Imagine Dragons (updating so slowly that it's ridiculous)

Burning pink sea

Mermaids. Okay. I need to find mermaids. Where does one find mermaids? They live in water, but I don't know where any of that is. I don't even know if I'm moving towards water or away from it.

This is horrible. What am I supposed to do? I can't figure out where I'm supposed to be at all. I'll end up dead and mermaidless.

Trees were much easier. It's a shame there's no giants here; if there were, they'd at least be easy to find, and somehow I doubt that two different species would eat the same thing, so I'd be safe on the blood-sucking-savages part.

I try to conjure up a picture of water in my mind. The first thing that comes up is bluish-clear stuff that I can tell is from that stupid dream (will I never forget it?) but next it's a hot pink that's almost blinding. Ah, that's what it looks like. Why didn't I know that?
So, water, okay. Hot pink is pretty visible. I wonder how the mermaids handle it? Pink draws in a lot of heat. And I mean a lot a lot; it's close to red.

I've always been slightly afraid of mermaids, even nice ones like Ariel. They seemed (and still seem) like a mutation, something accidental that everyone else loves. What about being half-fish is so great? What about it is pretty and elegant? Why would anyone daydream about having to live underwater, forever? And why do mermaids always manage to have perfect hair after living in the ocean for their entire lives? And how realistic is it that people would actually somehow become mermaids, by some science experiment? Dude, no. That's ridiculous.

Oh my god these stupid dream memories are getting to me. I've never seen a mermaid. That dream was stupid and weirdly hyperrealistic. But that doesn't mean anything. That was stupid and pointless, and there's no reason to let myself keep thinking about it. This is silly. I just need to forget about it.

Again, back to mermaiding. How does one locate mermaids? I didn't want to go near the mermaids in disney world, even, so I guess I don't have all that much practice. Or skill to start. Mermaids just feel like a bad idea in general, and now I have gills so I'm almost one of them. Well, without the tail. Ew, I'm a mermaid. I'm living every little girl's dream, and I hate it.

Stupid dream.

Why didn't someone else from over there come here to fight unicorns and become a mermaid? I didn't want to be a mermaid. In fact, I rather liked my ugly pale skin before it was faerified, and the bark was just a really weird add-on. What would the people from the dream think if they saw me now? Would they be jealous, or disgusted?

How different from I than that dreaming girl, thinking about maybe one day imagining something. I'm a lot braver, I think. I hope. I don't honestly think, though, that that girl from before would be anywhere near okay with going to look for mermaids in a pink sea or fighting off blood-sucking trees. That girl would have run away, far far away, or she would have accepted her fate. I think I'm braver than that girl.

I certainly hope that I am, or else I'll be running back to the faeries pretty soon. Everyone knows that they wouldn't accept me back until I've become one of them, but the idea of mermaids just scared the crap out of me.

What will I look like at the end of this? How warped will I be? What mutated blob will have taken me over and replaced my old self? Maybe it's right that I'm changing, because of the way my personality is changing too, but I don't really want to look like this. I want to hold on, ever tighter, to the me I was before. I want something to have of that girl, even if I hate remembering that stupid dream that I came from.

I keep scanning the land. Nothing outstandingly pink yet.

Actually, now that I think about it, I didn't see any water at all on my flight to the castle. None. Not a thing. The faeries and the trees haven't needed to physically find it, and I don't think that faeries need it at all. Maybe this has become a survival technique; they don't need water because they don't want to go to where the mermaids are.

Oh god, if the faeries are afraid of them I will flip out. Normal mermaids, with pretty smiles and shell bras, scare the crap out of me. The faeries don't seem like the kind of things that would be afraid of anything, and mermaids must be severely warped if they're going to scare the mermaids.

I'm scaring myself. I need to stop. The faeries said nothing bad about the mermaids. Maybe the mermaids are really nice and kind and...

Is that water? That pinkish toxic-waste-like glimmer on the horizon? Fäntäsiä doesn't have night, that much I know, so what is that?

I pull in my wings so I drop a couple of feet before snapping them out again. What is that?

Sure enough, it's water. I can see the little waves rippling over the surface. I don't see any mermaids, so maybe this is toxic. It certainly doesn't look like any normal water that I've ever seen, and I kind of don't want to be anywhere near it. I have to, though, so I dive towards it, relishing in the feel of the wind on my face before I know I'll have to be in that ugly pink water, which, from here, appears to be steaming like the dark gray from the dream.

Ugh, that dream again!

I hold my breath as I shoot under the water, and sure enough, it's hot. It's very hot. It's like diving into boiling water, without the bubbles. Oh my god it's so hot I think that my bark is peeling off. My lungs need air. I need to go back up, but I'm starting to sink. I can't seem to move right in this water, like its a different consistency than it is in that stupid dream where I understood things. My gills! But how do those work?

I open my mouth to try to breathe, but all I get is a mouthful of hot water. Oh my god. I came this far and now I'm going to die because I can't swim in pink water.

I close my mouth and try breathing through my nose, but now my lungs are just more water-filled. I can't breathe. I'm going to die.

My vision starts to close in as I continue to struggle, and all I see before I black out is a vampire-like face, with pale skin and pointed teeth, but somehow it looks concerned.

The last waking thought I have is "holy crap is that a mermaid."