Fandom High School

"I'm just saying," Duke was saying as the students started to arrive. "It's definitely not your kind of weather out here. If you all want to skedaddle, I totally understand. No hard feelings at all."

The walruses hanging out on the beach with the kayaks for today's class looked profoundly unbothered.

". . . Okay. It's up to you. It'd be nice if you at least got in the water, though. So I don't have to worry that you're stuck."

The largest walrus grunted and honked and rolled onto his back.

". . . Cool." Duke turned to the students. "So today we're kayaking. With these guys. Or you can just kind of lay out on the sand, which is my plan."

His back was not going to be into waving a paddle around.

Duke looked at the equipment provided for today's class. He looked up at the sky.

"Why do these things always happen to me?"

There was no answer forthcoming.

"Right," he said when the students gathered for class. He had a fairly permanent case of facepalm going on. "Today we're going to learn to swim using a monofin." The equipment provided was rather more than just the fins. Duke side-eyed it again and heaved a deep sigh. "Aka . . . mermaid swimming."

God dammit.

"Please don't mind the giant fucking crabs under the water. They probably won't bother you. As far as I can tell, they're too busy with those bongos to worry much about us."

"Right, so." Duke was actually here for his class this week. Sorry, Lord High Master of All Fishes, your reign of terror has ended. "I was thinking of doing some surfing this week, but there are . . . no waves." He looked down at the water gently lapping at the shoreline. "Literally none. I blame our new candy colored neighbors. And that damned music —"

He shook his head.

"Anyway. There's no waves, but there's apparently a lot going on underneath the water right now, so I thought maybe we could do a class on one of my favorite ways to spend time in the water: free diving.

"Now, technically the term 'free diving' refers to any sort of underwater activity that doesn't use supplemental oxygen. So we're talking traditional fishing methods, snorkeling, underwater basket-weaving. . . . All of that counts as free diving. I'm going to teach you how I do it, though, which involves no extra equipment in the water but you, your own ability to hold your breath — and some kind of water-appropriate clothing, since this is a class and all. And we're all super excited to have our own clothing back."

Duke himself was wearing a simple short-sleeved wetsuit today. That he had not picked off a tree, thank you very much.

"Now, like most things in the world, free diving takes practice. Most — air breathing, land-based — people are not going to be able to immediately dive in and be able to hold their breaths for ages. And they probably shouldn't try. No one is allowed to pass out because they thought they could hold it just a liiiiiittle bit longer, today. But there are some techniques I can show you right now to increase the amount of time you can stay under the water."

Duke walked them through the process of a breathe up and recovery breathing for before and after their dives.

"Alright. There are some floats set up out there in case you get tired and need a break, and I'll be swimming around, keeping an eye on everyone to make sure you don't get into trouble. Now get out there, have some fun, and . . . see what you can find!"