Pearlina

Safa walks into the front door of her new home with a sigh. She had seen the home before, but now that all the decorative furniture was out, she was left with an empty living room and plain white walls. If only her mind could be empty like that, too. She settles her bags onto the floor and kicks her shoes off, discarding them to the side. ‘Might as well make a little mess to make this place feel a little more like home”, she thinks to herself as she pads over into her kitchen. She takes a clean glass from her otherwise empty cabinets and fills it with cold water from the tap. She leans against the cold, marble kitchen counter and closes her eyes as the refreshing drink cools her down. It was the peak of day, and having a house on the shore meant relentless sun beaming down on her during the day, and inevitable chill by night. She didn’t mind though; it was all for the sake of the much needed sanctuary. She turned twenty-two this January and snagged a position with a marine life research facility centered around the studies of marine biomes and biological advancements. All in all, she was ready to start fresh. She missed the few friends she had, but this was for the best. Looking at her phone, she sees a missed call from Fatima and a few texts from Saf making sure she got in alright. She responded quickly with her free hand and made a note to call Fatima back later. With the only noise from the outside being the soft crash of waves against the wet sand, it was a significant change from the busy city of New York. Realizing she’s finished her glass, she places it in the sink and decided it’s time to begin unpacking. By the time she’s nearly done, the sun is beginning to set, casting a delicate shade of orange-pink through her open windows.

She decides to relax outside for a bit and enjoy the cool air before retiring for the night. She grabs her guitar that she left near the door and settles onto her front porch steps and tunes her instrument. Once satisfied, she begins strumming meaningless chords, not belonging to a particular song. She stays like that for a while, letting her hands do the work while her mind wanders.

text from: Fatima :)

i hope you won’t be lonely there all by yourself, Saf. let me know if you need a friend, i’m always free to visit!

She knew it was an exaggeration. Fatima had just been accepted into one of the most prestigious ballet programs in the country, and Safa knew she would be very busy soon. Still, it’s the thought that counts.

A glimmer in the ocean brings here out of her thoughts. It’s fairly distant from the shore and it resembles a figure. Safa sets her guitar down, a million thoughts racing through her mind. Is it a person? Are they drowning? Are they already dead and their body is just floating on the surface? She remembers there’s a pier over onto the left of her, and she rushes up the small ladder and runs to the edge, kneeling down to get a closer look. It’s definitely a figure, and she thinks she sees a head of dark, wet hair before it disappears below the surface again. Okay, there might actually be someone drowning right in front of her. She begins to panic because she can’t recall the protocol she learned at girl scout camp that one summer and, oh God, there might be an actual life on her hands and she is not fit for this kind of responsibility. She’s about to pull out her phone and call the coast guard when the head resurfaces, much closer than before. Under the dark, wet hair is a light brown forehead and a pair of big, round, and startled eyes looking directly into her’s. The two stare at each other for what seems like forever before Safa speaks.

“Are you okay?” She asks, voice shaking slightly. The girl stares back at Safa for a few more seconds before going back underwater without a response. Safa sits back and waits a few more minutes, and when the girl doesn’t resurface she runs a hand over her face and sighs.

Well, at least she wasn’t drowning.

____________________________________________________________

It’s a few nights until she sees the girl again. Safa sits on the pier with her guitar, legs dangling over the edge and toes brushing against the chill surface of the water. It’s not long before a familiar head rises above the surface. Safa’s legs still as she makes eye contact with the girl, who is looking at her with the same expression of fear and confusion as their first encounter. Safa ends up staring, and it isn’t until she hears a voice that isn’t her own that she comes back to reality.

“Hello,” the girl says hesitantly. Okay, her voice definitely lower than she expected.

“Hi,” Safa responds, hoping her voice isn’t as high as she thinks it might be right now.

“What are you doing here?” The girl asks, tilting her head to the side. ‘She looks cute like that’, Safa thinks, before remembering she had been asked a question.

“I live here,” She responds, earning a quirk of an eyebrow in response.

“No one’s lived here for a long time.” The girl says.

“Why are you always swimming around here? Do you live close?” Safa asks. The girl furrows her eyebrows in confusion and looks around her before returning her gaze to the girl on the pier.

“I live here.” She says simply. Now it was Safa’s turn to look confused as she tried to see if there were any homes in the distant she hadn’t noticed earlier. When she sees nothing but water, she looks back down to see the girl already gone, but she manages to catch a faint glimmer of-

“A tail, Fatima, I know what I saw.” Safa says, running a hand through her hair and pacing around her living room. It sounded all kinds of illogical, she knew, but she just got her new contact  prescriptions so she knew her eyes weren’t failing her.

“A girl with a tail that keeps swimming around your house and claims she lives in the water. Are you sure you haven’t accidentally walked into a Disney movie?” Fatima jokes.

“How can you be joking at a time like this? Fatima, there is a girl with a tail swimming around my house who says he lives in the ocean. The ocean, Fatima!” Safa exclaims. Fatima sighs on the other side of the line.

“Look, I honestly have no idea what to tell you.” Fatima says. The line goes silent for a second before she continues, “Do you think you’ll tell your facility about it?”

“I don’t know,” Safa responds exasperatedly. The girl may be strange but she seems nice. Safa knows what happens to mysterious things found in the ocean, and she doesn’t want to do that to her.

“Well, I have to get going. Text me if anything else happens and I’ll call you when I can.”

“Okay, bye.” Upon hanging up, Safa spends almost the entire remainder of her evening pacing around her house trying to wrap her head around what she had seen.

It’s late at night when Safa hears a knock on her door. She turns from her spot on her couch she eventually settled on to look at the door, pondering who would possibly be knocking on the door at this time. She approaches it hesitantly, and when she tries to look through the small cut out hole she still can’t see anything. Opening the door, she opens her mouth to speak but her mind goes blank when she sees the girl standing on her porch completely naked with legs and shivering. She’s about to ask the girl what the hell she’s doing when the girl starts wheezing and coughing, hands finding their way to her throat. Her eyes widen, and she looks to Safa for help.

“Oh god, okay. Okayokayokayokay,” Safa repeats, pulling the girl into her house and rushing her to the kitchen. She pours the girl a glass of water and thrusts it in her direction. The girl’s hands fall from her throat and take the glass as she eyes it confusedly.

“Drink it,” Safa urges. When the girl continues to look confused, still wheezing slightly, Safa uses hand gestures to mimic the act of drinking. The girl copies, and her shoulders relax a bit when the drink reaches her mouth. She finishes the glass in record time, pushing it back to Safa. Safa refills it, and the girl goes through at least five glasses of water before she can breathe somewhat regularly. The two stand there, the girl taking deep breaths and Safa desperately trying not to let her eyes travel before the girl speaks.

“Too dry.” She says, almost a whisper.

“What? What’s too dry?”

“Too dry.” The girl repeats, frustrated that Safa can’t understand her. Safa runs a hand through her hair, trying to figure out what the boy wants when she notices her running her fingers along her skin.

“Is it your skin? Your skin is too dry?” Safa asks, pointing to her arms. The girl responds with a dull nod.

“Uh, okay. Follow me,” Safa suggests, leaving the kitchen and walking down the hall. Light footsteps trail behind her as she opens the door to her bathroom, moonlight being the only light gracing the otherwise dark room. She turns on the overhead light and goes over to the bathtub attached to the side of the wall. She turns the knob and soon a steady flow of water is filling the tub. Once the tub is full enough, Safa motions towards it.

“Um, I don’t know if this will help but-” She doesn’t get to finish before she hears a loud plop and a loud sigh. The girl nestles into the tub and lowers herself until everything from under her nose is submerged in water. She hears a low hum of what she assumes is appreciation, and the girl closes her eyes.

“Better?” Safa asks. The girl opens up one eye to look at her and closes it again, which Safa decided to take as a yes.

“I’ll be right back,” She says, scurrying out the room to find her phone. She calls Shacora first this time, knowing Fatima has an early rehearsal tomorrow and is probably asleep. It rings twice before she picks up.

“What the fuck, Saf? It’s two in the morning-”

“The girl. She’s in my house. In my bathtub. I don’t know what to do.”

“...What?”

“I don’t know. I heard a knock on my door, and I open it to see her standing there, standing, Cora, as in legs, on my porch. She’s naked and shivering and I’m like what the fuck, and then she starts having an asthma attack or something so I give her a glass of water and she drinks like, ten. Then she says her skin is too dry so I run her a bath and-”

“And now you’re on the phone with me.” Cora finishes.

“Yeah,” Safa responds, sighing and resting her head on the wall.

“And now you’ve left her alone in your bathtub.” Cora continues. Safa silently curses at herself before looking in the direction of the bathroom.

“Stay on the phone,” Safa says, walking back down the hall. With the door still open, she peeks her head in to see the girl sitting up and tracing lazy patterns in the water, small ripples vibrating around the tip of her finger.

“She’s fine,” Safa whispers, as to not startle the girl.

“Do you know her name yet?” Saf asks.

“No.”

“Now would be a good time to find out. I’m going to go back to sleep, you’re going to find out what this girl’s deal is, and then you’re going to call me back at a more suitable hour. Okay?”

“Okay.” They hang up, and Safa re-enters the room, sitting on the far edge of the tub. She rubs the back of her neck and averts her eyes when she notices the girl staring at her curiously.

“Can I ask your name?” Safa asks nervously. The girl continues to look at her, and she’s about to make up an excuse to leave before it gets awkward because she thinks she won’t get a response when,

“Pearlina,” the girl responds quietly. Pearlina. That’s a nice name.

“Ok, Pearlina. My name is Safa.”

“Safa,” Pearlina repeats slowly, and Safa likes the way it sounds when she says it.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Safa wakes up to bright light streaming through the curtains of her bedroom. She stretches and enjoys the warmth for a few minutes before getting up. She shuffles into her kitchen and grabs a yogurt from her fridge before returning and squeezing herself into a corner of the sofa, feet tucked under her. She grabs the remote from the coffee table and turns the TV on.

“…a million years after entering the sea the aquatic apes would now be better adapted to their new world. They’ve lost most of their hair and can hold their breath for minutes at a time.”

Safa watches intently as the documentary continues. She’s so intune that she doesn’t notice Pearlina standing at the living room doorway, hands crossed and brows furrowed. She eventually makes her way to the couch as well, sitting herself on top the arm next to Safa. The two watch in silence that’s incredibly awkward for Safa.

“We took an x-ray of the tail. There were bones in the tail flack. Manatees don’t have that. We looked at the pelvis and there were remains of leg bones. Seals have leg bones but their thighs are short. We could tell that the ones in our specimen were long.”

Safa couldn’t help but glance at Pearlina’s legs that were slightly swinging as they hung over the couch arm. Pearlina wrinkles her nose as the documentaries observation. There’s a commercial break and Safa steals the opportunity to run to the kitchen and retrieve another yogurt. When opening the fridge she realizes it’s starting to look quite empty and she should probably go grocery shopping soon. In the midst of washing a spoon she hears the show come back on.

“The pod travels with young. They must be protected at all costs.”

Safa slowly makes her way to the doorway separating the kitchen and the living room. She watches Pearlina as she slides off the couch arm and inches towards the television screen until her nose is almost touching it. The documentary depicts a scene of a human like figure with a tail just below the surface of the ocean. The creature is attempting to warn its ‘pod’, as the documentary states. A shark is in the premises but the pod cannot understand. In the end, the figure drags a sharp dagger across its chest as to distract and bait the lingering shark. The pod is forced to abandon him as they swim away to safety. Safa shifts her gaze from the television to Pearlina, who seems to have spaced out. Safa wants to tell her being that close to the TV is bad for her eyes, but she doesn’t think the girl would even hear her if she tried. Eventually, Pearlina is released from the short hypnosis she had found herself in. She does not look at Safa, though she knows she is looking at her. Pearlina does nothing for a while. Safa says her name a few times but receives no response.

Suddenly, Pearlina looks up and out the window with a view of the shore. Her eyes then trail over to the door, and even before Safa can asks what’s wrong, Pearlina is dashing towards it. She shakes the handle and lets out an aggravated noise. Safa rushes over and moves her hands, trying to calm her down before going to the kitchen counter and retrieving the keys. Pearlina still looks distressed when she returns, but Safa decides now is not the time for interrogation. She unlocks the door and steps aside for Pearlina to step out.

Although she seemed to be in a rush just a few seconds ago, Pearlina now takes cautious steps off the porch and along the beach. Safa remains on the porch watching as Pearlina toes closer and closer to where the tide meets her. She lets the water run over her feet first, and Safa can see her shoulders visibly relax. She steps slightly further, and even further until she is confidently striding into the water.

“Pearlina, wait!” Safa calls out. She’s not sure if the girl is aware, but Pearlina still has two legs. However she stayed underwater so long when they first met, Safa assumes that ability does not apply right now. She continues to call out for Pearlina but her attempts fall upon deaf ears. Safa begins to walk down her porch steps when a huge wave rises up, crashing down and enveloping Pearlina in the process. Safa curses and sprints towards the water. Fortunately the currents are not too violent, so Pearlina doesn’t go far by the time Safa reaches her. She grabs her by the torso and lifts her head above water. It is a few seconds until the girl begins to cough and sputter, eyes moving rapidly underneath their lids. Safa struggles as she carries Pearlina and moves towards the shore, the girl eerily quiet in her arms. Again, Safa looks down to see the girl’s eyes open with that dazed and confused look. This time, though, she is not looking back into Safa’s eyes or a television screen. Her eyes are fixed on the ocean, the bright aura of the sun showing slightly in her light brown irises. Although the sun is out, Safa herself can barely see anything past the shallow waters. Pearlina, on the other hand, looks as if she can see everything. Or perhaps something very specific.

Returning to the house Safa makes a bee-line for the bathroom and runs Pearlina another bath in hopes of calming her down. She still has yet to speak, and at this point it’s starting to freak Safa out. She doesn’t want to leave Pearlina alone and make a phone call, so she’s truly left to her own devices. She tries to help Pearlina undress out of the oversized shirt and lounge pants Safa leaned her, but the girl instead flops into the tub with her clothes still adorned. Safa wants to be surprised but she’s not; at this point Pearlina has a huge question mark floating above her head and Safa is pretty much expecting anything at any given moment. The two find themselves in silence again as Safa tries to think of what to do next. This time, it’s Pearlina who breaks it.

“Pod.”

Safa looks up to see Pearlina still staring blankly into the tub water, fingers moving absentmindedly along the surface.

“What?”

“Pod. My pod.” Pearlina repeats, her voice quivering. She sighs before lowering her body into the tub just as she did before, so only her nose and eyes were above water. Safa understands this is all she will be getting out of the girl tonight and does not inquire any further. It seems as though they spend hours in that bathroom, utter silence surrounding them but this time there is no uncomfort. There is still a lot that confuses Safa, but she knows that ultimately she needs to help Pearlina. She’s not sure how she’ll do it or even exactly what it is she’s being asked to do, but she does know that will do whatever may be in her power for Pearlina.

And then the dolphins washed up.