In the dark depths of the watery abyss, the scenery blurred past as Marina swam for her life. She had no time to look behind her. However, she could tell by the distinctive disturbance of the current she currently was using to expedite her escape, that her pursuers were right on her tail.
She was swimming as fast as her weakened body would allow. It had been days since she had proper rest and a decent meal. Every time she thought she had evaded her pursuit, she would again find herself on the run.
How did she find herself in this situation? It felt like a lifetime ago that she had blissfully been playing and having fun with her best friend. But that all came crashing down one day when her clan and her best friend's clan suddenly found themselves in a violent confrontation.
Something had happened that fueled animosity between the Merpeople and the Sirens, leaving the two clans at each other's throats. She, a mermaid, had been best friend's with a siren of some considerable standing. When conflict arose between their people, she had been forbidden to see any of her siren friends. However, despite the elders' warnings to stay away from each other, she and her best friend continued to sneak out and meet up.
They had gotten away with their clandestine meetings for months without raising suspicion, or so they thought. Until just a week ago she had been as stealthy as an octopus shifter when leaving her clan's seas. Nothing seemed out of place at their meeting spot, but that should have been her first clue that something was wrong. Varuna always left some kind of sign that showed their rendezvous place was safe. This time she failed to notice that the sign from last week was still in place and untouched.
The sign? Shells from Varuna's personal collection of unique shells with varying designs that looked like Roman numerals. Each week Varuna would come and leave a new set of shells to show the day of the week and time they would meet. Marina would then come sometime later to see when their next meeting time would be. It wasn't too unusual for the same day of week and time to be used for a meetup, but it was unusual that it was the same time and day that were used twice in a row. She hadn't thought too much about this unusual choice, but she should have.
Because she ignored the signs of their meeting spot being tampered with, Marina now evaded capture by the angry sirens who now think that mermaids were all a sadistic race. The clan elders refused to tell her and the other young Merpeople what exactly had caused the rift between the Sirens and Merpeople. Thinking it was just a scare tactic for her age group, Marina kept ignoring the warning signs that a bigger conflict was on the horizon for her people.
The increased security at their sea's borders was easily explained away as training exercises for all the capable youth entering the police force this year when they came of age. After all, her generation had been one of the biggest in clan history so there were many more people needing jobs in their clan lands.
Slipping by the additional guards was easy for her since she grew up playing near the borderlands. She knew all the nooks and crannies where a small person could slip unnoticed through the narrow caves when no one was looking. She often played hide and seek in these dark caverns with Varuna until her best friend had outgrown the game and the caves. However, Marina had always been small for her age. Even now at 17 she was the smallest mermaid in her clan. This allowed her to get places others couldn't.
Swimming as fast as she could, Marina could see what she hoped would be safety ahead. Reaching a well-traversed area, the artificial lighting made the vibrant hues of her purple and indigo blue tail shimmer. The lights caught in her lavender hair that was streaming behind her, making her seem like a purple blur as she sought the safety of a neutral territory she had heard stories of. Never having gone this far on her own, Marina had to rely on the knowledge she had gotten through stories told by her parents and the clan elders of distant lands that were beyond the Siren and Mer-people…