The Little Mermaid (My Version)

Nadia

Nadia's POV

 I swam up to the surface, despite my father telling me never to get close to the beach. He always warned me about the "evil humans." But are they really that bad? I always wondered. I'm sure they're just misunderstood. After all, father doesn't know what they're like.

That much was true. Mermaids and humans hadn't communicated in over a century. Not after they discovered that we were edible to them. They ruled that it wasn't cannibalism because we were only "half human." Father always told me that we're not human at all. 

"Savages, they are." He always told me. "Uncivilized, and cruel. Look at them, Nadia. Few can even swim!"

I always felt like he was being too hard on them. 

I wanted to know, if only just for one day, what it would be like to be one of them. It would be difficult, not being able to swim as well, or even be able to stay underwater for more than a minute, but there's so much more to the world than water. So much more that I needed to see.

Time flies by when you're daydreaming.

I looked out over the top of the water and watched as the sun set. 

"Better get back," I sighed to myself. "He'll skin me alive if he finds out where I've been."

I swam down under the water until I reached a group of bluish-green anemone, making my way through it when I did. The soft tentacles waved hello, brushing my hands, face and tail ever so slightly, and being careful not to sting. I smiled and ran my hands along the delicate limbs, greeting my home. I found the patch of soft moss that I sleep on, in the middle of the anemone, laid there. After a minute or two of serenity, I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, the sun barely shone through the infinitely animate waves of the sea. Morning. I thought, yawning through my gills. He's not awake yet.

I swam up to the surface, yet again, studying the large faint shape in the distance. A ship, I concluded.