Not The Mermaid She Was Looking For

So she was surfing the web and, after several links, came to a website that promised to make a person into a mermaid.  Normally, Sofia would have laughed at the silly spell and potion ingredients.  Something, though, compelled her.  Over the next few weeks, she found herself visiting strange shops and purchasing even stranger ingredients.

On the night of the next full moon at midnight, she found herself in her completely empty dining room.  She'd carefully moved everything into the front room.  She carefully brewed the potion on the stove (she felt that the landlord might object to an open fire for some reason).  Unexpectedly, it changed colours from a dark muddy brown to a brilliant blue and then to clear over the space of a few minutes.

Retiring to the now empty dining room, she began the odd ritual.  It required her to perform certain moves in time with a chant kindly supplied by the web site's owner.  The chant was in no language she'd ever heard or heard of.  

At the midnight, with moonlight streaming in from outside, she drank the potion.  She felt an immense churning in her insides.  Not just her stomach (given the taste of the brew, she wouldn't have been too surprised at nausea in the extreme).  She felt dizzy, though, and sat down on the floor, propping herself up on one hand.

It was then the changes began.  At first they were had to notice but it soon became apparent that fine silvery scales were growing across her tummy and down her legs.  The strange tingle spread to her arms and, looking at an arm, discovered she had the same silvery scales on her arms and up the sides of her body.

The scales darkened across he backs of her legs and buttocks as she lay there, unable to move at all.  Her legs began to melt in a strange way, almost as if the bones inside were dissolving.  The flaccid blobs that had been her legs began to flow together and, like a zipper closing, melded into a single large mass from her crotch to what had been her toes.  Strangely, this scaled appendage stretched until it was nearly half a meter longer than her legs had been.  It then began to expand until she was left with a single tail, covered by the fine silvery scales, that ended in a flared point.

Wondering if she was finished (it certainly didn't look like it), she got her answer when the strange language chant started up again from the website on her computer.  The colour of the scales from hips down darkened and intensified until she had a real fish tail even if it had no fins as yet.  Within minutes she felt a painful pulling or tearing at her hips and watch as a pair of dark fins pushed out of the skin.  This was followed by a second pair farther down.  At the back of her tail, a dorsal fin pushed its way through the scaled skin.  Finally, the far end of here new tail spread into a wide fan of rays.  She had her caudal fin.  

The website had delivered.  She was now a mermaid but, for some reason, the chanting continued.  The scales on her forearms became denser and more "fish-like".  As this wave of intensification spread towards her hands she felt them distort and grow into  pair of huge pectoral fins.  

With this final change, she felt a twisting inside her lower lungs and felt cold air rush into slits at her side.  Undoubtedly, she now had gills as well.  The chanting stopped to be replaced by a cackling laughter before the computer shut itself down.  This was odd because she hadn't told the computer to shut down.  Clearly something in the website had done it.

There she sat, more fish than woman.  She was definitely a mermaid now but was faced with several problems.  Pectoral fins are fine on a fish but they were of no use to a woman who need to contact someone about her plight.  She pulled herself down the hall to her room with her new scaled skin itching as it dried.  Emptying her purse, she extracted her cell phone.  It was then she realised she had no way to activate it.  The fingerprint reader would have major problems with fish fins.  After a while, she managed to open the alternate mode with her nose and drag her nose across the nine dots to open the phone.  

"Call Bjorn."

The conversation was terse and, at least for Bjorn, surprising.  Sofia told him everything, of course, and even sent him an image to prove it.  She asked (well, almost demanded) he come help.  Even at the best of times, that would be half an hour but he agreed, unsure whether this was some elaborate sex play or real.

Sofia, meanwhile was feeling the effects of desiccation.  She needed water but was presented with a dilemma.  Living near the sea, she recognised her piscine portions.  She was an Atlantic salmon.  She needed water but she needed salt water.  It took several long an increasingly painful minutes to drag the water softener salt into the bathroom.  But how much salt?

She'd tasted sea water so had some idea what it should taste like but she also knew that sea water was more than sodium chloride.  She filled the bath half way and used her nearly ineffectual hand fins to scoop the crystals into water.  Swishing them about (at least the fins were good for that), the dissolved them as quickly as possible.  After each scoop, she tasted the result by letting some of the water trickle off her fin.  A dozen scoops later, Sofia felt the water tasted "right".

If felt amazing as she carefully let herself down into the tub.  The burning itch over her body faded.  As she lay back in the water, she watched as bubbles rose through her nightie from her new gills.  Resting her head on the bath pillow, she waited for Bjorn.

It seemed forever but was likely no more than ten minutes, he let himself into the apartment.  At her call, he walked into the bathroom still unsure as to what to expect.  When she twisted her new tail in a very piscine manner, he realised this was no sex costume.  

"Oh!" was all he could think to say

Woman: Faestock
Fish: Wikimedia: Andshel