Ξ On John's (Kai's) Parents Ξ Natalie Mahuta, a member of the Māori who are the native inhabitants of New Zealand, was an artist who lived on the North Island and was known for painting beautiful seascapes. During one excursion to a more remote location near the shore, Natalie met one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen. He kept his distance at first and didn't respond to any questions. By the third day, he was close enough to her that she could do some quick sketches. By the sixth day, he had ventured behind her to watch her draw and paint, fascinated. Natalie knew by then that he wasn't human. His eyes were completely black, his hands and feet had distinctive webbing between fingers and toes and traces of blue scales from his hips down to his feet. Aside from those features and the sounds he eventually made in an effort to communicate, she witnessed him return to the sea on that sixth day and he didn't hide his legs transforming into a tail when he dove and surfaced a few times to watch her watching him before departing. He was also consistently completely naked and not embarrassed in the slightest. Natalie stayed in that cottage by the shore longer than she had intended. The merman visited her every day. She was able to teach him some words in her native language as well as a few in English. He managed to teach her a few of his own, though the sounds were difficult to reproduce with a human throat. The first thing they had learned was each other's name. His was Ka'auri. One day he brought her some fish he'd caught and stared then laughed when she cleaned, gutted and cooked them. He ate the heads of the fish raw, but left the rest for her. After fourteen days, he coaxed her into the water and they shared their first kiss. The following day he joined her in the cottage for the first time and they were intimate. The following morning, they had sex for the first time while the sun rose. Natalie and Ka'auri spent the next week in a blissful bubble where they stayed together all the time, with him returning to the sea only for a few hours a day. She sketched and painted, seascapes and her merman lover in both his forms. She took photos as well, so she would know her memory wasn't playing tricks. Whenever they felt like it, they made love. The morning after a huge storm, they walked the beach, looking at the debris washed ashore and some damaged trees. They found a body further along the sand: a merman with a spear through his chest. Both were shocked, angry and though neither of them had known the deceased, they both grieved for him. Ka'auri told Natalie he would have to return to the sea to find the dead man's people and try to learn who had killed him and why. Carrying the body of someone who could have been his kin, Ka'auri promised to return and walked into the sea. Natalie stayed at the cottage for three more months, but he did not return. By then, her pregnancy was moving into the second trimester. She returned to her home and let only a few know she was going to be a mother. Then she worked to finish her paintings and held a gallery showing a week before she went into labour. It featured the originals and prints of these new pieces, all forty-five of them. None of her paintings or drawings featuring Ka'auri were among them. The show was very successful. Ξ On February 3rd, 2002, Natalie gave birth to a boy who, fortunately, had been given the proper breathing tools to live in either world. He was born at her home on the North Island of New Zealand in a birthing pool with her mother, Naomi, a close, trusted friend who was also a midwife, Cheryl, and her brother, Nick, present. She named him Kai and he was registered under her surname, Mahuta. On the official documents, Kai's father was listed as 'Missing at sea'. Kai was raised by his mother, grandmother and uncle. Though they weren't rich financially, they were comfortable enough and Kai had a wealth of riches when it came to love and nurturing. Because of some minor physical differences when compared with human children, Natalie decided to home school him until he was old enough to learn about his unusual heritage and understand that sharing this information or demonstrating any of his abilities would be strongly inadvisable. Neither Kai nor his family wanted him to be taken by the government or some other group and/or held against his will so he could be studied by scientists. Natalie, and then Kai, had nightmares about the potential horrors that could happen. His grandmother and uncle tried not to worry, but it wasn't easy. So, how do you live a 'normal' life when you enter high school and can't even join the swim team, which would be a logical activity for Kai? You focus on academics instead of sports and swim in the ocean when you are at home. He made friends and did well enough in school, but his secret was sufficiently big that it meant he couldn't get very close with anyone. His mother had shown him the artwork and photos of his father by this point and Kai's resemblance to him was uncanny. At the age of seventeen, Kai decided to go in search of his father, assuming he was even still alive. His family were sad and nervous to see him go, but they understood. He travelled to the same shore where his mother had first encountered his father, stripped to his Speedos, added his clothes to his water-proof - Ha! Mostly water-proof - backpack and walked into the sea. Kai doesn't know if it was a miracle that he found a community of merfolk or if the presence of a young surface dweller, wearing swim trunks and a backpack, and breathing underwater just fine without any of the usual paraphernalia, was sufficiently unusual to gain the attention of the local guards. Perhaps it was both. Kai only knew the few words his mother had taught him, but news of his arrival reached his father, who was part of a different community, and he came to see the boy. Ka'auri was surprised he had a half-blood son and was pleased to meet him, but would not return to be with Natalie. He felt they had been apart too long and given the difference in their worlds and life expectancy, it was probably just as well. Kai chose not to remain angry with his father for abandoning his pregnant mother, though it took a few days of fruitless venting on his part to a patient and slightly perplexed Ka'auri who didn't understand why his son was upset due to A/ a language barrier and B/ dwelling on the past is not something merfolk are prone to do. They very much live in the present. Kai spent a few weeks with the people and assisted in some of the community activities. He wasn't able to remain under water for as long as the pure merfolk could, but other than that, he stayed with them. He spent some time escorting the community's children on excursions with their teachers, freeing merfolk and other creatures from nets set by humans and those who became entangled in 'sargassos' of plastic, thoughtlessly dumped into the ocean by humanity. Deciding to stay for a while, he surfaced long enough to call his mother to let her know he had been welcomed and felt comfortable with the merfolk, even as a half-blood. He would call every few weeks to update his family on his life 'in the wild'. For the next three years, Kai stayed with the merfolk. He couldn't do everthing they could, not having a tail and so on, but he participated in solo and group efforts to rescue a ship's crew from drowning. Saving the cargo was also attempted sometimes, depending on how many merfolk were on hand for the mission. When they found the dead, they returned them to shore so their families could find them and have some closure. The merfolk would want to know if one of their kin had perished. Unfortunately, while exploring the waters off Warrior Reef, in the Torres Strait Islands, Kai was caught by an illegal fishing trawler about thirty nautical miles south of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) mainland. The Australian Border Force (ABF) did not arrive in time to stop them from fleeing into international waters. All they were able to determine was that the vessel had its license in Indonesia. The boat may have been registered in Indonesia, but the crew was a mix of many nationalities, including American. Once they realized what they had caught, along with the fish they had wanted, the captain and first mate had a few of the crew overwhelm and secure him. Kai was beaten and clubbed unconscious, much to the dismay of the captain. Not that he cared about the young man, but he had contacted someone in New York who was always looking for interesting and unusual 'things' and didn't want to sell damaged goods. Whether it was a collector of rare creatures or a science department of some government agency or some other interested party was unknown, but the captain's contact said they would pay a great deal of money for a merman. A living specimen. They kept him alive with minimal food and little to no effort of comfort or consideration for his injuries. Though Kai was weak and injured, as the vessel was passing near the east coast of the United States, its destination being New York, he broke free from his cabin below deck, released most of their catch back into the sea and dove beneath the waves, swimming for the shore as the alert went off on the boat and searchlights attempted to find him. Kai surfaced in the harbour at Easthaven. So, on the run from the equivalent of poachers/supernatural traffickers with a whopping head injury, complete with egg-shaped lump on his right temple, covered in bruises and cuts in various states of development and weakened for malnutrition, Kai stumbled through the Easthaven area, looking for... help? He had no clear memory of who he was or what he was capable of doing and no idea who he could trust. Whoever finds him will likely determine his immediate fate and John Smith will be born.