Chapter Text
“Lance tell us a story!”
Lance’s little brother and sister swam circles around him before laying down on their sponge beds. He smiled before laying down in between them saying:
“Once upon a time, when going to the surface was banned, there lived a MerSiren princess who dreamed only of the sky.
One day as she was swimming near the height limit, a surface dweller with wings fell into the water and started rooming. The princess brought him to the closest island, saving his life. The man had dark skin, something she could never have since mermaids spend their lives deep underwater. His hair and eyes were the same dark brown.
When the man awoke he looked at the princess in wonder, for mermaid s hadn’t been seen in centuries and were presumed extinct. The man called himself an angel. According to him, an angel’s wings took weeks to dry. The princess decided to provide the man with some company while his wings dried.
The first time she joined him on the island had pleasantly surprised him.
‘My God!’ He cried out. ‘You have legs! Can you all do that?’
The princess had fallen to the ground in laughter with tears in her eyes. She composed herself before saying:
‘Not all of us can do this. It’s a special gene created when a child is born with a MerSiren parent or a parent who is both mermaid and siren.’
After that, they spent their time together talking, snuggling, and falling in love. As the days came and went, the princess’s 18th birthday soon came. The day where she would be married off and crowned queen.
The night before she was to be married the angel confessed that his wings had dried off a couple of hours after he got out of the water. He had stayed just to be with her, for he loved her. The princess sobbed before wailing out:
‘Love me one last time before you leave’
The angle complied with her last wish. He showed her love like she had never known before, something exclusive to the land dwellers...”
Lance trailed off there not knowing how to give this “story” a happy ending, for this was the story of how he was born. He looked down at his little siblings, who were only five, only to see them in a deep sleep.
The stories ending was nothing short of miserable. See, per their kingdoms traditions, the night his mother was married she was to procreate with her new husband as soon as possible, which ended up being the night after her lover had made love to her.
She was soon declared pregnant, with twins nonetheless. Mermaid pregnancy was a little different than those of the surface dwellers, it only lasted three and a half months, so when the Queen's pregnancy lasted six months everyone in the kingdom began to worry.
The day Lance and his sister were born was a shock to the royal court and the midwives who were present. The way a mermaid is born has always been a mystery to the entire species. You heat the back of the pregnant mermaid and wait for the bubble with the child to rise out of their stomach. It has something to do with their small magical abilities, they phase right out of their parent’s stomach and out into the water.
The children that are in the bubble are usually glowing a bright white as they come out, and when their bubble is popped the glowing stops.
When the bubble that Lance and his sister, Luisa, were in popped, you would never think that they were related. Lance had dark brown hair and sun-kissed skin like his father, but when he had opened his eyes he had crystal blue eyes like his mother. Luisa, on the other hand, had pale skin and blonde hair like her parents, but emerald eyes like her father.
The king was outraged when he found out about this. After he had found out that Lance was not his son, he ordered that Lance was not allowed to go out into the public. They claimed that Luisa was the only child to survive the long pregnancy.
As Lance grew older, he learned to live with the scowls, glares, mockery, and ridicule that came with being the only dark-skinned mermaid in the palace and the fact that he was born to a land dweller.
When Lance turned eleven, his mom was declared pregnant again. When his little sibling was born, his mother died. Since mermaids were not used to long pregnancies, her first pregnancy had trained some nutrients from her that never replenished. She became sick incredibly easily afterward.
The next set of twins had just barely gotten the nutrients they needed to grow at the cost of draining the queen of whatever little energy she had left before she passed while the children popped. Her final words were to lift the ban on going to the surface.
The king tried to keep the ban but failed, for the last words of a royal are final. Though the ban was lifted nobody went passed their original limit. No one except Lance. He was scorned and mocked by the servants at home, but up at the surface, there was no one to tell him anything since everyone else stayed down below.
After his little siblings had gone off to sleep, he headed out up to his room to say goodnight to Luisa wish her an early happy birthday. Though she was already asleep when he got there. He swam over to his bed directly in front of Luisa’s and cried himself to sleep for he knew tomorrow was a day he would dread.
When the morning came, Lance was shaken awake by his little sister Amalia, and Luisa was woken by their little brother, Armando.
“Happy Birthday!”
They swam around their room singing happy birthday. A knock at their door had interrupted their celebrations.
“Come in!” Luisa chimed
A guard holding a spear opened the door. He bowed to the prince and princesses before turning to Lance.
“Your presence is required in the throne room”
He bows again before closing the door. Lance shared a look with his sister, for there had been talk around the castle about the King kicking Lance out once he turned 16. His siblings and mother had never grown to share the same look of distaste and hate for Lance the rest of the castle did.
He brought all his siblings in for a hug. Luisa clung to him a bit more since Amalia and Armando didn’t know what was about to happen. She whispered to him:
“I found some old human clothes and laid them out to dry weeks ago in the surface cave near the sand. There should also be a bag of those gold coins that humans have. Be safe, we love you.”
He swam to the door taking one last look behind him before leaving the room. As he swam to the throne room he prepared himself for the mockery to come. He opened up the door and bowed his head before the king.
“I know you’ve heard the talk around the castle, leave the palace. Go anywhere else for all I care. I’m even generous enough to let your filthy ass stay in the kingdom if you wish. If you speak anything about your origins at the palace, we will deny it.”
“Well, how kind of you to let me live in my own kingdom. Thank you oh pretentious one.”
“Guards escort this son of a bitch out of the castle.”
With a wave of his hands, the guards escorted Lance out to the back of the palace before he had a chance to defend his mother. He swam higher and higher before breaking the surface and looking around for the land cave. Once he spotted it he swam as fast as he could in its direction.
The cave had two entrances, one underwater that leads to inside where the floor was covered in sand, and the other one was above water connecting the cave to the shore. In the cave he saw a leather satchel overflowing with those gold coins, and out on the shore in the sun lay a dark blue shirt, black pants, and red boxers. Lance emerged from the water and tried to switch his tail for legs as his mom had explained. He knew how to do it in theory, since that’s all his mother talked about.
His mother had been the one to teach him about shirts, the smaller secret pants you wear under the bigger pants, and that he could turn into a human. Though they could never leave the palace together to go and actually do that since she and Lance were placed under house arrest.
As he sat up inside the cave where the water met sand, he remembered his mother's explanation for how to do it;
“First at least half of your body must be out of the water. Second, you need to imagine what legs look like. Smooth, lean skin where your scales should be”
Lance could feel the scales retreat back into his skin like little slits had opened up and they had retracted inside like a turtles head. Lance hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes till he had opened them again to look down at his new limbs that matched the same copper tone the rest of his body had. When he went to take a breath it felt strange, the water he usually took in through his gills was warm and, well, wet. The air was dry and cold. His mom had explained that MerSiren anatomy was designed so that switching from an aquatic to the terrestrial respiratory system was like flipping a switch
He flipped onto his stomach and tried using his hands to push himself up to stand like he was told humans could walk like.
Though he felt some weight on his back like Amalia was clinging to him begging to ride on him like a dolphin, and after several attempts of trying to stand he tried using his legs to push his way forward and his arms to crawl. He made it to where the clothes were laid out and sat there staring at them.
Sure the boxers and pants made sense to him, one big hole goes to the two little holes and the zipper thing goes forward. The shirt is what got Lance. It had four holes, sure, but the shirt looked the same from the front and back. As he tried just putting it on to feel what was right, it got stuck to something on Lance’s back.
“What the quiznack?”
Lance reached his hand back around felt something that was like bones, but it was soft and ticklish on his fingers. He crawled over to where the ocean was and tried to look at his reflection. He released a loud gasp when he saw what he could only think to be wings. The feathers looked exactly how his mom and drawn them, and they were the exact color she described his dads to be, pearly white.
Though from what he could remember humans do not have wings, so he continued trying to put the shirt on this time maneuvering it around his wings. He managed to finally get the shirt on after he had wrapped his wings around him by guiding them with his hands. He tried standing again except this time he used the wall of the cave's entrance for support. He managed to get up halfway before toppling back down.
“Ouch! These legs are like jellyfish, but with bones!”
He gave up after that and decided to lay down in the sand and appreciate the sky. Sure after his mom died and the ban was lifted he immediately started swimming near the surface, but he never took time to appreciate it. He always messed around with the sea life, because the sun was too bright above water for him most of the time.
He marveled at the clear blue sky for hours, and after a while, his head started to feel foggy, heavy, and dizzy. He soon heard voices coming from the forest which stopped where the grass met sand, a good 10 feet of sand was between the forest and the ocean. He sat up as the voices came closer and hugged his legs close to his chest. His head still pounding as the voices grew louder.