The Little Mermaid: the true story

Chapter 4

I was whisked away by a girl in a brown dress and up the grand staircase up to an even grander room that was so large it was even larger than my room at the palace back home. I was stripped naked by a maid who was so efficient I didn't even know what was happening when it was. She told me to step in to a large container full of water and I obliged happily. This water was different though. I was unused to warm or even like this hot water. She added some potion looking substances and said that they would make me smell nice.

I wasn't so sure that they would make me smell nice but if she said so then maybe he would like the scent of my hair. When one of the maids said that I was dome she said that they had found the perfect dress for me. It would be just my size and that it would be beautiful on me. She brought it out and took my breath away. It was the most beautiful pink dress with many layers of a delicate see through cloth layered with what looked like roses on the top near my waist and at the bottom near my feet. Putting it on was more difficult than I would have thought possible. The maids, I had already begun to think of them as my maids started with the very bottom layer that was what they called white lace under cloths. They proceed all the time to call off the layers to themselves as if to not forget the layer order. When they got to the dress they looked relieved as if they knew that they had done a good job.

I moved delicately as to not ruin my dress and sat on the stool at the wooden block with a mirror where they applied what they called make- up such as face powder, rouge and lip coloring. I was a little unsure of what they were doing with my hair but it was not surrounding my waist like normal. I was a nervous wreck, what would happen if he didn't recognize me? It would make it even harder for me to get him to remember me as the girl (mermaid) that had saved him all those years ago. They saw my reaction and tried to calm thinking that it was just the idea of meeting the king and queen.

My maids escorted me to the door of the dining hall and presented my name to the guard standing watch who announced me to the king as "Ariel of the Unknown". What I did following that introduction came so naturally that it seemed normal. I walked up the King and Queen and proceeded to curtsy low enough to consider appropriate from a royal to one of a higher status. I then walked over to the seat on the right of Prince Patrick and waited for a butler or server to move the chair out.

When no one moved to help me, Patrick proceeded to get up and pull out my chair. I sat down and then waited for a reaction from everyone and was shocked as I was looking around and saw Marissa sitting in the chair to the right of Prince and heir Eric across the table from Patrick and I. She wore the same expression on her face as everyone in the room: shock that I had done the unthinkable. I had presented myself like a royal would to another; yet no one knew who I was. According to etiquette I would now be quite the scandal; and I liked that they didn't expect this level of proper etiquette from a girl that was "shipwrecked" and found wearing a sailcloth on the beach.

...

"So my dear," started the Queen. "Where may I inquire are you from?"

"Nowhere and everywhere," I said quietly as I studied her finery and the way that she held herself. It was so much like my mother, but my mother had died. At least that was what everyone else had told me. I had injured my head and amnesia and was unable to remember anything up until a certain point where it started to come and go in flashes when triggered by certain sights and smells.

"Oh my, you poor dear," she exclaimed. "Oh Eric dear we must keep her here until she remembers were she is from! She can't even say where she is from" almost to himself that I had said something.

I watched as Patrick glared at his mother and whisper what appeared to be for his sake that he had indeed heard what I had said and that it sounded poetic to him.