see if the source of the voice was still around.
The first thing I saw is a pair of Sea Green eyes staring, startled and curious, back at me from a rock two or so yards out from where the sand disappeared into the water.
I blinked.
The eyes blinked back.
After I recovered form my initial surprise, I took in the sight of the person that the eyes were connected to. It was a male, as was made obvious by the fact that he was not wearing a shirt, (either that or he had the flattest chest on a woman I had ever seen).
He had the plush yet angular face of a young teenager, his curious eyes, made wider by the surprise of having someone drop in on him so suddenly, making him seem even younger than he probably was (I was willing to bet on around fifteen or sixteen). His hair was a dark, dirty blond, long in the back, but swept up and short on the sides and the front, creating a hairstyle you might expect to see on a kid at a rock concert. Some of the hair, however, had escaped whatever it was he had used to make it stand on end like that, and soft tendrils were falling in his face and around his high cheekbones, making them seem a bit rounder than they actually were.
His chest, arms and stomach, I noted, however, were devoid of the baby fat his face still possessed, and while he was lean enough for me to be able to see the vaguest outline of his ribcage, he had the build of a powerful swimmer.
I couldn’t see much past his hips because of the way he was sitting on the rock, but what I could see of the sharp, angular bones was that the swim trunks he was wearing was made out of some kind of shimmering grey material that, as the water shifted around him, turned from grey to a stormy blue, and then back to grey. I wondered what kind of material it was. It looked almost like it had been made of scales. Cool.
We just stared at one another for a few moments before I lifted my hand in a half-assed wave and said in my normal flat voice “hey.”
The effect was instant. The boy jumped as if he had been electrocuted and slid off the rock, diving straight into the water.
His rather odd reaction wasn’t what had me staring open mouthed at the place he had been, however.
No it was the fact that what I had thought to be his swim trunks hadn’t really turned out to be trunks at all, unless, as I highly suspected, my eyes were playing some kind of trick on me.
“Was that…..a tail?”
A/N: first, for some brief announcements, once of which is that I have never been on a plane before, or have I really ever been in an airport, save once, and that didn’t count. I have also never been out of the US of A, though that is one of my goals….to get out of here and go somewhere, some how. Sorry if some details are out of whack. Also, this arc is, I have been told, something like the Movie Splash, But I have never seen it so I don’t really know…..
Prologue
“You’re nuts. I always knew you were nuts, but this just takes the cake. How do you plan on doing all of this at once? I have told you you’re nuts, right?”
“Multiple times, dear, multiple times.”
“I mean, for one thing,” the first continues as if he hasn’t heard his companion, hovering behind her and peering over her shoulder, curious despite what he is saying, “how are you going to get them where they need to be? They’re all in the wrong places, and second of all- oh, and is second of all a doosy or what!- how will you choose the right people for them? If they don’t catch their attention right away, you’ll have a case of multiple homicide on your hands…..”
“Trial and error.”
“……”
“……”
“……”
“You know I was just kidding, right?”
“……”
“I was just kidding.”
“….I don’t put anything past you.”
“I love you too, dear.”
“I’m sure.”
They both go back to watching the water in the large golden bowel in front of her. He is still leaning over her shoulder, making negative comments every now and then to the faces that appear in it’s surface, until she comes upon one on which she stops.
“Him??”
“Him.”
Arc One: Tail of the Siren
Part one: First Meetings at the Beach
“Would you like something to drink, sir?”
I glanced up form my book for what seemed like the first time since the plane had taken off, my eyesight blurring slightly as I focused on the pretty young girl standing patently in front of me with a cart covered in various liquid ingestible…things. She was smiling gently, something that the last stewardess hadn’t done.
Well, the last one had smiled, but to tell the truth, it had looked quite painful.
I shook my head silently at the blond girl and her focus traveled to the guy sitting beside me, who ordered a coke. And some kind of alcohol. (Since I didn’t drink, I didn’t really know what kind it was).
Sighing softly, I went back to my book. I wanted to get it done before we reached our destination, and I had a hundred and fifty pages left to read in--I checked my watch--forty-five minuets. Ok, I wasn’t going to get finished. I was a fast reader, but I wasn’t superhuman.
As it turns out, I read another sixty pages before we hit ground again. Tucking my book safely and neatly back into my carry-on, I stood silently and waited for an opening to present it’s self in the line of people filing to the exit. Once one presented it’s self, I slipped out, closely followed by the guy beside me, who, as we stepped off the plane, began muttering to himself.
I ignored him.
Once I was outside in the bright sunlight (Cringe cringe) and warm summer heat of the Greek Isle known as Santorini, I scanned the air port for the group of people I had come with. It only took me a moment to pick them out; My teacher’s brightly colored dress stood out like a malfunctioning traffic light. Several of my classmates were already huddled around her, and were gazing around in aw.
I didn’t see why. It looked like any other airport runway.
Actually, It looked slightly barren, but that was just this part. It would probably be better once we got in the building.
That is, if everyone would just get there sorry asses over to us.
There were about fifteen of us on the trip. Not very many. It only took a minuet or two and we were all headed for the airport to get our luggage.
“Now.” Out professor, Mrs. Mulligan, began as we stopped by the luggage thingy. (the name for it escapes me at the moment…conveyer belt?) “We are all staying at a hotel in Fira. It’s only about twenty minuets form here. Also, we will have to get out money exchanged for Euros…”
And so on and so on. As it was, there was a place in the airport where we could exchange our American dollars for the common currency in Greece. On my way over, I had accidentally bumped into someone who was headed in the opposite direction of me. It was barely a knock on the shoulder, but I heard him drop his things on the floor behind me. Since I was in a hurry to keep my class and fast moving teacher in sight amongst the rather large crowd, I didn’t even bother looking back, much less stopping to help.
An hour and a half later, we were finally checking into the hotel that would be our home for the next three days until we headed out to the next island on our list. In the Lobby, the professor told us that she was giving us half an hour to unpack and get situated before she gave us our assignments for this island.
You see, we weren’t here on vacation or anything. The class I was with was my Ancient Mythology class. We had traveled to Greece to “Take in the atmosphere of the place that created some of the most famous legends in the world.”
Our professor was a very young woman, probably in her early thirties, with nicely cut and well kept blond hair sweeping about her shoulders, clear tan skin, and, I have to agree with the majority of the boys in my class on this one, a nice rack.
She also had a nice sense of humor, as was evident in her lesson plan for this two week excursion she had taken us on.
We were going to travel among some of the Greek Isles, and for each Isle she had a game made up for us. “kind of a mix between a Scavenger hunt and a Riddle game.” she had told us when explaining the trip.
Anything other than that, she wouldn’t explain until we actually reached our destination.
Sitting on the nicely made bed, I watched one of my classmates put his stuff away on the other side of the room. To cut down on costs, there were to be two of us to a room, which was fine with me as long as the other guy-- who’s name I couldn’t recall--didn’t try and start a conversation with me. He would just end up being ignored.
I’m not rude, honest, I just don’t like talking much. It seems like a wate of time since most of it would be pointless conversation anyway.
I sat staring out the window, waiting for him to get done so we could go down together. (it was one of the professor’s requests that we stay together so we wouldn’t get lost, but I was planning on ditching him as soon as we were out of her sight.) In the distance, I could see the cliffs that led out to the ocean.
Santorini was in the shape of a backwards C with four smaller islands --Therasia, Nea Kameni, Palea Kameni, and Aspronisi -- in the lagoon it forms. It was an island with steep cliffs surrounding the beaches, caused by long since silenced volcanic activity, and many ports for the boats going between islands.
In a word, it was beautiful. All of the rock formations were striped with red, white and grey layers of Volcanic sediment, creating gorgeous patterns.
Now if only it wasn’t so damn sunny.
Soon enough, the boy I was rooming with announced that he was ready to go, and we both headed downstairs, not another word exchanged between us.
We were the last ones down, much to my great annoyance. When we reached the lobby, I sat on one of the large, stuffed armchairs while the other’s took up seats on the one long couch in front of the television they had set up amongst some marble tables with vases filled with fake flower. The place was obviously supposed to look like a living room to make their guests feel more comfortable, but I figured that they would probably have an easier time of it if it didn’t look like something out of a Victorian house form the seventeen hundreds…all stiff and formal.
For God’s sake people, if you want ‘relaxing’ try using greens and blues…they’re the colors that scientists say relax you, not maroon and red….those colors make you hungry and giddy…
So unless you want a bunch of nervous people eating your couches, I would suggest you change your color scheme.
The sad thing is, I think they were going for ‘elegant’.
“Now class!” the Professor cried excitedly (a little too excitedly, I noted with a wince. Why did she always have to be so damn cheerful?!) “I’m going to give you your assignments now-- no, don’t groan, you don’t even know what they are yet-- and you have the next three days to get them done before we go on to the next island and your next assignment…” here she reached into a plastic Wal-mart and began to pull out those little white paper bags that you get donuts in. They were stapled together at the top and had each of our names written across them in black sharpie.
Funny, I expected her to use multi-colored Zebra gel pens.
“Now,” she continued. “Don’t open these until you are outside.” Everyone exchanged curious looks. She blinked at all of us. “Well, off you go! I have sight seeing to do, and you are all old enough to take care of yourselves. Don’t get kidnapped, don’t get killed, and for heavens sakes, don’t take candy from strangers. Now off with you!”
There was surprised and amused silence as she stood and strutted to the door of the hotel. She turned back around with her hand on the door knob. “Oh! And be back here at seven so we can all go out and eat dinner together, hmm?”
And then she was gone.
With one last confused, amused and exceedingly pleased look at each other, everyone had cleared the hotel in less than a minuet.
Everyone but me. I still sat on the chair, a small frown on my face, wondering how the hell I had ended up with a teacher who didn’t just give us a book and a test like all of the others.
Opening the bag slowly, I looked in, blinked, took the items out, just to be sure I hadn’t seen them wrong, and blinked again.
In my hand was two sheets of paper and a small, disposable Camera.
What….the hell?
Setting the green and white striped flashy thing of doom (I hated cameras as I had never really seen myself as photogenic) down on the glass coffee table, I opened the thicker sheet of paper. (One was a piece of regular notebook paper, the other was some heavier printer paper.) It read;
Dear Class, I have thought up some fun little riddles for all of you. Solve the riddle and go the place or thing designated by the answer. Have someone take a picture of you with the thing or place. When our little trip is over, I will collect the cameras and have the photos developed. If you have a photo of everything on the list I gave you (WITH YOU IN IT!) Then you will get a good grade. Anything less and you fail. They aren’t that hard! And you CAN ask for help!
Love,
your Adoring Teacher
Smoochies! <3
If I hadn’t been in Greece, I would have asked for a class transfer right then and there.
She signed with ‘Smoochies!’ and a heart.
Sighing I picked the other piece of paper up and tucked the camera away in my shoulder bag that I always carried with me. I stood and made my way outside to the busy streets, people walking past me on the sidewalk, tourists and natives alike. Pulling out my map of the island (I had bought it at the airport) I noted that the island was too big for her to expect us to go running around it and still get our pictures, so that meant that the things she wanted the pictures to be of had to be in the general area. I pulled out the notebook paper and scanned it. There were three riddles neatly printed on it. I frowned as I read over them, dancing out of the way of trampling feet as I did so. They read
1. I have caused several earthquakes
It’s theorized I have caused Tsunamis
I should be painfully obvious and right in your line of site.
What am I?
2. When I’m dried I make a tasty treat.
Here, you will see more of me as an aged liquid.
When growing, I am in the shape of a basket.
What am I?
3. I was once feared by the sailors of Greece,
But I was once defeated with beeswax.
Beware of me when sailing.
Who am I?
I arched an eyebrow. These were supposed to be riddles? They looked like they were written by a bored student with nothing to do but write stories about characters from a video game, or something. Snorting, I almost stuffed them back into my pocket. But, if I didn’t follow the instructions, then I would get a failing grade. Oh, what’s a boy to do?
Le sigh.
I skimmed the ‘clues’ again. I could probably solve them rather quickly, if I had wanted to really think about it. But honestly, I didn’t. Why put that much brain power into it? Besides, it would require studying the island and walking around, which is what I’m sure she was after, but still, I would much rather do it my own way and then study for a book test.
I stopped at the third ‘clue.’ It kept repeating the word sailors, so I was more than willing to bet that she was referring to the lagoon. (As if she could be any more or less obvious…) The part about fear and beeswax kept pulling at my mind, telling me it was familiar and I should really know what it meant (don’t you just hate that feeling, like you know you are forgetting something very important, but, since you are forgetting it, you haven’t got a clue as to what it is?)
Giving a mental sigh, I headed in the directions of the cliffs I had seen form my window. Might as well see if I could get down to the water and take a look anyway. Something I see, I figured, might jog my memory.
The cliffs were very high. On average, about two hundred meters from top to bottom, and while not impossible to scale or to descend, from where I was standing looking down, it looked very, very steep. I would have to be careful going down or I would end up a pile of broken bones at the bottom with several painful hours between my fall and potential rescue.
I worked my way carefully around a rather large rock that was protruding in my way. The going was a little rough considering the slope was covered in loose pieces of rock and the breeze was a bit stronger and constantly changing direction. At one point it even blew up, right at me.
If it hadn’t have been for that, my life might have continued normally.
As it was, however, the wind blew upward and hit me full in the face. And on the wind, besides loose pieces of sand, there was something else. As I was wiping the grit from my now stinging and watering eyes, I heard this…sound. At the time, I couldn’t tell you really what it was, since it was so faint, but it was there.
Now, I shouldn’t have found this odd because Santorini had many ports. However, I couldn’t see a boat anywhere, and I had quite the bird’s eye view. Even the small sliver of beach down at the base of the cliff was deserted from what I could see, though I will admit I was rather high up and could easily have missed a person if they had on the right clothes.
However, this sound didn’t sound much like any boat I had ever heard…no plane made a noise like that either…it was….well, I couldn’t really describe to you what it was, but whatever it was, nothing had ever made me more curious.
The wind changed direction, and the sound disappeared, carried away form me again. It had been faint, almost inaudible, anyway, and I still don’t know quite how I had heard it in the first place. Either way, I was now achingly curious. I had never quite heard a sound like that before, and as far as I could tell, there was nothing there to cause it.
Slipping my way a little further down the slope, I decided that this was defiantly a better past time than looking for things that grow in the shape of baskets. This was interesting. My ‘assignment’ ….well …wasn’t. So instead of turning back the first time I felt a sharp, warning pain form my ankle as it slid the wrong way out from under me like I normally might have, and deeming it a waste of time and trouble, I kept going.
The going got annoying somewhere between the sixth and seventh time I nearly twisted my ankle, but every time I considered just giving up and going back to the hotel or the city, the breeze would go my way again and I would catch a snatch of that sound, and my curiosity renewed, along with a feeling that, no matter if I died in the process, I just had to find to find the source of what, as I got lower, I identified as someone singing.
Soon, I was low enough to make out the fact that the song was in a language that I didn‘t know, though I knew several. The tune was melodious and slow.
And sad. Oh so very sad. Though I couldn’t understand the words, I knew that the story the song told did not have a happy ending. Just the way it was sung had my heart aching.
If this was odd, I didn’t really think about it at the time. The only thing I could really focus on was getting to the source of that lovely voice…’
It was probably a good thing that I was only a few feet from the beach by this point, because it was about then that I made a miscalculation in my footing and tripped, tumbling the last ten or so feet down the slope, loose rock tumbling down after me. I ended up in a heap in the soft, slightly rocky sand at the foot of the incline, covered in dirt, cuts and bruises, but, to my relief, otherwise unharmed.
I was also thinking clearer because the little cove I was in was eerily silent.
The singing had stopped.
Sitting up, I winced as I felt my neck pop slightly. “owwie….” I grumble, looking my self over, checking the lightly bleeding cuts that line my arms, and I’m sure I have a few on my face, if the stinging is anything to go by. I stand gingerly, sighing in relief as I find that I am able to put my weight on both of my legs without any pain.
It was then that I noticed the absence of singing. This wasn’t really surprising, since my impromptu trip had been rather noisy, and probably would have scared the living daylights out of anyone who thought they were alone.
I looked up form dusting myself gingerly off to see if the source of the voice was still around.
The first thing I saw is a pair of Sea Green eyes staring, startled and curious, back at me from a rock two or so yards out from where the sand disappeared into the water.
I blinked.
The eyes blinked back.
After I recovered form my initial surprise, I took in the sight of the person that the eyes were connected to. It was a male, as was made obvious by the fact that he was not wearing a shirt, (either that or he had the flattest chest on a woman I had ever seen).
He had the plush yet angular face of a young teenager, his curious eyes, made wider by the surprise of having someone drop in on him so suddenly, making him seem even younger than he probably was (I was willing to bet on around fifteen or sixteen). His hair was a dark, dirty blond, long in the back, but swept up and short on the sides and the front, creating a hairstyle you might expect to see on a kid at a rock concert. Some of the hair, however, had escaped whatever it was he had used to make it stand on end like that, and soft tendrils were falling in his face and around his high cheekbones, making them seem a bit rounder than they actually were.
His chest, arms and stomach, I noted, however, were devoid of the baby fat his face still possessed, and while he was lean enough for me to be able to see the vaguest outline of his ribcage, he had the build of a powerful swimmer.
I couldn’t see much past his hips because of the way he was sitting on the rock, but what I could see of the sharp, angular bones was that the swim trunks he was wearing was made out of some kind of shimmering grey material that, as the water shifted around him, turned from grey to a stormy blue, and then back to grey. I wondered what kind of material it was. It looked almost like it had been made of scales. Cool.
We just stared at one another for a few moments before I lifted my hand in a half-assed wave and said in my normal flat voice “hey.”
The effect was instant. The boy jumped as if he had been electrocuted and slid off the rock, diving straight into the water.
His rather odd reaction wasn’t what had me staring open mouthed at the place he had been, however.
No it was the fact that what I had thought to be his swim trunks hadn’t really turned out to be trunks at all, unless, as I highly suspected, my eyes were playing some kind of trick on me.
“Was that…..a tail?”