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**Comfort: A Matter of Metamorphosis Mentoring ~&~ Marine Matchmaking - by Amethystine

Illustrations by WhiteMantis**

Nayana was much more comfortable than she thought she would be, floating waist-deep there in the water, in a brand new body. Well, mostly new. The upper half was quite familiar, of course.. but the lower portions, while not completely dissimilar to that of the naga-coils she had possessed many times in the past, were completely new to her.

Lightly smoothing back an errant (and damp) lock of her, as usual, unruly jet black hair, she leaned back against a sea-smoothed stone and gazed placidly over herself. Her lower self, naturally. And natural was the perfect word for it, too! Maybe it was because of the aforementioned time she had spent as a half-serpentine creature, but the slick, scaly surface she now sported instead of legs suited her spectacularly, seeming supremely serene.

She chuckled at the thought of that word and its proximity to another name for the form she had just settled into (well, her physical self had settled, after the transformation, she, as an emotional entity had not fully come to grips with her latest... configuration). A serene siren. She had only managed to murmur the moniker 'mermaid', mentally, moments before.

Her mind came back around again to the thought of comfort. Flexing her gauzy white tailfin and being awed by its compact flexibility after the lengthy loopiness of the lamia lower-body, she pondered the effect of the sea and the tide and the waves on the mind of a mermaid. Which was the mind that she surmised she possessed, at that moment. The thrum of the ocean around her was powerful, and she felt tied to it, eternally.. a motherly presence that instilled a sense of superb security, somehow.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she half-knew that she probably gained some sort of piscine organ that processed the pressure of the water and sent it to her human brain, and that's what caused the sensation of connection to the cool crushing, rushing, global pool.. but in the moment of her immediate intimacy with the potent pull of the parental pelagic place before her, it felt more like her body was one with the water, and that in the seconds before she had slid into its swells, she had an overwhelming sense of unease and an unquenchable thirst to return to its enormous embrace.

Not that she had been a mermaid before, or that she have been 'returning' to anything. It was probably just another fishy sense of 'DRY AIR = BAAAD. WATER = GOOOD!'

Nayana laughed one last time, out loud, and flicked her koi-inspired tail. Not just her tailfins, but her entire white, pink-splotched lower half, flapping it up and back down to make a mighty splash.

From out of that splash came a familiar, yet somehow altered voice:

"Mermaids have such lovely laughs. Almost as sweet as their singing."

The speaker's head arose slickly from the dying ripples that had resulted from Nayana's physical outburst of mirth, he almost appeared more at home in the water than the half-human he addressed as he materialized from the murk like a salty spirit.

Tucking her tail somewhat bashfully up behind itself, Nay wondered how he had gone from being on land as a snake to being an eel and lurking around her resting place. As a rule, he was sneaky, though, so it only phased her for a half-moment. She splashed at him with a hand, a bit jealous at his experience.. both with transformations of all kinds, and, it seemed, with being an aquatic creature. She also had to assume that he appeared more comfortable in the lightly waving water because he was a fully anthro eel. Or was that semi-anthro? Since he didn't have legs, and all.

The mermaid's mental meandering was shunted aside as she pushed a pile of salty liquid at her friend, splashing his face with a much more sizable section of seawater than she had intended, or even thought possible. To his credit, he merely let it hit him and wash over his dark brown, hydro-dynamic face, laughing a bit as he blinked his water-tight eyes clear of the still sluicing salt.

Looking at her hand, Nay realized that she had gained a set of stretchy membranes between her fingers, clearly making her hands into effective rudders in lieu of the forward fins of a fish. It was then that she also noticed the frilly fins that stemmed from around her elbows. She giggled and touched them with the opposite hands, remarking upon how they seemed like loose sleeves, of some kind of 'natural clothing'. She had to admit, she had always felt a tiny bit naked as a naga. Now, the water felt like it covered her up..

"Eep!" Nay cried, tugging her torso downwards against the rocky shoreline behind her, so that her chest was no longer above the surface. She hadn't even considered how her new shape's upper half had differed from that of the snake, with the former form's 'fondle-ables' covered in a slight hybrid of scaly snakehide. Due to said thicker than average skin, she had been fairly comfortable being topless. But she had suddenly noticed how her skin was much more human again. It had felt bare, at least out of the water. She looked down to examine her breasts.

"Something the matter, my fine, feminine, fishy friend?" came Ame's voice again, suddenly on her other side. How had he slipped around to there..? And why did his voice sound so.. off, despite being so similar?

Looking up at him from the rippling, refracted image of her mermaid mammaries, she laughed nervously, glancing around a little before sitting back up slightly, her buoyant body allowing her to go from the sunken-down neck-deep stance to a less modest mid-shoulder height in the water with ease. Feeling a bit silly at being so self-conscious with only the snake-turned-eel around, as well as the nagging idea of sirens as being born show-offs, she deflected to a different, but related topic.

"Yeah.. are my breasts bigger, you pervy python?" she admonished Amethystine, adding alliteration for an additional attack, as he would have been the one who had caused said swelling with the so-called 'Siren Serum' he had given her, only minutes prior.

Speechless, the serpentine Amethystine's slightly elongated lower jaw lolled downwards (as did his eyes, for a split-second), leaving his mouth ajar and quite nearly agape before he composed himself.

"Well.." he began.

"Weeellll..?" Nay teasingly repeated, crossing her arms slowly. She was only teasing him at first, to be honest. The refraction of her chest had made her think along those lines, as well as idle thoughts about the mythical massive-ness of mermaid mammaries. But judging from her friend's fluid fidgeting of his flowing form and how her arms no longer rested against her chest quite the same way as she finished folding her fin-laden forearms.. she thought she was onto something.

Coming out at a rush, the eel's explanation was, "Well, it's a natural side-effect of the siren-ification process!" he half cried, before snapping that big under-bite of a lower jaw shut, evidently embarrassed.

"And was the fact that you're cute when you're bashful also a 'natural side-effect' of your own eel-ification process?" Nay asked, still trying to get under his sleek skin.

After muttering something about the extra layer of heat-holding, insulating fatty tissues that caused her increased bust line, the potion producer pouted and pointed out that "The 'Elixir of Eel' does _not_ make me look cute while bashful."

Nay grinned, having finally won against the wily serpent. Maybe she WAS more capable in her new body than Ame was in his, at least when it came to witty repartee.

But her victory was short-lived, as her constantly concocting companion revealed there was a plus to his plan. As she had been told, he had simply wanted to test his latest creations, a line of aquatic-alteration additives. Amethystine shifted his long body about to 'stand up' in front of his willing test subject, as well as gently nudge her tail away from the craggy rocks that represented the shore. The way that he folded his arms in front and behind himself and bowed down where he held them, the utter and sudden formality of it.. it told her that he was up to something. It was a clear giveaway when he asked her to join him underwater for a 'surprise'.

Nay knew the suddenly erudite eel wasn't up to anything extremely evil, though, so she daintily offered him her hand. The two webbed extremities met, and she watched him dip his snout to brush it over the back of her hand in another antiquated gesture of gentlemanly conduct. He was always like that when he was scheming, but it wasn't as though he didn't know he had that tell. She was certain that he did it on purpose to let his friends know, when they learned to recognize what they were getting into, that they could decline his advances to avoid his atypical avenues of amusement, if they didn't feel up to it.

"Oh, you charming and silly snak-- uh, eel," laughed Nay, acting a bit like the proper lady to his gentleman, albeit with a few cracks in the veneer of her formal facade. "You know I always love your surprises. Go right ahead!"

As soon as the last word had left Nayana's lips, Amethystine's larger, clawed hand closed over the mermaid's mostly human one. He then dropped all pretext and pulled her forward and downward by her anchored arm, diving swiftly into the reef that surrounded the nearby beach. Directly under and in front of the shocked half-koi, the eel's body flapped like a ribbon in the wind as he tugged her along quickly. She was surprised both by the amount of force generated by the graceful-looking slither of the serpentine fish.. and by the lightning-quick series of realizations she went through: First, she realized she hadn't been able to take a breath before being plunged face-first into the sea, then realized she wouldn't be able to breathe. Then, there was the shock of water being forced into her mouth by their speed, when she went to protest. Of course, it all ended when she remembered that she was now perfectly capable of breathing underwater, like any other mermaid.

Nayana blushed hot pink behind Ame as she caught her breath, literally. When the eel slowed down to show her a particularly nice spot to rest in a rather pleasant underwater grotto, she was sure she had hidden her surprise completely.

"That first breath is a doozy, isn't it?" quipped Ame as he swung around to circle her once, his tail trailing around behind her back as he plucked a flowery sea plant to admire. He placed it in his mouth, tucked his arms up in another gallant-looking pose and said, "~But telepathy comes a lot more easily than the little fight against the instinct to keep water out of your lungs that you just went through.~"

As she watched Ame's mouth holding the flower between his unmoving lips and still heard his voice in her head, once again caught in her inexperience with aquatic life, Nayana almost sighed in defeat. She stopped herself, looking around at the splendour of their surroundings. She idly flicked her tail to reorient herself to better take it all in, finding herself brushing up against Amethystine's belly softly. It was as though he knew she was going to back up into the coral-covered rock behind her, and he had set himself up as a soft backrest before she could scratch her flawless white scales.

In that moment, she relaxed, no longer feeling as though she was in a position where she had to prove herself as a capable koi, suddenly revelling in the prospect of having such a knowledgeable guide. She saw the eel as an expert, a guru to learn from, not a know-it-all to try to best or show up. She wouldn't have ever seen such beauty and also felt like such a part of it, without him. She leaned back against his belly softly, letting her body settle into the vague seat-like shape of the rocks she had been lead to. She looked up at him, with the 'flower' held in the tip of his snout, and raised her left hand to her cheek, smiling softly at her friend.

(Art by WhiteMantis, who can be found and praised here: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/whitemantis - If you can't see the image above, try here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5867200/ )

"~Thank you, Ame. This was a marvellous little surprise,~" she thought to him, accepting his lesson about telepathy seamlessly.

"~Oh, this isn't the surprise. He'll be along any second now, since our scents are present, I'm sure.~"

Before Nay could ask what he meant, she finally hit upon what it was about his voice that was odd. He wasn't hissing anymore! Certainly not in mind-speak, but he hadn't been doing it even above the surface! She was proud to have figured it out, probably too preoccupied with her transformation before to have noticed the naga's non-sibilance.

Looking up at the eel once more, she began, "~You're--!~"

"~Just a chaperone, that's right,~" he replied, looking out at the open ocean before them. He tenderly took the pretty pelagic plant and passed it to her. "~Here, give this to him. We're a little late, he's probably been waiting a while. Of course.. that will probably just mean he's even hungrier than normal.~" The eel grinned as he spoke of the mysterious man's 'hunger'.

Nayana took the flowery sea-floor fauna and looked into the murky expanse.. and saw the silhouette of a shark! Hearing 'hungry' and seeing a shark made the new nereid nervous about the nature of Ame's surprise.. until the lurking terror of the deep loomed closer and was revealed to be another mer-being, like herself. A quick burst of speed on the part of the sharkman and all at once she could see what the newcomer clearly had, to cause such a sudden spurt: The other's identity.

For the shark, he had seen that it was Nay, in the most marvellous mermaid shape. For Nay, she saw..

"Xello!"

Her boyfriend, her boy! He had been turned into the most sharply handsome mer-shark she could imagine, triangular fins and striking features, smooth, streamlined muscles and criss-crossing patterns, adorable bits of white on the ends of his dark-skinned fins and limbs and ears.. and that smile! His normal, sweet smile.. augmented by the addition of sharky teeth, there was something about it. It was a smile that could sink a thousand ships, either by his sheer power and strength of oceanic will.. or by making all the female sailors swoon and jump over-board for him. A steamy male siren with a dangerous flair! All other females would be nothing to him, beside his perfect prize of a mer-girl, though, and they would have the entire, eternal ocean to themselves, for however long mer-folk lived. (Nay hoped it was as long as the legends said.)

At least, those were the sorts of thoughts that ran through Nayana's head, immediately upon seeing and crashing into an embrace with 'her boy' once more. They both chuckled after their impact, both new fish had over-used the power of their mighty mer-tails. Xello especially.

After Amethystine reminded the two star(fish)-crossed lovers of his presence by retrieving the crushed flower from between them, he handed it back to Nay and wished them both a happy reunion. They had been apart for a whole five hours, after all!

They smiled and bid him goodbye. But as the eel exited:

Xello tried to put his finger (literally and figuratively) on what was different about his love's upper proportions..

And Nayana idly pondered the curious feeling of two tantalizing shapes pressing against her new fishtail!

Epilogue:

Flawless white skin sat atop a set of similarly perfect porcelain scales, patterned with splotches of pink.

Next to the pale pastels was their antithesis, a dark body of the dim depths, sleek and smooth and streamlined next to the more rounded, pebbled appearance of the lighter one.

One might see these two figures next to one another and assume an assault or an attack was underway. But they would be wrong. The two opposite ends of the pelagic predator-prey ecosystem were at play!

They swam and frolicked in the flowing fluid, laughing as if they had no cares in the world. Their love couldn't have been clearer if there had been a cheeky cherub present and plunging heart-tipped arrows into their semi-scaly hides as they began a slow upward spiral, like two halves of a double helix, circling one another, ever closer.

Looking more closely at the larger, darker of the two, who loomed up behind the brighter, beautiful one, reaching out to embrace her from behind and tie their spiral together; one could see how her happiness and purity had seemed to rub off on his extremities. It was as though her light-heartedness had infected and affected his form, dulling, softening and illuminating what could have been formerly fierce and fearsome fin-tips, that could cut like blades. One could think that her love had improved him, removed his feral framework.

And perhaps she used to have a body of blindingly, unmolested snow-white skin and scales. Nice and neat, but very vanilla. Bland and boring, one could say! An observer might begin to imagine, as she turned to look at him alongside her, smiled in a slightly impish manner and laid her hand over his own embracing one, that the relationship between the two was a road that ran in both directions. One might imagine that the wilder one's ways had wheedled their way into the woman.. from her wide tailfin to her wavy hair! Why, his hi-jinks could have caused her strands to go from straight to squiggly! His more 'colourful' influence could certainly be the source of both her blotches and her more mischievous moments.

Or, one might know that their love existed long before their current bodies did, but that with any change to any new set of forms, they always seem to be in perfect harmony.

Independent of what one might know, what one might assume or guess or embellish romantically.. it was clear, no matter the origin of their current corporeal manifestations, the mer-folk were perfect for each other. A match made in heaven.. or perhaps, just this once.. a laboratory.

(Art by WhiteMantis, who can be found and praised here: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/whitemantis - If you can't see the image, try here: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5867237/ )

The End