‘Seven days, once you hit the right continent.  Seven days, until you spend eternity on the shorelines, never truly belonging to the land or sea but somewhere in-between, always searching but never finding.  Seven days to find your parents and retain your gift of immortality.  But heed this warning there shall be a deceiver clad in lies, who was sent to ruin your quest and to surmise your demise.  Seven days is all you have to return to your home or you will forever be banished from my sight.  Heedless of this warning will surmise a fate worse than death.  Good luck my sweet Aline.”  Seatl kissed my forehead one last time and a soft smile graced his ancient face.  “Remember home is always open.”

***

My only regret was that I had not realized how pivotal Seatl’s last words of wisdom would be directed towards my future.  Years later I would realize the full extent of those words.  They contained all the wisdom, and guidance he could have afforded to give me, at the time.  For years to come they would guide me and I would never know it, always referring back to them but never truly realizing it.  I only wished I could go back to alert myself to them and then maybe my life would not be what it is now.  Then again maybe everything would turn out the same way, I have no regrets but I do have moments where my new knowledge of the world would have saved me a lot of trouble and heartache.  My story is one of…. It is not one that can be told it has to be lived.  There can be no sneak previews or short cuts.

Every part of my life has defined who I am and who I will become.  My regrets taught me valuable lessons that I hope can translate to other generations of mermaids, humans, and those in-between.  Do not make my mistakes just take the lessons learned from them and live.

I had come to live in the deep dark depths of the ocean when I was just a baby with my protector and guardian, Seatl.  The big white haired merman ruler, otherwise known as King Triton, was the best parental figure for any young mermaid.  He was strong, independent, and wanted me to be the same.

As soon as I was old enough to talk he told me to never call him King Triton, that it would not do since he was raising me and his title was a formality for others beneath our royal status.  He said it had to do with some ancient rule that mermaids were not allowed to call him King if they were his daughter for all intents and purposes, which I was.  Down below I was a Princess of the Sea Realm.  It was fitting, as I was the only one with auburn hair and almost pure white skin.

However, when I had searched through the past articles, dating back tot the beginning of our underwater existence, I could not find anything on another mermaid he had raised or even given a second thought to.  I never fully understood why he had chosen me and now I was losing my chance to ask him his reasoning behind it.  Was it because of my genetics, family heritage, or luck?

This was just one of many newly formed questions that would have to wait a week to be answered. 

The only hardship I was glad to leave behind, after this, was the stereotype of my short life ashore, my human side.  In fact my history of life under the water was viewed as horrific to most humans, or so I am told, water dwellers just view it as a typical day with one minor distinction.  We, Halflings, are untouchable and any interaction with us that “harmed” or mental, emotional, or physical state would resort in immediate termination from this life via Triton’s Trident, a big clear ugly stick with three spears at the top.  It lit our deep watery world.  Our ocean floor never went dark.  Unless we went to war, it was our call to battle though it had never been used in thousands of years.  When that did happen, our bioluminescence was our guiding features as we stalked our prey to kill, we also could see in the dark.

Stalking and killing was easy, since the majority of us had no feelings of remorse or emotional extremes.  The mermaids of the bunch are the catalyst for Sirens, of legends.  We are deadly and no one views that as a bad thing.  We are made to torture and kill with no regrets, painful torturers at the worst of times and death dealers at the best of times.  That was my ultimate goal in life.  I already spent the majority of my day with the Sirens and had been truly accepted by them.  My anger and resentment made me more like them than any other.  It was its own drug and call to their murderous lifestyle.  A freedom that I could only imagine releasing me of my hatred, we were bred to kill.  None of their stories began with happy, peaceful, or even wanted memories.

Not that most under the water did not have the same stories of abuse, murder, or other unspeakable acts done to them or by them.  We were a bunch of misfits trying to coexist and barely succeeding at that.  The only we tamed, managed, that was by killing humans.  This was the reality of my world but my history comes from a more rare and humiliating place.

At a few days of age I was sacrificed to Poseidon, the God of the Sea.  My “parents” had set me adrift in the ocean.  A live offering was far more coveted in the water world than a dead one.  What could you do with a body other than let it rot?  We never ate humans, only killed them.  Even we had our limits.  The Halflings, who went on quests to retain their immortality, were the only ones to eat until we became immortal.  We were not truly immortal, we could choose death if we wished it after 5,000 years, a minor technicality.

Poseidon, God of the Seas, spared my life that day by granting me temporary immortality until I turned seventeen.  He, then, requested special protection for me from Triton until I was old enough to make my choice between humanity and immortality.  To everyone’s surprise Triton, himself, choose to raise me.  An unheard of solution, one Poseidon must have seen coming.

The only drawback was that my immortality would begin to fade when I was a week out from my seventeenth birthday.  At that time I would be granted the opportunity to reinstate my claim to immortality by connecting with my “parents”.  If I didn’t need them so desperately to retain my immortality I never would have acknowledged their existence in this world or any other.  This coming experience would forever change my life for the better or worse I did not know.  It would be my defining moment.  The only bright spot about going ashore, I would maintain the gift of transformation from human to mermaid.  The only qualifier was that I had to change in the ocean daily, if not I would become comatose or dead.

I had prepared for that and for many other, potential, obstacles I may face.  The single most important detail of that training was to find quest aides.  In other words, someone with money or a person with a certain skill set to help me get where I need to go in the short time frame I needed to accommodate without getting caught.  Not that it truly mattered but being locked up would be an aggravation.  I would have to escape and who honestly had time for more humans. 

No one would ever know who I truly was or have a chance in hell of finding me again after my seven days were up.  Once I found my parents. 

My vivid one of a kind white tail flicked into view, a vicious reminder of them.  I hated swimming towards the land and knowing what was coming.  Every sacrificed child had a one of a kind colored tail, never duplicated in pure bloods nor with one another.  We were easily identifiable.  Me more than most, given mine represented a sacrifice to save a dear loved one, made of their purity and innocence.  That shit was only said to placate and help us acclimate to our new lives.

As rare as we were there was one thing even more rare, a matched or bonded pair.  I had a faded memory of seeing a mermaid and merman renewing their thousand year vows.  Their tails were the only ones to be duplicated, in the exact same shade of red-orange coral.  The greatest thing I noticed was that they only had eyes for one another.  I wondered if that was what the human word love looked like.  They were an inspiration, being the only matched pair in our entire history.  For that reason they preferred their privacy.  Before then a matched pair was nothing but a legend; two tails alike and bonded for life, a sign of true devotion.  Not that it came without a price; their separation from one another would mean death.  They had to be in the constant presence of each other.

Unlike their tails, my tail was a vicious reminder of the hell I was about to face.  My hands shook slightly as the realization hit me.  My way of thinking could change, forever lost, my wittiness and sharp tounge.  Only to have them replaced with grandeur thoughts of all the material things I wanted and how to use those things to best destroy the Ocean and its inhavitatnts.  Much less the damage to the land that gave humans the power to breath.  They did not seem to realize how important they were to their own survival.

Nearing the sandy shore I hesitated and took one last look at my tail.  As much as I despised the reminder I adored my tail.  I shall have you back in seven days, I silently vowed, before I began to swim as close to the shore as possible.  There were no humans or buildings in sight.  Perfect.

All too soon the water became too shallow to swim anymore.  I used my arms to pull myself through the shallowest part of the water, across the broken shells.