Lovers across two lands

A new day wields a new story

Blue ocean water flushed softly onto the shore, waves disappearing into the golden sand, past the shore were reefs and oceanic animals beyond what any normal human could count. The scenery was almost glowing past the rough surface on top of the water. Fish, sharks, and other animals swam through the water, though deeper in the ocean is a very well known sea creature, though these creatures are more commonly known as monsters rather than creatures to humanity, their long beautiful tails, fragile gills, and webbed fingers are known throughout humanity, mermaids.

Though humans see these sea creatures as sea monsters, the so-called 'sea monsters' see the evolved monkeys as the monsters rather than themselves. Humans like yourself, tend to be the main attraction of these stories. Instead, I'd rather tell this story from the mer-peoples point of view.

Today was yet another peaceful, but boring day. A beautiful, long-haired merman softly swayed his tail in front of himself, trying to give himself some entertainment. Topi Waluki, the son of the shark mer-peoples leader, was the name of this merman. Mer-people aren't allowed to go past a certain point in the ocean, and due to Topi's mother being the leader of the shark-people, she's very strict with his boundaries, which means he rarely has anything to do. Topi also tends to be bullied by other shark mer-people because of his constantly happy, optimistic attitude, shark people are known to be an aggressive, dominating clan, so shark people think that Topi is bad luck for their clan.

Topi got up from laying down in his room, and decided to look for his mother, to ask for permission to go out past their clans confines. He left his room and smiled softly to himself, excited to explore outside again, Topi loves to explore, and learn about other sea creatures, he's mainly interested in crabs, he finds them adorable. He looks around for his mother, Ilse, but has luck close to none. He eventually found her, talking to a strangely large group of people, Topi tilted his head out of confusion, wondering why the hell there were so many people gathered around his mother.

"Everyone, our food storage will be sorted out soon before fishing-season comes along, I promise you all, so trust your leader and calm down." His mother spoke with confidence, she was meant to be a leader, she's inspiring to Topi. "Who's gonna want to go out to hunt though?! The fishing season is almost here! No mer is going to wanna go out past our borders!!" A man in the group of people spoke, causing the crowd surrounding Ilse to begin to worry. "That won't be a problem. I'm sure there are mers in our clan who'd be willing to help hunt. Don't worry about that, I'm positive we'll be stocked up with food before the fishing season starts. Now everyone, please calm down." Topi was awed by his mothers leadership and talent to be able to make the whole crowd engage. Ilse sighed, clearly exhausted from the situation. Every year, around spring-time, the humans go out to fish, and they fish mainly around where the mer-people live; So around this time, mers stock up on food, so they don't have to go out and risk their lives during this time of year.

"Mother!" Topi happily swam up to Ilse, excited to ask his question. "Ah, hey my crabby little shark!" His mum smiled happily at Topi and patted his head, "I had a question, I was wondering if you could let me go out to explore again today? Pretty please with fish scales on top?" he attempted to persuade his mum with his best puppy dog eyes, begging her to let him go out. "Topi- I dunno.. It's almost the fishing season and I'm having trouble finding people to be willing to go out and search for-" Before Ilse could finish what she was about to say, she smirked at Topi.

She looked at Topi like a doctor who'd found his newest experiment. "Say, bubs.. Would you like to help me search for food for this spring? You're 24 now sweetheart, and I've had you clinging to me for god knows how long. So, I trust you now, you can go out on your own, but only if you promise to come back with some fish!" Ilse smiled at her son as he put his hands on his cheeks and his eyes glimmered excitedly. "R-really?! Thank you so much mum!! Thank you, thank you!"

Topi gathered his things, stuffed them into his satchel, and headed away from the clans boundaries. He examined every shiny little thing that caught his eyes, after about 2 hours he had 61 fish dead, collected, and ready to be eaten. He was about to head back, when suddenly, an adorable little Panther crab made him lose focus on what he was doing; He went up to the crab and picked it up in his webbed hands, he appraised the crab, taking in every little detail it had. He was about to let the crab go, but the crab started to crawl onto Topi's back, tickling him and making him squirm a bit. "H-hey that t-tickles! Hahaha!~" He giggled as the Panther crab continued to inch all over his torso, his laughter suddenly came to an end when a piercing pain shot through his shark fin. "A-ah-" He looked behind him to see a massive net with tiny spikes all over it wrapped up in his tail and back fin.

His heart dropped to his stomach and he began to feel a sharp pain in his whole frame, his body went numb, and the only thing he could do was panic. His life was flashing before his eyes, he thought about his younger sister, his mother, and the clan; His home. He was lifted up out of the water, and hoisted into the air while the net held him up, blood dripped from his body as the small, yet sharp spikes dug into his rough skin.

The last thing he saw before passing out were 7 human men on a huge boat, they looked excited, but were also shocked. The humans heaved the net back onto their ship and hesitantly but carefully unraveled the net from Topi's body, they almost immediately after taking him out from the tangled up net put him into a box, the box was labeled, 'Mermaid'. In the time that Topi was asleep, the fishermen brought Topi to shore, to their town. They brought him to the Emperor, not knowing what else to do with him. "A merman? I've the perfect idea to do with the wretched thing. Hand it over to Dianxia, I'm sure my son will know what to do with it." The Emperor said to the men, seemingly excited to have his son have to deal with a merman.

Topi was brought to the son of the Emperor, though the Emperor despised mer-people, Hua Ming, the Dianxia, was rather fond of them. He found them beautiful, and interesting, he loved to read about them, though they were always described as demons, monsters, and other such horrible titles. Topi woke up in what seemed to be something that was an aquarium, he looked around the small body of water he was in, and was terrified. He didn't know where he was, why he was where he was, and who he would encounter. Perhaps we'll find out in the next chapter.

Hellooo!! Author here, I really really hope whoever reads this enjoys it <3 I loved reading it and ngl I feel so powerful being able to make the decisions in this story >:3 I hope that people end up reading my story, and end up loving Hua Ming and Topi ^^ Next update will be August 27th! I hope to see at least a few people then! Have a lovely day, night, week, month, and year!!