Based off the Disney Channel Original Movie "The Thirteenth Year." I've loved that movie for well more than half my life. Sadly, the interwebs is seriously lacking fanfic devoted to a continuation of the movie. This is my thoughts of what would have happened if there had ever been a sequel. Enjoy!

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Sharon Griffin stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing the same cookie sheet that she had started on five minutes prior. The fresh cookies sat on a cooling rack in the middle of the kitchen table. Her husband Whit was sitting in his study working on another fly for his tackle box. The old light house home was quiet and peaceful, but Sharon felt uneasy. Wiping the bubbles from her hands she finally set the pan aside and looked out the window to where she could just glimpse the horizon.

Her beloved son was out there somewhere. On an overcast day like this where the sky threatened with halfhearted promises of rain, she could only wonder what Cody was up to. Despite the promises that had been made to her by Cody's birth mom, Sharon hadn't seen her son in almost nine months. The school year had started months ago and Jess kept bringing copies of the homework he was sure Cody was going to want when he came home.

If he came home. Fiercely shaking the horrid thought from her mind, Sharon looked away from the gloomy weather and attempted to finish the dirty dishes. Steps sounded behind her and she sighed as her husband wrapped his strong arms around her.

"Hey Hun." He kissed the back of her neck affectionately. There was a pause and she knew he too was now gazing out the window.

"Hey." Not bothering to dry her hands she grasped his forearms and held tight onto him.

Almost as if he knew what she was thinking, he responded to her unspoken worries. "We just keep watching. I don't know how or when, but our son is going to come back to us." Whit wrapped his wife even closer as he felt her shoulders start to shake.

Turning in his grasp she buried her head in his shoulder and let the tears silently fall down her cheeks. The summer had been hard when Cody had first left them. Seeing him leap from the water with a fish tail where his legs had only been moments before had left a hollow feeling in her stomach. Her baby boy was now this strange new creature who was leaving on a great adventure neither she nor her husband could be part of. She saw him like that when she dreamed at night, his pale blue and silver tail slicing through the water in a very fish like way.

Now with time continually slipping on and no sign of him, doubts had begun to seed in her mind and she could no longer refuse them attention.

"What if he can't?" Sharon turned her head up to see her husbands disheartened and worried expression.

Whit didn't say anything at first. Admittedly, he'd had the same thought months ago. The change from human to merman their son had gone through had seemed pretty permanent. He wasn't sure there was a way for him to come home. What if his birth mother had told them he'd come back just so they'd let him go? Then there was the look Cody had given them before he'd left. He'd looked happy, yet sort of melancholy and resigned. Had he somehow known he wouldn't be back and couldn't muster up the strength to tell his parents and friends that it was really goodbye?

But, even with the same doubts, Whit smiled at his wife. "We watch Sharon, and we wait. We have to believe that Cody will find a way. Our son is smart and clever. He'll be back. Trust him."

Sharon dipped her head back down and took one more shuddering breathe and finally nodded. This was why she loved her husband so much. She would keep watching. No matter how long it took and how many tears she would shed in worry, she would watch and wait. Giving each other one last tight hug, Whit went back to his fishing gear and Sharon returned to her chore with new determination.

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Cody smiled as he pumped his tail hard and fast, shooting forward in the warm current. The sea life surrounding him seemed to smile back and he sent thoughts of laughter to them. The fish responded in frenzy and swum faster, leaving him behind in their bubbles. Nearby he could hear the call of a whale singing for its pod. Migration had begun a while back and Cody could feel the change surrounding him. Fewer predatory creatures could be seen and the coral was half hibernating.

Even for a while now he had sensed a sort of unease within himself, as if he was changing with the climate in a way he never had as a human. He'd asked his mother about it the other day, but she'd just shook her head. They didn't migrate like the other creatures. In the winter they swum deeper as their skin thickened. There near the dark ocean floor they lived off of plants and different squids or crustaceans. They'd been near the ocean depths for a bit now, Cody's eyes easily adjusting with the lack of filtered sunlight. With the passing thought of winter he glanced down at his tan and smooth skin. He could feel how thick his skin had become, a strange layer of blubber hiding his hard earned muscles slightly. He didn't like the slight pudge it gave him, but he knew he would need the protection for the cold ocean depths. He tried not to think about he, Cody Griffin, had blubber.

With another laugh he flipped his tail and swam out of the ocean current. His mother was calling for him and he was curious to what she would want to talk about. As he swam through the tall and grasses and giant coral fans, he saw other members of his pod. A couple mergirls his age smiled at him, and he smiled back but continued on. He'd made a promise to Sam.

Sam. He sighed at the thought of her. He'd been thinking about her more and more frequently lately. And Jess. And his parents. He wasn't really sure at all how long he had been gone for, but he figured school must be starting soon. Yet he still had no information on how to go back home. He had tried asking others in the pod, especially the elders who were revered for their knowledge, but no one had any answers, or if they did they weren't telling him. He was already an oddity amongst his kind in his own right. Very rarely does a merbaby ever get separated from the pod. Especially not one as young as he had been. From what he'd learned from the pod stories, his mother had been heartbroken for months after she'd seen him taken on land. She'd staid in the cove for weeks, risking exposure and starvation. Finally her husband, his father, had convinced her to go back to the pod.

She'd waited those long years until one day she'd felt a change in the ocean, a change that signaled the change of her son to his full form. There had been an energy coming from the land and cove where she had lost him. She'd made the lonely trip by herself to see if it was really him. Sadly, and too Cody's dismay, his father wasn't able to join her. Lochlan had died a few years before from a bacterial infection due to a shark attack. Cody loved to listen to his mother talk of him and often wished that he'd gotten the chance to meet him.

The fact that his mother had been able to find him, let alone get him to change had been a miracle the pod hadn't heard of in centuries. Most merbabies when lost to land also lost the ability to change into their merform when they turned thirteen. Cody thought he was an exception because he'd always lived so close to the ocean and had swum almost every day of his life. If he'd grown up somewhere dry and landlocked, he'd had become fully human and never changed.

So the fact that he was with the pod now, from what he could gleam from rumors and old memory stories he'd been told, meant he would probably never get his legs back. That didn't keep him from having a hope in the back of his mind that he'd been on land just long enough to be just human enough that it was possible. There had to be a way. Some days he barely thought of his land home and family. Other days when the pod was busy or he felt in the way, he missed them greatly.

While Cody knew the pod was grateful that he was back to lessen his mother's grief, he didn't feel completely accepted by them. He was strange to them, a merman not quite merman. He had to concentrate extremely hard to get his thoughts through clearly when he wanted to communicate. Many times he found himself opening him mouth in frustration, just wanting to talk to them. He'd insulted a couple older mermen that he would try to talk with them in such a crude way as the humans did.

And then there was the whole swimming thing. While he'd been an amazing swimmer on land, he was decidedly slower here with his own kind. Though used to his tail now and good at working one appendage that flowed in the water, he'd been awkward at first. Sometimes he had found himself trying to kick with imaginary legs, sending him spinning head over tail into other merfolk. Now that only happened on very rare occasions.

Not only was the communication different, but so was the culture, the food even the little dress his kind wore. Customs were sometimes really odd and hard for him to grasp, and the laws and rules were almost beyond him. He was adjusting slowly, but lately he had been feeling more and more like he shouldn't be there. Land was calling for him. He loved being a merman and how right he felt in this form, but he missed his home. He missed his girlfriend Sam and his best friend Jess. He missed his mom's homemade cookies and his dad's reassuring smile and advice.

He heard his name called out to him again and he shook his head. His mother sounded urgent and he needed to hurry. Soon he saw her floating ahead near a woven patch of plants. She was fidgeting with a strand of seaweed in her hand, tying then untying it, only to retie it again in a not. Was she worried about something?

Concentrating, Cody sent out a hello to her. She looked up and smiled.

"Brennan," she called back, and Cody sighed.

Apparently, that was his name. He'd tried explaining his name was Cody, but it was an odd name to her and the pod so he'd stopped using it.

"Mother," he thought back.

The mermaid, known as Letha to their pod, dropped the seaweed and swam to her son. He was growing up so handsome and she ran a soft hand down his face. She never grew tired of that face, the one so much like her husband's. With her cherished Lochlan gone she felt having her son back gave her a piece of him.

"I've sensed unease in you." She frowned and tilted her head. "What is the trouble?"

Cody looked down and grabbed his mom's hand. The scales on their palms touched and a surge of energy flowed from him to her and back again. It connected them in an emotional way, a way that made him feel safe and loved. Right now though, it was a way for him to convey how much he missed land.

"My life there." He looked up to the surface. "Is waiting for me. You promised I could go back." He shook his head, hoping all of that got through. He could talk to him mom easier than the others, but he still worried if some it got lost in translation. They didn't necessarily think in words all the time, but used a lot of images with emotions behind them mixed with names and basic words. Sometimes his messages were too much of a jumble of words and not enough images to be understood by the others in his pod. Just another thing that separated him.

His mother separated their hands and looked up to the faraway surface. Her eyes grew sad and wistful.

"Brennan." She looked at him with a sad smile. "To go back." She pictured the buoy where she would watch him from. "It is hard, dangerous and painful."

Finally an answer. "But we promised." He touched his mom's arm. "I don't fit in here."

"Fit in?" Letha looked around. "Fit?"

Cody shook his head and swished his tail. Finally he pictured himself tumbling through the water like a madman. He then pictured the mermaids who had tried to hide their laughter at him.

His mother gave a small, sad smile and nodded. "No, you don't fit in." She grabbed his face gently. "But you are my son. I looked for so long."

They stared into each other's eyes. Cody finally looked away and felt his heart fall. School was going to start and he'd be unable to go.

"Brennan." Cody looked up. Letha tilted her head and gave him that familiar sad smile. "It is past time." She pictured his mom, the one who had raised him, sitting on the rocks of the cove with a backpack gazing out at the sea.

"Past time?" Wait, what? He thought it through in his head. He'd only been gone for a few months, right? No, that was wrong. He would have kicked himself if he could have. School had probably already started. How far into winter was it? He glanced at his skin again. Time was so irrelevant when you lived far below the waves, he honestly didn't know what day it was in the human world.

He sent his mother another, stronger thought of urgency. "I have to get back." Then quieter and softer. "Please."

He pictured himself with legs the best he could. It was harder than he thought and finally he formed an image of him mostly human sitting on the sand in the cove.

"I understand." His mom grabbed his hands. "You will go back to them. Come home when you feel the need."

"Feel?" He asked.

"You'll miss it." She smiled. "You are part of the sea, Brennan. Connected." She placed a hand over his heart. "It calls to us here, strongly. Don't ignore it." He felt a strong warning and nodded.

"I must go, mother." Cody looked at her pleadingly.

"Go to the surface." Letha pictured the cove at night. "Secretly lay on dry sand." Then she pictured him touching his hands together. "Imagine you are human; focus." He felt an underlying sense of pain.

He nodded. He understood. He wrapped her in a warm hug and sent feelings of gratitude, holding her hands in his.

Letha sighed, a small habit she had picked up from her son. "Be safe as you go back." She touched his heart. "Remember me."

Cody put their palms together one more time and closed his eyes. He smiled as he felt his mother's love wash over him, then her longing for her family to be whole, then her acceptance for how things were. Cody sent back his love for the mother he was still getting to know and a promise to come visit. Pulling away she touched his face one last time and then swum back to the pod. Cody watched her go with a sad smile. He would miss his mother, but he had other people he was missing more. And if he was guessing correctly, he was late in keeping his promise.

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So perhaps more of a teaser chapter than I wanted it to be, but I had to get this out here. I'm still working on two other fanfics at the moment: Water In My Blood (based on Mako Mermaids) and H2O: Just Add Mermen (based off of H2O: Just Add Water). Check 'em out if you want. Stay tuned for the next chapter on this one. Also, comments and reviews are love and make my day amazing, if you would like to leave one I would love any feedback of criticism. Ciao!