The Sea Princess and The Storyteller

Chapter Three: JEWEL

The ornate golden gates of the sprawling royal palace of Reddia were guarded by a duo of high-ranking officers in the Reddian Royal Force. One of the two bearded, tan mermen was so extremely muscular that he appeared to be capable of winning a wrestling match against a ferocious tiger shark. The other soldier was much leaner, but was over seven feet tall, from the top of his turbaned head to the tip of his jade green fins. They both were armed with long, sharp spears, carved from whalebone...harvested from cetaceans who died of natural causes, of course.

Crown Princess Jewel covered part of her face with her SeaSatin scarf. She looked down at her fluke, avoiding the guards' penetrating gaze.

"My favorite cousin is visiting me for the Feast of Amphitrite" Timin claimed, wrapping a well-toned arm protectively around Jewel and flashing the guards a confident grin. Like most members of the elite ranks of the Reddian Royal Force, Timin lived in the palace.

"Very well..." said the brawny officer. His tall comrade-in-arms's eyebrows shot straight up, but he nonetheless let Jewel and Timin pass through the gates enclosing the palace grounds.

Shortly after Jewel re-entered the palace, she was startled to swim into two unexpected, but by no means unwelcome, guests in her home. Her heart leapt with pure joy.

It was the Princess of Reddia's pen pal, the fair-skinned, titian-haired Crown Princess Nerissa of Pacifica, and a gorgeous merman with long dark hair, a green and silver tail, and a charming smile who could only be her husband Zale! Jewel knew what Nerissa looked like, as a portrait of her hung in the palace's Hall of Portraits alongside dozens of other portraits depicting notable merfolk royals, but the two mermaid princesses had never met in the flesh and scales before.

"Welcome to Reddia, Crown Princess Nerissa of Pacifica, and your Prince Consort, Lord Zale Delmar of Catalina Hall!" Jewel greeted them.

"There's no need for that sort of formality between us", stated Nerissa, beaming sweetly, and then embracing Jewel in a warm hug. "After all, I consider you a dear friend of mine, even if we've only communicated through seaweed parchment and squid ink!"

"But what about your...?" Jewel questioned. In Reddia, it was simply unheard of for an expectant mother to leave her eggs for more than a few hours at a time.

"It was indeed difficult to leave our little works-in-progress at the royal nursery back in Pacifica, but we've been planning this trip since long before the twins were laid..." explained Zale. "I mean, I know they'll be fine in the care of Dr. Fishman, the royal physician, and they're not expected to hatch for months, but...". His voice trailed off, and there was a faraway look in his striking brown eyes. Jewel recalled Nerissa mentioning in her latest letter that Lord Zale loved mer-children and was so looking forward to becoming a father.

"I was gonna tell you that we were coming to Reddia for your birthday ball in a letter, but Zale insisted we keep it a surprise!". Nerissa's blue-green eyes twinkled. "He just loves surprises!"

"We know better than to surprise your father, though. Rissie wrote him weeks ago to ask his permission to visit you" Zale told Jewel.

Crown Princess Jewel had mixed feelings about being born on the Eve of the Feast of Amphitrite. On one fin, she revered Amphitrite, the Goddess of the Sea as much as any other self-respecting mermaid in any of the seven seas. Her rather superstitious father, King Bahr, genuinely believed that his only daughter being born on the day before the major holiday, which commemorated the anniversary of the goddess's own birth, to be a good omen.

On the other fin, she couldn't help but feel like she had to share her birthday with the holiday season. This was the third year in a row that King Bahr threw a lavish birthday/Feast of Amphitrite ball for her. When she complained to him, two years ago, about not being allowed to leave the palace grounds, her father decided that it was a fair compromise to hold the occasional party at the Reddian royal palace, with a strictly pre-approved guest list. It was admittedly somewhat nice to have the rare opportunity to mingle with merfolk who did not live or work at the palace, but most of the guests were usually snobbish, vapid merman princes from foreign undersea kingdoms, who the King and the Grand Vizier had obviously invited because they considered them to be suitable future husbands for Crown Princess Jewel.

Jewel swam into the capacious ballroom, with Nerissa and Zale by her side. The walls, which were crafted with translucent seashells and curved inwards, mimicking the arches of a grand mosque in the human world, were decorated with SeaSatin banners in purple and gold, the traditional colors of the Feast of Amphitrite, and strings of pearls and tiny shells. An orchestra, entirely composed of Civilized crustaceans and small fish, played "Moe, Yam, Muhit", the official kingdom anthem of Reddia.

King Bahr was seated at the front of the ballroom on a large, clamshell-like throne. He was a short, skinny merman, with a silver and gold tail, long white beard, and a shiny gold SeaSatin turban on his head. Floating next to him was Lord Yam, the Grand Vizier of Reddia.

As the orchestra launched into a joyful, up-tempo Feast of Amphitrite carol, everybody, except for King Bahr and Lord Yam, started to perform Reddia's national merfolk dance. Merfolk surged forward, forming a large circle. Some clasped hands with their partners, while others remained free-floating. The dance began with a series of side shuffles, the movement rippling through the circle, creating a wave-like motion. Crown Princess Jewel observed that Nerissa and the numerous bare-chested young foreign mer-princes in attendance had trouble keeping up with the Reddians, as the music intensified, and the merfolk weaved in and out of the circle, their shimmering tails flashing like a colorful school of tropical fish. Laughter filled the water as merfolk brushed past each other, playfully splashing one another. The unenthusiastic dancing of Mayim, one of Jewel's two tailmaidens, however, made it crystal clear that she was disappointed that her long-distance boyfriend, Prince Adrian of Mediterrania, was not there.

"This is so fun!" Zale declared, grinning from ear to ear, as the energy grew. Soon, the entire circle was moving in unison.

A foreign merman with a haughty expression and a bright orange tail swam up to Jewel. "Greetings, Crown Princess Jewel of Reddia! You look...um, radiant tonight. Although, perhaps it would do you good to eat less seaweed cake in the future...?".

A flicker of annoyance crossed Jewel's face, but before she could respond, Nerissa materialized by her side. "Such a pleasure to see you again, Prince Edmond of Pugetia," the Crown Princess of Pacifica said, her voice laced with cool politeness. Nerissa had met Prince Edmond and his older brother, Prince Everett, more than once before, and she found their arrogant attitudes positively insufferable.

As hurtful as Prince Edmond's comment regarding her weight was, Jewel wasn't the least bit shocked by it. It was not the first time a rude merman at a royal event like this had said such a thing to her, and she seriously doubted it would be the last. In fact, she was pretty sure that no one of the opposite gender had ever told her she was beautiful and meant it. Even though she wanted to marry for love, Jewel sometimes wondered if she would have no choice but to eventually consent to an arranged marriage, if no suitable merman was ever romantically attracted to her.

Her mind wandered to Derin, the mesmerizing storyteller she saw at the marketplace earlier that day. She knew absolutely nothing about him, except that he evidently shared her love of good stories. When her brown eyes had gazed directly into Derin's dark orbs for a split second, Jewel swore that she felt something she had only read about in the Pacifican romance novels in the palace's well-stocked library.