Dolphinia

I had been selected for a strange experiment. I was injected with something that allowed me to stay underwater for several minutes, and sent out into a netted off bay to find and communicate with the trapped Dolphinia. I managed to find her, or allowed her to find me. I was able to communicate with her after a time, finding out that she was a mother, and her pod contained two of her children still. She desperately wanted to be re-united with them so she could see them join up with other pods after their summer feeding meet up. The more days that went by, the harder it would be to catch up. She also worried that it was dangerous for a lone dolphin to migrate the later the season got. I relayed this to our experimenters, and they told me to promise her that people could transport her directly to the feeding grounds where she could find the rest of her pod. She just needed to come play some games with us first.

I did my best, but it seems there were no easy way to talk about being transported really fast until I learned that dolphins bow surfed on whale and boat waves, so used that to say a boat would let us surf quickly to her pod. I felt bad for deceiving her.

The experimenters lowered a whole office building into the bay. I had to explain to them that we still needed to breathe air and couldn't reach the lower levels without extreme risk, so they put down diving bells with oxygen pumped into them. The two of us managed to swim through the building, with Dolphinia teaching me the proper way to swim, and how to glide to conserve air. By the time we were done with our experiments, I could stay down almost as long as Dolphinia. The longer these "games" went on, and the less the experimenters shared with me the more I began to worry that I had been deceived as much as Dolphinia.

Then one morning I woke up in a normal bed, with my normal body intact. I felt woozy though, as if I'd been drugged for days. I managed to get out of my room and found where they were keeping Dolphinia.

She had been completely transformed. She was human now, at least six feet tall, and in a blonde curly haired wig and red dress. She was stunning if a bit alien looking. She was frightened, couldn't figure out how to swim (walk) and confounded by the need to breathe continuously through this thing above her mouth. Turns out I had been allowed to find her in order to calm her down and get her cooperation again. She was so happy to see me, and concerned that I too had been made into this awkward land animal. She was convinced that I, too, had been a dolphin, and that was why I learned to swim and breath so well with her. Spiritually, I agreed with her, and I wanted nothing more than to be back in the warm water of the bay, swimming freely. I wanted to get her back to herself, and then delivered to the summer grazing area with a large pod she could travel with until she found her own. I had the feeling, though, that the dolphin to human conversion was only one way, neither she nor I would be able to go back.