The sea floor was calm and clear, but this particular mermaid was not seeing any of that. She was on her way to her last hope for not being a laughing stock among her pod.

Miriam crept up toward the seaweed field that covered a clamshell farm. The merboy watching the field saw her coming. She was a frequent visitor.

The overseer swam up. He held in a sigh. “Miriam,” he said in as soothing a voice as he could. “I can’t help you more. There are no more pearls. They’re all assigned or called for. I’m sorry. I can’t spare you another one. There’s nothing wrong with the pearls. I hate to say it, but there may be something from preventing you from hatching it.”

Broken-hearted yet again, Miriam reluctantly swam away. The merboy saw this. After checking to see that his boss wasn’t looking, he snuck up to Miriam with a lump of seaweed.

“Hm?” Miriam stopped when the brown-haired boy blocked her path.

“Please, take this,” He held out his hand to her, looking over his shoulder anxiously. “Quickly. Consider it a gift. You cannot be seen here again.”

Miriam blinked at the boy. “What is it?”

He shook his head, rested the green lump in her hands and swam back to his post just as the big-boned overseer came looking for him.

Miriam swam back to her residence in  the coral reefs and sat down to open the seaweed wrap. Untangling the mass of slippery plant life took patience, and many times she was forced to put it down and take a break to continue on with her life. The day she pulled out the last knot there was a mini celebration in her heart. Lying on what was left of the seaweed blanket was a broken oyster shell. The poor thing was cracked open with a hole in the top. Miriam ran gentle fingers over its bumpy surface, tenderly trailing the first finger of her left hand over on the cracked edges. It looked like it was very old and had been battered by the waves for years and year- nothing like the regular oyster shells that merchildren were hatched from.

 After wedging her pinkie finger into the crack by the opening of the mollusk, Miriam wiggled it until the shell cracked open to reveal what looked like pearl charm. The tiny sphere was unlike any pearl she had ever seen, for decoration or for hatching. First of all, it was clear. Crystal clear. There were swirls of blue swimming inside and it was cold to the touch.  She wore it around her neck and hid it with her extremely long silver hair.

When her friends swam by with their guppies on their tails- cheerful little merboys and mermaids laughing and discovering life in the ocean, chasing fish and being tickled by marine plant life- Miriam would touch two fingers to her pearl, close her eyes, and pray for her pearl.

One bleak day Miriam opened her eyes to a bright light shining in her face and a heavy weight pulling on her neck. She immediately reached up for her pearl only to feel nothing but her bare chest. Distraught, her eyes darted around frantically searching for the swirls of blue that marked her treasured sphere. A tiny yawn caught her ear and Miriam lifted her head to see what was weighing her down. A thick curtain of black and blue covered her stomach. Beneath the blanket of hair, a lump shifted and a head rose.

Large deep blue eyes blinked into Miriam’s grey ones. A small smile graced the tiny face and Miriam felt the soft but weighted thump of a tail fin above her belly button. 

“Ebony!” The teenaged mermaid laughed. “Slow down, you silly dolphin. I only have so tight a grip, you know.”

The cross-bred black spinner dolphin decreased her speed only slightly as she swam around a boulder and under a curved stretch of rock. 

“Where are you going with so much speed anyway?” Cordelia asked her excited companion.

Ebony let out a squeak and snapped, catching a fish in her mouth.

“If you were hungry you could’ve just said so.” Cordelia let go of the dolphin’s dorsal fin and watched herself sink down to rest on a rock. “You must get tired towing me around all the time.” Cordelia looked down at the deep blue beta fish bottom that masqueraded itself as a functional tail and sighed, watching the sheer ribbons she had received as a birthday present dance off the end of her tail with the current.

Ebony clicked her tongue and eased up next to her mermaid friend, rubbing her nose over the scaly birthmark on Cordelia’s upper right arm. 

“Yes, yes, I know. It’s getting dark. Mom will be looking for us soon.” She latched on to the dolphin’s waiting dorsal fin and rested her head on Ebony’s back, closing her eyes.

The dolphin swam off gently, slowly climbing upwards.

Cordelia enjoyed the feeling of moving around without a rush. Her hair, black with one single blue stripe running the entire length of her ponytail and side bang, drifted behind her, stopping just above the end of her tail. The forty-five pound decoration felt weightless under the strength of Ebony’s pull. It was always a nice moment to revel in before hitting the sea floor again.

The sea floor.

Cordelia opened her eyes. They were nowhere near the sea floor. “Ebony? Where are you-“ Cordelia closed her eyes as the dolphin broke the surface of the clear Caribbean Sea. Ebony lingered there for a moment, her blowhole taking in the refreshing sea air.

Cordelia gasped, her very first breath of air in all her 14 years of existence. She put her hand to her mouth. The air went in cold but came out warm! It was a strange feeling- not uncomfortable, just… alien. She tried pulling in the invisible new thing through her nose. The cool air came in and she felt it enter her throat. “Ebony…” She jumped. Her voice sounded slightly off out of the water. “This is…” Cordelia looked around.

The sun was just beginning its descent from the sky. The sea water sparkled, light dancing off the rippling waves. Even Ebony’s skin glistened from the great ball of light in this sea without water stretching endlessly above her. This waterless sea had trails of white floating through it, blissfully, it seemed, without a care in the world. These white… things reminded her of how it felt when Ebony towed her around.

“Ebony… this place…”

Ebony slipped back down and skimmed the water’s surface before jumping up again and again with happy squeaks. She turned and drifted a second time, facing the opposite direction. This time, Cordelia saw something that took her newfound breath away. At the forefront of her view there was sand. She knew sand. What she didn’t know were the creatures moving about on the sand. Or the great plants brushing the waterless sea with their green hair. Or the big gray rectangle thing jutting out from the sand into the water. Or the big brown thing floating above the water with more of the strange creatures sitting on it, laughing as the thing made its way closer and closer to the sand above the surface of the sea.

These creatures, they looked like her but- “They don’t have tails,” Cordelia said to herself. They had arms like she did, and hair – much shorter than hers, but hair nonetheless – like she did; a head, neck, torso, and skin like she did. Two eyes, one nose, two ears, a mouth. But not a one of these creatures had tails. Below their waists, they sported another pair of arms. No, that wasn’t right. She squinted to get a better look. The appendages were similar to arms but thicker, and flat at the bottom and the fingers were way shorter.

She watched as, when the floating thing had reached the sand, the creatures got off, moving one appendage in front of the other. Some moved faster than others, but they all got around the same way. One appendage would lift up a little, and come back down ahead of the one it had left behind, then the other would do the same.

When Ebony started down again, Cordelia almost lost her grip. What were those creatures? What was that place? A whole other existence out of the water! She couldn’t wait to get home and tell her mother.

Cordelia ended up holding off on telling her mom about what she had seen above the surface. Thinking about it more closely, she would have to ease into it, seeing as the same time she would bring it up she would suggest – very, very strongly suggest – that she become one of those creatures so she would be able to get around by herself.

~*~

One beautiful afternoon found the blue mermaid sitting on rock a ways from the cave that served her and her mother as their home. The water was warm, colorful fishes found their way through the coral and around the anemones, and sunlight danced in the water.

“Well if it isn’t the sea-slug, Cordelia herself,” came a mocking male voice.

Oh no. Cordelia looked away.

“Probably shouldn’t even call you a slug,” The voice laughed. “At least those can move on their own!”

“Leave me alone, please, Aquarius,” Cordelia said in a hesitant voice.

“You’re already alone, you should be thanking me for my company.” The haughty merboy tossed his luscious black hair.

Cordelia opened her mouth to speak again but was cut off by a new voice.

“She needs no company of yours.”

“A sea urchin would be better company than you would ever be,” another female voice called after the first. “No offence to the sea urchins, of course.”

Cordelia’s eyes lit up. “Nerina! Mariska!” she called in whispered relief, not daring to look up and risk catching the gleaming purple eyes of her relentless bully.

“Nerina,” Aquarius said in a drawn out call. “Sweetheart. Darling. Such a beautiful thing to be so blind.” He licked his lips.

Mariska shuddered. “Yecch..”

“Ew.” Nerina took Cordelia by the hand. “Get over yourself, Aqua-scum. Seriously. I don’t. want. You. Never have. Never will. Now leave my friend alone or you will answer to me.”

Aquarius simply chuckled. “Such ugly lies from such lovely lips. Why associate with a living rock like her, anyway? That big ol’ fan of a tail for what?” He drifted a hand to it. “It’s wasted on her. What kind of mermaid can’t even swim? I mean, come on! Maybe you oughta cut it off and give it to somebody who will actually make use of it.” Aquarius cast a sly eye on Cordelia’s waist where her scales met her skin.

Mariska gasped and covered Cordelia’s ears with her hands. “You jerk! How could you say such a thing! Your mom must not be happy with you at all! Saying such awful things. What if someone tried to cut off your tail?”

Aquarius lowered his eyelids with a smirk. “Unlike her,” he shoved a finger pointedly in Cordelia’s direction, “I could swim away. Chow, ladies.” He turned and began to swim off, calling over his shoulder, “Whenever you come to your senses, Nerina dearest, you know where to find me.”

Nerina feigned regurgitation.

Mariska removed her hands from Cordelia’s head. “Don’t listen to him, Cori’. He’s just a big meanie who’s starved for attention.” She looked down at her scarlet tail and nudged Cordelia’s tail with hers.

“Instead, feel bad for me,” Nerina joked, planting herself on the other side of the blue mermaid. “That thing has the hots for me. Did you see him wink at me?” A shudder ran visibly from the crown of her bright purple hair to the tips of faded purple tail. “Why me?” she cried. “Of all the mermaids in this part of the sea, why did he have to set his sights on me? He’s so full of it I just want to smack that smirk off his face sometimes.” Nerina took a breath. “But I’m better than that.” She rested her hands on her lap all prim and proper. “I am a lady.”

Cordelia giggled. “Thanks, girls. He just won’t stop.”

“Notice he only does it when he catches you by yourself,” Mariska pointed out. “He’s got no guts. Most bullies don’t. Just pick on people ‘cause they’re different and can’t stick up for themselves.” Mariska flicked her tail at a rock. “What could you possibly get out of that?”

“I don’t know but where’s your mom? I haven’t seen her in a while.” Nerina looked around.

“She’s probably out hunting with Ebony,” Cordelia responded, looking over her shoulder at the cave that served as her and her mother’s home. It was quite fortunate that Aquarius had not caught her there, or she would have no solace alone in her own residence.

“So uh… Mom?”

The mermaid known for her shimmery silver barracuda tail turned slightly with a something in her mouth. “Hm?”

“I’ve been thinking about…” She whispered the last word. “Moving.”

Miriam pulled the cloth-like texture from her mouth. “Thinking about what, dear? Speak up a little please.”

Cordelia pulled herself up closer to her mother and consciously slid her tail around to rest near the mound of shells and rocks Miriam was dealing with. “My tail,” she said in a louder voice. “You know, how it… doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Or at all for that matter.” She pushed out an amused breath.

Miriam paused and looked at her daughter. Her overflowing hair with the single stripe down the middle, her large blue eyes that she was just now starting to grow into, the birthmark of blue scales on her right arm that matched perfectly Cordelia’s beautiful but dysfunctional tail. “What are your thoughts, dear?”

“Remember that time me and Ebony came home just a little late one evening?”

“Yes?”

Cordelia rubbed her fingers through her bang. “And I told you it was because Ebony had decided to come home a different way?”

“Mmhmm?” Miriam tore a strip off of the cloth she was sitting on and twisted it, weaving one side in between a small tree of standing coral growing out from the side of the cave.

“But I never did tell you exactly what way that was, did I?”

Miriam shook her head and began threading the material together bit by stringy bit. “Was it nice?”

“It was different,” Cordelia offered cautiously, “very different. The water was lighter and warmer and…”

“And…?”

Cordelia looked around, sucking in her cheeks between her teeth. She ran her top row off teeth over her bottom lip. Her tongue probed around inside her mouth, examining the undersides of each of her teeth individually, rolling over each bump in her cheeks. There really aren’t as many bumps as there were last I checked, she thought. Her tongue folded under and had fun rubbing up on the thing that kept it attached to the floor of her mouth.

“Cordelia,” Miriam called, glancing back from her work. “You were saying something about the way Ebony had taken you? And I quote, ‘the water was lighter and warmer and…’ I would like to hear about it since you got my curiosity peaked. I may want to visit this place sometime.”

Cordelia blinked. “Hm? Oh yes. The water. It was light and warm-“

“I got that.” Miriam smiled.

“It was really clear. Ebony kept going until there was no more of it. Like we were on the surface of the sea.”

“The surface? What was it like?”

“There was a great ball of bright light shining in the sky!” Cordelia exclaimed. “It made the water sparkle like nothing I’d ever seen.”

Miriam laughed. “That was the sun, dear.”

“The sun? The sun! It was beautiful. But it hurt my eyes to look right at it.”

“What else did you see?”

“There is sand above the water.”

“Sand above the water?” Miriam repeated, tying a knot.

Cordelia nodded even though her mother wasn’t looking in her direction. “And there was a big brown floating thing, and round white floating things, and big white shapeless things floating through the waterless sea with the sun!”

“Clouds, dear. The puffy white things were clouds.”

“Clouds,” Cordelia tested the term on her tongue. “You sound like you know about the sea without water up there as well.”

“I’m supposing this ‘sea without water’, as you refer to it, is what everyone else calls the sky, darling,” Miriam tore off a lose end  to her work.

“The sky. The sun and puffy clouds live in the sky,” Cordelia said. “Mother… there were creatures up there. Creatures like us- well, the top half looked like us.”

“Mmhmm,” Miriam said, still listening but more focusing on tiding up her cloth piece.

“They moved without tails. They had four arms instead of two!” Cordelia stretched her arms straight out in front of her. “The limbs bent backwards and it didn’t look like the extra arms had fingers. They moved like this- Look, mom! Like this.” Cordelia lifted her right hand up and pressed it down in little ways in front her left hand, then leaned forward, lifted her left hand up, and pressed it down. “It was so intriguing.”

“Sounds so,” Miriam said, admiring her finished product. “And I can use the rest of this fabric to make ribbons!” She said to herself.

“So… I was thinking… they don’t have tails, my tail doesn’t work, they get along fine… Maybe, possibly…”

“Cordelia, dear, I’m sorry. I have to run these over to Syrene. Do you want to come along or-“

“No, it’s fine, Mom. You go ahead.”

“Are you sure, dear? Really, I hate to cut you off but I’d really like to get this to her today. We could finish when I get back?” 

“Sure,” Cordelia said with an unconvincing smile. “Go ahead before you’re late.”  Cordelia waved and flapped her tail, freeing its ribbons to flow in the current.

Miriam offered her daughter an apologetic smile and swam away, fabric strings trailing from her arm. “I’m sorry, dear. That’s a discussion for a very special night in the future, my precious pearl child.”

~*~

Cordelia looked around the dent in the cave that served as her room. She had picked out holes in the walls to hide tiny shells she gathered from the sea floor and filled a slanted area with sand and seaweed for her to sleep on. This was all she knew. The waterless sea- the land, as her mom had corrected another day when she had gathered the courage to bring up the topic again- had so much to discover. All she had to do was find a way to gain the appendages of the land creatures and then she could independently build a life for herself.

She pulled herself over to her sleeping space and curled up, her excessive hair serving as more than a blanket. She gazed at the roof of the cave, dark and endless with hidden crevices and kinks she could hide her tiny treasures in. To move around of my own volition, she thought blissfully. Ebony could have her own life, Aquarius would stop teasing me, and I would be able to do whatever I wanted.

A few hours later, Miriam returned from her errand at the Hall’s and peeked in on her daughter. She was sleeping so peacefully. Miriam lifted Cordelia’s bang from her face and rested it over the rest of her hair. “It never even crossed my mind that that could be a solution to your dilemma. I suppose that was quite selfish of me, keeping your sweetness all to myself. I know what you want to do, my dear, and as much as I want to go with you, I cannot.  You’ll have to this one on your own.” Miriam smiled weakly. “But that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

~*~

Twenty-one days had drifted by since Cordelia had had the last conversation about the land with her mother.  Little by little, the silver mermaid had started teaching Cordelia the proper terms for the strange things she had seen on her one and only visit to the surface. The big gray rectangle jutting out into the water was called a “dock. The floating thing with the creatures on it was “something like a house”. Not an actual house, her mother had specified, but It had a triangle on the top which turned out be called a “roof”, which all houses were said to have. The tall grayish brown plants with green hair were actually called “trees”. There were all different kinds of tress, her mother had told her, but the ones she had seen were “most likely palm trees”.  There was so many new things there! She wanted to know more, but Ebony had made it a point to not take her back up to the surface for whatever reason.

Miriam came up to Cordelia in her room. “Cordelia? Sweetheart?”

“Yeah, mom?” Cordelia put down the curled shell she had been mulling over. “What is it?” Blue eyes looked up to the silver-haired mermaid.

“Come with me, please. I’d like to take you somewhere. I think you’ll like it a lot.”

Cordelia pulled herself out to the opening of the cave. “Where is it?” she asked, intrigued.

Miriam smiled softly. “It’s a secret. I promise you’ll be happy.” And I’ll have to be happy for you, my dear. No matter what you choose to do with this new information.

Cordelia’s eyes took on the most skeptical look they could show. “Ok… if you say so.”

Miriran turned around and leaned back directly in front of the cave and waited as Cordelia pulled herself up to put her hands on her mom’s shoulders. “Got a good grip?”

“Mhm! Ready to go!”

Miriam swam up and out slowly to gently pull her daughter from the cave. When Cordelia called, “Tail’s out, Mom!” Miriam took off at a natural swimming pace. She would swim straight ahead, then climb upwards a little, then swim ahead some more, then a little further upwards, then ahead again, making a sort of extended staircase with the trail of bubbles she was leaving behind.

Cordelia looked around after awhile of swimming. “Mom-“ she started to ask.

“Shh, we’re almost there,” Miriam said and without further warning bulleted straight up until she broke the surface of the water with a picturesque splash. Miriam took a deep, refreshing breath of the cool night air.

“Mom…” Cordelia said in disbelief at first, “but this is the surface!”

“You wanted me to tell you about it, so I figured a night like tonight would be a good time. You’ve been patient and to be honest I initially had hoped that you would’ve given up on it but you’re my daughter so,” she let out a laugh, “of course that would never be the case. Look up there.” Miriam lifted a bright brown hand and pointed a to the sky.

“The sky is dark,” Cordelia said, looking up. “And there are cute little white dots up there, like tiny little suns.”

“What about the moon?”

“What’s a mo-“ Cordelia cut herself off as she caught sight of the round white disk in the sky. “Is that it? That round white light among the tiny suns?”

Miriam nodded. “And those tiny suns are actually called stars,” she added.

“Stars,” Cordelia said in awe. “There are so many. Do they only come out at night with the moon?”

Another nod. “That’s right. Now for what I really brought you up here for.” Miriam took a huge gulp of air and let it out through her nose. Lord, give me strength, she prayed in her mind. Protect my precious pearl child in this huge decision. You know why You made it so that she would have to go alone.  I suppose I would have to let her go sooner or later.

Miriam swam forward toward the sand on a cay until she could no longer propel herself forward with her tail. This particular cay happened to be less than half a mile from the main shore that Cordelia had seen on her discovery. “Stay here, dear,” Miriam instructed her daughter before proceeding to pull herself up the remaining way up the shore.

Cordelia watched her mother, confused as to what exactly she was doing. She opened her mouth to call out and ask but then froze as her mother finally stopped dragging herself through the non-wet sand and turned herself over. She looked on as her mom’s tail shimmered and sparkled, becoming engulfed in light and bubbles.

Using one arm to shield her eyes from the light, Cordelia called blindly, “Mom! What’s happening? Are you ok? Mom?!”

When the light died away, Miriam called for her daughter. “Cordelia, sweetheart. I’m fine. Look.”

Cordelia lowered her arm and gasped, her already large eyes widening to take up half of her small face. “Mom!” she exclaimed, her hand flapping and pointing crazily in her mom’s direction. “You’re a- You look like- You’re one of those- You have the limbs!” The stunned merteen could not believe what she was seeing right in front of her. “What in all the seas and oceans in going on, Mom?!”

“Calm down, Cordelia,” Miriam said gently, walking to the water’s edge with her hands up.

“You even move like them!”

Miriam nodded.  “Listen to me, dear. These-“ Miriam lifted her right 

leg and waved it around a bit, “Is called a leg. These limbs are legs. Humans – that’s what the  creatures you saw are called – use them to walk.” Miriam demonstrated by walking in a circle.  “It’s how they get around. This action,” Miriam jogged to a nearby pal tree and ran back, “is called running. It’s faster than walking can be very tiring.”

“Legs…” Cordelia looked at them in awe. “How did you do that? Can I do that?”

Miriam nodded. “Yes, you can. Every mermaid and merman has the ability to become a human at will. Only when you’re out of water, though. It’s usually much quicker than what you just saw but it’s been so many years since I’ve done I’d almost forgotten how.  Come on. Pull yourself up here and give it a try.”

Cordelia half army-crawled, half dragged herself up to the water’s edge where her mother stood waiting for her. Miriam pulled Cordelia the remainder of the way up the shore. “Ok, Cordelia,” she said. “Let’s see what your legs look like.”

Cordelia turned herself over onto her back and looked down at her tail. It’s pretty deep blue scales, the way it fanned out over the sand, the way grains of sand stuck to it and it’s ribbons. She looked up at her mother. “How do I do it?”

“Just close your eyes and picture yourself with legs.”

“Alright.” Cordelia took one last look at her tail before closing her eyes and focusing on an image of herself standing with a pair of legs all her on. She felt her tail become lighter and lighter and bubbles begin to surround her tail. When she opened her eyes she instantly slapped her hands to her mouth. “Mom!” She squealed. “Mommy! I have legs! They’re so much lighter than my tail!” She watched her toes wiggle. “I can feel the tiny finger nubs!”

“Toes dear,” Miriam corrected. “Those are called toes. This flat part here,” Miriam knelt down, “From your heel,” She tapped said body part, “to your toes,” Cordelia wiggled her toes, “is called a foot. Each leg ends with a foot.”

Cordelia swung each foot side to side in the sand. “Two foots, Mom! I have two just like you do!”

“Feet, sweetheart. The plural is feet.”

“I have two feet!” Cordelia corrected herself. She pulled her feet up slowly. “They bend!” She smiled excitedly.

“Yes, dear. The joint when it bends is called you knee.”

“Two… Knees?” Cordelia questioned her mother.

Miriam nodded. “You want to try standing?”  Miriam sat on her toes.

“Can I?”

“Whenever you’re ready.” Miriam pushed herself up and stepped back to give her daughter room.

Cordelia looked around for a moment before pulling her feet  up to her. She put her hands in the back of her on either side of her body and pushed her bottom a little off the ground and walked her hands forward until she was sitting on her toes the way her mother was. As soon as she lifted both her hands from the sand, her body tipped forward and and she landed on her knees. 

Miriam watched silently as Cordelia looked down at her knees in the sand, distracted slightly the feeling of the sand shifting beneath her weight. She tilted her head slightly to the left then leaned forward to press her palms into the sand so she was on all fours. That’s the way, sweetheart, Miriam thought approvingly. You’ll figure it out just fine.

Cordelia lifted her knees from the sand slowly, walking her hands backwards as she straightened her legs. She lingered on the tips of her fingers a minute longer than she needed to, shifting her weight around to test the feeling. Tentatively, she crept her hands up from the sand over her feet to hold on to the lowest part of her legs. “Uh, Mom?”

“Yes, Cordelia? What’s the matter? You’re doing just fine. You’re practically standing.”

“It’s not that,” Cordelia explained. “There are bumps on my legs.”

“Bumps?” Miriam walked over to get a closer look.

“Yeah, two of them. One on each side of each leg. They’re really hard like my elbows.” Cordelia squeezed her fingers over the “bumps”.

“Let me see,” Miriam bent down to look at where Cordelia was holding her legs and lightly tapped one of Cordelia’s fingers to peel it away from the spot. When Cordelia moved her hand, Miriam let out a chuckle. “Oh sweetheart,” she said between her light laughter, “those are your ankles. “

“Ank…les?”

“Yes, dear. They’re perfectly normal. Every pair of legs has ankles.”

“Ok.” Cordelia rubbed her fingers over her ankles one more time before sliding her hands up her legs, pausing to rub her knees and remind herself that that was what they were called. When she finally pushed herself to full height, she staggered and her left foot instinctively stepped out and gave a her a wider, more steady stance. Her eyes widened. A soft breath of awe flowed unheard from her slightly parted lips. “I’m… standing. I’m standing! I’m standing!” She looked at her mom with a huge smile on her face. “I’m standing!” She shouted again, giving a little jump of glee. She blinked, looked down at her feet, and then hesitantly jumped again. “What was that?”

“What you just did?”

Cordelia repeated the action.

“That was a jump, or a hop, depending on the height of the jump. But good job, Cordelia. You caught on to your feet faster than I did.”

“I did?” Cordelia smiled.

“Walk to me, sweetheart,” Miriam suggested.

“W-walk?” Cordelia looked at her mom blankly.

“Yes, walk.” Her mom nodded and demonstrated by taking a few slow, contemplated steps toward the brown teen girl.

“Oh, right.” A determined look took over Cordelia’s face. “Alright feet, time to do what we’ve been waiting for.” Cordelia gingerly shifted all her weight to her right foot before actually attempting to lift her left foot from the ground. She slid her foot across the sand a little.

“Your foot has to completely leave the ground, Cordelia,” Miriam called.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m getting to that,” She laughed. Cordelia lifted her left foot from the ground, slamming it down as quickly as she could in front of her right foot.

“Cordelia.”

“I felt like I was going to fall!” Cordelia repeated the process: shifted her full weight to her left foot, slid her right up a little, lift, and slam.

“You have to balance your weight between both your legs, dear,” Miriam told her. “And try to do it a little faster. You’re thinking so much about keeping yourself up on one leg you’re not actually focusing on the final goal: literally moving yourself forward. Come now, don’t worry about falling. You know how to push yourself back up, don’t you?”

Cordelia nodded. “Mhm.”

“Then there are no worries!” Miriam smiled. “You can do this, Cordelia. All on your own.”

All on my own, Cordelia thought. This is what it was all about.  Her being able to carry herself around with not one lick of assisstance. “I got it, Mom!” Cordelia looked down at her feet and held out her arms at her sides as she shifted her weight around before lifting a foot and leaning herself forward, just barely stopping herself from hitting the sand. She tried to make her other foot do the same thing but slipped. “A-ah!” An instinct she didn’t know she had threw her arms in front of her, breaking her fall.

Miriam stopped herself from running over to her baby girl. Just get up and try again, sweetheart. Miriam laughed as Cordelia did just that. I guess the only person I have to convince is myself, huh cOrdelia?  Miriam thought back to the day her little guppy actively realized she was different from all the other merchildren. She couldn’t bear the look in her precious pearl child’s eyes as she pulled at the air above her trying to detach herself from the seafloor.

“Mom! I’m walking like a normal  human!” Cordelia called, bringing Look at my legs! They work perfectly! I’m like a natural human!”

Cordelia walked as fast as she could to the edge of the water and looked down at her human reflection in the moonlit seawater. “I don’t look like myself, Mom. My eyes aren’t blue anymore, and my hair-“ She reached up and tentatively ran her fingers through the drastic change of hair her human form sported. It was now completely black and only hung down to her shoulders. It was light and puffy and… “It’s so short! Where’d my blue stripe go? And how come my hair’s so light and moving with the breeze now?”

“That’s because it’s dry, sweetheart. There’s no water in it which means it’s no longer wet or weighed down. And the reason your stripe is gone is because blue not a natural hair color for humans to have. Many colors we as merfolk are born with don’t come naturally to humans so the transformation accounts for that by shifting or getting rid of the color completely when we take on a human form. That’s also the average hair length for a human as well. Their hair doesn’t grow anywhere near as long as ours.” 

“I see… human hair is short and dry with less colors… And I thought I was just going to get legs.” Cordelia ran her fingers through her new hair. “It’s cute though, I like it.” She looked back at her mother. “Your hair color didn’t change. And your hair is down your back.”

“Some humans do have gray hair,” Miriam responded, running a finger through her own silver locks. “Granted, it only happens when they get old but I suppose since the color does occur my hair stayed the same.”

“Wow, there’s so much difference between our species,” Cordelia thought out loud. “How come you know so much about the humans, Mom?”

“I actually spent some time up here when I was very young,” Miriam admitting, sitting down under a small palm tree.

Cordelia’s eyes grew wide again. “You did?! What was it like? Tell me everything! That’s awesome!”

Miriam let out a breath. “Slow down dear, you can’t get it all at once. I will tell you that the people – that’s how you refer to humans in general – were quite nice in the place where I stayed. I did some private modeling for a nice young man who went by the name of Gregory for his photography business.”

“What’s photography?”

“Here on the land humans have things they use to take pictures of moments in time. It’s really quite amazing. I forget what the device is called but it remarkable how simply they can snap entire beautiful scenes with just the push of a button- and not the kind that holds clothing together,” Miriam clarified outright. “A different type of button.”

Cordelia nodded then a sly look crossed her face. “Did anything happen between you and Mr. Gregory?”

Miriam looked at the girl sitting next to her. “Well excuse you, miss,” She said. “But I’d be lying if I said no. Eventually we did become more than photographer and model. We went on a few dates; he admitted to me that Gregory was actually his middle name but wouldn’t tell me what his first name was. It was a running joke between us, me trying to guess what it could possibly be. He invited me to meet some of his family. Pleasant people. He had a little nephew who was simply adorable,” Miriam laughed, “loved me to death. He loved the water so much I often times thought he could be one of us.”

“Really? That’s sounds delightful!” Cordelia was growing more and more positive about her decision to live in this new place.

“He almost found out I was a mermaid- almost,” Miriam emphasized. “But please keep in mind dear: just like in the sea, all humans aren’t nice people.”

“I’d figured as much,” Cordelia affirmed, looking down at her feet and wiggling her toes. “Mean creatures are everywhere.”

Miriam nodded. “I’m glad you realize that.”

“So what happened with you and Mr. Gregory?” Cordelia inquired of her mother who seemed to have dropped off her tale.

“Oh um,” Miriam thought for a moment. How can I word this? Miriam looked up at the stars. “I never planned to stay there long in the first place,” she began, planning her words as they left her mouth, “Living on the land was lovely and all but I always missed my home in the water. On one visit to my home, I came to terms with how homesick I truly was and decided to stay.  I realized that wasn’t fair to Gregory or any of my other human friends so I went back one last time, officially quit the modeling, told everyone goodbye and returned to the sea. This is my time in human form since, and that was a while before you were hatched. Keep in mind our aging is slightly different from theirs.”

Cordelia blinked and cocked her head, then glanced up at her mother. “It didn’t hurt you to just cut off all ties like that? I mean, I’m sure Mr. Gregory-“

“Gregory was a kind man, Cordelia. He understood and I’m sure he’s found a lovely human woman with whom to share his life by now. This was all such a long time ago.”

“Mmmm.” Cordelia decided to leave it alone. Her mother knew why she did what she had done. And now that I think about it, if she had remained on the land with Mr. Gregory, I would’ve never been hatched! Cordelia gave her mom a hug.

“What’s this for?” Miriam asked, returning her daughter’s affection.

“What?” Cordelia giggled. “I have to have a specific reason to hug my own mother now?”