Chapter Text
The dream didn’t start off well.
Lightning brightened the dark sky with thunderous cracks as sheets of rain came pouring down. The sea rolled with huge swells and threatened to burst. In the midst of this terrible chaos, a lonely sailing ship glowed a bright red as it struggled to keep its head above water. Its white mast trembled and burned, threatening to break as the storm wind rattled against it.
Suddenly, lightning flashed across the sky, revealing a large pointed cliff that loomed before the ruined ship. Unable to steer away, the poor boat made a thunderous crack upon impact. After a couple of minutes of continuous burning, the once proud ship exploded, leaving nothing but debris in its wake.
Many of the sailors have already escaped into lifeboats. Except for one.
A young man in his twenties was bobbing along the surface of the fierce water and was barely able to keep his head up.
Somebody help him! Claire screamed, but her words were drowned out by the dream's wind and thunder.
Before a large wave could swallow the young man completely, something jumped out of the water and pulled him to the surface.
A fish? Claire could see a tail appear just out of the water. No, wait… A person? A girl?
Ariel… The voice in her head whispered once more.
Claire gasped in surprise. While the top half of the girl was human, Ariel had a fish-like tail instead of legs and feet. A mermaid. Ariel was a mermaid. Wait, mermaids are real?
After seeing walking life-size playing cards, flying books, and talking paintings, should I still be this surprised? Claire thought, shaking her head.
The stormy scene distorted and disappeared and was replaced with a much calmer one. The waves have subsided now, and the sky cleared of dark clouds. Claire looked around confused before she noticed that the two castaways were now on a sandy beach They must’ve been in the water for hours.
Ariel looked around frantically as the man continued to lie motionlessly on the sand.
Is he... dead? Claire thought, now horrified.
However, after a couple of minutes, the young man started coughing out seawater. The mermaid looked back at the man’s face and sighed in relief when she saw his chest rising up and down. She pushed away her long hair and placed her face closer to the man, but not too close for their lips to touch. Looking at him lovingly, she started to sing as she stroked his cheek.
What would I give to live where you are?
What would I pay to stay here beside you?
What would I do to see you smiling at me?
Her voice was beautiful and carried across the beach. Though the words were pain and sadness, Ariel’s voice was filled with hope and determination – as if she could be friends with this man despite her incapability to walk on land and for him to breathe underwater.
Then that wish was crushed. Shouts came from the distance, and footsteps pounded against the sand.
Startled, Ariel stopped singing and managed to drag herself back into the water. She disappeared beneath the waves just as the new strangers arrived.
“Prince Eric!” An elderly thin man wearing a cravat came running down the sandy beach.
Prince? Claire stared dumbfounded as the elderly man knelt down and helped Eric to a sitting position. A giant sheepdog came lumbering behind, his large tongue hanging out on the side.
“Oh, Eric." The man spoke like a grandfather, and the wrinkles on his face immediately formed into a relieved smile. “It is so good to see you doing okay.”
“A girl helped me,” mumbled the young man as he was helped to his feet. “Her voice… she was singing. Most beautiful voice…”
“Yes, yes,” the old gentleman said nodding, clearly assuming the prince was still disoriented after being in the water for so long.
Claire and the young mermaid watched as Prince Eric leaned on his caretaker and hobbled out of the sandy beach.
“I wonder why my heart is racing,” Ariel whispered with fevered hope as she peeked out from behind a small crag. Her bright eyes trained on the prince until she could no longer see him, and then she slowly came out of hiding. She gazed out to the land with a longing in her eyes. “I don’t know when. I don’t know how. But I know I’ll be a part of your world.”
She sang her thoughts. She sang about her love. She sang as the waves crashed around her and the wind blew.
Claire, on the other hand, was not amused.
Really? You just met. And the guy wasn’t even conscious for the first half of your song, she thought, crossing her arms in disbelief. How could this mermaid expect a happily ever after without getting to know the guy first?
From the corner of Claire's eyes, a tiny ripple appeared from a pool of calm water. She glanced over and saw a pair of large slippery eels. Like Claire, they watched the unbeknownst singing mermaid. However, there was a sort of interest that indicated deviousness and crackled as their eyes gleamed both yellow and olive. The hair on the back of Claire’s neck stood up.
Those eyes. Where has she seen them from?
The crashing waves against the beach started to sound a lot like the rustling of papers. Groaning, Claire opened one eye and saw a burning light glowing in the dark room. She was back in her room again though this time, the sound of papers wasn’t going away. Wiggling out of her cocoon of blankets, she glanced over the edge of the bed and saw Grim sitting on the ground. Notebooks and papers were strewn around him.
“So, the application for this problem… And these two questions…” Grim muttered as he continued to read.
“What are you doing?” Claire asked, getting up to a sitting position.
As her companion/roommate and her ‘other-half’, Grim was an oddity of the sort being a talking raccoon with blue flames coming from his cat-like ears. He had gray fur and a white belly. A frayed black-and-white striped bow was tied around his neck, and his tail was a devil-pitched forked. Although he does listen to Claire, he tended to be self-centered. The fact that he flinched at the sound of her voice told her that he was up to no good.
“C-Claire?! Don’t look!” Grim said, hastily covering the notes.
“What’s going on?” Claire narrowed her eyes in suspicion as she tried to read the content. It looked like a bunch of study notes from where she was sitting, but the dim lamp light made it difficult to read.
“I’m studying,” Grim said, refusing to move.
“Studying?” Claire repeated in disbelief. Grim might as well said he was eating smelly socks, and Claire would’ve believed that more. “Exams are tomorrow… no… Exams are in a few hours.” She glanced over at the clock to see that it was already one in the morning. “Cramming will not help you.”
“Well, I’m just reviewing,” Grim said with a frown. “And don’t go dragging me down.”
Being two halves of one student, Claire and Grim still had to pass any paper exams to ensure that they both continue in this school. Their situation was unusual by any standard, but then again, Claire and Grim weren’t normal in the usual sense.
Grim normally wouldn’t be able to attend a prestigious mage school, especially Night Raven College, on the account of having no opposable thumbs. However, his situation wasn’t the strangest one of the two.
Claire’s was more baffling because despite attending a magic school specifically for boys, she had not a single drop of magic to call her own. She should’ve been turned away by that alone, but the rules were that whoever the Dark Mirror has chosen was allowed to attend the prestigious Night Raven College. The headmaster decided that she would be a plus to include in the school body, and this obviously caused a worldwide social media firestorm. Such an event would’ve made headlines and multiple televised interviews with celebrity guests and maybe even an autobiography book. However, to the world’s surprise, Night Raven College had closed its gate to any news reporter and threatened lethal force should they bother Claire – all because of one dark secret that would cause an even bigger and more dangerous firestorm.
All of that was the least of Claire’s worries at the moment though. Tomorrow’s midterms held her attention. She was still suspicious about Grim's actions but paused as she thought about it. On the one hand, Grim studying at the last minute, quite literally, was not a good sign, but on the other, he was studying. She couldn’t remember how many times per minute she had begged him to start for the past few weeks. If he could at least remember one thing for the test, it was one less thing Claire would have to worry about.
“Don’t bring the papers too close to the candle,” she said simply and rolled over to go back to sleep. She listened as Grim continued to mutter to himself before sleep took over again.