Sea of Tears

Chapter Three

Leaving the trenches, Adonis ventured further away from the Kingdom, having no clear direction, only the insatiable desire to get as far away from his life as possible. The reef felt leagues behind him now, along with all he knew about the world. The seaweed fields had turned into dark, slithering forests that stretched as high as one could see. The thickness of the endless stalks blotted out all the light from the surface, allowing him privacy as his tail propelled him through the darkness.

The forests soon cleared away to colorful coral beds, sandy clear valleys, glowing ravines, and the wonder of it all amazed him to no end. He began to realize with a saddened heart how incredibly small his existence had been with each new part of the ocean's frontier he traveled past. Why was the kingdom kept away from all this beauty?

Streaks of light filtered down from the surface onto a clear sandy field scattered with sea shells. Adonis stilled, lifting his eyes curiously to the moving waves above where his kind never ventured. Gleaming white curls swirled incandescently around his face as his lips parted. His father had told him once there were clouds up above. He wasn't even certain what a cloud was except for a floating wisp of white, or so his father had explained, much to his confusion.

Seeing one for himself became an instant obsession.

Propelling himself upward with strong swishes of his tail, he grew closer and closer towards the surface with a rising elation, life igniting within his spirit for a fleeting moment.

Moments before he reached the rippling ceiling of his existence, a sound he thought he would never hear again instantly pierced his ear drums for a split second. He froze, the gills on his chest and the razor-sharp scales of his tail rising subtly in alert. Nothing but silence.

...It couldn't be.

A shrill, long note from the whistle he had once treasured as a boy tore through the serenity of the sunlit, sandy clearing once more, and Adonis's blue eyes flashed with recognition. Turning his head sharply in the direction it had come from, his ascent to the surface became forgotten entirely.

Without a second to spare, the whistle began going off again, several times in succession as if in desperation. There was an urgency to the piercing sound, causing Adonis's instincts to take the lead. Not wasting any time, he sliced through the depths towards it in equal urgency.

His mind warned him of impending danger, yet the curiosity mingled with his current mood left him unable to resist. Hardly a care was left within him now that his world had come careening into a darkened pit of depression. This unexpected mystery was a welcoming distraction.

Weaving through beds of seaweed and schools of fish, he was suddenly caught by surprise when a massive shadow of some kind moved slowly above him as if floating atop the surface itself. Flicking his head up, his cerulean eyes grew large in stupified shock before he immediately changed form to hide himself. Taking camouflage as a dolphin, he slowly - and with extreme caution - neared it.

This was the place where he had heard his whistle come from. Although, surely it couldn't have been... from up there. If that was the case, then he was beginning to have second thoughts about finding it. Damn that little whistle, he had lived just fine for years without it.

And yet then... he saw it. Glinting in the depths from the other side of the shadow. He nearly swam after it. Nearly. If it wasn't for the blur of swirling white that hovered beneath it in a descending tumble of...what was that?

Swishing his flippers forward, he swam up to it cautiously. His heart made a strange leap into his throat when the white silkiness wafted down.

A mermaiden!