Kinsmen of the Dragons
Copyright© 2013 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 3: Miss Tiny Tits
Heather Zimmerman had her eyelids squinched nearly shut, so that it was impossible for someone to tell if they were open the tiny bit that they really were.
A few feet away from Heather’s beach towel, Darryl Silverman was talking to Ginny Vega. It seemed imaginative, Heather thought, to believe that Ginny hadn’t noticed the log in Darryl’s swim suit that revealed Darryl was having a lot of interesting thoughts, vis a vis Ginny, even if their conversation was centered on who was going to pick the music they were going to listen to on the way home.
What was truly annoying, Heather went on to think as she contemplated Darryl’s erection from four feet away, was that Ginny Vega had small breasts just like Heather. True, Ginny’s were slightly larger than Heather’s, but Heather couldn’t help but wonder what difference her nickname of “Miss Tiny Tits” was making in regards to her success with the opposite sex; said success was, at this point in her life being nonexistent.
It was enough to make a horny, desperate fourteen-year-old girl wonder about the fundamental justice in the universe. Yes, Ginny’s breasts were a tad larger than an A-cup, while Heather’s barely changed the tape measure, but they both had the same amount of pubic hair — none. That had to be some kind of measure of maturity, right?
Heather sensed it before anyone else did — the big wave building up offshore. She stopped looking at Darryl’s erection and popped up off her towel and went to her surfboard, stuck in the sand down close to the water. She pulled it out and backed up a half dozen steps and stood contemplating the ocean.
Odds were, no one would notice, she knew. No one ever noticed what she did.
Surfers on the north shore of Hawaii watched the surf eighty percent of the time, girls about ten percent of the time and their peers about the same. No one had time to watch little “Miss Tiny Tits.”
She could see the wave start to bulk up, further from shore than most. Some of the surfers out on the water had noticed now, and there were a few flurries of action as they tried to get into position. This was, she knew, a time of great heart palpitations, even among those who had surfed here for years and years.
You could tell from how deep the water was where the wave was starting to break whether or not it was going to be a big wave. The question became: could you get into a place where you could ride it before it broke? Guess wrong and you were going to get pounded, because you only had four or five seconds to make up your mind.
Most of the boys out there realized that it wasn’t going to work for them and promptly bailed, diving to get under the mountain of water coming at them at the speed of a slow-moving automobile — but as heavy as a freight train. A few of the more experienced surfers paddled strongly, trying to hit a sweet spot.
Yeah, she was jealous of the fact that she couldn’t get laid on this beach to save her life, but that didn’t mean she wanted anyone hurt. This wave, though, was going to be a forty-footer and the more timid surfers, the ones not up to it, had seen it and had bailed.
Two guys out of the three that hung in there had good rides; the third realized that he was too close to the curl and bailed as well, diving deep before it was too late.
The wave had attracted the attention of those on the beach and there was a stampede of surfers that had been catching the rays a moment before to get their boards up before the wave washed ashore. Heather made sure she was safely out of the way, as well as high enough on the beach to avoid getting wet.
There were still a half dozen boards stuck in place when the wave, now barely three feet high, swept up to them and scattered them. Others, included Heather, tried to keep any boards from going back out with the ebbing water. Maybe twenty people had had to make hasty departures from their towels, as well.
She planted the one board she’d recovered in the sand, well above the high water mark of the wave and walked back down to the water and launched herself on her own board.
Jimmy Timmer was close; he’d been one of the guys who’d had a good ride. He saw Heather and smiled. “Yeah, the next half hour or so, they’ll be pretty puny!”
He kept going and finished up on the beach, planting his board where the others had been before, and heading for some of his friends to start telling the story of riding the big wave.
Heather had only slowed; now she paddled faster.
She wasn’t sure how she did it. In her head, it felt like she could feel the pulse of the ocean. She knew when the big waves were going to come, and she knew how big they were going to be. She’d realized about the time she was twelve that other people didn’t know that sort of thing, and none of them believed she was anything other than an attention-hog who was a lucky guesser.
Seven more sets of seven waves, she knew. She’d known for almost a day. Then the biggest kahuna wave in a long time was going to break on the beach. Maybe sixty or eighty feet high. That kind of wave only came every few years, and frequently left a lot of death and destruction behind. She wasn’t worried about that though. She was going to be safe. She wasn’t sure how she knew that the beach would be clear by then, but she knew in twenty minutes when the wave came through, that the beach would be clear and that she’d have the ride of her life.
None of the other surfers would be in position to ride it, and while she didn’t understand that, she was content.
She didn’t stop at the others still waiting patiently for a wave, but kept on going, stopping another hundred yards further out. She hadn’t said anything because they would have just made disparaging remarks about a girl being out where the big dogs stayed. A couple of them realized Heather caught only a few waves, but those were the larger ones. Most of them didn’t care, because they had hard ons for the surf, not girls. Oh, they got the hots for cuties on the beach once the sun was down — but the girls on the beach had long ago learned that dedicated surfers were never going to love anyone like they loved the big waves.
Heather relaxed, letting the swell lift her a couple of feet, then put her back. The sky was clear, a deep azure, with a few puffy clouds here and there. Gulls mostly stayed closer to shore and there were no human sounds that came out as far as Heather was. It was altogether quite peaceful and beautiful — so long as you ignored the fact that the ocean could reach out in a second and kill you.
A wave hit her board that was different than the rest; out of step with the others. She blinked in surprise, not having expected it.
She mentally took the temperature and pulse of the ocean and her first thought was that she’d really been crazy all those years and she’d gone overboard now! The ocean was all wrong! The tempo of the waves had totally changed from what she’d been expecting.
She sensed it then, not more than a half mile away. A huge bulk was gliding underwater parallel with the shore and roiling the water, even here, so far away.
Her first thought was that it was a submarine — no one had ever seen one here, but the Navy had them and everyone knew they were around somewhere. The urban legend was that there were pictures they took of the girls from the beach in all the lockers aboard those subs.
She snapped back to the moment as the thing kept going and going and going as it slid past her. She tried to get a grip on it, to envision it as it was. Twelve hundred feet long, she thought. That was way too big to be a submarine! She sensed the undulations along its titanic length and realized for the first time that it was alive.
She swallowed, amazed. Who was going to believe that the Loch Ness monster was swimming off Hawaii? Except it was swimming two hundred feet deep, was twelve hundred and forty-two feet long and thirty-one feet in diameter. She didn’t think Nessie was supposed to be that large.
What happened then was something that surprised her again. It turned; she could sense the turn. For a few seconds as it came around she thought nothing of it. Then she realized it had turned closer to shore and that it was lined up with the row of surfers waiting for a wave worth bothering with.
There were about twenty-five boys on boards, strung out over maybe two hundred yards. A thin line with only a few clumps where they were talking to each other.
She stood up on her board and screamed and pointed — but she knew she was too far away to be heard over the sounds of the ocean.
Once second two dozen boys were there, the next second there was a tremendous swirl in the water and they were gone. Four or five seconds, maybe six, she thought — that was all it had taken.
She felt the creature go by as it passed inshore a hundred yards away, and again the sea boiled and swirled in strange patterns from its huge bulk.
Heather sat numbly, staring at the empty ocean that had once held two dozen surfers. The thing continued to move on, heading east now, staying closer to shore. Now she could sense something from it — primal hunger, anger that the food supply here was so small; discomfort from some of the things it had just ingested. Nowhere in that, did Heather sense anything about herself.
She could see jet skis putting out from shore; she could see a lot of commotion among the people on the beach. She sniffed audibly. There wasn’t a chance in hell they’d believe her, was there? Who was she, after all? Miss Tiny Tits! Who would pay any attention to someone with a nickname like that?
The creature continued on its way, only now Heather could sense it better than before. It was, she thought, like a computer game she’d seen once, online, called Second Life. The longer you looked at something the better the resolution got. This was like that. The more she “sensed” the creature, the better she saw it. Like everything else in the last half hour, it didn’t make sense.
Then she felt the wave building behind her and her first thought was that if there was ever a good chance to bail, now would be it.
Instead, she doggedly started paddling, matching her strokes to what she knew the shape of the wave would be. A minute later she was headed towards the beach, riding something as large, as heavy and although not as fast as a freight train.
She kept going past the usual edge of the beach, riding the froth the rest of the way until it turned around and headed back for the mother ocean. She stepped off her board easily in just few inches of water that was surging back to the ocean. A perfect ride, she thought, but with a difficulty of just “One.”
Quite a few people had watched her come in, and sure enough two lifeguards came running up and one of them asked, “You okay?”
Heather thought that was probably the stupidest question she’d ever heard in her life. “I’m fine,” she said mildly.
In the distance, she felt the monster turn again, coming back towards them.
The two lifeguards were prattling on about freak waves; asking her if she’d seen what had happened to the others.
“Yeah,” Heather said after a second, “yeah, a freak wave.” She waved along the beach where a lot of people were milling down by the water’s edge after the last wave had retreated. She could see it in her mind’s eye. Twelve hundred feet long, but the first two hundred was neck and head. It was going to come by the beach and scoop up the spectators like an anteater licks up ants.
Heather continued to speak mildly, reasonably. “I think maybe you should get the people back further from the water. Maybe you should close the beach until you’re sure there won’t be any more freak waves.”
One of the lifeguards, she realized, was a coward, both morally and physically. Someone had made a suggestion that would cover his ass and keep him personally safe. “Jeez, Harry, she’s right! We gotta get people back from the water!”
She watched them go.
Always; always before, lifeguards were the knights of the water. They weren’t supposed to be afraid, they weren’t supposed to be interested in covering their asses, and just why would a suggestion from fourteen-year-old “Miss Tiny Tits” carry any water with men such as they were supposed to be?
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