Making a Splash

Aquaria Festival: Day 2

It was Day 2 of Aquaria's annual festival. Almost all of the merfolk living on land nearby had arrived by now, so the underwater city was even more crowded than before. The stalls were filled with merpeople looking to buy special gifts or eat food that couldn't be found on land.

Lily and her friends were also enjoying everything the festival had to offer. They had never been in mermaid form for so long, but it was strange how natural it felt at this point to them. Even sleeping in the small cave on the mossy ground had been little trouble.

As they had seen many of the stalls the day before, the four friends were currently exploring the city together. It truly was amazing that such structures were able to be built underwater without the use of the construction tools and vehicles that would normally be used up on the surface.

According to Marie, the kingdoms were apparently constructed with the help of magic. Legend had it that a powerful trident that the god of the ocean Poseidon once wielded was split apart into several smaller and weaker tridents, one for each underwater kingdom. Poseidon then gave those tridents as gifts to the ruler of each kingdom to be passed down before he returned to the realm of the gods. Those tridents were then used to not only create the castles and cities of the kingdoms, but to hide them as well. Marie, Emma, and Cleo found themselves fascinated by the legend.

Eventually, their exploration led them to the outskirts of the city. Marie's ability to act as a guide wasn't as good as she would have liked it to be, as she hadn't been to Aquaria for the past few years. She could only rely on the vague memories she had from her last visit.

"Where should we go next?" Lily asked.

Marie thought to herself. "Hmmm..."

Suddenly, Cleo's ears twitched as she heard something. "Do you hear that?"

The four mermaids stayed quiet and listened carefully. Sure enough, there was some sort of commotion coming from the distance. Curious as to what it was, the four of them followed the sound and swam towards it.

Soon the four of them came further towards the outskirts of the city, just before the temporary residences for visitors. There, they found a large cave with what sounded like the laughter of children coming from it. As they swam closer, they looked inside and saw a large amount of young merfolk swimming about with a couple of mermaids that seemed to be in their low-twenties, as well as one who looked well over forty.

"Ah, I remember this place!" Marie realized. "This must be the Nursery!"

"Nursery?" Emma questioned.

Marie nodded her head. "Yeah. It's basically a day care service. Parents leave their young ones here and pick them up later in the day. It's typically not that busy, but since there's so many visitors during the festival, this place gets swamped with kids from those visiting. They have infant merfolk and children all the way up to age eight I think."

"I see."

"Oh perfect!" a voice called out. Lily and the others watched as one of the older mermaids, likely one of the Nursery attendants, swam up to them. "You must be the replacement singers I was told about."

"Replacement singers?" Lily asked.

"I apologize for the short notice you must have had. We didn't think the singers we hired would end up sick." the attendant said. Wasting no time, she began shoving them inside.

Marie tried to protest. "W-Wait! It's not what you think! We're-"

"Oh the children are going to be so excited! They've been looking forward to this all morning!" the attendant said, not bothering to listen to them. "Children! The new singers are here!"