Part of My World

NOTE: This story was inspired by one of the topics of the 201'5 Freestyle Challenge Final topics: FairyTale. It is NOT an entry into that contest.'

Part of My World
‘Dreams don’t always come true,’ they had always told her. ‘Some things are never meant to be.’ But the little mermaid had always believed, and now she had proven them all wrong. Tonight, she held the love of her life in her arms.

She had watched him for years. Every day, as the sun was setting, he would come to the end of the dock. He’d sit there, dangling his feet off the end, staring off into the brilliant oranges and bruised purples of the sky. She would watch it with him from beneath the waves, and though she was still young she knew what they shared was special.

She smiled fondly at him now. They had both grown so much since then. His body had grown hairy, his limbs long. The changes she remembered fondly; how his legs hung ever closer to the water with each passing year, and how the stones he skipped went further and further. She collected each one, cherishing it like a precious jewel.

She had changed, too. Her tail had lengthened, and she had become very lean. She had shed her many, needle-like teeth 13 times now, which made her a woman grown. The child stalk on her head had grown longer and burst forth in a bright, luminescent, emerald orb at its tip. Green stalk-bulbs were considered a thing of great beauty and rarity in the undersea world. Many mermen had come to court her, but her heart belonged to another.

Her heart belonged to the boy on the end of the pier.

She ran one of her hands through his hair, using the other to hold his hand against her scaly cheek just beneath her baseball-sized eye socket. She was remembering fondly the first day he’d noticed her. She had ventured close – closer to the surface than she had any business being – when he had noticed her emerald bulb glowing. He had stared intensely into the murky water, making her quite self-conscious. She blushed, causing her bulb to gleam all the brighter.

Now, each evening as he came to the pier, he was no longer watching the fiery red-orange sunsets. Now his eyes were fixed on her glowing green presence. It was intoxicating to her, and each day she found herself moving closer and closer to him, his eyes wide with wonder.

She smiled at him now, and he grinned back. The tension had built on like this until a day not too long ago. She had been right on the verge of breaching the surface of the water when she noticed him stripping off his shirt and shoes. Bemused, she retreated a bit beneath the waves.

Finally: elation! He dived in to be with her!

Oh how joyous their meeting had been! How quickly she had taken him in her arms. He was shouting with joy, holding onto her oh so tightly! She hugged him back, ecstatic in the bliss of finally being together. They frolicked together for what seemed like hours before she finally loosed him from her grasp. Taking him by the hand, she led him down to her home beneath the waves.

Ever since then, they’d been as happy as two people could be! Day by day, his smile grew wider, and she knew she had found bliss. He refused to eat anything, but she wasn’t sure if humans ate anything anyways. Her hand came away from his head, and with it a chunk of the hair she had been stroking floated away into the surrounding water. She was elated! With this and his widening eye sockets, he seemed to be becoming more merman by the day!

Everyone told her that was impossible, but what did they know? ‘Dreams don’t always come true,’ they had told her, but she knew now that sometimes, if you wished hard enough, they could.