"Oh you both are here," Myra chimed as we swam towards her. She was sitting on a boulder outside a small restaurant, and another mermaid had been applying a healing paste over her tail.

"Does it hurt terribly?" Ryan's voice was full of concern. He crouched on the sea-floor—he had forgone his tail sometime before—and looked at Myra's tail, careful to touch it.

The mermaid applying the paste looked at us. Her jaws went apart when she saw me, and I saw her eyes go wide. Not knowing what else to do, I flashed a hesitant smile at her. Though she smiled back, her smile did not quite reach her eyes—eyes that grazed over me from head to toe, taking in my human flaws and imperfections. I felt self-conscious and was overcome with an urge to cover myself with a blanket. However realizing that I would not even remember her after we go out of there, I focused my attention on Myra and saw her smiling and talking to Ryan as if nothing had happened.

"—yes I'll be careful," Myra assured Ryan. Then, looking up at the other mermaid, she said, "He worries too much."

"Should I not?" Ryan asked.

I looked at Myra and saw how she did not want to know what all had occurred, how she was fine not knowing.

"Absolutely not. Only thing you need to worry about is you," her brows furrowed as she said, "and her."

Myra looked up at me. "I'm so relieved that you are okay. I may not remember what happened with me, but I certainly do remember those faeries taking you," she said.

"And you don't want to know why you are so badly hurt?"

I could tell from her expression that she was amused at the question. "Why would I?" she said to me, her voice reflecting how absurd she thought my question was. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ryan look up at me, but I did not say anything to either of them. "I remember Fiona—" She gestured at the mermaid. "—lifting the stone over from me, while I was still writhing in pain. Knowing that much is enough for me."

What could I say to that? The realization of how different we were from each other hit me again, with power enough to bury me under the sea-floor. And I silently cursed The Obsidian for its useless magic rendering us to recall only the events that took place in front of our known ones.

Ryan cleared his throat, and in his attempt to lighten the air around us, introduced me to Fiona. I frowned realizong that I was going to remember her scrutinizing gaze—the one thing I was happy to forget. Then he asked Myra, "Why should I worry about me?"

Myra gave him a look that said he had asked a stupid question. Indeed, his question was imbecilic. "Every kingdom, either on the order of Aeron or simply because they now hate the Royals of Water, are in search of you, Ryan. You had the chance to escape—"

"—I didn't want to," Ryan said sternly.

"It doesn't matter. You, King Aadish, Lady Eleanor—you all had the chance to escape while the Royals of the other kingdoms did not. The Kings are dead and their heirs now have to listen to Aeron, while you are free. They want you, Ryan."

"Really? You think I am free?" Ryan hissed. I clutched his shoulder with my fingers. He did not budge. "Granted, I don't have to listen to Aeron's whims. Granted, I am not his prisoner. Granted, my father is not dead, but that does not mean I have my freedom. Ever since we escaped—ever since I came back here—I have been running away from Aeron and his cronies. This is not freedom. Freedom will be when I'll be able to face Aeron and fight him."

"Even if I understand this, they don't," Myra said. I could see the understanding of what Ryan said on her face. I could also see the same helplessness of not being able to do anything on both of their faces.

"Perhaps." Ryan rested his palm over my fingers which still clutched his shoulder. He said, "They can despise me for Aeron's deeds, but I cannot believe they are sitting quietly and listening to his whims—that they have done nothing in two years."

"What can they do?" Fiona asked. The three of us looked at her, which made her stumble upon her words but she was quick to recover herself. "The heirs to the former kings are doing whatever they can to maintain every bit of normalcy Odalis has left," she said. "Declaring a war against King Aeron without thinking about Odalis, without thinking about all of us who reside here, just to pacify the various needs our minds have, will certainly be destructive. Will you be willing to risk all of our lives, Prince, to go on a war with your own uncle?"

"Certainly not." Ryan's voice had an unusual lilt to it. "The lives of the individuals of my Kingdom, of Odalis, is more important to me than my meaningless grudge against Aeron." He smiled at Fiona who seemed convinced with what he said.

I was not, especially because his grip on my palm had tightened and he tapped his index finger over mine. One. Two. Three times. In a rhythm. I had seen Ryan absentmindedly tap his index finger whenever he thought of something important.

I shifted my fingers within his grip which diverted his attention from Fiona, and he looked up at me. His grip on my palm loosened and I slid my fingers away from his shoulder. Ryan stood up with his eyes still fixed on mine. I did not avert my eyes like a part of me wanted to, instead I pierced his gaze with mine, both of us communicating with unspoken words. I saw the moment Ryan realized that I knew he was up to something reflect in his eyes, and he looked away.

I looked away too and saw Myra wink at me, and Fiona scowling at me. I certainly was not going to pay attention to Fiona's scowl, so I went to Myra's side and suggested that we should head out of The Obsidian. Myra looked at my pathetic state, narrowed her eyes and told Fiona to hand her the shell with the healing paste. Maybe her tail still hurt. I should not have told her to go with us before checking if she was well enough.

Confusion was laced on Fiona's face, and her scowl did not really go away as she handed the shell to Myra. I was going to help Myra put the paste on her tail, but she told me to stand still and herself covered a small cut on my arm with the paste. "Apply the heal just over your cut..." she said, "...and let it set. The heal will peel off itself once your skin has been healed." She then gave the shell containing the heal, to me.

I took a sufficient amount of heal on my finger and applied it over a bigger cut on my stomach. But I could not do it right. The heal was jelly-like when touched but turned into a powdery liquid after it was applied on the cut. Making the heal stay just over my cut was difficult. Myra might have done it a few times to be able to do that so precisely. Every time I tried to put the heal over my cut, I ended up destroying it.

"Give me," Ryan took the shell from me.

"You teach her that," Myra said, "Fiona and me are going inside the eatery. We are hungry."

"Don't you eat your food raw?" I asked.

"Every eatery in Kingdom of Water serves food for both us and the faeries. Except for some in The City, which serve food only to the Faeries," Fiona replied in her bland voice.

"I told this Prince of ours," Myra pointed her fingers at Ryan. "To buy food for Venus, or think of some arrangement to atleast cook the fishes from my breed, but clearly, he did not listen to me." Myra floated to him and smacked him on the arm.

"Calm down," Ryan got out of Myra's way, careful not to spill the heal. "I know her medicine isn't going to keep her hunger at bay for long," he said, "I'll feed her." They might have been trying to care for me but I wanted to say that I did not need babysitting. I could certainly feed myself.

"You don't need to feed yourself?" I asked Ryan.

He angled his head, narrowed his eyes, and then pulled the right side of his lips upwards in a slow, lazy smirk—all in the same order.

"Your face will be deformed forever if you continue to smirk like that," I said and for some reason, it made that insufferable smirk of his, go from lazy to almost feline.

Myra giggled. Fiona was her usual uninterested self. "When we were children, we used to spend too much time together for him not being able to eat anything raw," Myra said in between her giggles.

"She forced me into eating raw fish until I would not puke into my plate anymore," Ryan said, his voice traced with laughter. "So no, I don't need to feed myself cooked food. I can consume nearly whatever I want."

"You still going to the eatery?" Fiona asked Myra, who nodded and dragged Fiona and herself inside the said eatery.

"So...where do you want to eat?" Ryan smiled.

"First show me how to apply the heal, and then take me out of here. I certainly am not going to eat here." I wanted to get out of The Obsidian so badly, but it seemed something or the other always held me back. The darkness of that place was becoming unbearable—I was starting to feel that the walls of the tunnels would close on me and engulf me into their mouth.

My thoughts were hindered by the feathery touch of Ryan's finger over my abdomen. I sucked in a breath, almost involuntarily. He knelt infront of me, and then cleared the dirt around the wound, but did not press his fingers too firm over the cut. Ryan's touch was, as usual, soothing, and it sent ripples of cold, endless waves down my veins.

"You were taking too much heal," he said and took the barest amount of heal from the shell. "Take the smallest amount and then apply the heal without pressing it over your cut." I did not even realize he had put the heal over my cut until he stood up—he had applied it within a second, barely skimming the paste over my cut.

"I am unable to see how this is going to work. I cannot even feel the heal," I looked down at my abdomen to see if it had turned into that powdery liquid again. It had not.

"You should not. See, the heal is intact. If I had not taken only that little amount of it, and if I had tried to massage it over your cut instead of barely placing it, the heal would have turned into fluid."

"Everything here is weird," I muttered.

Ryan's mouth curved into a small smile. "Don't worry, Spark. You will soon get used to all these," he said and handed me the heal. Except I did not want to get used to Odalis or to Kingdom of Water. I wanted to find where my family was kept, then I wanted all of us to return to our land--our world--the human world, which somehow sounded less complex than this world of faeries I had brought myself into.

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CHAPTER 25!

Hope you enjoyed it. Do vote/comment/share 😊😊

Sooo.. Myra forced Ryan to consume raw fish till he stopped puking them😂
Poor Ryan.