Joan proceeded to carefully propel herself around the ocean floor as she explored her current surroundings. She continuously glanced behind her back and generally kept tabs on her surroundings. She knew that Nicole made precautionary wishes to protect her, but Joan was still more than a little unnerved by her alien surroundings.
"I've watched the Discovery Channel enough to know that ocean wildlife can be more than a little dangerous. I could end up being a shark's lunch, stung by a deadly box jellyfish, impaled by a stingray, bitten by a sea snake... or I could avoid all of the sea creatures and just be turned into chum by a passing boat's propellar blade. Hopefully Nicole's protection wishes will keep me safe until four o'clock."
Sudden movement to the right caught Joan's attention. She whirled her head around in time to see the silhouette of a strangely shaped creature duck behind a large coral reef.
"What was that," wondered Joan, "It's too big to be a regular fish, but it didn't look like a shark."
The shadowy creature quickly darted to another reef. Fearing that she was being hunted, Joan nervously swished her tail around to backtrack out of the enclosed reef area.
Joan could see a the general shape of a fish-tailed creature out of the corner of her eye as she desperately tried to swim as fast as she could. Joan swimmed at an impressive rate, far faster than she could as a human, but she could still feel the presence of the creature closing in on her with her "fish sense".
Joan panicked and wailed as the creature grabbed her from behind. She thrashed violently about and screamed as loud as she could underwater to try and scare off the creature. But Joan's scream soon turned into a girlish giggle until it finally erupted into full blown laugther. The creature behind her wasn't attacking her, it was tickling her.
Joan broke lose and turned around to see what the playful creature wanted. She was startled when she saw a pretty female face giggling and laughing at her. Joan looked further down to see that the mischievous tickler was a full blown mermaid just like her. The mermaid looked to be in her teenage years and sported raven black hair that floated wildly underwater as well as a dark blue fish tail like Joan's.
The giggling mermaid pointed her finger directly at Joan and said, "Gotcha good!
Now it's your turn!" The mermaid then burst through the water, leaving Joan to play catch up.
Not knowing if this is part of Nicole's wish or just a chance encounter with a real mermaid, Joan proceeded to give chase and catch up with the phantom tickler. She had many questions to ask and a little score to settle with her.
