Sam and Bella swam over the reefs in a leisurely pace since they had time to meet up with Carlos and Will. They had agreed to help train Carlos for the competition and Will agreed to come and help too even if he wasn't going to compete.

/Are you sure you can do this Bella? You learned only recently how to 'share' oxygen with Will while underwater./ Sam asked as they neared the place they had agreed to meet up.

/I guess so. We don't know unless I try, but I trust Will to tell me if he can't hold his breath anymore. He used to compete too, remember? Besides we, meaning me and the others, agreed to use it only during emergency situations./ Bella replied with a smile. /But thank you for your concern Sam./

/Just making sure and it's my job to look after you guys. Even if Cleo, Emma and Rikki have technically been mermaids longer than me it still seems that I have more experience. When I received some of my new powers I freaked out that I could accidentally hurt someone so I stayed in my mermaid form almost four days before I returned home./ Sam explained her reasoning.

/Wow, that's unbelievable. You guys have been through so much./

Smiling at each other both mermaids surfaced right beside Carlos's boat. Both Will and Carlos smiled when they saw their girlfriends surface.

"Ready to go?" Carlos asked and placed his swimming goggles on.

"Just waiting for you two." Sam replied as she and Bella backed away from the boat. "We'll head towards Mako Island and we can rest in the moon pool if either of you get tired."

Bella decided to be a tease so she pulled Will overboard, she giggled quietly when Will surfaced and spit water out of his mouth. "Sorry, I couldn't resist." She quickly dove followed by Will, Sam and Carlos.

The four of them spent hours swimming near Mako Island and when they wanted to take a break everyone headed into the moon pool. Only when the sun began to set did they start heading back home. All in all they had a successful day.

The next morning Carlos went out for his morning training. While he was out he thought about the red haired beauty he had seen, her name is Sophie Benjamin...now he knew that he had a girlfriend, but he was already an adult and he knew that his girlfriend was much younger than himself.

While he was 20 years old, Samantha was only 17 and she wouldn't be 18 for a while. He felt a pain in his chest as he thought about it as he compared Samantha to Sophie.

Now if you had asked him if he thought this was wrong yesterday morning he would tell you that yes it was wrong to think about other woman when you already had a girlfriend.

But last night after they had returned from training, he went into the library where he found Samantha reading an old book about mermaids. Whatever she had read must have upset her enough for her to leave the book open and get up and leave, she didn't even notice him as she passed him in a hurry.

He is ashamed to say that his curiosity got the better of him and he went over and picked up the book before reading it.

Chapter 18: Magical Life Debts!

While they are rare Mermaids do not like being seen by humans as they tend to become obsessed with the creature in question, this does happen more often than one might think. Some cases are really extreme.

Long ago a mermaid princess named Shaya saved a human prince by the name of Helia. She had saved him from drowning and afterwards he became obsessed with finding her. She didn't feel the same obsession for him, but she felt a pull towards him so much that she would come to the surface just to watch him to satisfy the pull between them. Her father of course thought that she had fallen in love with the human and as such he banished her from the oceans to live on land. Helia found her and they got married. They lived happily until Helia kissed another woman, thus breaking the magical link between them. But by this time they already had 3 children and as such when the Debt was broken Shaya took her children and returned to the sea. Her father was happy to let her come back and gave her children the gift of becoming one of the merfolk themselves if they so desired.

So the story is not like the one that the humans know as The Little Mermaid. It was just a marriage made on the Magical Debt.

Normally this debt happens after a mermaid saves a human from drowning and if they look into each other's eyes, they will both feel a pull to each other.

Now like the story above this pull is not to be mistaken as finding one's soul mate or as love.

This pull just means that the human in question now owes their lives to the mermaid who saved them. This magical debt can be broken by the human, but it is not advised to do so, as the consequences could be devastating. The only way to break the debt would be to kill the mermaid that saved the human's life, resulting in the human to be cursed for all eternity. There are also rare cases where the mermaid willingly let's the human go and be free of the Debt, but the records are so rare that no one really knows if there will be consequences or not. Last way of breaking the Debt is by kissing another human of the opposite gender. Like Prince Helia had done in the story.

But in doing so the results of this would be that the human in question cannot go near the mermaid's home island or 10 feet near the mermaid, who the Debt belonged to. The human in question won't be able to write, draw or speak about mermaids without feeling physical discomfort. Like Prince Helia suffered when he cheated his wife by kissing another woman. The mermaid in question would not be cursed, but given the rare ability to tell who is not to be trusted and who could. In other words the mermaid could read others aura to see ones inner self and judge them as she sees fit.

Carlos couldn't believe that their pull towards each other could be by a debt made when Samantha had saved him. He didn't want to be cursed for the rest of his life, but he wanted to be with Sophie so bad...he needed to talk to Samantha as soon as she had calmed down. Maybe they could find a peaceful solution.