Take

Part One

Once, long, long ago...
When the world still had an ocean...
People did not have any wings. They lived on the wide, wide land.
The ocean was a large pool, so large and so deep... that it would have swallowed this entire nation.
Within the ocean, an enormous fish called a "whale" would roam about freely.
The whale was as old as the world itself...
It was always singing mysterious, yet gentle, heart-warming songs.
An evil god appeared, and swallowed the entire ocean... every last drop of it...
He swallowed the whale, too, and it was never seen again.

"Kalas, over here!"

She tried to lift her head. There were voices echoing around her and she wanted to see, so she parted her eyelids. Sand spurted in the air by her head, and she knew that someone was running down the beach toward her.

"See? We would have gotten Xelha's pendant for you, but there's huuuuuge fish here!"

Xelha tried to reach out her hand but ended up only shifting her body so that she slid farther onto the beach. She heaved her lungs, the breath dry and coarse in her throat. It felt as though the sun was roasting her, and her skin was shriveled all away. Kalas...

"It's not like we're scared of it... We just don't want it to eat the pendant! Maybe you should kill it!"

Please help me... The water running over her legs was nice and cool, but she knew that she had to get back on land. She tried to kick her legs forward but they felt thick and heavy, and she just lurched a bit.

"Hey... You're right, that really is Xelha's pendant. We gotta get it back from that fish no matter what. This sounds like a job for Gibari — let's go find him!"

That voice, it belonged to Kalas. She tried to call out to him, but the sound got caught deep inside her. She moaned. Kalas, Kalas... Don't go! Footsteps sounded across the beach and she knew that he was gone. She stopped struggling and rested her head with a sigh. A breeze whistled by and her skin felt as thought it was drying up. She thought she heard a crackle. Her eyes lolled about.

She spotted the pendant and, summoning all of her strength, she scooted over to it. It's my pendant, the one I took from Geldoblame... Kalas wanted to save it. But what about me? Did he not see me?

Her arms were too weak to move — she could hardly feel them, in fact — so she nudged the stone with her nose. The pendant buried itself in the sand.

Xelha let out a sigh and waited for Kalas to return. She wondered if she was waiting for death. The sun penetrated her skin and seemed to boil the flesh beneath. She kicked her legs in the water and ocean waves splashed onto her bare back; she wiggled in small relief. Her bones felt so heavy, and her body, so limp, like she was a sack of wet sand. Ugh... Get me out of here...

"There it is! Let's take care of this thing and get Xelha's pendant back!"

Xelha perked up, hearing Kalas' voice once again. She rolled her eyes toward land and saw four figures that were running toward her, but they wavered in her vision. She called out weakly. "Grooh...!" They looked right at her.

"Whoa now," Gibari said. "You sure you want to fight this thing? I don't think we need to carve it up unless it's trying to steal the pendant."

"Just look at it! It's all over the pendant." His voice darkened. "I'll do whatever it takes to get something of Xelha's back."

What do you mean? I'm right here, Kalas! Why are you looking at me like that? I think I'm dying. Please help me... "Guuuh."

Kalas pulled out his sword and the two little boys, Cedr and Palolo, cheered. "We should just kill the thing and get it over with. No point in dawdling."

Gibari hefted his paddle. "You may be right... And you can take it from me that a little fishing never hurt anyone, ha ha ha! We could always take it back for dinner, ya know? Enough people came to see your guardian spirit off as it is." He closed his eyes and in a burst of light his wings of the heart emerged. "This should be an easy win."

Xelha filled with hope as they approached her. Will you finally help me up? I haven't seen you two in so long; it's good to be back. I have no idea how long I've been out here but it sure it hot today and I think I might have a sunburn... Actually, now that I mention it, my whole body feels strange and I'm worried that I might be sick... "Ooo..."

They didn't reach down to help her up, though. They lifted their weapons. Xelha cried out as Kalas dug his sword into her shoulder and suddenly she saw her own blood run down into the water. "Gyaa!" What are you doing!? She paddled her arms in the water, trying to get away, but it was too shallow and she flopped instead. She felt Gibari's paddle in her side, crushing her breath, drawing blood from her punctured skin. The skin flaked and stained chips floated into the water.

Xelha screamed, because she didn't know why they were hurting her and because she didn't want to fight back. She could never bring herself to hurt her friends, especially Kalas. And yet, he drove his blade into her helpless body... with a look of satisfaction in his eyes. Why? She gasped, and Kalas began to dim in her vision. His face faded slowly to black as she reached out for him; she missed and fell into a strained, growing darkness.

When she woke up, she found herself floating in water. She looked around... nothing but ocean and sky. Xelha tested her arms — flippers, she soon realized — and pushed herself slowly through the water. She paid no mind to the gentle waves that lapped at her sides, and only focused on propelling herself forward.

She felt a dull sense of dread as her memories returned to her. The scenes played out in unbearable detail, right from moment of her confession to her bitter end. She could almost feel herself falling down all over the land as rain, trickling in from rivers and pooling in the center of the world. There, the Greythornes had gathered her essence and began to piece her back together. Just, not as a person...

Xelha lifted a flipper and stared at it mournfully. This body was not her own. It belonged to the Greythornes, and they had given her the power to control it. They were a part of her, and she a part of them...

She remembered her first reaction to the knowledge that she was no longer human. She had tried to kill herself. Although she didn't want to destroy herself, it wasn't as though she was exactly excited about living the rest of her years as the missing whale. And so she found herself gasping on the beach, her lungs straining and her skin dry and taut, wishing that Kalas were there and that he would hold her once again. She remembered bitterly that he never would, and that's when her consciousness began to blink in and out.

After that... they had killed her. Her friends had killed her and when all of her blood was washed back into the ocean, the Greythornes went back to work and built her a body again. Here she was, the water sliding over her skin, the currents tugging beneath her belly, and the smell of salt water overpowering in her nose... She closed her eyes and let herself sink down into the ocean, down and down, and she wondered if she would be able to drown.

Probably... not.

Xelha rolled languidly, frustrated that she couldn't wiggle her toes, or stretch her fingers, or even shed a tear.

She told herself she wouldn't... she told herself, she did!

But I wanted to see you...

She lingered in the water by the cliff, watching him. The surf sprayed about her head, but she floated with her eyes barely above the surface. Her lungs filled slowly and she exhaled.

I promised... that I would never leave you...

He sat on the rock looking contemplative, hands hanging loosely over his knees. He studied the horizon with a face set like stone, and the only movement about him was blue hair thrashing in the wind. Though she floated right in his line of vision, he didn't seem to see her. He didn't see anything.

And I never will.

She flicked her tail and moved forward a bit. His image on the beach grew sharper and she saw something dangling from his pocket. When she saw that it was a chain, she could almost feel it in her hands. Fins. She gave another helpless flick.

Kalas noticed her then. At first, it was just the movement of his eyes and the slight tilt of his head that told her. He watched her, didn't give any thought to her, but he watched her and didn't blink. Xelha advanced slowly. She hardly knew what to think, and what if he tried to kill her again? She froze in the water.

Then his eyes began to glaze over again. Xelha couldn't stand it — she wanted him to see her! — and she began to reveal herself. It was as though she rose up in the water before him naked, blushing like a virgin but she couldn't blush, and instead of herself, her jaw jutted brutally above the water. This is me, she thought. I'm a fish now. This is the real me! Do you see?

He barely glanced her way.

Xelha, her broad skull held majestically in the air, sank back down, deflated.

She grieved that he would never see her again. She couldn't speak, and in this state he wouldn't be looking for her, and she decided that all was hopeless, and that she had better give up.

A/N: Um yes, it's crack? I usually get plotbunnies like this. I've always wanted to write something fluffy and cute but nooooo. I get Xelha's-been-turned-into-a-fish-now-write-a-story plotbunnies.

Anyways, there will be only be one more chapter to this and I will update once it's written. Review, pretty please?