Sera sighs audibly when Kyma signs the sentence back to her, clearly disappointed. "You passed. You've mastered both languages. I never thought you could do it."

Instead of a frown, Kyma gives her a small grin. "You might have tried to hurt me with the way you taught, but every one of those comments helped me perfect what I did. So thank you."

Sera looks shocked at this. "You're thanking me?"

Kyma nods. "Yes."

Sera looks taken aback by this and almost says something before stopping herself. She sighs, composed herself, and then speaks. "Well your lessons are over, so I can be free of you. Go on now, go prance around like you deny doing."

Kyma sighs, shaking her head in dismay at Sera's continued dislike of her. With one final backwards look, she exits the room for the last time, followed by Lyss. When they emerge from the building, they find Alai waiting for them.

"How did it go?"

Kyma grins at her. "I passed!"

Alai begins to jump up and down excitedly at that news. "You're free from the lessons after two months of them! That's awesome!" Then she frowns slightly. "I'm sorry my mother was such a cow towards you."

Kyma shakes her head and steps forward to fold Alai into a hug. "It's not your fault. If she wants to hate me, then she wants to hate me. As I've said before, you can't make her change how she acts."

Alai nods. "I know that's true, but I always feel like I should have been able to help."

Kyma smiles at her. "Let's stop dwelling on this, alright? We can go celebrate somewhere instead."

Alai grins. "What do you want to do?"

Kyma tilts her head up to the sky and thinks for a moment. "Well, we can go swimming and meet up with Nami and Fala. Later, I want to try and check out the cave by the cliff waterfall, because I just realized that I haven't actually done that."

Lyss frowns from beside her. "Let's go to the cave first, we can dive from it into the sea."

Alai scoffs. "You guards can do that, but the rest of us merrows can't. It's too steep of a drop and it's really hard to do accurately."

Lyss shrugs. "I think Kyma can do it."

Alai shakes her head. "Her body might be capable of it, true. But her mind likely isn't. It's really hard for you to force yourself to dive off of a high point unless you've done it before. It's a mental block."

Kyma cuts in. "Why can't I decide if I can do it or not myself? Although you're right, we should do the cave after the rest of it, just in case."

Lyss nods. "Then it's decided. Do you want to go through the throne room or the hill-cliffs?"

"Let's take the hill-cliff route. I don't want to disturb my mother."

Lyss lets out a bright laugh. "As if you could ever disturb your mother. But alright, we can take the hill-cliff path."

Alai leads the way to the nearest hill-cliff, which of course is never far off due to the small size of Eilean Mhara, or Beata Island in the human world. It only takes them about fifteen minutes to reach the top of the hill-cliff, but their pace slows considerably as they begin their descent, wary of the hollow spots hidden on the cliff. Kyma can understand her own apprehension at the descent, still being not entirely familiar with seeing the spots, but even Alai and Lyss, who have been traversing this same path their whole lives, are wary of their descent. When they reach the bottom of the cliff, their speed picks up as they make their way to the shore.

Kyma waves at one of the Coveguards as they pass her, a lady named Ceit. Within a moment, the trio are stepping into the sea and rewrapping the folds of their clothes into a tunic to make way for their tails. With a grin, Kyma lets her tail ripple into existence and takes off, spinning and twisting just beneath the surface of the water before spiraling back to Lyss and Alai, who are still floating at the surface, having just finished shifting themselves. Alai laughs brightly as Kyma jumps out of the water, her tail sparkling in the sunlight.

"You're excited, aren't you Kyma?"

Kyma nods, grinning. "I haven't seen my friends in a while, they're never in the same area as I am when I'm in the water."

With a laugh, she dives beneath the waves, emerging into the watery world of the merrow sea city. She waves at the hunters as she passes them, and one pumps his spear holding fist up through the water, displaying his catch for her. She grins at him, and sends him a quick sign.
"Good catch!"

He signs back. "Thank you, Princess! We'll have plenty of food tonight if this luck continues."

"Good."

She darts off again, twisting around a large portion of coral reef. She almost crashes into someone but stops just in time, having felt the movement of the water.
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For those of you who just got confused by both the italicized signs and the thought-speak from when Kyma talks to the voice, I might make one of them bold instead of italicized.

Who do you think she bumped into? Tell me your thoughts! Happy reading, and I'll see you next chapter!

~Goddess of Fate, signing out.