Under the Sea

Under the Sea

Ow, ow, ow. My tail was crying out in pain after that freaking shark thought I was just any other fish. Did he not see that I had a human torso?

I laid out on a rock, my light blue tail wrapped around my front, and my hands bathed in light as I cast a healing spell on it. I was rather low on my magic reserves after having to fight off that shark, but healing magic thankfully didn’t take much out of me.

My hands passed over each broken scale, resting but a moment as they cracks undid themselves, and the shattered pieces forged back together. The bloody underflesh was the worst, having to recreate muscle and sinew.

“Sheesh…” I let out a groan, leaning my head back so my tail-length blond hair, wet as always, barely touched the water behind the rock. This was going to take a long time. At least I was old enough for my father to not yell at me when I was gone for too long.

I returned to healing my tail, my body drenched in sweat from the high afternoon sun.

“Need some help?”

I almost fell off a rock as another mermaid with pink hair popped out of the water. “D-Don’t do that, Felicity!” I gasped, trying to catch my breath. “I thought you were a shark!”

“Of course I’ll do that. Otherwise, how could I see my cute Marissa in a panic?” A snicker spread across her face. “Here, take your hand off the wound, I’ll take care of it.”

What other choice did I have? I let her get to work. Any mermaid knew others healed you better than you could heal yourself.

For the first time since coming up here, I could see over to the piers. They were usually empty, but today there was a guy seated at the edge with a fishing pole cast out. God, if he were a merman he’d be damn hot. Those muscle-bound abs, that square chin with a slight stubble, and his piercing sharp eyes were enough to send any mermaid’s heart aflutter.

“How’s your skin?” asked Felicity.

“I’ve got enough mucus for another hour out here.” I stretched my arms up and let out a yawn.

“Good. I’m almost done anyways.” She passed her hand over another broken scale. “Say, why were you this far from the kingdom anyways? If I hadn’t seen you leave you might’ve been sunk.”

“I just wanted to watch the humans a bit.” As a mermaid’s eyesight was a dozen times as strong as a human’s, I could see them doing their everyday activities without them noticing me. “I do it every so often.”

“Oh?” She put on the finishing touches. “Well, no doing that again for a few days. I’ve healed the wounds but if you put too much strain on your tail the new flew will just rip right back open.”

“Yes, mom~” I teased.

Felicity put her hands on her tail-hips. “What kind of a thank you is that?”

“Sorry, sorry.” I dove back into the waters with Felicity and swam down at a relaxed pace until we came back to the kingdom.

---

Humans were always interesting to me. They would waste hours upon hours of their lives fishing, basking in the sun, or running around. How did they balance themselves without water to prop themselves up? It’d always been a curiosity to me, but one I’d never want to find out. All mermaids knew the price of gaining legs: find true love or turn into sea foam the first day after he married someone else.

Still, ew. Loving a human? Who would ever want to do that? That would be like… loving a fish or something. Mermaids were to love Mermen… or other Mermaids if they were into that. Other special were just bestial.

I floated around in my room, resting wherever the waters would take me. “What to do today…” I asked. The merman doctor took a better look at my tail and gave me my prognosis: Four days of bedrest and I’d be as good as new.

While it was easier than tending to the corals and gathering seaweed for dinner, that didn’t make it fun. In fact…

“Damn it, this is so boring!” I groaned. What was a mermaid to do alone in her room? We weren’t supposed to be bound to one place. We were supposed to go around exploring the depths!

And I wasn’t going to stay here. I just needed to take it easy. Maybe I could play around with some of the guppies – the merpeople who hadn’t quite come of age.

Knowing they could get rough I chose a sturdier and less fashionable bikini and headed out of my coral house to the village.

The guppies were there playing reccos: a game where they could only use their hands in an attempt to get a ball into a net. I’d heard of a rumor of humans having a game like it where they could only use their feet. How would that work? All merpeople knew their tails were unfairly strong.

I was just about to say something when I caught a flash of pink out of the corner of my eye. Felicity? She was heading out of the village, and not in the direction of the corals or seaweed.

“Interesting…” I whispered.

Pumping my fin, I turned to follow her.

We were going the same direction as the day before. In fact, we were heading to the same rock? Why?

She popped out of the water to lie on the rock, facing the pier again. Oh crap! I couldn’t pop out and talk to her here. I was supposed to be in my room lazing around.

Still, why was she here? Some mermaids did enjoy the feeling of their skin when their mucus had mostly evaporated, but she didn’t seem like that kind of a girl. So why was she…

Her eyes were transfixed on the docks. That man from yesterday was there again, his legs dangling off the edge as he fished. And her cheeks were flushed.

It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

“Is someone there?” she asked, turning her head around towards me. I dipped underwater before she could catch me.

This was bad. Mermaids falling in love with humans was a hundred times worse than them falling in love with a fish! I couldn’t let her become sea foam!

Dinner that night was supposed to be seaweed. Imagine my surprise when Felicity came in with a freshly sunbaked lobster.

“Whoa!” My jaw dropped. “How many sand dollars did that cost?”

“None. Caught it myself.” She broke the tail in two and gave me the other half. “Thought it’d be a good idea to have a treat tonight.”

My heart raced. That wasn’t good. Every perverted mermaid who gave up her legs for a chance at love with a human had always had elaborate meals the night before. Was she really thinking of going ahead and doing it?

She dug into the meat with a clam shell. “Say,” she said, “I have a question.”

I squirmed in place. “What is it?”

“Um… it’s about love.”

Here it came. The big reveal. She wanted to tell me she loved that man, and I had to step in to tell her not to do something stupid. People don’t love those they just met. Sure, she may love him, but he’d never love her back, and she’d be foamed. “What do you need?”

Looking aside she said, “Well… I think I might have a love which might be a little outside the mainstream. And I really want to take the next step in our relationship. It’d cost some money, of course. I’ve got plenty of sand dollars saved up, but I keep wondering, what if it doesn’t work out?”

This was where I was supposed to tell her no. But in that moment, seeing her pinkened cheeks, her heaving chest, and her closed eyes with long eyelashes, my own heart twisted. Who was I to judge her life? Wasn’t it true love to risk one’s life for a slim chance of being with the one they desired?

There was only one answer. “Listen, Felicity.” I clasped my hands around hers. “I will support whatever you wish to do. But please, think of the risks before you do it. Is it really worth possibly losing everything you have?”

Her pink eyes seemed soft and sad as she looked into my own. “For my love, it is.”

“Then you have your answer.” It hurt to say that. I was pretty much sending her to her death. What else could I say?

We spent the rest of the night reminiscing on good times we had as guppies. She and I had been close for as long as I could remember. And now, I was about to lose her. My only prayer would be that she wouldn’t suffer both when her tail became legs, and when her heart broken.

The following morning, I swam out of my house early. Keeping my distance, I watched as she left her own coral house and swam to the black market district of our village: the home of the great witch.

Everything was happening too fast. She went into the witch’s shop, and came out five minutes later with a small bottle of a white liquid.

Felicity… you were too important to me growing up. You always were the voice of reason when I wanted to do something wild. You were the one who gave up your role as the chief fish in our 5th-grade play so I didn’t have to play a barnacle. I remembered the time we explored the shipwreck hoping to find interesting human tools, and only found a couple of shiny golden-colored rocks and thousands of wet papers with words like “In God we Trust” and numbers like 100 on them. Total junk.

She swam up to the rock again. The fisher was seated at the edge of the dock again, hanging his rod out. That was the guy she’d go after. If I hadn’t been bitten by that shark she’d have never seen him and—

“I know you’re there, Marissa.”

A shiver went up my back.

“Come. There’s room enough on the rock for two mermaids.”

I pulled myself out of the water and took a seat on the rock, placing my tail next to hers.

There was a cool wind out here, but with how wet our hair always was it didn’t make it flutter like a human’s would. “Listen, Felicity,” I said. “I know what you said last night. But… are you sure? The odds are so low.”

“Low?” She put her hand to her chest. “I think I have a really good chance. I mean, I feel like they love me back and…”

I put my hands on her shoulders. “You never met them before. It won’t be as easy as you think, and you’ll turn into sea foam!”

“Never met…? Sea foam…?”

“Take that potion and throw it away,” I closed my eyes, letting my tears flow. “I don’t want you to become a human. I want you to stay in the sea! That man doesn’t love you!”

She blinked. “Him?” She turned to the docks. “Ew! You really think I’d love a human?”

What. “Felicity, what are you—”

“God, Marissa, you’re so gross! How could you suggest such a thing!”

“But you came up here and—”

“Of course I did. I knew if I didn’t you’d be up here instead of resting, so I was keeping guard against you.”

“But… that potion…”

“This?” She held it up. “Yeah, it was pretty expensive. But I’ve decided. It’s all for you.”

“I don’t love that man either!”

She shook her head. “It’s not that kind of a potion. It’s a speedy recovery one. I don’t want you stuck in your home for weeks since you won’t stay in one place.”

“Then… your love…”

Her eyes sparkled as she looked at me. “Why, it’s you of course. If you’ll have me, that is.” Her face was pink again. “I know two mermaids loving each other is a little out of the mainstream, but it’s not like the old days when people frowned on it!”

Oh. So that was what this was about. “Felicity,” I said. “I never loved anyone but you.”

“Marissa!” She threw her arms around me, pressing her chest against mine. “Oh God, you had no idea how afraid I was you’d say no!”

The man on the docks stood up and put her fishing rod away. As he did, Marissa and I shared a kiss under the hot sun before falling together in each other’s arms back into the sea.