They swam as fast as they could. Anxiety, worry, fear, and frenetic energy surged throughout the water. The deep azure blue currents moving violently with their strokes.

They were two mer-people. A female and a male. One, the male, was a handsome young man, by perspectives of humans, being tall, slightly muscular, but a little skinny, and overall fit in a healthy sense. He had deep blue hair flowing dramatically behind him, his hair was shaved around near his ears and lower head, but the rest was long, he had pointed elf-like ears, and blue fins on his arms making him look more like a mythical creature, than human. Tattooed across his chest was a spiralled fish design displaying his rank, and he had gills on his neck. His tail had light cyan and deep, beautiful, blue lazuli scales that faded from light into dark in an ombre affect, and was shaped like one that resembled a dolphin except the fins were slightly more split, in a "V" and seemed more fanlike. Much like some descriptions of mermaids, he had a rigded fin down his back and tail.

The female was unlike the other. She clung to a seal, which helped in aiding her to move faster. She was smaller and had brown, midlength hair pushed back behind her pointed ears. The hair crossing above her bangs was plaited with pearls, flowers and seagrass, and tied back behind her head in a long thin braid. Behind her ears were frills similar to that of a dragon's, and she also had almost a crown of leafy, foliage looking things that stuck out like horns or antanee. Her gills unlike the male's were located below her chest, at her sides, corresponding to where humans lungs might be. She was very odd, she was in fact a leafy seadragon, and didn't have a proper tail, and she had leafy fins or protrusions the color of light yellow-green with transparent purple splotches, all over her, on her arms and tail mainly, and had spikes and patterns reminiscent to an actual leafy seadragon. Her scales consisted of light colors of yellow, orange, green and some random bits of purple that complemented the yellow nicely. And being similar to her actual counterpart, the leafy fins didn't help much in swimming and propulsion, thus giving her reason to hold on to a seal for transportation and served important for speed. Though her lack in speed she could partly compensate, having webbed fingers and an almost spiny, sail-like, webbed dorsal fin on the back of her tail. She wore a deep earthy purple-blue cloak that was drapped around her, and served as decoration and possibly warmth.

They had been traveling for nearly an hour trying to escape their pursuers. They both turned their heads to look back and see if they had been followed. So far it had seemed that they had managed to get ahead of them.

"Donovan," the female said getting the  male's attention.

Donovan slowed down and turned to look back at the seadragon woman that clung to the seal and asked, "What is it, Gwynneth?"

"Did you notice that the water has gotten significantly colder,"the female named Gwynneth said in a perceptive tone to him,"in the past hour it has gotten colder, did you notice that?"

"Sort of,"he answered continuing to swim.

Gwynneth analyzed her surroundings a bit and said,"We are heading toward New Zealand, it seems. That would definitely explain the change in temperature."

"Well," Donovan said in a slightly tired but relieved voice with a small sigh,"I guess we are staying there."

They continued on their journey, and Donovan sped up a bit. Following slightly behind, Gwynneth stroked her free arm a little faster, and thrashed her tail a bit, still holding onto her seal companion with her other arm. Donovan was significantly faster than her, but that was expected, he was built better for swimming than her.

As they swam for another thirty minutes, Donovan recognized the change in temperature and shivered slightly. Gwynneth rolled her eyes and wrapped her cloak tighter around her shoulders as they kept swimming.

They past many kelp forests, and both of them discerned that there were less coral reefs. The only ones were rather small. The scenery was rather nice, a different change from the mainly corals and tropical things they were used to seeing in warmer waters near where they used to live.

Meanwhile....

A young man sat on a boat with a bunch of people. They were sailling off the west coast of New Zealand, it was summer, well technically winter. Weather there is lot different. If it was winter, December, in the Northern Hemisphere, let's say North America, it would be summer in New Zealand. And if it were summer, June, July, August, it would be winter in New Zealand. And it was June, so the weather was rather cold, there's was a breeze and some clouds, but the weather was mostly nice, kind of like a cooler Monterey Bay.

The young man was pale and had light short blond hair, and blue eyes and wore a sailor suit, but a more modern take on it. He was about the age of a teenager, eighteen. And he was working on the boat for money. He was watching the waves on the side of the boat calmly, and beamed slightly.

"OI, FELIX!" A man on the boat shouted at him in an Australian accent.

Felix, the young man, shook himself out of his daze and was a bit startled, he walked over to the man and said,"What is it, sir?"

"It seems the crew thinks that you..."He hesitated,"that you are a traitor."

"WHAT!?" Felix gasped, "How!? What did I do!?"

"They say you stole a huge portion of the money we earned from today's catch of fish, mate," the man said in a grumbled voice.

"Wait, but I didn't," said Felix.

"Sorry, cuz, but we can't be too sure." The man continued and glanced at the other crew members, "I'm afraid we are going to have to kick you off the boat, it just isn't fair."

Felix stood there in shock. The other crew members started gathering around him. Plenty of them were a mix of Irish, Australian, some English, and Maori. Two young men were sturdy built, and obviously were Maori had light brown-tan complexion and traditional Maori tattoos on their arms. There were others but those two stood out. The rest of the members consisted of the other ethnicities. One of the other crew members, was a short, pale girl with brown fluffy-curled short hair, and wore glasses who unlike the other crew members had a calm countenance.

The other crew members glared at Felix. One of them, a tall lanky man with messy red hair handed him two oars and motioned to the small boat attached to the boat. Then one of them shouted, "OFF YOU GO THEN!"

Felix took the oar and got into the small boat. One of the crew members threw a bag of his simple belongings to him. Then two girls followed, the short girl with brown fluffy hair and glasses and another girl of similar height, with bright green eyes, pale skin, with her light red-violet-fuchia, and magenta dyed hair up in two short pony tails. Both lowered the boat into the water by turning a handle around in a counterclockwise direction. The handle thing had a line of rope coming from it attached to the boat which was what helped the boat into the water.

The two girls then cut the rope that attached the little boat to the bigger on, and then joined the other crew members as some waved to Felix before they started to continue sailing away. But before the boat turned, Felix noticed that the other crew members had left except for the two girls. And the facial expressions of the two girls were suspicious.

Their names where Daphne and Vannelope, Danphe the short girl with glasses, and Vannelope was the other with dyed hair. They smiled and laughed then high fived each other. Then they both looked straight at Felix and held up the stolen money and waved it at him.

"THEY STOLE THE MONEY!" Felix tried to shout at the boat, "Vannelope and Daph-"

But the boat had already begun to trug along through the water and his little boat was too far down for them to hear. The boat was leaving at a fast speed and soon Felix decided he would start rowing back to the Mainland of New Zealand.

Sense they had left him off at the West coast Felix knew were he could go from there. He could paddle to the nearest part, and stop at Nelson and then from there either rent a car, or find someone to drive him back to his home in Christchurch.

But that would take a while. Sense he was in the middle of the Tasman Sea. So he just kept rowing.

A couple hours had passed and he felt tired and hungry so the blond young man looked in his bag to see if he had any food. In his bag was his phone, a compass, a small map, only a few coins, and two plastic ziplock-bags, one with Lay's chips inside and another with snap-peas.

In the next thirty minutes he had begun to eat the chips and snap-peas while continuing to paddle with the oars and move the boat closer and closer to the mainland. After a while he could faintly see land and there was some hope that he might actually get reach it.

"Almost there, I've made it is far, I've got to keep going, "Felix said to himself.

The young blond man continued rowing his boat and tried his best to ration the food he had. It was imminent that he would run out of snacks. But he had to keep going.

~***~