Disclaimer: Vampire Academy series is owned by Richelle Mead. The story is inspired from Just Add Water from Music books horses.

Rose POV

"…five, four, three, two, one."

I open my golden brown eyes and shoot through the water, diving through the beautiful coral arch with multitude of colours. I pass by thousands of colourful little water wildlife, all of which swim about living their life in their home coral, looking for my best friend Lissa. Suddenly I hear a faint giggle, coming from my left, giving away the hiding location of my blonde hair best friend. I give my fiery golden tail a sharp flick and dive back into the water to the huge reef of green coral to the left, trying to pin point the whereabout of Lissa by looking for her iridescent silvery green tails. I see the said tail flipping back and forth through the water as she tries to stealthily swim away to find a new hiding place among the coral. Try being the operative word. She and I both know that it's pointless. I am great at finding people, plus I am one of the fastest mermaids around, well fastest if you don't include my big brother Mason that is. I guess it's partly due to our great lineage, but my parents also just say we are gifted and that if I'm a allowed, I would make one hell of the royal sea warrior just like my father, general Abe Mazur, the trusted advisor of the King Derek Dragomir.

Yes, I am a mermaid, incase having a golden tail and living under the water didn't give you enough clues.

Me and my best friend, Lissa, are currently fifteen years old, well Lissa is, but I'm close enough anyway, and I am already the fastest and more cunning than most of the mer-people in our school. Many people call me my father's golden girl, because I have huge brown eyes with flecks of gold, my skin shade is that of the inside of the almond (as I've told, because we don't actually have almond here under the sea) and the most beautiful golden tails. My tail is the type that most mer-people are jealous of, it's gold with a bits of iridescent ruby red, and when the undersea lights hit, it glows just like the sun at sunset and make jaws drop when people see it. Most mer-people have tails the colour of iridescent green, blue, purple or black. Some lucky ones like my beautiful mother and brother have a ruby red tails that people are very found of, a to-die-for trait from my mother's side of family, but golden tails is the rarest. I was told that my great-great-great-great-great grandmother on my father's side (I lost could of how many "great" there is) has the pure golden tail, so that's where I inherited the trait from. So, yes, my tails is my favourite thing about myself, well, besides my wicked cool hair that is. My long hair is the colour of deepest brown it looks almost black, a trail I share with my old man, with a heavy texture with soft waves I got from my mother. To many mer-people, including Lissa, I have the look that would turn guys head and make girls green with envy.

My best friend, Lissa, or as many mer-people know as Princess Vasilisa Dragomir is the exact opposite of me. Lissa has a beautiful silvery green tail. Not the common boring iridescent bug green shade but the shimmery pale green matched perfectly with her jade green eyes, the trait that runs in the Dragomir family. Couple with her long beautiful blonde hair, I always thought that Lissa looks like an angel, a refreshing sign in the sea of people and animals with strong iridescent colours. Me and Lissa, we make an interesting pair, contrasting each other perfectly. I know sometimes we feel jealous or each other's looks when we go shopping for pretty seashells, starfishes or to decorated our hair and the colour doesn't go along well with our hair or tail, but then we would just realise how silly it is and just shop for the other. Although that doesn't happen very often as we have been joined in the hips since we were born, and basically do everything together. According to our parents our first words had been each other's names, they think we may have taught each other to say "mama" and "papa". We're even planning on spending a year on land together once we learn how to shift.

Oh god! The customary dry-land stay! Old man told me that the transformation is a painful process, but Lissa and me being the royal class mer-people will eventually have go on land quite a bit, so it is essential that we learn to do so. Although we aren't really looking forward to the pain of the transformation when we turn our fins into human leg, and the gills that we are so used to breath are closed up so we have to breath through our nose, it's a small price to pay for the experience we hope to gain on the dry-land. Lissa cannot wait to go into the human world to try on the different types of cloth we saw human wear at the beach, I on the other hand just really want to know how wonderful it would feels to be able to run and dance with legs! I'm so used to being a fast swimmer, I wonder how I would fare with two legs on the dry-land. To be honest, I'm a little afraid that I'd turn clumsy using the legs, and my hard-earned badass reputation would suffer.

Signing to myself, I quite my daydreaming and see Lissa's beautiful tail shoots behind a mound of bright seaweed that matches the colour of her tail almost perfectly. It was a good hiding place, but not good enough for me.

With an internal evil laugh, I swim around a bit trying to pretend to not know where she is until I finally sneak up behind her without her noticing.

"Got ya!" I yell at her both mentally and out loud.

Lissa shoots a good three feet through the water in fright like her tail is lid on fire, while I flip backwards shaking with laughter.

It took a little while for me to stop laugh, just at I look up to sea Lissa glaring daggers at me with her eyes, causing me to smile at her innocently and giving her the dolphin's eyes expression, my secret weapon that no one can resist.

All mer-people have the ability to talk with our mind, it's how we communicate with the animals but it could also be dangerous as some mer-people can use something call compulsion, and only those which have learn to guard our minds can resist such compulsion. Me and Lissa are both yet to learn how to guard our minds from other mer-people, as it is customarily taught when a mer-person reach an age of sixteen. I hate being under compulsion, I suspected that my mother used it to get me to eat my daily seaweed when I was younger, though she never really confirm or deny my suspicion.

Anyway, the point it is considered rude to invade another mer-person's mind unless given the permission, and it is consider a social faux-pas to talk mentally in public, but Lissa and I tend to so it anyway, though we have perfected the facade of pretending to be doing something else as we speak mentally to each other since our young age so that we could communicate secretly with no one the wiser, something we are very proud of.

"Come on Lissa! I'm bored!" I says out loud to her, then in her mind, "Let's go treasure hunting instead!" A wicked gleam fills my eyes at the thought of escaping the palace and search wicked cool human treasure.

In case you didn't already guess, no, we are not allowed to go outside the palace, especially without supervision and protection from our sea guards. But we like to escape the place on our own anyway. We, well I, would bribe Meredith or Meddy, my family pet dolphin, for the information of the lasted ship shrink site, don't ask how Meddy comes about such info, it's a dolphin thing, they can communicate with each other from distant it's really very cool.

"Rose, one day you're going to get us in more trouble than wither of our parents can handle." Lissa says to me like I am a naughty child but an indulgent smile lights up her face. I know she loves treasure-hunting as much as I do. We've been to a couple of treasure hunting prior to this, and we have discovered some really wicked human gadget and beautiful jewellery that we like to share together.

"You love me anyway!" I state cheekily as I grab her hand and swim to my living quarter for our essential tool in sneaking out of the palace, the ink I squid ink I stole from Mr. Stan Alto, the giant squid that teaches biology class at our school, perhaps that's why Stan hates me, oh, well, at least the hatred is mutual.

It takes us awhile to paint each other's tail black with the squid ink. We couldn't really escape the palace unnoticed otherwise as my tail is way too noticeable, and we figured if someone from an enemy kingdom want to kidnap Lissa or me, they would never look at us twice with our tail painted black. When I came up with the idea, Lissa has thought of me very diabolical, her exactly wording, I was just plainly very proud of myself. Although scrubbing each other tail clean of the ink afterward isn't very fun, as we can't really have our usual maid as per usual without giving anything away.

Once we took care of altering our appearances, I call Meddy over, and with a week worth of alaskan salmons, her absolute favourite, as bribe, we shoot off the palace ground to the ship site Meddy was told off by her friend, but from the tone of her voice, I think the said friend is her secret boyfriend.

"Come on guys, this way." Meddy's sweet voice echo in our minds.

Meredith is so excited I have to remind her to slow down for Lissa as she isn't anywhere near as fast of a swimmer as me and Meddy are. We stealthily swim pass the royal sea guard trying to look inconspicuous as we exist the palace ground to the common ground where the sea civilian of the Dragomir Kingdom go about their day, we choose the to pass through the market place where hundreds of shop located, ranging from restaurants, beauty salons where mer-people go to get their hair and tails polished, clothing stores where mer-women shot for the lasted design of the bikini tops and accessories, jewellery store were precious gems and pearls are sold, to furniture shops that sell various types of sea shell beds.

It takes us awhile to arrive at the ship site, which is quite further away than any we've been to beforehand. I'd wager we had come closer to one of the neighbour kingdoms from the looks of things.

"This is quite far away from home isn't it. May be we should just go back." Lissa whispered to me. Feeling uncomfortable being in a foreign ground.

To be perfectly honest, I feel it too, but the sight of the newly shrinker ship give me a burst of excitement that squeezes the feeling uncertainty down.

"We've come this far. Let's just take a look at the ship really quickly and if there isn't anything exciting then we'll head back right away." I pleaded Lissa with a dolphin-like eyes that I know she cannot resist.

Just as we were about to reach the ship, Meddy's scream echo into our minds alerting us of the danger. Immediately I took Lissa's arm and swim into the opening in the ship, sensing rather than seeing Meddy following close behind.

"What is it Meddy?" I begin to question my dolphin friend, only to have the answer I dreaded echoing in my mind

"Sirens." Meddy answers.

Damn it Rosemarie, why didn't you listen to your best friend. I thought to myself.