Welcome to Sealantis

chapter 4: Caspian Marino is neither a bag

A/N - Sorry about the delay in posting. Insert detailed, trauma-filled explanation to fulfill fanfic-writers-having-terrible-lives trope. Anyways, then we lost power, but now it's back so yay!

Flashback to 9 years prior

death and dying represented.

"Sandy," my dad said softly. "There's something I've been meaning to tell you."

My mother looked up from her creamy soup, a chunk of meat on her spoon. "What is it, love?"

"I'm... not who you think I am." The knuckles on his hands were white as he guided the steering wheel.

Mom giggled, her blue eyes sparkling as her hair blew gently in the breeze. "What, are you gonna confess to being a pescatarian or something? I know you're not, darling. I love you anyways."

"Whassa pesh-kah-ware-ant?" I asked innocently. "Is thath a, a, type of CLAM?"

My parents laughed, my heart soared, and very air around us shimmered metaphorically with golden light. I wished that moment could have lasted forever, but their laughter would be the last thing I'd ever see them do together again. Well, except die.

I watched them die together.

In an instant, we were weightless. The world turned nauseatingly before I felt a sickening impact and the world went still and quiet except for the ragged breaths of my parents and I.

"M-Millie," Dad croaked, stretching out a mangled hand. "Sssa-"

Footsteps interrupted him, and I laid my eyes unwittingly on green limbs and eyes that blinked the wrong way.

"So," one creature began. "The prodigal Merman and his clam-loving wife's consequences finally catch up to them."

Another stepped up beside the Sealien, arms outstretched so their shadows cast a T on my parents. "It's a shame you embraced human culture so openly, Caspian. The Marinos have always been our primary strategists, revered for their bright minds and dedicated hearts. Must you fight your nature - must you fight us so thoroughly, that you die just as you lived?"

My dad groaned. "Please-"

My vision blurred and the first creature's voice softened. "If you wish, I will deal you a mercy kill - a cause of death as honorable as your grandfather's. The only question is how long you're willing to suffer."

"S-Sandy too," Dad managed, and I heard a disconcerting chittering sound.

"Sandy is a good-for-nothing human, a- a pescatarian! How can you love her?"

The other creature muttered something too low for me to hear it, and the first creature sighed. "You're right. It is better the child grow up parentless than have a pescatarian for a parent. Pass smoothly through the waves, Caspian."

A sickening thud and a final, rasping gasp etched itself firmly in my mind, burning through the blurriness, and I focused on the dying faces of my beloved parents.

flashback over

The next few hours were a blur, much like my vision had been when my parents were... kindly killed?

One does not simply come to the realization their mother was a clam chowder enthusiast.

I would need time, and time I was given.

A/N - not literally. she does not have time travel powers. yet.

The grass around our little "camp" got flatter and flatter as I paced circles around the group. I might have been tired from running and fighting, but any time I tried to sit down, it was like my core was on vibrate mode, shaking me insistently from the inside. I couldn't stay still. Edward stuck by my side the entire time, bending down to collect the occasional rock.