Amadala floated, breath tearing in her lungs, nose stinging, as she watched the spot where Sting had disappeared.
“Sting,” she whispered, her voice breaking on his name.
And in that moment, she proved that Mermaids could cry. The bright pink scales, once her pride and joy, softly dropped from her fin, scalding pink tears that told of a love newly discovered and lost in the same breath.
Amadala, Ruler of the High Seas, Master of the Oceans, Defender of the Merpeople, proved that Mermaids could cry if the pain was deep enough, sharp enough, cutting enough.
And the softly falling scales proved it.
* * * * *
“I’m tired,” Elanna mumbled as Storm tore around the cavern he had dragged her to.
She was beginning to get a feel for this place, thinking it was laid out like a giant underwater castle, complete with stalactite chandeliers and her very own trio of court jesters.
Rage and her sisters had waylaid them coming from the sunroom, as she affectionately called it, and wanted to know details on human relations—the physical kind.
After escaping with as much dignity as he could muster, Storm dragged her to this room where he plopped her on a stone seat—she was getting used to the feel of good rock against her bottom—and began to pour through powders.
The room was almost like a pharmacy or a poorly stocked lab, she decided as she wearily examined the bags hanging around, separated by the color of the skin that held them and the size of the pouch.
Soon, I’ll take you to the island so you can rest, Storm said, his lips not moving but his voice loud in her mind.
“Can you lay off the mind-speak?” she asked testily as she pulled her feet and legs out of the water to curl up and get as comfortable as she could. She examined her toes carefully as she shook the water from them. Was she growing webs between them? Well, she might, considering the amount of time she’d spent in the water. “You are giving me a headache.”
“Sure, love,” he said distractedly as he searched through the pouches, tasting this one, sniffing that one.
Closing her eyes, Elanna decided to try and get some rest before she hunted for dinner, and her fish had better be cooked!
Without realizing it, she drifted off to a deep sleep, her body temperature dropping as her heart rate and breathing slowed.
She was so tired.
She tried to sigh deeply, but that heavy feeling in her chest was back, and it disturbed her somewhat.
That feeling jerked her out of a sound sleep and into panic.
“Storm!” she wheezed, trying to get enough air to force the words out, but finding it impossible. “Storm?”
Having no success calling the man who was still surrounded by his powders and his desperate musings, she tried a different approach.
Storm! she called out in her mind.
Elanna? With a mighty splash, he was almost instantly at her side, turning her onto her back, pressing his hands to her chest.
I’m dying, she managed as even the mental thread began to grow weak.
“No, Elanna!” Storm begged as he closed his eyes and let his power search through her body. The epimorph had taken over! It was running through her blood, through her lungs, and her brain. It was completely filling her body, and he had no way to force it out. “Please don’t leave me!”
His eyes grew wide, and even though no liquid spilled forth, she knew that he was crying.
Storm, it’s been fun, she wheezed, the mental line just as shaky as her voice would have been.
“Fun,” he chuckled, knowing that there was nothing he could do, feeling her life seep from her body.
Fun, Fish Boy! She laughed weakly. And you gave me my first and only orgasm. Thanks!
She tried to smile, but found the muscles in her face were just too weak.
She no longer felt the cold, the hardness of the stone she complained about, and suddenly, she wished that she could feel them, feel the discomforts that made life, and have the time to complain about them anew. But stillness had come over her, a slow creeping darkness that leached the feeling right out of her. She could barely feel her lungs struggling to rise and fall or her heart fighting for one more beat.
“Storm!” she cried suddenly, tears filling her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, tears she could not feel. “I don’t want to die!”
“Elanna,” he sobbed, his voice cracking as he pulled her stiff body into his arms, feeling the coldness of death as it slowly overcame the flesh he loved, the body that was once filled with a shining, vibrant life force. “I don’t want you to leave me! I want to beg and plead, but you are going! I can feel it!”
His breath raced as he remembered the first time he saw her, falling from the sky to land across his body, her sarcastic comments to him, the way she tried to take his head off with her words. Then he remembered her eyes, looking trustingly up at him, relying on him, needing him. He felt his heart rip, and a pain too intense for words began to wash through him in waves.
“Elanna, don’t leave me!” he begged anyway, as he clutched her tighter, as if the very powers in his body could do the impossible and revive her. “Elanna! Creator, Elanna! Don’t you fucking die!”
Such language, Elanna sent, a small smile tugging at her lips.
She struggled to raise her hand, to touch his face ravished and inhuman with his grief.
Storm saw what she was attempting, and immediately reached down to grip her palm, resting it against the fever-hot skin of his face.
“Don’t you leave me alone!” he sobbed without a tear. “Don’t you dare! You are mine! These eyes,” he cried as he rested his forehead against her delicate and so beautiful face. “They are mine! And this face, it’s mine! And your mind, Elanna, it’s mine! Give them back, damn you! Give them back! Please! Fight it, Elanna! Fight, my love! Fight for me! I can’t go on without you! Damn you, woman!” he screamed as the water began to turn a dark murky black and the air went still. “Don’t you teach me to love, make me love you, and then leave me!”
He dropped his head to her chest, gripping her palm, placing kisses—tender kisses, begging kisses—on her cold, still flesh. His body shuddered with the force of his pain, his grip tightened on her body.
“You are loved,” Elanna breathed as she tried to remember what he felt like, how hard his muscles felt, how the wet silk of his hair flowed, his wonderful sea smell. “You are loved, Storm!” she said a bit stronger as the room began to grow dark.
“Love for me,” she whispered.
Now the room was a tiny pinprick of gray light. The silence roared in her head. She tried to feel her chest move, but it had stopped.
Tears still ran down her face as that tiny light focused on the turquoise hair of her one true love.
“Storm,” she asked calmly, “my love. Where have all the colors gone?”
“Nooo!” Storm wailed to the heavens, screamed as he held her tighter, but there was no life left in Elanna Richfield.
She had gone home to play with the angels.
Chapter Nineteen
“We should go and talk to him,” Rage said as she huddled with Sting near the entrance to the cavern where Storm held a sad vigil over Elanna’s body. “It can’t be healthy for him to be in there with her dead body.”
“You go and talk to him,” Sting said sadly, trying to understand in some small way the grief the Merman had to be facing. “I think it’s better we leave him to grieve.”
“But it’s been a whole day, Sting!” Rage countered. “He needs nourishment, he needs to be in fresh water, he needs to let us go in and dispose of her body.”
“He needs to be left alone,” a low voice said from behind.
Rage and Sting turned to see Amadala making her way slowly towards them.
“His heart is breaking and he needs time to deal with the changes in his life.”
“Changes?” Rage asked. “What changes? He only met her a few days ago! He has made no changes for her.”
Rage wasn’t being obtuse; she just didn’t understand this thing called love that caused people to react in so many unpredictable ways.
“He opened his heart,” Amadala said quietly. “That is a hard thing to do. It’s even scarier when your heart is rejected.”
As she said these words, she stared straight at Sting, her eyes wide and hurt, her once sparkling tail fin devoid of color and luminance. Most of her scales had been shed.
“Amadala,” he began. “Now is not the time. We are worried about Storm.”
“I’ll talk to him,” she said as she stiffly turned from the one man she had unexpectedly grown to love.
“I think you are the last person he wants to see,” Sting said as he reached for her arm.
But with a small wave of water, Amadala pushed away from his restraining hand and moved farther away from him.
“I said I would talk to him.”
“Amadala,” Sting said as Rage, sensing a conflict, took the time to bolt. “I don’t think this is what Storm needs.”
“Storm needs to grow up!” Amadala finally lashed out, turning to face the black-haired Merman, watching as his one eyebrow rose almost to his hairline.
“And you are a fine one to give advice,” he stated coldly.
“He needs to grow up and stop feeling sorry for himself!”
“Storm needs understanding!”
“Damn Storm!” Amadala screamed, her patience snapping. “Damn him and his schemes, and his lost love, and his human! He needs to let her go, Sting!”
“He needs to grieve!”
“He needs to realize this was not his fault, just as Neima’s death was not his fault!”
“He feels guilty!” Amadala insisted. “And what is he supposed to give up this time? His life’s blood? He already abdicated the throne to me because of his guilt about Neima!”
“He is in pain,” Sting continued to argue. He could not begin to imagine Storm’s loss, but he likened it to the loss of his lofty ideals and ideas about Amadala. That wound was still fresh and throbbing and he had to fight not to compare the two situations.
“Life is pain!” Amadala sneered. She took several deep breaths, feeling the agony of her shattered heart as she faced the one who had caused her such distress. “And you have to accept your faults and move on! That is the important part, Sting, moving on!”
“And how is he supposed to move on from this, Amadala? Two women he has loved, two women he has lost! How is he supposed to move on when his every breath reminds him of his loss?”
Amadala was silent for a moment, contemplating Sting’s words. She had an answer, but she didn’t think that he would like it. For a moment, she debated telling him of her opinions, but then her aggressive nature took hold and she let the words fly.
“He has to stop being selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“Selfish, Sting! The human is dead! His mate is dead! Elanna is dead! She is feeling no pain, no suffering, she knows nothing! He is feeling sorry for himself over a human who could not care if she wanted to! Life is for the living! Do you think she cares whether or not he stares at her corpse and wills himself to death? She lost that ability when she ceased to exist. Storm is being selfish and pitiful because he can’t face reality. Elanna is gone! It is time to move on with his life!”
“That was heartless,” Sting said quietly. “But in a way, it makes sense.”
“Of course it does. He is still feeling bad about something he could not have prevented. He has to grieve, Sting. But he doesn’t have to kill himself because the one he loved is gone! He is feeling sorry for himself, guilt-ridden, and there is not a thing Elanna can do to ease his suffering. Elanna is dead, Sting, but he lives.”
Sting blinked his eyes as he stared at the woman before him. Was this the shallow, vain woman that he had grown to know? Where had these deep insights into Merman nature come from?
“So what are you going to do?” he asked finally.
“I am going to go and talk to him. He can grieve all he must, but he must live for himself, Sting. That human would never have wanted Storm to die for her, and he is willing himself to death.”
Turning away from Sting, she sank beneath the surface of the water, her pale pink hair floating for a moment before it too disappeared, leaving Sting alone with his thoughts and the fading sight of her long pink hair.
“Be careful,” he said quietly, but his words were never heard.
* * * * *
Storm sat beside the body of his beloved and felt the coldness that surrounded her.
He had laid her flat on the stone bed, her arms crossed over her naked chest, hiding the breasts that he had loved. Her eyes were closed, those once lively orbs stilled. Her brown skin looked gray and hard. Her hair, her wondrous tightly curled hair was dull and lifeless. Lifeless, just like her body, just like him.
He couldn’t force himself to leave the room!
He knew he should allow the others to come and remove her body for disposal, but he could not let her go!
He sat there, stroking her hard cold skin, and tried to picture life as it had been, life without her.
He couldn’t do it.
“Elanna,” he breathed, his eyes wide and luminous. “Why did you leave me?”
“It’s not like she had a choice,” a female voice said from behind. Storm easily recognized the voice of his queen.
“No,” he breathed, not even having enough energy to order her to leave. “She never had that option.”
“Then why are you contemplating a question when you already know the answer?”
Still not turning away from the face of his love, he answered quietly, “Because it gives me something to think about.”
“Why not think about letting us take care of the body?”
“Her name,” he gritted out between clenched teeth as the water around him began to bubble, “is Elanna.”
“She is gone!” Amadala said quietly. “This is just the husk that held the human Elanna.”
“Then I shall have the husk a while longer,” he answered, still not looking at her.
“And then what?” Amadala asked. “Will you turn your back to your people, run away to live with the sharks? What would your precious Elanna think of that?”
Storm said nothing, just stroked the lips he’d once kissed.
“So you are going to die for her?”
“Not honorable,” he mumbled.
“And locking yourself in with a dead body is?” she countered.
“Go away, Amadala,” Storm sighed. “I don’t need you here.”
“Well, you need someone!” she spat. “And everyone else is too busy throwing you a celebration of pity! Poor Storm!” she mocked. “Poor, poor Storm! He lost his love and lost his mind! Snap out of it, Triton! You have duties to perform!”
“I suppose you want me to fetch and carry for you,” he sneered. “Bring you seaweed from the Baltic, fresh fish from the Aegean?”
“No! I want you to do something really important! I want you to prepare her body for disposal.”
“I can’t!” he screamed in a broken voice. “I can’t bear to let her go!”
“I and me are all I’m hearing from you, Storm! You have to let her go! She is gone! Her life is gone! You are the only one holding her here! You need to end this!”
“How can you say that?” he roared, as he finally turned from his beloved’s body to face his tormentor.
Amadala swam a few lengths backwards as she faced a sight she never thought to see again! Storm was going insane!
His eyes were wide and wild, their pale color almost red. His face was drawn and gaunt, all of the flesh seemingly melted away, consumed by his own never-ending grief. His breathing was raspy, his hair a tangled mass from running his fingers through it. Even more horrifying, his scales were dry and flaking, all of their glimmer gone.
He looked to be on the edge of death himself, holding on by his anger and guilt.
“I can say this because you
are killing yourself!” Amadala said. “You are dying, Storm! And I cannot allow that to happen!”
“What are you going to do?” he asked, suddenly quiet, his stillness worse that his insane ramblings. “How will you save me, Amadala? Elanna sought to save me, and look where it got her. Will you be the next to die?”
The water began to roll and boil and Amadala again felt an uncommon shaft of fear as the water played around her. Because of her recent bout with Storm’s anger, she was developing an absurd fear of the sea, the very thing which gave her life.
“Storm, you must end this!” she insisted, feeling the coppery taste of fear filling her mouth. “You must begin to live!”
“And what have I to live for?” he asked, leaving the body of his mate for the first time in days. With a snake-like movement, he eased through the rough waters towards Amadala, who paused, frozen in fear, eyes trained on the Merman who moved closer and closer with every breath.
“You live for her!” Amadala insisted, trying to remember how to breathe and move. She kept taking small glances at the rolling water, and then returning her frightened gaze to Storm’s face. “You have to because of her!”
“And what do you know of love?” Storm sneered. “Other than the love of your own reflection?”
“I know love that is lost hurts!” she stuttered. “But you are the lucky one. My love died before I could experience it!”
Storm blinked once, then regarded the Mermaid who trembled in her skin, yet tried to stand up to him. Her bravery was the mark of a true leader.
“You’ve lost…love?” The waters began to calm.
“I lost love before I recognized it for what it was. I was selfish and stubborn. Don’t make my mistakes, Storm.”
“Sting?” he asked, as normalcy tried to fight its way through his feral eyes.
“He thinks that I am selfish and that I use people.”
“So he knows you are a bitch!” Storm said, a trace of his old self in his voice. “He must have known from the moment he met you. I did!”
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