Hearing my father's question made the whole room smaller. It was as if the walls were closing in on me. He knew. He knew Professor Cyan was an Aquantien.

I gazed at my mother whose eyes rested on my shock-stricken face. Calmness surrounded her, making it obvious that my teacher's secret was no longer hidden.

"You know," I stated, and nodding of her head confirmed it.

For a moment I forgot to breathe. With a palm over my mouth, I was struggling to process the new information. The gravity seemed to be pulling me with more force than a minute ago, and if I felt this way, I couldn't help but thinking how must Ms. Cyan be feeling.

Breaking the chains of gravity, I returned to the kitchen. Ms. Cyan was sitting at the table, my father on the opposite side. Her face was as white as the porcelain tea set on the counter top behind them. He was looking at her with warmth in his eyes and a smile on his lips.

I walked up to the table and sat down without a single spoken word. Ms. Cyan looked at me. "You told them!" she accused me.

"No!" I exclaimed and cast a glance in my father's direction. "I haven't said a word!"

"She didn't," he confirmed. "She didn't have to." He was still smiling, making it look as if this whole situation was amusing him.

"What do you mean?" I leaned towards him. "How do you know that Professor Cyan is an Aquantien? Not that I'm saying that she is."

"She is," he said with a nod of the head. He crossed his arms over his chest and sank into the chair.

"How..." Ms. Cyan tried to ask a question, but her voice gave out.

"How I figured it out?" my father finished her question.

She nodded in confirmation.

"You made the same mistakes Azora did when she was learning to swim and dive again. She could not keep her mouth closed. She kept trying to breathe under water. She must have drank and spat out half of the ocean back then." A spark appeared in his eye as he was remembering those days. "I have to give you credit though, you're a much faster learner."

"But humans sometimes drink water when they go diving too!" I was not going to let him win this one.

"Yes, but usually they don't need somebody to tell them that letting the water into their lungs is a bad idea," my father said, taking away all my arguments. I did say that to Ms. Cyan. I just thought he wasn't able to hear us.

"There's one thing you need to know about the sound," he said. "It gets amplified when it travels over the surface of water."

He loved to use everyday situations to teach me about the scientific principles. I would have loved it if he saw fit to teach me this particular one before the day at the sea with Professor Cyan.

I looked at her. She sat with her head bowed and her fingers in her hair. She hadn't moved a muscle. A tiny drop of water slided down her cheek and fell to the surface of the table. As if that was her cue, my mother walked up to Ms. Cyan, sat on the chair next to her and placed an arm over her shoulders.

"No need to feel uneasy," she said in a soft voice. "This is something you clearly don't want to share with the rest of the world and let me assure you, your secret is safe with us."

The sideways glance Ms. Cyan gave my mother, let me know that she wasn't too convinced in that. It was pretty obvious she did not have faith in my parents.

Her eyes kept wandering, looking at the patterns on the wooden table, doors of the lower kitchen cabinets, coffee table and area rug on the floor in front of the sofa, basically anything below the sight line of the rest of us, trying to avoid eye contact.

"I never should have come here," she muttered. She then turned to me, only gave me a superficial glance and said, "Cursed the day I let you plant the thought into my mind."

"Don't say that Professor Cyan." Her pain somehow became my pain as well.

It wasn't until the roar of an approaching thunder rolled to us, that she finally lifted her head.

"They did predict the possibility of a thunderstorm during the night." My father walked over to the kitchen window, making sure it was shut. He left us when he went on to check all the other windows of the house.

Last summer we decided to go out to dinner one evening. None of us remembered to close the front room window. The storm surprised us, but not as much as a pond that welcomed us upon our return. My mother often mentioned that she liked the idea of having one, only I doubted that she meant to place it in her living room.

"A bed is ready for you in Azora's room," my mother said to Professor Cyan. She gently touched her arm as she looked into her eyes. Turning to me, she added, "I've prepared a blanket for you. It's on the chest next to the bathroom door."

"Thanks." I smiled at her.

She returned the smile before focusing on Ms. Cyan again. "Try to get some sleep. Let the dreams chase away the worries." Aftr she wished us good night, she left us.

"Come on, let me show you to my room," I said and added, "You don't want the storm to catch you outside."

That was my attempt to drive out any thoughts of leaving our house. The day was full of nerve-wracking events. It would be best for Professor Cyan not to be alone. Especially on a night like this.

A flash of light illuminated the world outside and just a few seconds later, a deep, roaring sound of thunder filled the air. It was as if it responded to my thoughts. Looking at my Literature teacher, I could see the sound of clashing clouds was not to her liking. With her hands over her ears, she closed her eyes shut and clenched her jaw. Another loud thunder came almost simultaneously with the lightning, causing her to flinch.

"Let's go into the room, Professor Cyan," I said softly but loud enough for her to hear me. "I'll stay with you until the storm dies down."

Still facing her, I took a step back. She stepped in my direction, but her eyes never left the nearest window. On the other side of the glass, nature continued to put on her very own light-show accompanied by the thunder that sounded like rolling barrels.

Just as we found ourselves in my room, the clouds poured down their liquid cargo in the form of a cleansing rain. It streamed down the roof, filled the gutters and gushed through the downspouts.

"I love the sound of rain," I said and turned on the lamp. A warm yellow light bathed the room. "We could never hear that sound in our underwater home." Once again, the thunder joined the conversation.

"Or the sound of raging thunder. Not like this," Professor Cyan responded. She would shake every time it thundered.

"Do you still remember your old home?" I asked and leaned against the closet. She stood in front of the window, at a safe distance. She did not want to be too close to the source of her anxiety, and yet she wanted to keep an eye on the storm accompanied by lightnings and thunder.

"Thirty-six years is a long time to be away from home. Your memories start to fade. Faces of everyone you knew become blurry. You can't see them clearly when you think about them." She stared at the window. The rain drops washed it as they slided down.

"This is where you feel close to your home, isn't it? This is close to your home." I bit my lower lip as if I said something forbidden, something that was not supposed to be spoken of.

"You really think you have all the answers, don't you?" she asked, looking at me with the eyes full of pain.

"I don't know all the answers, but I do know that my underwater kingdom used to be your underwater kingdom."

As I said those words, a lightning, followed by the sound of the thunder, lit up the sky and caused a brief dance of the shadows inside the room. I was not sure whether Ms. Cyan shuddered because of the thunder or because of my words.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for voting.

I would like to dedicate this chapter to my Wonder Writers Book Club partner for the month of November 2018. Thank you Red_Leasia for all the wonderful advice you gave me.

If you enjoy a good Science Fiction story, you should definitely let her take you to the New Elysium. 

Just a reminder - if you liked this chapter, don't forget to vote.
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