The Mystic Hearts Series

Chapter 65- Kau'i

This short story is about a mermaid & a human falling in love & deals w a lot of the technical pts that would entail being a mermaid, but that people don't normally dive into. Hope you enjoy :3 <3

I'd always known I was different, I just couldn't ever put a finger on why. At first I thought it was because I lived in a pod where I only knew who my bio dad was. See, the story goes that when Dad was still married to Szandra, my heartless ex-step mom of sorts, she had had many clutches of eggs with him. During 1 occasion, an unknown mermaid had sneaked an egg, my egg, into her clutch & it'd been fertilized by my dad, making me half my dad's & half that mermaid's.

& it seemed Szandra's sole duty to remind me how much I didn't belong, even after she divorced my dad, among her offspring that made up most of the pod, because I didn't know who my mom was & I wasn't her kid.

& while that did leave me feeling ostracized from the pod in a way, despite my dad & his new husband's unrelenting kindness, I don't think that was the only reason I felt different...

It wasn't until after puberty hit that I realized that the reason I felt different was because... I wanted to be a girl. I was trans...

I had always been uncomfortable with being called a boy & other masculine terms, initially thinking it was just because I was a shy & self-conscious child in general. It wasn't until after I started noticing how a lot of my half-sisters began to... grow that I realized... what I was missing...

I began to keep my hair longer than I had before, down to my mid-back, which wasn't completely uncommon for merpeople. It was culturally ok to do this as the only way to get a haircut around here was to head upshore to a shack near the forested beach run by a family of kind earth elves who kept our existence a secret. It isn't exactly a good idea to cut hair underwater...

But I kept my hair long as a... form of expressing my true self, even if it were minute & subtle... I couldn't help feeling happy how my long, pretty raven hair curled slightly at the end. Or how I could flip it back from my face & almost feel like 1 of the other girls. Or how I could use my long hair to cover my... obviously lacking chest area...

I didn't tell any of the pod, of course. About... my identity. I didn't know how they'd respond &... I didn't want to be exiled... Maybe after I was an adult & went to start my own pod, I might say something then, but... at the moment, things seemed rather hopeless, being only 16...

This hopelessness left me in a kind of deep funk that I never seemed to get out of. At least not until I met Amir.

What'd you guys think? To explain the beginning pt, I think mermaids would probably reproduce much like fish, bc that is their bottom 1/2. The females would lay eggs, similar to fish, but probably bigger bc they contain a much bigger offspring within. & the males would do the sperm trail thingy that fish do. So the main character's mom put her egg in the step-mom's clutch, which the dad fertilized. So, she's related to the dad, but not the step-mom, & doesn't know who her bio mom is. If that makes sense...

Anyways... on another note, I tried to portray her experience as accurately as possible. I know that might be hard, considering I'm afab, not amab, & NB, not a trans girl. But I understand what dysphoria feels like, & I'm trying my best. Let me know if anything is inaccurate :) <3

Oh, btw, here's what some of the characters look like, just so you know.

The main character's bio dad, Kaimana, who she calls "Dad":

Her adopted dad, Kaimana's new husband, Angel, who she calls "Papa":

& her ex-step-mom, Kaimana's ex-wife, who she just calls "Szandra", lol: