Innocence Was Bliss

9: Poor, Unfortunate Soul

Ariel, with anger still running threw her veins, arrived at Ursula's humble abode.

It was a gloomy place to say the least. Not a place she would imagine sunny smiles to land. It was black coral, with an oddly skeletal shape, and purple vapor that glowed.

At the mouth, the entrance, Ariel hesitated. This was a place that she had been warned of. However, unlike with humans, Ariel was scared of Ursula.

"This way," said Flotsam and Jetsam. They smiled their crooked smile as Ariel took a deep breath and followed them inside.

There was instant shrieking and murmuring. Ariel was shocked to say the least.

This was Ursulas garden. Of what? Polyps. Merpeople who couldn't afford Ursulas high demands and were doomed to be subjected to her for eternity. They are small plant-like animal hybrids that just sit on the ocean floor crying in agony, occasionally being fed dead fish by Ursula.

Ariel looked at them cautiously, swimming above them slowly. Suddenly, one grabbed her arm and she gasped, pulling away as quickly as she could. Ariel could hear her heart beat in her ears. But it stopped, dead in its tracks, when she heard Ursula say,

"Come in. Come in, my child." Ariel looked around a corner. "We mustn't lurk in doorways. It's rude."

Out came Ursula in all her greatness. She had purple skin and white hair. Her eyelids were an unnatural blue color and her lips where a bright red. She was... on the chubbier side. Her bottom half was tentacles, not fins, like that of an octopus. But her tentacles, unlike the octopus, were black. Besides that, Ariels eyes caught the golden seashell pendant she wore around her neck.

Ursula chuckled. "One might question your upbringing." She went to sit down in front of a coral vanity mirror and started fixing her hair. "Now, then, you're here because you have a thing for this human, this pirate fellow. Not that I blame you. He is quite a catch, isn't he?"

She laughed once more and applied red to her lips.  "well, angelfish, the solution to your problem is simple." She blew a kiss to her reflection. "The only way to get what you want is to become a human yourself."

Ariel gasped. "Can you do that?"

Ursula smirked at Ariel through the mirror. "My dear, sweet, child. That's what I do. It's what I love for." She made her way to Ariel "To help unfortunate merfolk, like yourself. Poor souls with no one else to turn to."

Flotsam and Jetsam swam around their mistress.

"I admit that in the past I've been a nasty. They weren't kidding when they called me, well, a witch. But you'll find that nowadays, I've mended all my ways, Repented, seen the light, and made a switch. True? Yes." Ursula opened her underwater cauldron. "And I fortunately know a little magic, it's a talent that I always have possessed."

A bright, pink color emerged. It lighted up Ursulas purples skin and cast a rather odd shading in the room.

Ursula smiled. "And dear lady, please don't laugh,
I use it on behalf if the miserable, the lonely, and depressed." She made two figures appear in the magic. One was a thin man, hunched over, and the other was a robust woman. Both wore saddened expressions.

She whispered to Flotsam and Jetsam, "pathetic."

Ursula walked around the cauldron. "Poor unfortunate souls, in pain, in need." She pointed to the woman in the hologram. "This one longing to be thinner." She signaled to the man. "That one wants to get the girl. And do I help them? Yes, indeed." She turned them both into beautiful merpeople and they embraced each other. "Those poor unfortunate souls, so sad, so true.