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Chapter 39: A Turning Of The Page

Ross and Sherry brought Justin and Bethany in to our room not long after Diane and I had finished our breakfast the following morning. Though the hospital was well prepared to meet the peculiar dietary preferences of Mers, we opted for more conventional(?) fare, pancakes well slathered with syrup, with slices of bacon on the side. As for beverages, we went with water, and coffee with creamer added, no sugar. Now that she was only 'eating for one' for the first time in more than eight months, Diane's appetite was already appreciably less than it had been.

"Since when do you ever see a fat mermaid?" she quipped at one point.

Well, maybe she was being a bit unfair. Too many of us humans have gotten overweight in recent years, and swimming can be a good way to lose weight and improve muscle tone. Indeed, some of the mermaids now residing at the Sutherland Express have said they originally began mermaiding as a way of getting back into shape after being diverted by the myriad demands of school and work, motherhood (their children ranged in age from toddler to adult), and adult life in general.

As might be guessed, the younger children in particular much missed their mothers even as they also had come to better understand why their mothers now needed to live in the sea. There was a great deal of messaging back and forth, and it seemed every time Captain Musgrave's Merry Maid came calling, there would be children and fathers on board eager to meet with the finned members of their families. Some had even taken up scuba diving as a way of getting to better understand how their loved ones now lived, and to at least get a glimpse of our new home in the sea.

It was also not much of a surprise to hear some of those visitors express wishes that they too could become Mers. Though I had not been approached lately by someone wishing to be thus changed (To this day Diane and I have remained very close-mouthed about my ability to safely transform humans into Mers), we now began to think more frequently about how to handle such cases. If a husband wanted to be changed so he could be back with his wife and there were no young children to be concerned about, the decision might - might - be a comparatively easy one to make.

If though, young children were involved, then being able to say yes or no to an adult's desire to be changed could get a LOT more challenging. If both parents now had tails instead of legs and were thus effectively confined to water, even if in a freshwater lake instead of the sea, how would they effectively raise their kids? Might their children live with relatives, and would they interract with their parents 'long distance' via emails and live videos? Diane in particular did not much like either of those options, which led us to wonder if maybe I should say no to families with young children.

Neither of us was really satisfied with that option either. I could tell prospective clients why we thought it might be best to transform their children if they wanted to be changed, but young adolescents in particular might have difficulty accepting suddenly no longer being able to walk, or that once changed, there was no going back. Allowing me to enter their mind via the Vulcan mind-meld could well be more intrusive than they might be willing to accept. Though nearly all of us changed by the Xanadu event had now come to at least accept our new forms, bipedal 'tweens or teenagers with mermaid mothers might already have prospective careers or other interests in mind which are rather incompatable with tails and fins. In a world where having two working legs is often the most vital physical attribute of all, that would be no minor consideration.

Infants and toddlers might be a different story. Someone transformed at such an early age might well retain little or no memory of what it is like to have legs and be able to walk, which could well be an asset in their future lives as water dwellers. On the other hand neither Diane nor I were certain I would be able to mind-meld with such a young child sufficiently to use Mer magic to transform them into a young human-fish hybrid. For now, until and unless such a family were to come to me with the desire to become a family of Mers, that would be yet another question which would have to remain unanswered for now.

With great power comes great responsibility.

As we had hoped, Diane was given the OK to leave the hospital that afternoon, and we lost little time contacting Matthew and Delainey with the news. They in turn lost little time calling a taxi to pick us up; Marlon had earlier told us he would be out of Florida for a few days and thus be able to give us a ride.

When our ride did come, we were surprised and amused to discover it was a tanker, of the kind sometimes used to fill new swimming pools. With help from the truckers and a couple staffers of the hospital, we quickly got on top of the tank, crawled to the hatch, and splashed in. With the tank filled almost to the brim the ride was blissfully smooth and we were soon back in our then home-away-from-home. Though the earlier cases when Hannah, Tara, and Ana had given birth suggested mermaids recovered far faster than 'normal' women, Diane's doctors asked us to stay close by for a couple more days in the unlikely event of post partum complications. We were willing to comply, as Delainey and Matt were very sociable hosts, and Ross and Sherry had also wanted to visit us at the pool, and bring the new additions to their family when they did so.

They arrived the following morning, the nineteenth of September. After parking in front of our hosts' home, they walked around to the rear where the pool, and us, were. To our surprise Sherry and Ross were both dressed in medieval attire, as they each held a baby in their arms.

"We decided to have a little fun dressing up like this" Sherry said after Diane and I had swum up poolside from where we had been nibbling on some water plants.

"You do look beautiful!" Diane actually was gushing as she spoke "Did you two ever dress like this before?"

"No, we never did" Ross now answered "But after seeing Delainey we both decided we liked the styles..."

Diane and I both couldn't help but admire our visitors. They were costumed as successful merchants or local lords might have back then, in that era's equivalent of everyday wear, if there really was such a thing. When Justin squirmed in his mother's arms, she covered his eyes with one of her voluminous lower sleeves, and that seemed to soothe him, as within moments he settled down once more. Eyeing the chairs and table nearby, she handed her son off to her husband, who was already holding their daughter in his other arm, then briefly lifted her skirts as she sat down with practiced smoothness. After taking Justin back in her arms, she took a bottle out of her bag and readied it for him to suckle on it.

"Would you like for me to feed him?" Diane asked "I'm still lactating."

"Yes, please, thank you, if you will" Sherry answered. Diane crawled out of the water, accepted a towel Ross offered, and rubbed her upper body dry. Her nipples peaked through her scales, but thanks to their pale green tint, they did not stand out quite as much as on a 'normal' human woman. After handing the towel back to Ross, she took Justin in her arms and held him to her chest, in moments he was nursing. When he was finished Diane handed him back and then turned her attention to Ross once more.

"Would you like me to feed her too?" she asked as she focused her attention on his daughter who he held in his arms. Before he could reply his wife signalled her approval with a broad smile, and soon Bethany was suckling at one of Diane's breasts, before signalling with a mild burp when she was full. Now her father took her back in his arms, smiling down as broadly as his wife was smiling at their son in her arms. Soon both children were again asleep, and when Matt and Delainey came out with the infant's car seats from the car, they tucked them in and placed them in the shade of the umbella which shaded the table where they were once again sitting.

With the four adult bipeds sitting in chairs and us two Mers sitting on cushions which our hosts had thoughtfully brought out for our benefit, we chatted for some time about subjects serious and trivial, with frequent admiring glimpses toward the twins napping in their car seats. Sherry and Ross told us they would be heading back up to North Carolina in two days time unless the twins developed complications, which neither they nor the doctors anticipated happening. They yet again thanked us profusely for the efforts and sacrifices we (Diane in particular!) had put in to give them two healthy children. They also said they would pay her considerably more than they had guarenteed in the surrogate contract as a gesture of gratitude, and said they had deliberately chosen the middle names of Diane and Harry as a further thanks. I felt myself start to turn green with embarrassment in a most unVulcanlike manner, and I noticed Diane flush a pale red herself.

We in turn were asked about our own long term plans. We mentioned our plan to get married later in the year, and that we did not plan on having any children ourselves. Ross and Sherry actually seemed a bit disappointed to hear that bit of news, but they certainly perked up when we told them we were the 'Mer parents' of a teenage mermaid who could not breathe air. That prompted a minor flood of questions about Natalie; how she had come to be a mermaid, how she coped with being unable to ever leave the water for all intents and purposes, and what she hoped to do when she grew up.

"We never fail to be amazed at how well she has accepted her situation" Diane said at one point "Looking that different from most people and not being able to walk is one thing, not being able to even breathe air is really on another level altogether..."

"What about having children?" Sherry now asked, bringing up a potential issue that had somehow eluded discussion prior to that point.

"We don't really know" Diane answered "She herself has never said, but we would not be surprised if she is already thinking about whether or not she wants to eventually have children someday...she is old enough to at least start to think about it, though we do hope she will wait at least a few years..."

"Does she have a boyfriend?" Ross wondered.

"She actually does" I now answered.

"Is he a merman?"

"Indeed, he is" I now said "I imagine it would be pretty hard to have a relationship when one can't breathe water and the other can't breathe air..."

Elise Jordan could certainly attest to that. She had been transformed into a water-only breathing mermaid by the Xanadu event, and within a few weeks her husband had filed for divorce. That alone seemed cold hearted and unsupportive, but we later heard there had already been problems in their marraige.

"Is their relationship at all serious?" Sherry now wondered.

"I would say it is heading that way" Diane said "But for two kids who are not even seventeen yet they are doing very well at keeping things in perspective, that it is not yet time to let things get REALLY serious..."

"Sounds like they have a couple pretty level heads on their shoulders" Ross commented.

"They do" Diane said, before she and I spent some time answering the Thomas's queries about Bruce, whose story fascinated them as much as Natalie's had. They had little difficulty agreeing that having a tail that worked was far preferable to having two legs that did not. They also had thoughtful looks on their faces when we told them that at least two mermaids had been in similar situations and that both were emphatic that the Xanadu effect had changed their lives very much for the better, in stark contrast to the ordeals endured by other survivors, some of whom had been driven to take their own lives. All six of us adults present were silent for several moments after touching on that subject, before conversation revived with talk centered on various lighter subjects.

The gathering broke up by early afternoon, with the Thomas's heading to their short term apartment rental, and our hosts heading inside for lunch and a bit of 'working from home.' Diane and I cruised about the pool/pond at a leisurely pace, taking in the sights, which were still facinating even though for a Mer there was nothing like the ocean. We looked forward to returning to our proper home in the sea and reuniting with Natalie and our other friends of the Mer colony.

We had hoped to depart Florida for Bimini and the Sutherland Express that Friday, the twenty first, but Mother Nature had other ideas, serving up a tropical storm that barely qualified as such but still forced a delay in our return by a couple days. We filled in the time with more socializing with our hosts, and with a mermaid who was heading for a family reunion of her own, and who said she thought she might be pregnant. She didn't specifically identify the father, though she did had a steady relationship with one of the resident mermen, and was hopeful her exam with a gynacologist would result in a positive test.

We also thought about our own future including our upcoming wedding, we finally decided the ceremony would be at, or above, the Sutherland, while the official reception follow on a later date at Beaufort for the benefit of our land dwelling air-only breathing friends - though there would surely be plenty of celebrating below the waves! There was also my eventual surgery to put my heart and liver in their proper places (for a Vulcan), and seeing Natalie and Bruce continue the transition to young adults. What might the future have in hold for them? What might the future have in hold for us? Ultimately there was still only one way for us to find out...

Description
Chapter 39: A Turning Of The Page

Ross and Sherry brought Justin and Bethany in to our room not long after Diane and I had finished our breakfast the following morning. Though the hospital was well prepared to meet the peculiar dietary preferences of Mers, we opted for more conventional(?) fare, pancakes well slathered with syrup, with slices of bacon on the side. As for beverages, we went with water, and coffee with creamer added, no sugar. Now that she was only 'eating for one' for the first time in more than eight months, Diane's appetite was already appreciably less than it had been.

"Since when do you ever see a fat mermaid?" she quipped at one point.

Well, maybe she was being a bit unfair. Too many of us humans have gotten overweight in recent years, and swimming can be a good way to lose weight and improve muscle tone. Indeed, some of the mermaids now residing at the Sutherland Express have said they originally began mermaiding as a way of getting back into shape after being diverted by the myriad demands of school and work, motherhood (their children ranged in age from toddler to adult), and adult life in general.

As might be guessed, the younger children in particular much missed their mothers even as they also had come to better understand why their mothers now needed to live in the sea. There was a great deal of messaging back and forth, and it seemed every time Captain Musgrave's Merry Maid came calling, there would be children and fathers on board eager to meet with the finned members of their families. Some had even taken up scuba diving as a way of getting to better understand how their loved ones now lived, and to at least get a glimpse of our new home in the sea.

It was also not much of a surprise to hear some of those visitors express wishes that they too could become Mers. Though I had not been approached lately by someone wishing to be thus changed (To this day Diane and I have remained very close-mouthed about my ability to safely transform humans into Mers), we now began to think more frequently about how to handle such cases. If a husband wanted to be changed so he could be back with his wife and there were no young children to be concerned about, the decision might - might - be a comparatively easy one to make.

If though, young children were involved, then being able to say yes or no to an adult's desire to be changed could get a LOT more challenging. If both parents now had tails instead of legs and were thus effectively confined to water, even if in a freshwater lake instead of the sea, how would they effectively raise their kids? Might their children live with relatives, and would they interract with their parents 'long distance' via emails and live videos? Diane in particular did not much like either of those options, which led us to wonder if maybe I should say no to families with young children.

Neither of us was really satisfied with that option either. I could tell prospective clients why we thought it might be best to transform their children if they wanted to be changed, but young adolescents in particular might have difficulty accepting suddenly no longer being able to walk, or that once changed, there was no going back. Allowing me to enter their mind via the Vulcan mind-meld could well be more intrusive than they might be willing to accept. Though nearly all of us changed by the Xanadu event had now come to at least accept our new forms, bipedal 'tweens or teenagers with mermaid mothers might already have prospective careers or other interests in mind which are rather incompatable with tails and fins. In a world where having two working legs is often the most vital physical attribute of all, that would be no minor consideration.

Infants and toddlers might be a different story. Someone transformed at such an early age might well retain little or no memory of what it is like to have legs and be able to walk, which could well be an asset in their future lives as water dwellers. On the other hand neither Diane nor I were certain I would be able to mind-meld with such a young child sufficiently to use Mer magic to transform them into a young human-fish hybrid. For now, until and unless such a family were to come to me with the desire to become a family of Mers, that would be yet another question which would have to remain unanswered for now.

With great power comes great responsibility.

As we had hoped, Diane was given the OK to leave the hospital that afternoon, and we lost little time contacting Matthew and Delainey with the news. They in turn lost little time calling a taxi to pick us up; Marlon had earlier told us he would be out of Florida for a few days and thus be able to give us a ride.

When our ride did come, we were surprised and amused to discover it was a tanker, of the kind sometimes used to fill new swimming pools. With help from the truckers and a couple staffers of the hospital, we quickly got on top of the tank, crawled to the hatch, and splashed in. With the tank filled almost to the brim the ride was blissfully smooth and we were soon back in our then home-away-from-home. Though the earlier cases when Hannah, Tara, and Ana had given birth suggested mermaids recovered far faster than 'normal' women, Diane's doctors asked us to stay close by for a couple more days in the unlikely event of post partum complications. We were willing to comply, as Delainey and Matt were very sociable hosts, and Ross and Sherry had also wanted to visit us at the pool, and bring the new additions to their family when they did so.

They arrived the following morning, the nineteenth of September. After parking in front of our hosts' home, they walked around to the rear where the pool, and us, were. To our surprise Sherry and Ross were both dressed in medieval attire, as they each held a baby in their arms.

"We decided to have a little fun dressing up like this" Sherry said after Diane and I had swum up poolside from where we had been nibbling on some water plants.

"You do look beautiful!" Diane actually was gushing as she spoke "Did you two ever dress like this before?"

"No, we never did" Ross now answered "But after seeing Delainey we both decided we liked the styles..."

Diane and I both couldn't help but admire our visitors. They were costumed as successful merchants or local lords might have back then, in that era's equivalent of everyday wear, if there really was such a thing. When Justin squirmed in his mother's arms, she covered his eyes with one of her voluminous lower sleeves, and that seemed to soothe him, as within moments he settled down once more. Eyeing the chairs and table nearby, she handed her son off to her husband, who was already holding their daughter in his other arm, then briefly lifted her skirts as she sat down with practiced smoothness. After taking Justin back in her arms, she took a bottle out of her bag and readied it for him to suckle on it.

"Would you like for me to feed him?" Diane asked "I'm still lactating."

"Yes, please, thank you, if you will" Sherry answered. Diane crawled out of the water, accepted a towel Ross offered, and rubbed her upper body dry. Her nipples peaked through her scales, but thanks to their pale green tint, they did not stand out quite as much as on a 'normal' human woman. After handing the towel back to Ross, she took Justin in her arms and held him to her chest, in moments he was nursing. When he was finished Diane handed him back and then turned her attention to Ross once more.

"Would you like me to feed her too?" she asked as she focused her attention on his daughter who he held in his arms. Before he could reply his wife signalled her approval with a broad smile, and soon Bethany was suckling at one of Diane's breasts, before signalling with a mild burp when she was full. Now her father took her back in his arms, smiling down as broadly as his wife was smiling at their son in her arms. Soon both children were again asleep, and when Matt and Delainey came out with the infant's car seats from the car, they tucked them in and placed them in the shade of the umbella which shaded the table where they were once again sitting.

With the four adult bipeds sitting in chairs and us two Mers sitting on cushions which our hosts had thoughtfully brought out for our benefit, we chatted for some time about subjects serious and trivial, with frequent admiring glimpses toward the twins napping in their car seats. Sherry and Ross told us they would be heading back up to North Carolina in two days time unless the twins developed complications, which neither they nor the doctors anticipated happening. They yet again thanked us profusely for the efforts and sacrifices we (Diane in particular!) had put in to give them two healthy children. They also said they would pay her considerably more than they had guarenteed in the surrogate contract as a gesture of gratitude, and said they had deliberately chosen the middle names of Diane and Harry as a further thanks. I felt myself start to turn green with embarrassment in a most unVulcanlike manner, and I noticed Diane flush a pale red herself.

We in turn were asked about our own long term plans. We mentioned our plan to get married later in the year, and that we did not plan on having any children ourselves. Ross and Sherry actually seemed a bit disappointed to hear that bit of news, but they certainly perked up when we told them we were the 'Mer parents' of a teenage mermaid who could not breathe air. That prompted a minor flood of questions about Natalie; how she had come to be a mermaid, how she coped with being unable to ever leave the water for all intents and purposes, and what she hoped to do when she grew up.

"We never fail to be amazed at how well she has accepted her situation" Diane said at one point "Looking that different from most people and not being able to walk is one thing, not being able to even breathe air is really on another level altogether..."

"What about having children?" Sherry now asked, bringing up a potential issue that had somehow eluded discussion prior to that point.

"We don't really know" Diane answered "She herself has never said, but we would not be surprised if she is already thinking about whether or not she wants to eventually have children someday...she is old enough to at least start to think about it, though we do hope she will wait at least a few years..."

"Does she have a boyfriend?" Ross wondered.

"She actually does" I now answered.

"Is he a merman?"

"Indeed, he is" I now said "I imagine it would be pretty hard to have a relationship when one can't breathe water and the other can't breathe air..."

Elise Jordan could certainly attest to that. She had been transformed into a water-only breathing mermaid by the Xanadu event, and within a few weeks her husband had filed for divorce. That alone seemed cold hearted and unsupportive, but we later heard there had already been problems in their marraige.

"Is their relationship at all serious?" Sherry now wondered.

"I would say it is heading that way" Diane said "But for two kids who are not even seventeen yet they are doing very well at keeping things in perspective, that it is not yet time to let things get REALLY serious..."

"Sounds like they have a couple pretty level heads on their shoulders" Ross commented.

"They do" Diane said, before she and I spent some time answering the Thomas's queries about Bruce, whose story fascinated them as much as Natalie's had. They had little difficulty agreeing that having a tail that worked was far preferable to having two legs that did not. They also had thoughtful looks on their faces when we told them that at least two mermaids had been in similar situations and that both were emphatic that the Xanadu effect had changed their lives very much for the better, in stark contrast to the ordeals endured by other survivors, some of whom had been driven to take their own lives. All six of us adults present were silent for several moments after touching on that subject, before conversation revived with talk centered on various lighter subjects.

The gathering broke up by early afternoon, with the Thomas's heading to their short term apartment rental, and our hosts heading inside for lunch and a bit of 'working from home.' Diane and I cruised about the pool/pond at a leisurely pace, taking in the sights, which were still facinating even though for a Mer there was nothing like the ocean. We looked forward to returning to our proper home in the sea and reuniting with Natalie and our other friends of the Mer colony.

We had hoped to depart Florida for Bimini and the Sutherland Express that Friday, the twenty first, but Mother Nature had other ideas, serving up a tropical storm that barely qualified as such but still forced a delay in our return by a couple days. We filled in the time with more socializing with our hosts, and with a mermaid who was heading for a family reunion of her own, and who said she thought she might be pregnant. She didn't specifically identify the father, though she did had a steady relationship with one of the resident mermen, and was hopeful her exam with a gynacologist would result in a positive test.

We also thought about our own future including our upcoming wedding, we finally decided the ceremony would be at, or above, the Sutherland, while the official reception follow on a later date at Beaufort for the benefit of our land dwelling air-only breathing friends - though there would surely be plenty of celebrating below the waves! There was also my eventual surgery to put my heart and liver in their proper places (for a Vulcan), and seeing Natalie and Bruce continue the transition to young adults. What might the future have in hold for them? What might the future have in hold for us? Ultimately there was still only one way for us to find out...